203. Why do we feel so unloveable?

it that we feel so unlovable? Why is it that we have followed or overwhelmed by these doubts that we will never find anybody, that we will always be alone, and that we you know, even if we do find somebody, we will have to settle with good enough rather than a love that is spectacular and amazing. It is a real mental prison to want something so bad and have this equally strong voice in your head telling you that you will never have it or that you don't deserve it.

Not only is this, you know, a really hard battle, especially when the voice is kind of coming from inside the house, but it's also so much more common than we think. That is one thing that I can promise you. There are so many of us, especially in this decade, looking around feeling like love is not something that we

deserve or something that we can have. And this experience, this mental state has some really striking psychological origins, from childhood to even early romantic experiences or lack thereof in high school, in our teen years, pivotal moments of rejection and shame that really cause us to internalize a lot

of comparison and criticism and insecurity. So understanding where it all began, I think, is the first point for kind of accepting what we've been through, escaping the maze, and then truly feeling like we deserve vibrant love in our lives that I mean truly deserve it. These origin points of all of our self doubts and you know, self beliefs about why we are unlovable. They might seem permanent,

it might seem like our kind of destiny. But you can really rediscover, or perhaps discover for the first time, all of the things that make you brilliant and all the things that make you quite honestly a catch, and that there are so many people who would be so

lucky to have you in their lives. And with that you really raise your confidence, you raise your levels of self love, and of course you also raise the bar for what you deserve, the standard for who gets to love you, rather than living in a scarcity state where anyone who comes along and promises you the bare minimum gets let in. So that's what we're going to discuss today. Why do we feel so undeserving of love? Where does that come from? And what exactly can we do about it?

How do we heal from the wounds that have created this belief system? So, without further ado, let's get into it. To be vulnerable for a second, there was a point in my life where so desperate for love and at the same time felt so undeserving of it that anyone who even gave me like the slightest bit of attention, it felt like they were the one. It felt like I had met my soulmate, and it caused me to end up with a lot of people that at the end of the day I never even liked and who

were most certainly not worth my time. And I can recognize that now. I can recognize that all of my habits stemmed from how unworthy of love that I felt. And these same habits were not only attracting these people to me, but they were also making it so I kept them in my orbit, even when time and time again they proved to me they did not deserve to

be there. Essentially, this like deeply rooted sense that I was unlovable meant that I had no boundaries, because the boundaries that I should have set were just going to be another reason that people wouldn't be able to love me. But if I lowered them, more people could be let in. If I pleased everybody, I could be loved. And I didn't, you know, quite think about why exactly those people wouldn't

have been around before my boundaries were lowered. But again, that is the nature of this really insidious self belief system that you are unlovable. Not only is it that we accept less for ourselves, we also sabotage when we have a really good thing going on, because when you feel unworthy of that kind of affection and kindness being

showered on you, you react from a place of fear. This experience is so unfamiliar and it feels like it doesn't belong to you, so you find you know some kind of way unconsciously to end it before the other person wakes up and realizes that for themselves, it's again a whole labyrinth. Feeling unworthy of love causes us to miss out on a lot of opportunities because we close ourselves off, We reject ourselves before we even get to the start line.

And it can also be lonely. In fact, I think that is one of the core pillars of this experience is that it creates loneliness. It makes us inherently somebody that is isolated and perhaps living very solitary, even when we are surrounded by other people, and it continues to shape a series of behaviors that sadly keep it that way. So let's talk about why that is. When we feel unlovable. It's not just that we feel generally undeserving of love.

It often also means that we think there is something about us that makes us a fundamentally bad person, or there is something about us that others would look at and immediately turn away from. You know, this could be some part of our personality that somebody has, you know, told us isn't attractive or isn't desirable. You know, we're too loud, we're too much, we're too sensitive. It could be some feature of our body, our weight, our height, our mental health, believing that no one could love us

at our lowest or our past. Each of us has some insecurity, some secret, something that we think almost brands us with this big sign that says this one is unlovable. That's really what it feels like. And the saddest part about recognizing that is subsequently recognizing that somebody else had to teach that to us. No one enters this world

inherently hating who they are. Someone out there, you know, if we think about this hypothetical, there is somebody out there who has never been exposed to unkind words, who has never been exposed to social judgments or media portrayals or unkind statements, or bullying or teasing, and they would not have the insecurities that we have because they inherently

have a social origin. It's the same thing as like someone who has never seen a mirror could never call themselves ugly, who has never been scolded or shamed or embarrassed or teased about some aspect of themselves will never learn to hate what makes them them, and they will always feel deserving of love. So, you know, we learn how to love ourselves by how others have or haven't loved us. That is where this sense of inherent unworthiness

typically emerges. It is learned and therefore it's also taught. So I think the most obvious source of this sense that we are unlovable is our childhood and how our caregivers, typically our parents showed us affection and showed us care. This is where, like the whole theory of attachment style emerges from, you know, the premise being that our initial bond with our parents goes on to shape all future bonds.

