5 reasons you feel you don't deserve love (none of which are true)

Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further:

Everyone, yes every single precious human on this planet, you included, deserves love.

With that important truth front and center of everything that follows, we can take a long hard look at why you might feel that you are the exception to that rule and set you back on course to believing that you DO deserve to be loved.

Speak to an accredited and experienced therapist to help figure out why you don’t think you deserve love, and how to overcome those thoughts. You may want to try speaking to one via BetterHelp.com for quality care at its most convenient.

Why do you think you don’t deserve love?

Sometimes, because we don’t consider ourselves lovable and valuable, we build up protective walls to shield our tender heart from potential harm.

This armor can become so resilient that ultimately we start to believe that we don’t deserve to be desired or loved by anyone else.

Even when feelings of attraction to one particular person are running high and are reciprocated, we’re not able to let go.

The triggers for such negative thoughts are wide-ranging, with low self-esteem or a false self-image being the culprits in the majority of cases.

Another common reason is a feeling of being worthless or unlovable due to negative experiences with a previous partner or childhood trauma.

These toxic emotions come flooding in just at the moment when happiness is within our grasp. Negative thoughts like ‘nobody will want to be with me when they get to know me’ crowd out any positives.

Ultimately, it’s a downward spiral caused by a fear of being disappointed, hurt or taken advantage of.

You are lovable and valuable.

The fundamental question to answer is this: ‘If you don’t love yourself, then why should someone else?’

And yet it’s so easy to fall into a cycle of negative hypnosis, where you internalize negative beliefs about yourself. As the self-doubts mount up, your self-worth evaporates.

The fact is that you need to rescue and nurture your relationship with yourself before you can open your heart fully in a close relationship with someone else.

You are a wonderful and unique being, right here, right now. If you are struggling to reconcile yourself with that fact, the first thing to do is avoid people who bring you down by implication, word, or deed.

Sadly, there are people out there who are intent on doing us harm. It’s up to us and our own self-esteem, to choose whether to stay close to these people or whether we make a conscious choice to believe that we are worthy of better and that we deserve to be loved, appreciated, and cherished for what and who we are.

Anything that undermines your sense of self-worth has no place in your future as you rebuild your self-respect and learn to love yourself once more.

You may find that practicing mindfulness will give you mental space to burrow deep down into your core emotions and begin your journey back to self-love.

Here’s the bottom line: when you finally make the choice to accept yourself as you are and love yourself unconditionally, completely and deeply, pretty soon you’ll discover that people in your orbit won’t be able to help themselves from loving and accepting you in return.

Coming up are 5 reasons why you might wrongly believe you don’t deserve love:

1. I don’t deserve love because I’m not attractive – FALSE

Let’s get something out there right away: No matter what you may believe, you are 100% not too unattractive to be loved.

Take a look around you; I mean a really close look and not just at the ones who rate as ‘pretty’ in our (somewhat unrealistic) culture.

You’ll see that there are people of every shape and size; people of all different colors; people with a whole range of different facial features; people who are differently able to do things.

There are people out there who may look outwardly perfect but believe that they are ‘ugly’ due to flaws that are invisible to everyone else.

And then there are those who would grace any beauty magazine cover but don’t have a brain in their heads or are incapable of loving any other being than their beautiful selves.

The word attractive doesn’t even have anything to do with the way you look. What it means, literally, is having the ability to attract others and it’s never just superficial looks that achieve that.

If you’re looking for ways to make yourself more attractive, rather than the superficial stuff, one of the things that is most attractive traits is actually the ability to listen, to be truly interested in what others have to say.

Being a good and animated conversationalist is guaranteed to bring dividends that hiding yourself away because you mistakenly believe you aren’t pretty enough never can.

Get out there and do what you do, be who you are. Find like-minded souls who share your passion for Star Wars or hiking the backwoods or wandering the halls of museums.

While you’re following your interests and sharing them with others, the way you look becomes secondary to the way you’re experiencing life and all it offers. And that enthusiasm can be very attractive indeed.

And all the while, pay attention to the way you present yourself. It’s so easy to let things slide if you believe yourself to be unattractive and then it becomes self-fulfilling.

Clean clothes and hair are a must; stand up tall, paste on a smile and fix those bright eyes on the world around you. Remember that people who are interested are interesting.

2. I don’t deserve love because I’m a bad person – FALSE

Okay, so the first question that needs answering here is: ‘Who says you are a bad person?’

The fact is you’re more likely to be the victim here than the perpetrator. Someone in a position of influence, be they parent, teacher, lover, sibling, has told you this untruth, which is actually part of their coercive control technique or power play.

In reality, you are an individual who is as deserving of love as anyone else.

The fact that you have been brainwashed into believing that you are unworthy of love is something which needs to be seen for what it is and turned on its ugly head.

Such negative programming is often so deeply engrained that it’s not easily reversed. However, talking therapies, either with trusted friends or a professional, can help to reveal where this erroneous self-belief came from.

When the cloud you’ve lived under for the longest time is lifted, you’ll be able to embrace a future where you are ready to love and be loved.

Another reason you may feel you are a bad person is down to your history in previous relationships. Perhaps you behaved very badly, let someone down, or hurt them deeply.

That does not mean that you can’t mend your ways and find true love, but you’ll have to forgive yourself first, as well as committing yourself not to make the same mistakes all over again.

