One of the most challenging things to navigate along the self love path, is the realization that sometimes we have parts of self that have absolutely NO interest in being loved.
It’s also super common, and something I want to normalize today so that if this is part of your experience, you don’t have to feel like you’re alone or like you’re doing something wrong.
The truth is, many of us have parts of self that have spent SO many years in a state of fear, in a state of being blamed, in a state of being shamed and told that they are bad, wrong and guilty - that by the time we show up and try to love them, they simply don’t want to hear it.
They don’t want to let their guard down.
They don’t want to trust us.
So what do we do in this situation? How do we love and support ourselves when it seems like we have parts that are DEEPLY uninterested in BEING supported?
Let’s explore this together today.
The ROOTS Of Parts That Don’t Want Love And Compassion
The truth is that many of us have parts of self that are not going to be open to or trusting of ANY kind of self love or support.
We have parts that when we show up and try to give them understanding, try to get them to talk to us, try to show them that we are here for them, that we are a safe place and that we just want to get to know them - that fully shut down, turn away and refuse that love.
Oftentimes these are the parts of us that are the MOST in need of love, comfort and relief from guilt.
These are usually the parts of ourselves that feel the MOST shameful - like we are the cause of all of our problems, that blame us for every pain we are experiencing, that truly believe that the harder we are on ourselves the better life will be.
These are usually the parts that are in the most pain as well. The parts of self that feel the most abandoned, that feel the most alone, that feel the most like there is never anyone out there who can or will love us, help us or protect us.
These are the parts of self that are DEEPLY wanting safety, that are so badly wanting to be loved, that are so desperately wanting to be seen - but when push comes to shove - they are deeply incapable of actually receiving that love or care because it ultimately feels like a threat to them.
These are usually the parts of us that have experienced the most pain - and therefore they are the parts of ourselves that have the strongest walls built up around them. They are the parts of self that are SO afraid to let go of self blame and shame because they are DEEPLY convinced that they have been hurt, harmed, abandoned and abused because of who they are, what they are and how they are failing.
So when we try to love them, they shut down. They run away. They push it away. They go DEEPER into stories of shame, blame and guilt or simply go into that state of overwhelm thinking about all the pain they have experienced and fearing that that pain is only going to continue.
These parts are refusing love, refusing compassion, refusing to be supported and seen because to them, love has always been a threat. Love has been fickle and went away. Love was simply not available, and they HAD to get to a place of being ok with not having it - so opening up to the idea that it’s now here, available and safe feels FAR too scary - because what if it goes away again? Having opened up to it and then having to LOSE it again likely feels like the WORST thing that could happen. Better to simply stay away so that you don’t have to deal with the pain of love going away again.
These parts are refusing love because they are TRULY convinced that in order to BE loved, they HAVE to fix themselves. They HAVE to change. They really, really believe that ANY level of staying how they are is going to mean more rejection, blame, shame and abandonment, and that the ONLY way out of pain is to change. So they are going to have a deep fear of self love and self acceptance because to THEM this is a death sentence. This means accepting being alone, rejected and abandoned FOREVER.
These are the parts of self that so deeply learned that love is unsafe that they are not going to open up to it in any way - exposing themselves to more threat.
These are truly innocent parts that are going to need a lot of loving kindness.
How To Slowly Open These Parts To Love
The key to this is to understand that we are NOT going to force these parts of self to open to love any time soon.
We are likely not going to convince them in any way that love is safe, that they can trust us or that not being in shame, blame and guilt is in any way safe.
These parts, rather, are just going to need time, space and EVIDENCE.
They are going to need proof, over a long period of time, that they aren’t going to be shamed, blamed and abandoned anymore. They are going to need to experience safety over and over again. They are going to need us to learn how to be on our own sides, and for us to show up in this loving, supportive way over and over and over again.
However before we even get to THAT phase, there are a few steps we want to take first.
Step One: Validation: The very first thing that we are going to do for these parts of ourselves that are deeply closed off to love and have no interest in being supported is to VALIDATE that they feel this way.
We are going to start with acknowledging that they HAVE been hurt. That we see how much they have been hurt. That we understand that they are closed off to love for a good reason - they want to keep us safe.
We are going to take the time to remember all the times and places where love went away, where we BELIEVED love was going away, where we were made to feel inadequate, shameful, unworthy, where we were trained to believe that we were never good enough and never could be good enough. We are going to remember all the times and places where we perceived that we were being rejected when we needed love the most. We are going to remember where we were told that what we were doing or that how we were wasn’t right.
We are going to allow ourselves to really see that all of those places where we currently have shame, blame and the desire to guilt ourselves, the desire to fix ourselves when we are in pain and all the places where we deeply believe that we ARE broken and need to be fixed, are all places where we were HURT. They are all places where, in real reality, we are feeling scared, feeling abandoned, feeling like we aren’t going to get our needs met and like the way that we are is the REASON for this - and we are going to acknowledge that this really, really HURTS.
