When you are in love with Fear

Oxytocin is a hormone mostly associated with the feeling of love. However, both love and fear are governed by this hormone.

Whatever you have ‘recorded’ in the past as a feeling of love, your body will try to maintain and regulate your nervous system accordingly.

If you experienced a classic scenario where a parent did not hear or see you, you likely developed coping mechanisms to protect yourself and create a ‘loving’, safe space. The moment a familiar emotion is triggered, your body will revert to the survival mode it previously recorded as a feeling of ‘love’.

In adulthood, you will try to replicate this feeling in your relationships with others. You will always seek what you did not receive from your primary caretakers, mirroring the unhealthy patterns of your childhood experiences.

So what is love then? The ‘real one’—how do you find it if you potentially never experienced it in your life?

We each have a different definition of love as it relates to our ‘strongest’ coping mechanisms. My biggest revelation was that love is within me, that I was born with unconditional love, and I need to discover what it means to me. What are the unmet needs and fears I need to unravel and convert to love?

Go inward. Get vulnerable with yourself. Get in touch with your suffering and fears. Ask yourself:

What am I believing that makes me feel this way?

What am I scared of (rejection, not being understood)?

Stay with the feelings that arise in your body, Welcome them and ACCEPT them as they are.

In the beginning of this process, I was just sitting there, feeling sorry for myself, but then I started to feel lightness in my heart area, soothing warmth, and pleasant tingling in my shoulders. It takes practice, and some days you just can’t connect with yourself, and thats also ok.

If you ignore your dark side, there’s a big chance you’ll never find out what true love is.

“Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running away from it can.” Virgina Satir