Unloved?

It’s a sorrowful feeling.

We look around and feel:

• No one cares

• No one understands

• No one wants us

We feel unlovable. Nothing we do and no one we pursue seems to shake this feeling, and most of our efforts only seem to exasperate it.

We feel desperately alone, not worthy of what we long for—not worthy of love. We feel lonely and yet unable to connect.

This feeling tricks us into either isolating or pushing with cloying efforts to grasp onto love. Both reactions only push people away, perpetuating the feeling of being unlovable.

It’s a sick downward spiral: this deep, empty feeling of being unlovable and the fight to prove it wrong that only reinforces it.

I had a client who never felt worthy of love and then acted on these feelings of unworthiness. (They became needy or pushed people away)

Then, they were left alone with living proof of their deepest fears— spiraling them further into these wounds.

Grasping

Those who succumb to this emptiness of unlovability wander through life, aching in its maw, searching hopelessly for someone to rescue them from their burning tower.

They reach out with needy tendrils, trying in vain to convince someone to love them. This creates a greater feeling of being unlovable because why else would they need to beg to be loved? The very act of grasping causes others to turn away, proving their fears.

Toxic relationships

Some who struggle with feeling unlovable even find themselves strung along in toxic relationships in the hopes of one day finding some reciprocity, fearing another loss. However, they only find one-sided dynamics that greatly serve their partner while continuing to famish them.

Isolate

Others who feel unlovable in this wounded way believe that the more time they spend with people, the less others will like them. So they keep their distance, spending just enough time to avoid emotional starvation but not enough to form real, deep connections, perpetuating their unlovable feelings.

Many people spend their whole lives feeling unlovable. This cavernous pain shapes their relationships (or lack thereof) and their actions in work and life. It fuels a general sense that they are bad or wrong because why else would they be unworthy of love or unable to get it? These treacherous feelings poison the well of life; meanwhile, they are dying of thirst.

Unable to receive

Some are so consumed by these empty, limiting patterns that they cannot even receive love right there in front of them. They ignore every sign that they are loved, favoring only the fleeting moments of minor betrayal. They cannot feel or even acknowledge the love around them, ready to be let in.

The tragedy of their lives is that they never know how much they are truly loved because they deeply believe they are unlovable. Life becomes a trap.

Healing unlovability

Those who find their way to healing these festering wounds joyfully embrace a wholeness of love—love for themselves, others, and the world. They begin to live a life not fueled by the hunger of longing but by the cyclone of abundant love. They begin to accept all the love around them like a thirsty flower bulb opening to April rains.

Those who release these old patterns and fears:

• Live fuller lives

• Don’t push so hard

• Enjoy their relationships

• Get out of toxic, manipulative dynamics

• Live the life they want without fear of other people’s opinions or expectations

• Finally, feel worthy of good things, worthy of love

They twirl in the sense that they are okay, good, and loved and that the world wants them here. They can relax in this warm knowing. This is the bounty of healing.

Misguided path of healing

Unfortunately, most go about healing with good intent but in a misguided way.

They believe the only way to feel lovable is to receive enough love from the outside world. And if they don’t feel enough love from someone, they move on to someone else, ravenously seeking it elsewhere, starving though they just ate.

They confuse their feelings of lack of love with a lover’s shortcomings and often gravitate to those who play hard to get or give love inconsistently, as this stimulates their desire to earn the love they long for.

This makes them reject real, consistent, healthy love and fall into the marshy oaths of a relationship built on longing, feast, and famine.

Some seek to push back against this unlovable feeling with affirming thoughts or mantras, repeating to themselves, “I love me” or “I am lovable” over and over again. But they sense the lie in the words because the feelings don’t match.

This friction between feelings and thoughts only creates more disquiet.

Many people seek to find the inciting incident. The moment when they began to feel this way. An old memory of a parent yelling at them, their failing a test in the first grade, or something more severe.

They believe that knowing the supposed source of the feeling will neutralize it, only finding that insight doesn’t automatically create change. We all know people who understand their challenges front and back but struggle to feel any different or shake damaging behaviors.