This is hard work. Because again many of us believe these shame, blame and guilt stories. Many of us believe these inner parts that say ‘no, you can’t love me how I am because how I am IS bad, IS wrong, IS shameful, IS the reason I’m in pain and will never be safe or have the love that I want.’
This first step of actually seeing THROUGH the shame, blame and guilt so we CAN validate that we were hurt and treated in ways that we didn’t deserve is a BIG job.
So we start with this, and we take it slow. We keep working that self compassion muscle as much as we can when we are hurting and wanting to blame ourselves. When these parts come up to tell us how wrong, bad, shameful and guilty we are, we must do the work we need to do to say ‘wait a minute, this is conditioning, not reality. What am I REALLY feeling?’
Again this is not easy and it takes a lot of time for most of us to get used to catching these thoughts and validating that they aren’t true in real reality.
So be patient with yourself. Make it a practice. Get into the habit of asking yourself:
- What if I’m NOT actually shameful, wrong and bad the way these parts are convinced I am?
- What did I experience that taught me to hate/shame/blame myself right now?
- Where was I shamed, abandoned, hurt, harmed or otherwise abused in a way that convinced me that I am unworthy of love and must hate myself?
- Who’s voice is in my head right now if it’s not actually mine?
Check out this video for more on this as well.
You are not the reason you are hating yourself. You are not the reason you believe you are unworthy of love. You are not the reason you don’t believe love is safe.
That is conditioning.
And you never, ever deserved it.
What if that is real?
Can you validate that you were hurt, harmed and abandoned and that that wasn’t your fault?
That is step one.
These parts are refusing love because they deeply believe that if you don’t change you ARE going to be hurt, harmed, abandoned and alone forever. THAT is what’s at the core of this.
So how can you validate that these parts went through really painful things, and just need to be shown that it wasn’t their fault?
Step Two: Permission: Next, we need to give these parts FULL permission to NEVER change if they don’t want to.
As counter intuitive as this may feel at first - the reality is the safer these parts feel to stay just as they are, the more these parts actually GET the love that they have needed forever - the love that says ‘you never have to let go. You never have to change. I will be here, loving you, even if you never accept it, never stop blaming me, never stop telling me I’m not good enough and never heal. I see you, I know you’re just hurting, and you never have to change if you don’t want to’ - the more these parts are, over time, likely to let go and soften up.
We need to give these parts of ourselves the love they always wanted - the love that says they are good enough how they are.
This means validating again that they are how they are for a reason. They got hurt and that wasn’t their fault. They are doing what they are to protect us from future harm and we validate that and appreciate that.
Then giving these parts full and complete permission to never change.
Telling these parts we are just going to love them, over and over again, and even if they stay blaming, shaming and guilting us until the day we day - we are going to love them anyway.
I know this can be hard to do. Of course we want these parts to change. We want them to stop yelling at us and telling us how unworthy of love we are. We want to feel better and there is likely a part of us that believes that in order to feel better, we MUST get rid of these parts/change these parts.
But the reality is, in order to feel better, all we need to do is take this FIRST STEP of simply validating and giving ourselves permission to be where we are.
So we give these parts full permission to just BE. To exist how they exist.
They will likely shut down at this. They will likely NOT believe you - and that’s ok.
Again we are going to prove this to them with time and practice.
But we MUST start with releasing the expectation that these parts must change. We must start with making it ok that they are how they are. We must start with permission. The unconditional love they never got.
‘It’s ok if you never change, I will be here, loving you, no matter what.’
That’s what these parts need the most.
Step Three: Proof: From here, we must practice.
This will be the most challenging part - but it’s also the most important.
This is the part of the process where we simply show up, over and over again, to validate these parts. To see them in their pain when they are yelling at us, and to give them that unconditional love they have wanted.
Whenever we catch ourselves in that shame, blame and guilt spiral, whenever we catch ourselves beating ourselves up and blaming ourselves for our pain, whenever we catch ourselves in our self sabotage or coping and numbing behaviors, whenever we feel those voices rising up to tell us that we aren’t good enough, that we aren’t trying hard enough, that we are failing, that we will never be worthy of love - we turn around and see these parts of self that are stuck in self abuse as a way of trying to earn the love we so desperately wanted and needed - and we say ‘I see you. I am so sorry you were so badly hurt. I love you. I’m here for you. This isn’t your fault and it wasn’t your fault.’
Just that.
Over and over again.
Whenever we go into shame, we say ‘I’m so sorry you were taught that you had to shame yourself to be good enough.’
Whenever we blame ourselves for our pain we say ‘I see you. This isn’t your fault. I’m so sorry you were abandoned in your pain and not given real solutions.’