It may have been a particular set of life circumstances, or a perfect storm of ill-matched personalities, which triggered the hurtful actions which you now regret.

It is by making mistakes that we learn, grow, and develop as humans, so you are most likely a better, more rounded person with the benefit of your past experiences.

Cut yourself some slack and don’t write yourself off as a bad person who is unworthy of love. It’s just not true!

3. I don’t deserve love because I come with too much baggage – FALSE

The truth here is that everyone has baggage, be it physical or emotional.

Shedding an emotional burden is hard to do. But, if you’re still consumed with negative emotion, the leftovers of a damaging former relationship – be it anger or longing or regret – then you do need to get beyond that before you’re relationship-ready.

So, the fact that you’re burdened with these emotions doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve to love again, just that you’re not ready for it yet.

Healing from a significant heartbreak is a normal process and can be a lengthy one if the former love was deep. Give yourself that healing time.

Talk about your emotional burdens with close friends or family. If that avenue proves unhelpful, then consider spending time with a professional therapist to help you move on.

This, together with the other great healer – time – will allow you to open your heart to someone who will love you and your baggage unconditionally.

But what if your baggage is more physical than emotional?

Maybe you are saddled with debts or financial problems from your past, due to bad luck or poor decisions.

Maybe you have a child or children and a troubled relationship with your former partner which has turned co-parenting into a minefield.

Maybe you are living with and caring for an elderly relative.

Sure, these are all burdensome problems, but they don’t make you undeserving of love.

Let’s face it, there are very few mature adults out there without one similar burden or another.

You are in the driver’s seat here, responsible for your own destiny. Allowing yourself to believe that your current circumstances preclude love is likely to be self-fulfilling.

Seek out some support groups for people in similar predicaments and you will see that your burdens are far from unique.

Be sure to be outward-looking and keep the door open. You never know when a special someone will step through it, baggage and all.

4. I don’t deserve love because I’m too broken – FALSE

Perhaps you feel you have too many scars and too much past hurt to be loved.

Maybe you worry that these negative and damaging past experiences make you unworthy of having a healthy relationship and make you unlovable.

Wrong.

No one is so broken that they don’t deserve to be loved.

No matter what the nagging inner voices say, you are good enough. But the fact remains their toxic whisperings can be pretty convincing.

It’s easy to be so taken in by them that you find yourself self-sabotaging your relationships, so those voices are controlling your fate.

That is if you let them…

Although you may never succeed in quietening them completely, you can learn to reduce the volume and replace them instead with positive thoughts that you are absolutely good enough.

You may believe right now that your emotional battle scars make you unlovable, but think on this anonymous quote: “A scar simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.”

Therefore, although you may see yourself as weakened by your past hurtful experiences of love, the truth is that your scars show your strength, not your weakness. You are a survivor.

Maybe there are circumstances and events from your past that you’re not proud of and maybe some of them were self-inflicted; you just couldn’t help yourself at the time.

But don’t get hung up on the belief that these mistakes make you a broken person. In fact, they make you a fully paid-up member of the massively flawed human race, scars and all.

Don’t lose sight of this fact: any person who is worthy of your love will embrace the messy parts as well as the good parts. Chances are they will be joining the party with a fair few scars of their own.

5. I don’t deserve love because I’m weird – FALSE

Here’s the thing, oftentimes people who think of themselves, and/or describe themselves, as ‘weird’ are actually very smart individuals.

They’re deep thinkers, who are more mentally mature than the average in their age bracket. In short, they’re gifted people, although they struggle to realize this fact.

Instead, they go down the unhelpful rabbit hole of comparing themselves unfavorably to others who they see as fitting the ‘norm.’ They ask themselves why they don’t fit in and what’s wrong with them.

The idea of being loved for who they are by someone who will embrace their very difference and love them for it can seem unattainable.

Does this sound like you?

The fact is you are not weird – you are actually truly special, with a capacity for deep truly wondrous thoughts.

It’s just your perception that no one will ever ‘get’ you in all your uniqueness that sets you apart and makes finding love seem a remote possibility.

You are who you are and you can’t change that, but you can, perhaps, change the way you interact with others, the way you express yourself.

How about channeling some of that fearsome intelligence into figuring out how to do that?

Joining groups of people who share your passions, be that keeping reptiles, bungee jumping, or collecting bottle caps is a great place to start.

Once you have successfully reset where you see yourself alongside all those so-called ‘normal’ people, you’ll need to watch out because you’ll have people falling at your feet, wanting to love and be loved by the exceptional being that you are.

Still think you don’t deserve to feel love or be loved?

Talk to a therapist about it.

Why? Because they are trained to help people in situations like yours.

They can help you to feel better about yourself and address the core reasons for the beliefs you are struggling with.

BetterHelp.com is a website where you can connect with a therapist via phone, video, or instant message.

You might not think your problems are big enough to warrant professional therapy but please don’t do yourself that disservice.

Nothing is insignificant if it is affecting your mental well-being.

Too many people try to muddle through and do their best to overcome issues that they never really get to grips with. If it’s at all possible in your circumstances, therapy is 100% the best way forward.

Online therapy is actually a good option for many people. It’s more convenient than in-person therapy and is more affordable in a lot of cases.

And you get access to the same level of qualified and experienced professional.

Here’s that link again if you’d like to learn more about the service BetterHelp.com provide and the process of getting started.

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