Learning to accept the love I deserve has not been an easy task for me. I have spent years believing that I was unlovable and nobody would ever fully love me when they learned of my past. That, of course, wasn’t true, and it was again my cPTSD lying to me.
To accept that you are lovable is actually a frustratingly painful thing. There are so many feelings that I have been robbed of all because I never learned how to process them from my childhood. That when I achieved something and felt proud that I mastered what I set out to do, I was left with the thought, “What is this strange feeling? Am I supposed to feel good because of this?” and far too often I have had to remind myself that feeling any positive emotion, such as feeling happy, is a good feeling and I should seek it out. That feeling bad is bad, and I should avoid it.
This whole healing thing has been mostly paradoxical for me. For example, joy is painful because my head believed I didn’t deserve to feel any positive emotions. To get over how unlovable I felt has proved to be difficult.
My therapist has been helping me untangle the feelings of believing that I am unlovable. Because my thinking always was if I’m unlovable and bad, then everything makes sense. The universe is fair and just. My pain is acceptable. Things are as they should be. It didn’t register that if I’m not fundamentally bad, that I’ve been punishing myself for nothing. If I deserved to be loved and protected… then it’s not fair. Then it’s sad. If it were any other child, I would say it was heartbreaking. Totally unacceptable. But as long as I’m unlovable and bad, then everything is okay.
We accept the love we think we deserve.
The thinking “I deserve this and others don’t” is often an unconscious part of how I relate to the people around me. To keep believing that I “deserve” to be punished is such an awful and isolating feeling that no one should really ever have to experience. But I am beginning to understand that those thoughts are what is holding me back.
Being at my age now and re-learning everything feels, at times, that I have failed. But I know that is just another emotion where I am disparaging myself. After all, who really has their whole life together? Nobody. We are all at different points of our lives and learning things, letting go of patterns and learning new ones. I simply am behind in some aspects, but that doesn’t mean I have failed. In fact, recognizing where I am means I am actually winning.
Yes, it is frustrating that I have missed out on so much time and that I have to re-learn how to parent myself to ease the inner child wounds. I am exposing my blind spots and leaning into the good feelings more and more. That I am allowed to be angry, disappointed, or whatever I need to be, and acknowledging those feelings means I can process and move on. Importantly though, I am beginning to believe that I am lovable, and even though that is scary, it actually feels… nice.