People who can't receive love feel vulnerable if they let themselves do it.
Ever since our childhood, we are taught conditional love. What is conditional love? Conditional love is when our parents scold us and withdraw their love everytime we are "bad". They ingrain the belief that what is bad cannot be loved and we must be good at all costs in order to be loved. And what is the strongest desire that any human being has? To be loved.
Hence we mold to fit into the narrative of the societal conditioning about what and how a good person's should look like. As children, when our minds are fragile and impressionable, we easily absorb the punishments and conditions that our caregivers imposed onto us. We are "trained" that we have to earn love, we have to perform a certain way to be deserving of love and we have to have certain traits, only then we are lovable.
Growing up, all we dream about is a love where we are loved and fully taken as we are, without any restrictions. However, if and when that happens, the wound around being loved that we have carried inside us since childhood will prevent us from being able to see it. So basically when we stumble upon someone who loves us the way we have always dreamed of we will most likely not recognize it and receive it. The programming taught says there is no such thing as being loved just because of our own existence, pure and simple. It taught us that we must give in order to be worthy of receiving and that we must work for it. So love with no agenda and no strings attached is foreign to us and is not compatible with our subconscious story.
We slowly but surely lose faith and trust in love and anyone who claims to give it to us because history showed us there is nothing given away for free when it comes to love.
Therefore, we convince ourselves there is always something not to btrust about being loved when you have been deceived by it in the past.
Simply receiving love just because it is given to you would mean surrendering, softening and allowing an unfamiliar paradigm. That is too dangerous! It is a challenge most people don't take, especially if they do not know about this wound they have. Receiving the love that is flowing to you without having to work to deserve it is not compatible and will not enter into your conscious awareness until you decide to drop the story about what love should look like, a story that was forced onto you.
There are so many amaziny opportunities we reject or overlook in love because we are not as self aware as needed in order to allow ourselves to receive that which is truly compatible with what we want. But this is not our fault and we should not at any cost start feeling guilty.
How do you know you have this wound? Everytime someone tries to express their feelings, your body responds to it in a very resistant manner. You feel like a tightness in your chest or a push away sensation. It is the opposite type of response that one might expect to have to love, isn't it? It is however completely understandable and in no way condamnable.
Healing it therefore starts with the question `How can I let myself and allow myself to feel love today? ` Show yourself patience, allow yourself to take incremental steps. It can be as simple as saying `Thank you` when you are complimented instead of feeling cringeworthy and having a kneewjerk reaction of dismissing it.
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