And if they showed us unconditional, unquestionable love, that is what we will seek in the future because that was the example that was set. That is the norm. But if they were dismissive or emotionally unavailable, if there was some level of abandonment, if they suffered from something that made it difficult for them to parent correctly, like an addiction or an untreated mental health condition, if they experienced

trauma themselves. You know that's going to be passed down to us through an avoidant or anxious attachment style, because the way that we were able to bond with them was in some way disrupted or disturbed. And there have been a lot of recent studies confirming what I think we already knew, which is that yet again, insecurely attached individuals implicitly often believe that they do not deserve love, and it all stems back from these childhood and early

adolescent as well origins. It becomes this very deeply ingrained part of their belief system. So, especially if there is you know, a history of abuse in your childhood as well, it is it is difficult to not internalize those experiences as being a reflection of you, that you were a bad kid, that you were undeserving, you were inherently unlovable, because as children, we kind of don't have any other

way to rationalize those experiences. You've got to remember here that our brains try really hard to protect the bond that we have with our caregivers by idolizing them, by creating a fantasy, by almost suppressing memories of their wrongdoing, because as children, we are really really dependent on them for everything. So if we truly believed that they were bad people or that they were seriously trying to hurt us,

we would have nowhere else to turn to. So it's a survival mechanism to idolize our parents to keep coming back to them. Our brains therefore have to turn to the next logical explanation for what we are experiencing. And the only other person in this equation is us, and so we must be the problem. We are the issue.

A lot of times, people who have gone through this abuse deduced that they must be so unlovable as to deserve that experience, And as we get older, we know that that is untrue because all of our rational thinking skills begin to click in because we see that other people didn't experience what we experienced, because we learn what is actually okay, But that doesn't change what has already

been done. It doesn't change that we already have this belief system based in our experiences that we have to unlearn. So Floud, sick and fraud was someoney who was really interested in what kind of behaviors this experience creates for adults, and he observed this unconscious tendency especially amongst people who experienced emotional or physical abuse as children, called repetition compulsion.

So back when he was studying this in like the nineteen twenties, he noticed that quite a few of his patients were basically recreating traumatic experiences in new ways, in new scenarios or a new environment. They were constantly in this process of reliving and repeating what had happened to them.

And it wasn't a mental process, It's that they were There was some like unconscious, subconscious part of them that would enter, you know, a new relationship and almost always immediately seek out people who were just like their parents, or they would live out their trauma through this new experience.

So the reason why he kind of believed that this happened was because firstly, it was a way to ease the initial emotional trauma by almost getting used to that trauma again and again and again, like when you keep pressing down on a brew the pain lessons because we become more tolerable, less sensitive to it. But he also believed that maybe it was because the reason this repetition compulsion was occurring was that it allowed people to gain

mastery over the experience. So if you experienced a difficult childhood, a difficult attachment, this kind of theory says that you go looking for that in every new person because this is kind of all that you are familiar with. And it may be why that not only do we feel unworthy of love, but we also become quite cynical about other's ability to give us love because we have never

encountered a situation that proves differently. Because there is some part of us that I don't like to say is attracted to bad people, because I think that puts a lot of the blame on us. But there is some compulsion that draws us back to the comfort of what was familiar, even if that was terrible. So childhood experiences are one thing, and don't get me wrong, they are probably the biggest contributor to a sense of feeling unlovable.

But there are many people who may look back at their memories and say, no, you know, everything was so perfect for me. I never wanted for anything physical or emotional. I had beautiful, loving parents, why do I still feel unlovable? And that is where our teen and adult experiences really come into it. You know, it's not like we're only influenced by our infancy. We continue to learn and observe and shift, change, evolve, be influenced by experiences and you know,

events way into adulthood. And often I think that our teenage years are just if not more formative for our sense of self worth than our childhood. It's really during this developmental stage, this chapter, that we begin to also get a taste for romantic love, beyond the familial and platonic love that we've been used to. It's like, you know, all you turn thirteen, all your friends turn thirteen, and

suddenly you want boyfriends and you want girlfriends. And we begin to perceive that our value is in some way derived from whether other people find us attractive or have a crush on us, or want to date us, or want to hold hands with us, want to take us to prom and want to take us to form more. And you know, as adults, you might roll your eyes at those moments and think of them as really childish and really silly, but they're actually really valuable as a way.

