Podcast Newsletter: Episode 34- Our Belief that We Are Not Lovable

Explore the "Anxious Attachment Solution" podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, hosted by Amber Lynn, focusing on overcoming anxious attachment through neuroscience and emotional intelligence.

Hello my Anxiously Attached Warriors, on today’s podcast episode 35 I want to talk about our belief that we are not lovable and how it conflicts with our strong desire to be loved and accepted.

I want you to know that I see you. I am where you are. I know how hard it is to be a person who gets emotionally affected by what people say, how they say it, or by what they don’t say. I know how it feels when you feel big emotions and get stuck in them. I know how it feels to be on an emotional rollercoaster that you wish you could just get off.  I know how it feels not to like your own reactions to feeling this way. 

I want you to know I see you, you are not alone and that it is hard. I want you to know that just because it is hard doesn’t mean you are not doing the work. This work is harder on some days than others. You are going to have days, weeks and sometimes even months that feel like your anxious attachment is being triggered one thing after another. Then you are going to have space in between when you feel like you have finally developed more secure attachment habits. Then something is going to come up and you will be triggered and you are going to feel like you are not making any progress when you really are. Please do not give up on yourself. Please do not be mean to yourself in these moments. 

I know these moments are overwhelming and I know you wish you were different. I know you wish things didn’t cause such big emotional reactions inside your body or start such major overthinking and anxious thoughts.

I know it is so natural for you/ us to get mad at ourselves and desert ourselves in these moments because we don’t like the way we feel. I want to offer you that what if what you really need in this moment is to be seen, and understood by yourself. What if in this moment you really need validation that you love yourself no matter what your brain does. I want you to know, 

I know how it feels to have constant doubts about your lovability, such big emotional reactions, and wonder if someone will ever truly be able to love you, in spite of your anxious attachment. I have been there.

You may have a small belief in the back of your mind that you are hard to love, you are too much, no one will ever be able to love you- or this voice may be loud. It is because we have spent years with a brain that feeds us thoughts like: 

I am too much

Once they get to know you they will leave

No one will ever be able to love you forever

Do they really even care about me?

How can they love me when I have such big reactions to small things?

How can they love me if I’m so reactive

How can they love me if I always such down

I am not good enough for them

I am not loveable

I am hard to love

It didn’t work out before, why would it work out now.

What if getting close leads to hurt

If I am not in a relationship I am not loveable

I’m single again, I am the problem

I have to always be perfect for them to love me

If they really loved me, I wouldn’t feel insecure

The problem isn’t that we have these thoughts. The problem is that on some level we believe them. Instead of questioning them- we take them for face value, because our experiences in the world up til now have proven to our brain that they are true and we were not taught how to look at our thoughts and question them.

Having these thoughts on repeat create feelings of doubt, fear and comparison. Leaving us feeling insecure and unloveable. So we experience low self confidence, low self love, and minimal self acceptance. We are left with low self worth, we believe our self worth has to be earned or given to us by someone else.  We don’t feel good enough and we feel like too much all at the same time. 

These thoughts on repeat create a belief system that tells us: We will never truly be loved and accepted the way we are.

We have a strong desire to be loved and accepted that conflicts with our belief that we are not loveable or that we are hard to love and no one can ever truly accept us.

In order to BELIEVE other people can actually love us though we have to first believe we are lovable and not too much.

I know this sounds hard. I know it also sounds cliche but it's true, because it does not matter if someone loves you to the moon and beyond- if your thoughts are constantly telling you that NO one could ever love you- you will eventually self sabotage any relationship you are in because - It is your thoughts that create your feelings. So no matter what that person does, no matter how much they actually love you, show up for you, or tell you they love you- it can not cancel out your thoughts that create your feelings.

Don’t panic. I will teach you how to create new feelings on purpose to create a new belief system around your lovability. It will take time so be patient with yourself. If you are anything like me, these unloving thoughts have been with me for a few decades, so it will take time to lower the volume of these old thoughts and decrease their effect on us. I will teach you how to create new thoughts so that when those old thoughts come back in we can turn them down and we can turn up the volume on new thoughts that create the feeling of lovability.

New Thoughts to practice

I am enough. 

My people enjoy all of me. 

I do not have to dim myself.

Other people's opinions of me are none of my business.

They are here now

I am loveable. 

I am worthy of love.

I am worthy of the love I desire. 

Being loved is my birthright.

Being accepted is my birthright.

I accept myself, other people don’t have to.

I care about myself, so I will show myself care.

Lots of people who have big emotional reactions are being loved by someone right now. 

Lots of people who shut down during hard emotions are being loved by someone right now. 

I am not hard to love, some situations are just hard. 

I am not going to compare my past to my present. Sometimes things just don’t work out.

People are just people and sometimes relationships don’t workout.

Single people are just as loveable as people in relationships.

If I am feeling insecure it is because of my thoughts- not myself worth or my lovability.

All people are imperfect and are loveable.

Helpful questions:

Ask your brain the opposite of the insecure filled questions it is so close and fall madly in love?

Instead do they really even care about me? Ask How have I seen them show care for me?

Instead of asking: How can they love me when I have such big reactions to small things? Try: Who do I love or have I loved that have had big emotional reactions? What if someone can love you even if you have big reactions?

You see the trick with these thought questions is that our brain is designed to look for evidence to prove them to be true. ( confirmation bias) our brain looks for evidence to prove our thoughts true. So if you are asking your brain a question rooted in negative non loving thoughts- it will problem solve and show you exactly what you are looking for. 

If you ask what if I get too close and I get hurt: it will show you how painful that will be, and throw all the worst case scenarios of that happening. 

So we have to work on asking our brain powerful questions rooted in just how loveable you are. 

Because you are loveable. I truly believe that you are worthy of love. You are worthy of feeling loveable and  you desire to have a brain that gives you loving thoughts, and if you don’t have that yet- it is okay, I am on that journey with you and I will help you create thoughts that help you feel like you are lovable and worthy of love.   

To summarize- The thoughts we think often become beliefs. The thoughts we think also create our feelings. We have thoughts in our head that create our self concept and our belief of our lovability. Right now those thoughts could be telling us that we are not very lovable. So in order to stop believing that we have to create new thoughts on purpose and practice them in order to create new self beliefs, the belief you are lovable. Our brain does something called confirmation bias- where it looks for evidence to prove our thoughts true, so if you believe you are unloveable your brain will look for all the evidence to prove that you are unloveable. If you believe that you are lovable your brain will look for evidence to prove that you are loveable. That is why the questions we ask ourselves are powerful, because our brain is a problem solving machine and will offer us answers to the questions we present to it. 

Homework:

Your anxious thoughts may be different from mine. So do a thought download. What are all the thoughts that come up for why you are not lovable? Write them down. What are all the thoughts about how lovable you are, write them down. What new thoughts do you want to believe? Write them down. Now pick two or three to practice this week. Each week add a new thought to your practice list. 

If you want help creating lovability, or you want to learn how to do thought work come work with me, have questions email me at amberlynn@takingbackherbrain.com and set up a consultation call or dm me at TakingBackHerBrain