Whenever these voices come up to tell us that we are wasting our lives, that we are messing everything up, that we need to get our lives together and aren’t doing it right - we say ‘I see you. I’m so sorry you weren’t given what you needed to feel safe and like you were good enough. I love you.’
These parts just need to be given love.
Again this is going to be hard. It’s hard to catch ourselves in our self hate patterns. It’s hard to confront the voices that are telling us just how horrible we are. It’s hard to contradict those voices. It’s hard to look for how we were conditioned to believe these things vs. simply believing them.
But it’s the work we must do. Over and over again.
‘I see you. I’m so sorry you were hurt. It wasn’t your fault and you didn’t deserve that. I love you just as you are,’
That’s the practice.
With no forcing the parts to believe us. No forcing them to change. No forcing anything.
Just showing up with love over and over again.
Step Four: Expression: As we practice this, as we continue to show up for these parts of ourselves with love and compassion, as we continue to reinforce that we see that they are doing what they are because they were hurt, harmed, abandoned and abused - eventually these parts are going to start speaking to us.
It’s likely that with enough loving kindness with no expectation of them changing, that they will eventually start to show us all the times and places where they got hurt - and this is one of those big turning points we want to be very mindful of.
When these parts start to express to us their pain, when they start to show us those memories of when we were yelled at, when our caregivers pulled away from us, when our peers made fun of us, when we experienced not being loved, when we were told that who we were wasn’t good enough and so on - THIS is when we need to love and support them the most.
This resurfacing of memories that were deeply painful is important.
When we can start to view these memories through the lens of self compassion - seeing that we weren’t actually bad, wrong, shameful or deserving of that abandonment, shaming, guilting or rejection - and instead can say ‘that was the fault of my caregivers/peers/society - I wasn’t bad, they were treating my poorly’ THIS is when we REALLY start to heal.
When we can meet these memories with a new story - the story that we DIDN’T deserve to be harmed in that way, that that WAS harm and that we are allowed to be UPSET about what happened to us vs. BLAMING ourselves for what happened - this is when we are REALLY healing.
So when you start to notice that memories start to come up, this is when we need to work our self compassion muscle the most.
If you need support with this, if it’s hard for you to see past the shame, blame and guilt, if when those memories come up you find it really hard to see how it WASN’T your fault or how you WEREN’T to blame/deserving of being abandoned/shamed/abused - this is when I would suggest reaching out for some sort of support. This is when we may need the loving presence of someone outside of ourselves to validate us and to tell us that we weren’t in fact deserving of that pain, and that we ARE fundamentally good.
Because this is EXACTLY what we need in these moments.
When these parts start to express, they need to be met with the opposite of what they have been met with forever - they need to be met with compassion, grace and acceptance - not more justification for the self hate.
Can you practice seeing how you WEREN’T deserving of that pain, and can you let yourself be UPSET that you were hurt vs. blaming yourself?
That’s what these parts need.
Step Five: Meeting Their Needs: Finally, when we can move into that space of really seeing the pain that these parts have experienced and we can show up for these parts with compassion and love, we can tell them over and over again that it wasn’t their fault, that they never deserved that treatment and that they are allowed to be upset instead of ashamed - eventually they are going to soften up.
Eventually they are going to release.
This is when we are going to go through that emotional catharsis period.
This is when we will go through that time of needing to cry, to be angry, to be resentful.
This is when we need to make it safe for ourselves to NOT ‘feel ok’ or ‘be better’ right now.
As we process these memories from a place of self love, we will be shifting from shame, blame and guilt, into a phase of really letting ourselves feel what we ACTUALLY felt - pain.
We will be shifting out of believing we were broken and deserving of rejection into a state of seeing that we were harmed - and this is going to lead to us being upset!
We need to be given the space to grieve. To yell. To vent. To blame our caregivers and peers. We need to be given the space to work THROUGH the REAL emotions we have and had - and that means going through a period of time where we just feel terrible.
We must make this ok. Because this is normal. This is what it means to move ourselves out of this stuck place.
We will just be upset for a while - and that IS the healing process.
Then we can start to ask these parts what they need that they never got.
We can start to ask them what they need in terms of support, expression and love.
What do they want to be? What do they want to say? What do they want to create?
What don’t they like? What do they want to change? What are they actually feeling?
Once we meet the need of emotional catharsis, these parts will then start to inform us as to what we ACTUALLY want in life.
They will start to tell us what we need, what we desire, what we don’t want, what isn’t working for us and who we really are.
This is the magic of this path.
But don’t take my word for it.
Give it a try yourself.
See what happens when you don’t try to change these parts, but you just validate them and make them safe.
One step at a time.
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Are you sick of the self help roller coaster that leaves you constantly striving and never arriving?
Are you ready for a true spiritual path that connects you to yourself and reality so you can feel good about your life?
Then come check out the Mystery School.
