I've struggled a lot, especially the past few months, to conquer years worth of "negative thinking". It's hard work, and has entailed constantly emptying my life of all toxic thinking (which has meant avoiding toxic people, situations, movies and books) and filling my mind with positive influences. It hasn't been nearly as easy as I had hoped it would be. I begin each day with gratitude prayer and inspirational writings, and leave that prayer time feeling strong and positive. But some days it only lasts until I get downstairs and hubby unintentionally says something that either triggers anxiety, self-doubt or even anger in me.

So I've been asking God why I'm having such difficulty with this. The answer? "Because you don't know you are loved". An amazing and accurate answer. So now I've been struggling with THAT. Why don't I know I'm loved? Theoretically, I DO know...I know God loves me unconditionally, I know hubby loves me more than anyone has ever loved me before (they both show me in so many wonderful ways all day everyday) and I know others love me to various degrees. And yet, I can't seem to get that "knowing" down into the depths of my being where it needs to be.

I can't "feel" loved. I don't know if I've ever actually "felt loved" for more than a few shining moments here and there throughout my life. These days I can't seem to feel much at all. It's as if my ability to feel any positive emotion has died, although I'm still far too capable of feeling anger, sadness, grief and despair. But I really want to turn that around...thus the recent struggle to replace the negative thinking with positive, in hopes that healing will ripple through to my emotional facet as well.

I know that "knowing I am loved" goes beyond feelings, that we can't measure it by feelings, because feelings are too arbitrary and flighty and subject to too much interference and distraction. Whereas authentic love is constant, unconditional and unaffected by any outside influences or interference.

So my question is: how do YOU know you are loved? How do you know to the depth of your being that you are loved? On what do you base your faith in that love...simple acceptance that it's true? I'm trying to exercise (blind) faith and acceptance, but it's still not sinking in. Is it a constant mantra that you say to yourself until it becomes part of you? How do you know you are loved when the feelings are no longer there?

Eagle,
As a purely practical matter, if you are taking any medication at all, especially for depression or bipolar disorder, it's a good idea to do an internet search to see what the side effects are. If "flattening of affect" is listed, it means that the drug can cause you 'not' to feel your emotions because they have been 'numbed' by the drug. "Flattening of affect" is a side effect of most antidepressants, tranquilizers, pain killers, and many other drugs. It's worth checking out.
If it really bothers you, your doctor might take you off the drug or try something else, but you should NOT stop on your own because suddenly discontinuing a medication, can be hazardous.

If not from a medication, maybe the lack of feeling begins in the spirit. I know it has been said so many times it has almost become cliche,' but maybe we must allow a loving God to strengthen our spirit to love ourselves until we are strong enough to love others and only by giving love to others can we 'feel' the love that is all around us.

On a personal level, the most loved I ever feel is when I am giving love to someone else. A line from the lyrics of a song in one of my plays, "If you give it away, you'll just get more" seems so true.

I pray that you can truly feel the depth of God's love for you this very day. And that His love will strenghten your spirit to love yourself and to feel the love of others around you.

smile

So my question is: how do YOU know you are loved?

Eagleheart, I am going to try to find the words to explain the answer to your question as I have percieved it to be asked.
I feel loved by how my heart feels. When I get hugged by my husband, I feel a deep peace and happiness. When I talk to my children and they tell me "I love you, Mom", I feel a deep peace and happiness. When my grand -children speak to me, I feel their love for me, and it is a feeling of deep peace and happiness.
Love is so hard to define except that it is a "feeling."

How do you know you are loved when the feelings are no longer there?

I have been loved and then the love started to erode...that's when I felt unloved. It was not a good feeling, but I couldn't make someone re-love me again. If the feelings are no longer there, then I am not feeling it, therefore it is not happening.

I also have been loved and couldn't return the feelings...they just didn't appear. I couldn't lie to myself and make it happen. A fondness, yes but not love.

But this is just me...

I hope you are truly being loved and the feeling of this love will saturate your heart with a deep peace and happiness. This is my prayer for you, Eagle.

I don't have any other answer, I'm sorry.

