Love is the most powerful force in the human experience, yet for many people it is the most terrifying one. After all, to love and be loved means opening up one’s self to intimacy and being completely vulnerable. For many people love is a no-brainer and comes easily, almost as easily as the involuntary acts of breathing or heart-beating. For others, however, life has left them on the defense against love — a result of a lifetime of soul-shaping moments and experiences.
If you find yourself at a point in your life where you are ready to do the heavy lifting required to move beyond the self-protection and self-sabotage that is preventing you from knowing, giving, and receiving love, there is a way out. The team at Psychology Today created a list of the top 5 things you can do to begin to cure your fear of love, and the following is an excerpt of #3:
#3) CHALLENGE YOUR DEFENSES: It’s easy to fall back to those old, comforting activities that keep us feeling sheltered and alone. Even though, they may make us feel lonely, unfulfilled or hardened against love, we revert to our defenses like a heavy blanket shielding us from the world. Our defenses, no matter how alluring they may sound, are not our friend. They are there to keep us from achieving our goals. It may have felt threatening, even dangerous, to open up to someone as a child or show our feelings in our family, but these same defenses are no longer constructive to us in our current relationships. Perhaps, pretending we didn’t care helped guard us from the pain of feeling neglected or invisible, however that same attitude will make it hard to accept loving feelings that are extended to us today. As we learn how adaptations that served us in our childhood are harmful to us in the present, we can act against these almost instinctive behaviors and, over time, become who we want to be in our relationships.
You can read the full list by visiting PsychologyToday.com. One’s experience in childhood is the #1 reason why a fear of love is formed in the first place, and to learn much more about how to defuse this you absolutely need to read Alice Miller’s groundbreaking book The Drama Of The Gifted Child: The Search For The True Self. You can learn more about this extraordinary book by CLICKING HERE.
SEE ALSO: The Neuroscience Of How Love Rewires Your Brain, And Affects Who You Are & Who You Become
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