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you're not hard to love. you were loved badly. · feel your feelings with Ethan Jewell

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  You are not hard to love. At some point in your life, you
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  were loved badly. Whether it was by a parent when
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  you were younger, maybe a relationship that you had in
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  high school or college, or maybe the relationship that you have
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  with yourself. No matter what it is, you are
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  not unlovable. You are capable of being loved.
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  You deserve to be loved exactly the way that you want to be and
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  anyone, including yourself, that tells you otherwise is simply
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  wrong. My name is Ethan Jewell and
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  welcome back to Feel Your Feelings.
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  Today we are going to be talking about love and not just the good
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  side of love. We're not going to be talking
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  about love in the traditional sense that we all think of.
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  We're not going to be talking about relationships with others.
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  We're not going to be talking about how to love others.
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  We're going to be talking about loving ourselves and how others
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  can affect that. Today's intro was not just a
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  hook. It wasn't just a warm up.
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  It's the truth. And it's a truth that most of us
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  need to hear but never have. You are not hard to love.
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  Maybe you've spent months, even years of your life thinking
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  this. If you clicked on this episode,
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  I'm quite confident that you've felt this way.
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  And there's a story that we tell ourselves.
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  Most of us have a story that we carry about why our
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  relationships haven't worked, why people leave, why love feels
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  so hard to hold onto. And for a lot of people, more
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  than would ever admit it, that story sounds something like I'm
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  too much, or I'm not enough, or some exhausting combination of
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  both. But here's the thing about that
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  story, you didn't write it yourself.
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  Someone handed it to you. And someone handed you that
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  story early on before you had a good sense of self and you just
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  absorbed it. You started treating it like the
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  truth. The people that were supposed to
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  show you what love felt like early on, parents, caregivers,
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  early relationships through high school and college, they taught
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  you something whether they meant to or not.
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  And what they taught you became your nervous systems definition
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  of love. Inconsistency felt like love.
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  Chasing somebody felt like love. Walking on egg shells feels like
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  love. Earning affection, Managing
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  somebody's mood, making yourself smaller to keep the peace.
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  That felt like love. And not because you're broken,
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  but because that's the version of love that you were given, The
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  version of love that you were taught.
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  So why did this happen? Why us?
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  Why do you feel this way? There's a concept in psychology
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  called attachment theory, and I'm not going to give you a
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  lecture, but the short version is this.
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  The way we were loved as children or in our earlier lives
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  defines the template that our brain uses for every
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  relationship that we have as adults.
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  If the people who raised you were consistent, warm, and
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  available, you probably developed what's called a secure
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  attachment. You learn that love is stable,
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  that people come back, that needing someone doesn't make
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  them. But if the love that you
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  received was unpredictable, warm sometimes and cold, others
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  present one moment and absent the next, loving you when you
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  performed well and withdrawn when you didn't, then your
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  nervous system learned something different.
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  It learned that love is conditional, that you have to
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  work for it, that the moment you relax, it might disappear.
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  So you grew up optimized for this anxious kind of love, hyper
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  attuned to other people's moods, always scanning for signs that
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  someone might pull away, terrified of abandonment, either
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  clinging too tight or shutting down completely because the
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  alternative felt too dangerous. And that's not a character flaw.
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  It's not something that you do wrong.
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  It's a survival strategy that made total sense in the
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  environment that you created it. The problem is, you're not in
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  that environment anymore, but your nervous system doesn't know
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  that yet. We tend to be drawn to what
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  feels familiar. It's not what feels good, what
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  feels familiar. And for a lot of people, those
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  are not the same thing. So if love for you has always
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  been a certain kind of way, a little bit chaotic, a little
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  uncertain, a little like you're always one wrong move away from
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  losing it, and then you meet somebody who offers a stable
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  kind of love, a gentle love, a consistent love.
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  It might not feel like love at first.
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  It might feel boring, too easy, like something must be wrong.
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  And then you meet someone who makes your nervous system light
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  up, who's a little unpredictable, who keeps you
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  guessing, who you have to work to keep.
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  And that feels electric. It feels like chemistry because
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  you've been there, because it's familiar, because you know how
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  that works. You're falling for the pattern.
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  You're falling for the version of love your nervous system
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  already knows how to do. And that is the trap with this
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  type of love. That is the trap.
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  When we learn these kind of attachment styles early on, we
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  are trained to keep ourselves there.
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  It's what's familiar. It's what we know.
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  We know how to handle it. We know what to do when it
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  hurts. So you tell yourself the story
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  again. When that person who's
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  unpredictable runs away, the way many unpredictable people do
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  within love, you tell yourself I'm too much.
