Healing from pain is first of all accepting that which we have rejected in us. The badness, the ugliness, the sadness, the despair.
But we cannot do that if first we do not start softening the shame around them. Shame is what binds the rejected/denied parts in us to an excruciating pain. Shame is what makes us mute the bellows of our wounds. Shame is what makes it impossible to talk about our rawness fully and from a non-judgmental place. That is why we need to step into an area of non-shaming
In our childhood,we were in a survival mode. We did not have a choice as children how to love our parents. They enforced and molded their own needs onto us and they required to be loved by us through the filter of their own trauma. So we needed to be on board with everything they did. If not it was s matter of survival. So the love languages we had to absorb from our caregivers were mandatory. They were the only models of behaviour and display of affection accepted and approved of, the only ones available to us. It is abusive and inhumane to believe that we can stop having these toxic patterns overnight.
Before we heal we need to drop the shame around the fact that it is bad and wrong to be this way. Here are several love languages we learned as children by witnessing how love was expressed or by how parents directly showed us and treated us:
I feel loved when I make my partner feel comfortabe at the expense of my own well being
This happens in a family were a display of negative emotion was either dismissed, denied or disowned, so the only choice we were left with is to show positive emotion.
The behavioural response in a stressful/triggering situation is to show we have it under control and that nothing affected us.
As adults, we feel that we can only be positive and smiling in order to be worthy of love. We feel it is our duty to make the other feel safe and comfortable at our own expense because once that was what it was required of us by our caregivers. Once, our parents made us responsible for how they felt and expected us to behave a certain way to make them feel good about themselves.
I feel loved when I enable my partner's behaviour
This behavioural pattern is a love language accepted in a family prone to addictions. You may have seen your mom/dad excuse and justify the other parent's addiction by gaslighting the children: "He/she is just tired from work".
The parent gaslighting you would therefore enable the others addiction at the expense of your and their safety. The enabler feels that love is all about agreeing and putting up with the other partner's problems. They unconsciously find ways to cope with the issue at hand. The enabler is afraid of admitting o the truth of the situation and therefore locks himself or herself in a fantasy where enabling will eventually lead to the other partner starting to see how amazing and loving he or she is.
I feel loved when I am pitied
This happened in a family where disconnection was almost complete and the only time parents saw you as when something bad happened to you and you were the victim. Everytime your parents paid attention to you was only when you were sick or someone did something bad to you, they unknowingly reinforced the mindset and core belief that only victims are worthy of love and attention and that victimhood is the only way you have access to receiving love. In an adult relationship you will play the role of the victim because of the emotional payoff that it gets you.
This means you let your partner take control over your life, while you expect to be fixed and rescued without any effort. You engage in self defeating mechanisms because you know you will be seen. You punish yourself so that they find themselves in the position to tell you there is nothing to punish yourself for, therefore approving of you. This equals love and care for you.
I feel loved when I feel controlled
Growing up with an overbearing parent will teach the child that freedom is toxic. The selfhood and free will is toxic because it is unpredictable, unsafe and can lead to pain. The caregiver teaches you that whatever is not in your control will deviate. Your parent will approve of you when you comply to their vision of how you should be. So you unconsciously translate this into "I am loved when I am controlled". You will gravitate towards partners that do not tolerate any manifestation of individuality outside of their capacity to contain. They will watch your everyone and interpret them, putting you in the position of defending your every word and action before them. Even though this is suffocating for you and you know it deep down, the opposite side of the spectrum - a partner who respects your freedom - would be translated by your mind as "He gives me freedom because he/she doesn't care enough what I do. My actions dont impact him/her because he/she is uninvolved". You too shall unknowingly be doing the same thing to your own partner. Safety for you is all about what is familiar and controllable.
I feel loved when reality is less real
When we do not have the tools to regulate how we feel, we deny the realness of the reality. This is called gaslighting. It is the manipaution technique that your caregiver applies on you as a child. That means that they invalidate anything that contradicts or threatens their own reality or their own wellbeing. If you say "The clothes you bought are beautiful, but are a bit too tight", they would say "No, they're just perfect".
You learn to be dismissive of your own reality and your partner's reality because of the extreme pain that acknowledging that reality would entail. So if you have a partner that is abusive towards you, you will deny their behaviour and soften it by finding roundabout ways to explain it. We learn to make life bearable when the stories we tell ourselves about why we suffer justify the suffering.
I feel loved when I am needed
A parent that is not letting their child grow up by letting them take small and comfortable and suitable responsibilities for their own age will have them grow up into an adult that is doing the same in thei romantic relationship. We think that love is about unburdening the other while burdening ourselves. It's about how much they need us that makes us feel loved and valued because that is exactly what the parent who never truly let you become your empowered and autonomous self felt. This dynamic is a parent - child one in the romantic relationships. You make sure to come to the rescue and offer the best possible solutions for anything that bothers your partner. I will handle it don't worry is your favorite saying.
I feel loved when I do not feel different
Another model of behaviour where the parent never allowed their child's identity and sense of self to normally develop. In this scenario, the parent would demand of his or her own child to completely and utterly give up on anything that makes up their world as a condition for their love. This took the form of dismissal of anything that was "different" than what the caregiver wanted for the child. The partner made sure to disapprove of any independent and autonomous manifestation and approve of anything that the child did and was congruent to what they desired for the child. So the child had no other choice but to conform. The child had to like whatever the parent liked and had to hate whatever the parent hated. In adult relationships, the now grown up feels threatened and unsafe in any circumstances that would require for them to be a separate self. For the person who has undergone this type of treatment, their love language is that the partner has to want to merge with them, taking them everywhere and liking and disliking the smart things.
I feel loved when I am not seen
The child that was shamed for being himself or herself feels threatened if they are seen. When in an environment of unpredictability the child internalizes that being seen is being invalidated.
A child who was berated and humiliated and scolded, made to feel less than if and when they were seen,, as an adult they will do anything to underachieve and remain invisible while propelling the partner forward. Being seen translates into being exposed and vulnerable.
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