WE ACCEPT THE LOVE WE THINK WE DESERVE

 

  " Beneath every behaviour is a feeling. And beneath each feeling is a need. And when we meet that need rather than focusing on the behaviour , we begin to deal with the cause, not the symtoms "

 We felt crushing disappointed towards the loved ones who I perceived as having failed to meet my needs for many of us. This resentment made me so frustrated. It was directed towards not just my parents but my partners, friends, and siblings. I was convinced if only they would listen, understand me, apologized, and more importantly, change their behavior, I could finally be okay.

It was exhausting work trying to get others to treat me the way I wanted, I  banged my head against that same brick for the longest time. It seemed so straightforward to me, I tried everything I knew to help these people see why their behaviors were hurtful and destructive and could not understand why they didn't see or understand and continued to, well, be themselves.

The truth is, changing is hard work. Think about all the times you promised yourself you would change. I have lost count of the number of times I vowed to be a better and responsible person, eat better and go to bed earlier, give myself more positive self-talk and be gentle with myself when I felt anxious. once I got on the healing path it occurred to me that there was a lot of dysfunction in my own behaviors and try as I did, but couldn't change who I was overnight.  

One such example is my giving nature. As I was grown with a mentality to be useful and generous to other people and towards their needs. I always struggled to say the word "no". Every time I tried to say no and choose my needs above others my inner self felt a sense of guilt and it got me triggered to always say yes and suppressed my needs and took others more superior. This feeling of giving it all and sacrificing my needs was a total disaster because, on the other hand, I was struggling to identify the bad behind all goody talks. Every time I made a new connection I give it all my time, my energy, my emotion, and everything. Regardless of that what am I getting in return I just did what I could do to keep the connection going and to make the other person happy?

I would not say much because blaming them and categorizing them in the term that they used me, is not good. Even though they doused me but everyone has done this. we do this every time but never realize or we are too busy getting one's work done. 

I did not give much attention to my needs so eventually, people also thought I do not have any. And how can you expect that someone will help you until you show them? 

I was stuck in this ongoing cycle for 2 or more years. even though I realized that it was the root cause of my suffering. I failed to break through the cycle. for so many years  I made a lot of effort to overcome my obsession with giving everything straight away. I made myself realize that it's okay to take some time for yourself and to put your needs first.

 But whenever I thought I was ready to take some time out just for myself I was put under such a situation where I have to give up the self-care thought and get going with the giving spirit. 

It felt like that the god above wanted me to pay off a big price for the bliss of self-love.

My point is, most of the time our loved ones couldn't change even if they wanted to. Most people are inherently decent and care about your love and approval, even if they act like they don’t. They likely don’t understand their dysfunction and the patterns that created it and figuring that out is no easy task, it takes a long time and a lot of work. They probably love you very much and wish they could be the person you desperately need and want them to be. The truth is, almost all of us struggle to meet our own needs and change for our own betterment, let alone for others. Our inability to snap our fingers and behave differently isn’t a measure of our love for others, it’s symptomatic of our own struggles and damage.

It took me 3 years and I am still working on it. it's crazy that it took me 3 years to just deny things and accept what's good for me, but such is life.

Once I started doing the work of radical honesty about my own shortcomings and loving and accepting myself it was easier to let my loved ones off the hook and hold more compassion and understanding for how they showed up. I was able to realize that they always loved me, they simply did not have the tools or ability to change in the way I wanted them to. Not only that, it occurred to me too that it was no one else’s responsibility to change to suit my needs, that responsibility was mine and mine alone. This allowed me to accept the love they did give and to recognize it was enough.

By reframing my experience I no longer felt unloved by those people, I realized their behaviors were not personal or intentional and this allowed me to further separate myself from the hurt I used to feel. I found too that the more I focussed my attention on giving myself the love I need the more I released the urge to seek it in others. As time has passed and I’ve gotten better and better at being my own superhero I have learned that when we fill our own love bucket we have more love to share. I’m no longer keeping tabs on what I receive in return because my bucket is already full, there’s no need to think about where my next refill is coming from.

Beneath every behavior is a feeling and we must remember how hard it is to make sense of our own feelings and reasons for being the way we are before judging others. Everyone is fighting their own battle and it’s really none of our business how they behave unless we make it so. Instead of trying to change how others behave towards us, it’s healthier to develop boundaries around those who cannot change even if they wanted to. A healthy person doesn’t waste their energy trying to fix another person's dysfunction, they don’t beg for love and transformation, because they know how to meet their own needs and consequently can identify when others cannot and are comfortable stepping away from such situations. It is only when we can’t meet our own needs that we lean into others instead and with the greatest will in the world, no one can fill the holes in our bucket for us when their own is leaking all over the place.

Releasing my sense of entitlement around others being who I needed and wanted them to be was the beginning of a beautiful new chapter in my life, it was the beginning of learning to love not for what I could get back but for what I could give, this is real love, authentic love, it allowed me to love and accept people as they are and consequently I found that people who feel loved and accepted are generally easier to get along with - no one enjoys being nagged or shamed after all. It healed my family relations especially, despite the fact that no one around me changed at all, the only thing that changed was me, how I perceived them, how I reacted and how I showed up for myself. When we dwell in resentment and tell ourselves we can’t be happy until a certain person changes in some way, we give our power away, we put our happiness in another’s hands, it’s unfair to them as much as it is to ourselves. We have to learn to stop pouring ourselves into buckets that can’t hold us and learn to patch up and fill our own. Anything else is futile.

When you feel let down, rejected, or disappointed in someone, take a moment to dig beneath the surface of your feelings, to lovingly soothe yourself, and do for yourself whatever it is you expected from another. That is where you will find an infinite source of power to feel good again. It’s in us all, take it!