You know, they're actually really valuable in creating our romantic social scripts. So understanding how people relate to each other, understand kind of it's like love with training wheels on, you know. That's what teenage romance, especially in early teenagehood is kind of like. And if you skip that step, if you've never had it, eventually you start to wonder why the further along you get, our teenage years are this chapter of like ultimate insecurity and comparison and wanting

to fit in. So when you feel behind in a certain way, that can definitely carry with you later into life because it's emotionally significant at the time, it's also a period in which we are really developing our self confidence. So even small, minor things can disturb that process.

And sometimes I wonder whether you know, I would have had better standards for myself if I had not felt like I was missing out, if I didn't feel quite so desperate, if I didn't feel quite so unworthy based on those experiences. Essentially, the reason this may contribute to feeling unlovable is because it actually contributes to an insecurity about our desirability. That's really the thing about being desired.

You can't desire yourself. Somebody else needs to be part of the picture to confirm that you are indeed somebody that is wanted and likable and worthy of their intention. And if that never happens for you, it's hard to feel like you are actually somebody who is deserving of all those things, or who is looked at in that way. That can create a lack of confidence, and that is I think only exacerbated the older we get and the further we get into our twenties and beyond without still

having those experiences. Everybody around us is having these flings or these love interests, or these big romanceers. It can really feel like the only question left to ask is what is wrong with me? What don't I have? Why have I not had this experience? You know, it's very easy to also overlook the logical explanations as to why not you just haven't met the right person. It just wasn't your time, you've been busy with other things like those are all super logical explanations for why this hasn't

happened yet. But social comparison leaves us feeling lacking and therefore drawing the wrong conclusions about our desirability, our worthiness,

and therefore our capacity to receive love. So let's turn to another area, which is the experience that happens when we, you know, do start dating or do get into relationships, and how that can also leave wounds around our you know, sense of worthiness even before we get into a relationship with somebody, I think frequently experiencing rejections can also really

damage our self esteem, especially when they continuously happen. We do start to reconsider whether the common denominator is us, you know, if this person didn't text us back after a first date, if you know, we didn't get as many matches on dating apps as our friends, if this guy you know, dumped us after like a couple of weeks of dating, that can really start to chip away at our self confidence. I also want to add here

that can also be for friendships as well. You know, if you've had a few friendship breakups, if you've had a few letdowns, a few rejections. When it comes to putting yourself out there in any capacity and trying to make connection, that all comes back to love, right, That all comes back to feeling desired in a social sense. So it's not just like poor experiences when it comes to romantic relationships can really blind us to our sense

of worthiness. Platonic experiences, familiar experiences can also have an impact. And so what that can create in you is that you feel like the only way to ever have that is to lower your standards, especially when this scarcity effect begins to kick in the sense that this thing is so valuable, it is so available to other people and you don't have it, that you're more desperate to find it the more you value it. That the scarcy effect is essentially feeling that something is more valuable when it

is less available to you. So the less available love is to you, the more valuable it is, the more you will do to obtain it. Perhaps the lower your standards become, the less you kind of respect other's ability to respect you. Not every experience with love, whether it is our first or most recent, is going to be positive, is going to be golden. If there is anything that we have learned so far, it's that the people we love the most can actually cause us the most harm.

And that goes for our exes, that goes for the people that we fall in love with. A partner can leave you feeling pretty worthless, especially if they've been cruel, especially if they've made you feel like you demand too much, especially if they've spoken down to you, ignored you, never fully reciprocated your intimacy, your love, your generosity, your care. After a while, you change your expectations around what it actually means to be loved and what it actually what

you actually deserve. You know, if this person you trust and obviously care about still doesn't see you as worthy of everything that you give them or everything that you want, who is going to believe that you are? Who was going to give you those things? This is a component of narcissistic abuse as well, and I don't use that term lightly, but it is a component of it that I often see when people find themselves in a situation with a partner who belittles them, who wears them down,

who gives and takes. That is so often intentional, because the poor your self esteem becomes, the less deserving you feel, the less likely it is that you will believe that you can find somebody better, and the more likely it is that you will stay, and that gives them control your belief that you are unlovable. That benefits their ego, and it benefits their intentions. Again, it also often creates this cycle of jumping from one terrible relationship to the next.

