Love is all we need. We yearn for it. We desire it. We go to endless lengths to get it.
Yet, have you ever stopped to consider that you might be blocking love, and that this is creating all kinds of problems in your life?
After two decades of working with women, I’ve met this time and time again. On the surface we desperately want love, yet under the surface, we are doing everything possible to stop us from having it.
Are you blocking love?
Do this quick exercise to see whether you can allow yourself to be truly loved or not. You may be surprised by the results!
- Take a quiet moment and sit with your eyes closed. Breathe gently for a couple of minutes.
- Now focus on your life. If you have a partner, focus on your relationship with them, if you are single, imagine your life with a partner.
- In your mental picture, let that person love you completely. Imagine your partner making any necessary changes in order to really love you, to be with you and respect you just as you are.
- Feel that connection with their heart, and the unconditional love flowing from them into your life.
- So, now that you are in that situation of complete love, how do you feel? Do you feel relaxed, peaceful and happy, or is there something more negative there?
- Focus on your heart and on your stomach. Do you feel a knot of stress there? Very often people will feel worry, anxiety or fear beginning to surface.
- What are your thoughts? Is this the life of your dreams, or are you beginning to be overwhelmed by anxiety and panic?
If you have any anxiety, stress, fear or despair associated with this picture, then this is proof that your subconscious is preventing you from being truly loved.
Maybe it comes as a surprise. Maybe it is what you knew all along deep down. Whichever, don’t despair, because now that you know you’re blocking love, you can start to take the action steps to change this at the root.
How does this show up in our lives?
If we are in a relationship, we unconsciously keep our partner at a distance. We allow a certain level of closeness, but if it gets too intimate, we sabotage it with an argument or betrayal. If we are single, we will unwittingly sabotage any potential relationship. The same pattern is seen with family and friends. It can also block your career, preventing you from receiving the rewards, acknowledgement and money you deserve. It’s all love in different guises.
The result is unhappiness, frustration, and often ‘love-substitutes’ such as eating, shopping or smoking.
The typical mistake
As with all subconscious sabotage, we usually try to fix the wrong thing – focusing on the surface problem, instead of the hidden root.
You can have counselling for your smoking addiction for years, but if you do not allow love in, quitting cigarettes will be very hard indeed.
You can go on hundreds of soul-less dates, but while there’s a hidden love block, you’ll remain single.
You can be stuck in an endless pattern of relationships where you’re treated badly again and again. Blaming the world (or men) isn’t going to break that pattern for you.
Instead, one question, and one question only is the KEY to your liberation.
Why am I blocking love?
Why indeed! Why would anyone not allow love into their lives?
The answer is simple – if you’re blocking love, you don’t actually understand what love IS and what it ISN’T.
Basically, your definition of love is wrong.
When I dig beneath the surface, we invariably find that the understanding of love has been warped – usually because of our life-experience. Here are some typical examples: love is punishment, love is abuse, love is judgement, love is pain, love is abandonment, love is rejection, love is being controlled.
You see what’s happened here…These things are NOT true love in any way, shape or form. Instead, poor treatment has been erroneously equated with love.
For example, if your mother said she loved you, and then hit you, your subconscious would believe that mother’s love is being hit. If your father said he loved you, but then abandoned you and your mother, and your little heart was broken, you would believe that father’s love is being abandoned and having your heart broken.
In these instances, you just have not experienced love at all! So you have no reference point for what love actually is!
Let me emphasise this a bit more for you:
The understandings are NOT actual love at all.
Instead, they are ANTI-LOVE that has been LABELLED as love.
The first step to love
From now on, I invite you to consider a new definition of love.
Love makes you feel good, it makes you feel safe, nurtured, free to express yourself, supported, valued. This is what you deserve. This is what is possible for you, regardless of what you have experienced in the past.
Anything else is not genuine love. From this point on, stop calling those other negative things love, and realise that you haven’t yet allowed the real thing in.
In my next article I will be taking you deeper and showing you how you can indeed free yourself from this, and allow that genuine, beautiful love to flow into your life.
Dr. Anne Whitehouse
Lifestyle. Mental Wellbeing. Women’s Empowerment.
Photo by Paul Cusick.
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