The truth is, feeling unlovable has very little to do with the outside present world and everything to do with the bubbling pain of old wounds. And while it often does come from the past, the solution isn’t within the past.

Of course, this is a big subject, and I hope to begin exploring it and outlining a general path forward. This is only the beginning.

(We’ll explore more at a community healing event soon. Hit ‘reply’ to this letter and say “I’m in.” if you want to join.)

1. Unlovable is a feeling

The experience of being unlovable is not a set of facts or realities. It’s a humming feeling. The thing about feelings is that we pass our whole world through their lens.

So, if we feel unlovable, a friend who doesn’t text us back will be seen through that lens and reinforce the feeling that no one loves us. A stranger being rude to us at the grocery store will be passed through the lens of feeling unlovable and serve as further proof of our unlovability.

In reality, the friend was probably just busy or is a lousy texter, and the person at the grocery store likely had a bad day.

Our feelings shape our reality, not by changing it but by changing how we perceive it. Understanding unlovability as a feeling helps us begin to work with what it is instead of trying to reshape the world in the hopes of changing our feelings.

Subconscious healing isn’t about changing circumstances to feel different; it’s about feeling different to change circumstances.

When we heal, we wipe away the dust on our telescope, allowing us to finally see the stars. To view reality without the mark of the past.

2. Learn to recognize love

One of the hardest parts of feeling unlovable is that it becomes difficult to recognize love when presented with it. We doubt and second-guess someone’s genuine compliment or gesture of care because our feeling of being unlovable makes it hard to see or trust it.

It’s almost like we’re so hungry we’ve lost our appetite. Or, like we’ve gone so long without eating, we have forgotten how to butter toast.

Learning to recognize care and love when we see them (even if they seem untrue or unappealing) is a beacon revealing that our feelings of being unlovable have little to do with reality.

This recognition can also allow us to begin to receive love from others, if even hesitantly, like nibbling on a saltine cracker after our rescue from the desert of unlovability.

The urge may be to deny love and reject its seemingly saccharine sweetness, favoring safe isolation or enticing inconsistency. However, simple, stable, clear love is a boon to our wanderings and real nourishment for a wounded heart.

3. Transform the feeling

Once we’ve pinpointed unlovability as a feeling in us, not purely a reality outside us, and started to let in gentle crumbs of love, we can begin releasing the wounds of unlovability.

To begin with, it’s important not to reject or fight the feeling of unlovability. Rejecting unlovability makes it feel unlovable, which only makes matters worse.

We must treat the emotions we swim in with the care they need. Unlovability wants acceptance and love, so it’s best we approach it with these gifts of our attention.

Start with a sense of love, compassion, and nurturing grace for this feeling. This will soften its hurt and yours. Loving is a great start to feeling loved. Love the feeling of being unloved. This will sweep away the residue of shame that lives within the wound.

Next

Follow these beginning steps, and you will find greater ease and a general softening of the pain of feeling unlovable. In time, you can move more deeply inside, and healing at the subconscious roots will flow next.

What comes next would be hard to do through text, but we follow the pain like a trail of breadcrumbs until we arrive at its source, not intellectually but in actuality.

What we find is typically a cluster of beliefs, memories, emotions, needs, values, and identities. When we feel unloved, these elements are often wrapped in the parchment of shame—a sense of being fundamentally wrong or bad.

The work of healing involves shifting these memories, emotions, beliefs, values, and identities and finding new, healthier ways to fulfill our needs. We do this without intellectualizing, analyzing, or endlessly ruminating.

As these pillars change, how we feel in our precious days transforms.

The path of healing is to reshape our feelings and, in doing so, change our world.

This is the work of healing, and when it’s done, the pains of unlovability soften until they dissolve into the air completely.

All the energy we put into these wounds goes toward more exciting, enticing paths, and we wake up anew.

Just as effortlessly as we felt the pain of the problem, we engage in new, healthier ways, giving and receiving love freely.

We’ll explore more in the coming weeks.

Warmly,

Lucas