And it all starts with somebody teaching you that you can't find better, so you accept what you think is normal, which is quite frankly, horrible horrible love. I want to be clear, really clear here, crystal clear. None of that is your fault, none of it. How are you meant to know any better if you have never had an example? How you meant you think that you deserve better if your confidence has been destroyed. It's not just that you feel unworthy of love as a result of these experiences,

but also that you perhaps feel shame. Shame around what you've tolerated, Shame around the fact that this keeps happening, Shame around the fact that you haven't found the one yet. And I think this all just continues to trigger, you know, a lack of self esteem, a sense of unworthiness, and the repetition of this experience an identical pattern, because there is nothing that is breaking the cycle here. Honestly, it has to be one of the worst things that you

can put another person through. It's breaking down our most precious and core belief, which is that we are a lovable creature, that we are deserving of love. It's, you know, so crazy to me that people can do that to other people, because every person is genuinely just so special and unique and deserving. It's like a It is a basic human need and human right to be loved and to receive love. So depriving somebody of that, or telling them that they aren't worthy of it is it's criminal.

It's also I think worth noting that people who are simultaneously struggling with mental health concerns or conditions like depression, like PTSD, like borderline personality disorder, amongst many others, they're already at an increased risk of feeling unworthy and feeling worthless and that sense of self doubt, and so those experiences combined with a traumatic upbringing, combined with early experiences of rejection and shame, combined with a terrible experience and

a past relationship are just going to make you so much more susceptible to this false belief system. And I spoke about this in my episode on dating and mental health in our twenties. But it can be hard to see others valuing you when you're struggling to value yourself as well. It can be a really hard mindset to navigate wanting love but also feeling like you'll be a burden if you accept it into your life. There are so many different factors that contribute to this feeling of

what feels like inherent unworthiness. So what do we do about it? How can we relearn self love beyond the basics of self care and self acceptance, but like truly relearn at the core of ourselves, in our the fiber of our being, what we are entitled to, and how to raise our standards and how to actually attract good, deep, meaningful love into our lives. So we're going to talk about all of that and more after this shortbreak. If there is one thing that I believe passionately, it's that

self love is not always romantic. It is really tough sometimes doing an entire belief system, even if you didn't create it in the first place. It is hard to be vulnerable, and it is hard to be soft after so many years of being strong and hard and resilient, of trying so hard to convince yourself that you don't need love, that you're better off alone, that you don't care.

But I saw this amazing TikTok the other day from this woman saying, I know that I'm deserving of love because I love myself and I was once my own worst enemy. I hated myself more than anybody else in the world. And if that person can still learn to love me, I am sure that somebody else can as well. And that is exactly the attitude that we want to

be Taking. As cliche as it sounds, feeling worthy of love really does start with you, and it also starts with realizing that it's not just about having your basic

needs met. It's about actually finding love that is enriching and rewarding and generous, and being open to receiving that, not just believing that you would like it, but being open to seeing somebody offering that to you and thinking that is for me, and it begins with kind of showing that love to ourselves and setting an example not just for others, but for us that this is what

we deserve. There is no love that is off limits to us because we have already shown ourselves the highest form of appreciation and compassion, the highest form of intimacy and connection. So if somebody cannot meet that standard that we are showing ourselves, are they really worth it? I know that sounds like big words. How do we actually get there? Firstly, I think it's important to love yourself where you are at, even if it's not where you

want to be. It is a lot easier to say, yeah, I'll start dating again, or I'll be worthy of love when I fix this, when I'm better at that, when I have this thing, when I've lost that weight. But that attaches our value and our worthiness to some kind of weird milestone, to success in something, to output, to productivity, to self improvement, which is not the case. Our love

is inherent. We don't need to change for it. It also means that, you know, like I just said, we still believe that love is conditional on something else happening first, rather than just the fact that you're an amazing, cool person as you are right now. That obviously doesn't mean that you can't be committed to self improvement or you can't want to change something about yourself, but it's important to think about whether you're doing it for you or

for somebody else. A relationship love that is not a reward for working on yourself period. I understand wanting to be in the right heads for a relationship if you've just been broken up with or if you do really want to undo some of those negative beliefs, But I want you to be honest with yourself. Are you waiting because you're not ready for love, or because you still don't feel like you deserve it, or because you are scared of what you might find or not find and

what that might confirm about you. This is where we need to work on the second of our new and improved beliefs. How others treat you and their impression of your desirability or your worthiness is a reflection of them, not you. I like to think about this as if we are a piece of art. Somebody is going to look at you to look at you the artwork, and you just might you know, you just might not be their type or their taste. That's okay. They are allowed

to have preferences. But somebody else might come along and look at you and be like you the art work and just it will change their life. Nothing has spoken to their soul more, Nothing is better in their eyes. The thing to realize is that the art hasn't changed. Though when you go to a museum, it's not like they switch out the paintings based on the preferences of the viewers. You like, the art just continues to exist.

