Table of Contents
Here are some common human thoughts.
If I share this one thing about myself, others will feel that I am unlovable.
They will KNOW that I am unlovable and unwanted.
I AM unlovable.
At least I think I am.
Why do I feel unlovable, anyway?
Am I unlovable?
This kind of personal crisis is at the heart of human existence.
But, funny enough, it’s not actually a personal crisis.
Because the parts that you feel you can’t share when you say, "I feel unlovable?"
It's those parts that you need most.
Those "unlovable" and "unwanted" parts actually bind you to others.
"Why Am I Unlovable?" (Feeling Unlovable or Unwanted)
It’s amazing to think that there was a point in my life when I was terrified to write about my mental health.
A point when I asked myself, "Why am I so unlovable?"
I certainly was feeling unloved from time to time, but why did I ask such a dramatic question.
Why did I have such a negative core belief about who I was?
But now, here I am.
Here we are.
The first time I even contemplated writing about my mental health, a thousand disastrous scenarios ran through my mind.
People will think I’m strange.
They will no longer like me.
I’ll be judged.
They will think I’m crazy.
That final one is a pejorative that especially hits hard for me. It’s probably because I know how often it’s used to hold people down, to put them in their proper place. It’s scary to step outside of societal norms.
Then I published my first story. And another. And another.
And you know what?
Nothing happened.
Well, not exactly nothing.
Something did happen, but it wasn’t what I expected.
Something happened inside of me. I got stronger. I started to find my voice.
And, this may have been the oddest revelation of all, I started to feel less ashamed about who I was.
How could the exact opposite of what I thought might happen occur for me?
That is the secret right there.
The beauty in the ugliness.
The opposite side of negative belief.
When I was a kid, I quickly learned that boys should only have certain emotions and act in certain ways.
I learned that wearing a mask was not only helpful, it was an essential part of getting through life unscathed.
So I caked on mask after mark because I thought that's what everyone learned to do so that they could get by.
I thought the layers were there for a reason, for all time. But the layers were there to be peeled back, to be thrown away, discarded then and for good.
The funniest thing of all?
Whether I wrote about mental health online or not had nothing at all to do with feeling loved.
But, in a weird way, it was the start of an answer to the question "Why do I feel so unlovable?"
When You Ask, "Am I Unlovable?", It's This One Core Belief That is Holding You Back
Would you believe me if I told you it’s one negative core belief, your own self-doubt, that is predominantly holding you back from feeling that you are lovable?
That’s what I’ve found to be true in my life.
I always thought it was other people. I thought it was society. I thought it was because, if I shared who I truly was, I would become unlovable.
What was behind it all was actually a more primal emotion, and that emotion was fear.
I was able to hide my fear in a story that others didn't like me or appreciate me or want me around.
But these were all made-up issues driven by fear.
These were all core beliefs of mine. But they were limiting beliefs.
To be unloved is one of the greatest fears a human can have–to be cast off from the universe and all the connections that bind us to one another.
Maybe that was the case thousands of years ago. Societies, to inflict eternal shame, would cast off the unwanted. It’s not the case anymore.
I still have layers to peel. I still have masks to take off. We all do.
But feeling unloved isn't a death sentence anymore.
Still, changing the way you feel in the deepest parts of your being stems from belief.
If you believe you are unlovable, you will establish a belief system that influences your behavior.
What are the other layers holding you back in your life?
They could be relationships that don’t serve you. Feeling unloved in a relationship is a real thing.
Or maybe your layers are limiting beliefs that you’ve had since you were a child.
Often, limiting beliefs take shape for no good reason at all. Do you even know why you think the things you do? Usually, it’s from an emotional experience that no longer carries any weight in our life.
You might believe that the world is not a safe place, but is that really true?
Are You Really a Person Who Is Unlovable?
Question everything. It’s by questioning even the most minute details that you start to pierce the layers of your life.
It’s by seeing the layers that you remove the layers.
I'll leave you with this:
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today can be an awakening for you.
It can be the day you start to see your worth–and that includes the parts of yourself that you don’t think are valuable.
Because those parts are especially valuable. Because they are what make you human.
Loved and unloved, lovable and unlovable.
Those are just words, and they never pierce the reality of what is really going on.
If you draw on the full extent of your life experience, you'll realize that words-- acknowledging the symbolic labels that they are--can't ever capture the totality of something.
That's where you come in.
That's up to you to decide.