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  I push them away, something is wrong with me, and the pattern
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  repeats again. But that's not what happened.
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  What happened is you got handed a broken template early on in
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  life, and you've been running this template on everyone you
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  meet. That's not your fault, and it's
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  not your destiny either. You might believe that you're
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  too much, too difficult to love, but at some point somebody
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  taught you that. Maybe it was a parent who needed
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  you to be smaller, a relationship that punished you
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  for having needs, a childhood where love always came with
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  conditions attached. You learn to shrink, to
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  apologize, to edit yourself down until you felt like you were
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  somebody who was easier to love. But the people who taught you
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  that you were hard to love, they weren't showing you who you are.
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  They were showing you who they are.
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  And you can't keep letting that reflect on you.
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  You are not hard to love. You deserve the love that you
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  crave. You deserve gentle, calm,
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  predictable love. You were never the problem.
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  You just had the wrong teachers. And there's a problem with this
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  kind of love. It really has some negative
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  effects on us. When someone is inconsistent
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  with you, when they're cold or critical, when there are
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  conditions to that love, it is almost impossible not to
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  internalize it. Especially when it happens
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  during the years where you're still figuring out who you are.
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  Especially when it comes from someone who's loved you needed.
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  That belief gets wired in deep. It becomes the lens through
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  which you interpret every relationship that follows.
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  If someone doesn't text back quickly, they must be losing
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  interest. Someone seems distracted, or I
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  probably said something wrong. Someone ends things?
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  Proof. Proof that I was right about
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  myself all along. You're not being irrational,
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  you're being consistent with the evidence your early experiences
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  gave you. But the problem is, the evidence
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  was never about you, it was about them.
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  Their inability to love you well was not a verdict on your worth,
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  it was a reflection of their capacity.
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  And what we have to do is relearn this love, both with
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  others and with ourselves. Relearning what love looks like
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  is not just a simple mindset shift.
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  It is not a decision that you make.
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  It is a slow and unglamorous, sometimes frustrating rewiring
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  of something that lives in your body.
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  Your nervous system learned what love feels like, and the only
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  way to teach it something new is the repeated experience of
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  something different. Which means this takes time.
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  Which means you will probably have moments where that old
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  pattern feels more real than the new one.
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  Which means healing in this area is not linear.
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  And that makes it frustrating. But here's what it can look
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  like. It looks like noticing when
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  something feels familiar in the wrong way.
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  Not running from it automatically, just noticing,
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  you know? Asking yourself, is this
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  exciting because it's genuinely good, or is it exciting because
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  my nervous system recognizes the pattern?
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  It starts to look like letting stability be interesting,
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  letting consistency be enough. It starts with tolerating the
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  discomfort of being truly seen by someone and not performing,
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  not managing, not editing yourself down into a smaller and
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  easier version of who you are. Just being who you are and
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  letting that be enough. It starts by asking yourself,
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  not just does this person like me, but do I actually feel safe
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  with this person? Do I feel like I can breathe?
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  That last question is something that a lot of people forget to
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  ask because we're not even thinking of ourselves in this
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  way. We're so deep in this pattern of
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  believing that we are unlovable that we don't even look out for
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  ourselves. We don't even look for safety
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  and comfort and love for ourselves.
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  But we have to. This is a real and deep issue,
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  and it will take time. You have it rooted within you
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  that you are not capable of love, that you are difficult to
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  love. But you're not.
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  You have just learned a pattern over and over again through your
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  childhood or through early relationships, that love is
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  supposed to be unpredictable or earned, but it's not.
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  I promise you, love can look stable, it can look calm, it can
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  be predictable. You deserve that kind of love.
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  You deserve to be loved gently by others and yourself.
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  You are not hard to love, you've just had the wrong people
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  telling you that. The belief that you are hard to
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  love, that you are too much, not enough.
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  That was never a fact. It was a lesson taught to you by
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  people that are insecure or bad at loving you.
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  And lessons can be unlearned. You were not built wrong.
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  You were shaped by the love that you received, and the love that
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  you received was incomplete. It is not the final word on who
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  you are or what you get to have. You are allowed to be full of
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  yourself, all of it, and still be loved.
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  That kind of love exists, and you are perfectly qualified for
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  it. You deserve it, I promise.
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  That's going to wrap it up for today's episode.
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  Thank you so much for being here.
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  If you like this episode, please drop me a comment and let me
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  know what you think about this topic.
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  Also, if you need help feeling your feelings, you should check
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  out my music on all platforms under the name of Ethan Jewell.
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  I almost guarantee it'll make you cry.
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  So thank you so much for being here.
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  Thank you for understanding that you are not hard to love.
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  And as always, thank you for feeling your feelings.
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  I'll see you next time.