The thing that changes is people, and is how people treat the art and their perception of its beauty and its worthiness. And that is you. You are the art. It doesn't matter like the art does not change. The beauty of the art does not change based on who was viewing it. The worthiness of the art does not change.

It's still in the museum, you know. That doesn't change based on whether someone sees the technique that it took, or sees the effort that it took, or sees the colors and the texture, and you know, all the beauty behind it that somebody does not. I think when we detach the those two things, you know, our worthiness and other people's opinions. Those two things are separate. We are better able to pull from the things we know to be true about us, rather than others' impressions of those things.

You are still kind, creative, intelligent, attractive, funny, dedicated, inspiring, motivated, a good friend. You are still all number of qualities despite or because of somebody else's recognition. That does not change. So the second kind of step to this is noticing when you start also to put words in the mouths

of people who have never spoken them. If someone doesn't message you back after a second date or a first date, you might assume that it's because they thought you were boring, or too sensitive, or too loud, or because you wann't what they are expecting. We typically put words in other people's mouths, and you know, did they say that, No, they didn't. We are applying our own false beliefs onto

a puppet. We're projecting our assumptions onto somebody you know who didn't text you back because they are emotionally lazy, you know who maybe got busy. Like It's not that we're finding excuses for them, it's that we're actually just not assuming. We are just letting them exist. And we are letting ourselves exist, and we are recognizing that how they feel about us really doesn't say anything about us.

I think that applies to a number of scenarios where we tend to implant our past experiences onto a new situation that really isn't the same. Or we look for the most available explanation, which for us is that we're unlovable. But just because that's the most available explanation doesn't mean that it is true. Often again, this is all deriving

from a false belief, not from fact. I think that that can become harder when you know, as we spoke about before, they do tell us, especially when it comes to an X or a partner who was emotionally close to us and hurt us. It's really hard to not take those things incredibly personally and carry them with us for the rest of our life. But again, an opinion, a judgment of cruelty is not fact, it will never be.

That can be hard to recover from. But the secret lies in concentrating and borrowing down into what you know is true about yourself and your self worth, the part of you that stays stable regardless of others. One way I really bolstered my own sense of worthiness in the face of these experiences was by choosing to almost like

have a bit of a love affair with myself. Now I've spoken about this before, but if you want to fall back in love with yourself and rediscover how amazing you are and really begin to defeat those debilitating core beliefs, why not date yourself for a while. And I mean date yourself. I'm talking dinners, I'm talking flowers, quality time, compliments,

weekend trips away. You really need to romance yourself. This may sound odd, it might sound a little bit silly, but again, set the example that perhaps hasn't been set for you. Set the standard that people need to live up to, because if they can't show you the love that you show yourself, which is honestly the bare minimum, are you letting them in just because you don't think you can do better, or are you letting them in because they are actually worthy of everything that you have

to offer. Finally, I recommend therapy all the time on this podcast because it is just genuinely so important and it does work, especially for a sense of unworthiness, and you know, especially knowing that that is really rooted in childhood and past trauma and experiences. It is so valuable to wrap your head around your response to what you have been through and how that has created your belief system, and how that has created your sense of self worth.

And you know, I wouldn't talk about it so much unless it worked, and it's worked for me and so many other people that I know, especially in this case, dynamic interpersonal therapy, which really focuses on how dysfunctional beliefs are based on relationships and how that impacts our mood, but also dialectical behavior therapy talking it through getting to the root of your emotions and where they came from,

where they were born from. One final reminder for you, the last thing that determines your worthiness, particularly for love, is others. They may receive it and appreciate it, but they should never have the power to influence it. Anybody would be lucky to have you. You are absolutely gorgeous and beautiful or handsome, like no one is noticing the things that you dislike about yourself more than you. You show so much care and kindness, I'm sure to your

friends and to strangers and to your family. You deserve for the love that you show others to be directed towards yourself and nothing less. So I am sending so much love, and that is a love that you deserve, not a love that you had to earn. I think that you are incredible for being committed to yourself and committed to healing, and committed to thriving and finding you know, a real deep compassion for yourself. So thank you so much for listening. I really hope that you got something

out of this. I hope you learned something about yourself, about your circumstances, about your thoughts, and that you know, if you didn't learn something, at least this was a bit of a pep talk and it made you feel a little bit better about your life. Make sure that you were following along on Spotify or Apple podcasts so that you never miss a new episode. And if you did enjoy this episode, please feel free to give us

five starts wherever you're listening right now. If you have an episode suggestion, a topic suggestion for me, and you want to hear about the psychology of this topic or about something to do with our twenties, please feel free to DM me at that psychology podcast. I would love to hear from you. And as always, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, and we will talk soon.