Sending sisterly love,
Andria

[ August 16, 2005, 12:14 AM: Message edited by: chickadee ]

Smile, I've been off all meds for over a year now. At the beginning of my breakdown in Feb 2002, that "flattening of affect" was essential. I expected and looked forward to it. But after a couple of years of numbness, I really wanted to work this out on my own, knowing it would be a long hard road. A lot of damage to wade through and heal. It's actually going well, I'm really pleased with my progress. But every so often, I hit these roadblocks and need to stop and figure out, not how to avoid them, but how to meet them head-on, deal with them in creative and healing ways, then move on.

This one, the inability to feel loved, has been another one of those constant confusing companions (thorn in my side?) throughout my life. But I've never met it head-on before. It has continuously baffled me, because my entire life (up until this last breakdown) has been lived loving and giving to others (and I believe that my "loving and giving" have been authentic and from the heart). My life has also been jam-packed full of being loved and being given to in turn.

And yet, as profound a spiritual journey as it's been, and as full as my life has been and is now, here I sit, full yet profoundly, bewilderingly empty. How can that be? How can I look out the window of my soul and see that I am surrounded by infinite beauty and profound presence of loved ones and heart gifts, yet feel absolutely nothing? As much as I yearn for it to be more, my gratitude and love are barely more than lip-service, because in fact, I feel very little, usually nothing at all (but maybe "numb" is a more accurate word than "nothing").

But I continue to speak both into my own emptiness, because I still believe in both. I know that love exists...I've loved, I've been loved, I've read the book, I know it must be true. But it's clear that I don't know it enough...if I did, my thinking would be changing, and that "changed thinking" would be changing my life.

It's more curiosity than pain that brings me to share this here...my emptiness baffles me. I'm keenly curious to learn how other people "know" that they are loved.

Dear One,
As I read your entries, it was like reading pages from my own journals, my own life. I've struggled long and often w/ the "unlovable" feelings, because, that is in essence what they are. There is some beasty deep inside our psyches' telling us that we are unlovable, thus we don't always feel the love or know the love.
But it is a subtle beasty who only whispers. I've tried for years to find the roots of why I always question my worth, there are not absolute answers. My mom says it's genetics; I wonder if it isn't some collective unconscious thing that has lived in my ancestors for generations and just keeps moving forward like some toxic dna thing. The problem with all of this is until we find the love within us, for us, no one and nothing can convince us! At some point I just had to tell myself that I was lovable, did deserve it, could accept love....or in the words of Stuart Smiley, "I'm good enough, I'm strong enough, and gosh darnit, people like me!". Then I just had to believe it every day. I don't always believe it, but I try!

I know I haven't been around the forums much lately, life and work interfere, but I know many of you from your posts. You are remarkable, beautiful, wonderful women who I admire and respect. Eagle, you are an amazing person, worthy of love and all the good things the world has to offer. We believe that about you, now you have to believe it too!

God bless you woman!
Kathryn

Eagle, I went through this for a few years but what I called it was a loss of joy. I can remember when I was younger, having great joy over a possible event or person and it was like lighting a fire. It gave me energy. So, when I noticed I was unable to feel any joy anymore I put it down as finally having so much rejection and let downs in my life, my mind wouldn't let me go to that joyful place for fear of it happening again. It was so bad, Montel Williams Show booked me and I even got a call from Oprah's producer and I felt...whatever. Yawn.

Things from my past caught up with me that I had buried or ignored too long. So, I had to take each of them, one by one, and work through them. Bottom line was, I didn't think I was lovable because my entire childhood I had been told I wasn't. I had to get rid of those words and erase them in my mind.

Today, I'm back to my old, ornery self. It does take time but I know what you're going through and I also know that you are a wise woman and can get to the bottom of this.

Eagle,

Believe me, I am in no position to give anyone advice, but I absolutely agree with something Dianne said --"my past caught up with me that I buried or ignored too long"--

For as long as I can remember I felt not quite right, never even really adequate, not truly lovable, etc., etc. Then last year (during a trip back to Canada!) I learned some truths about my early years that astonished me, temporarily devastated me, and in the end gave me the answers
that I had been searching for all of my life. And here's what I hope to be able to really convey to you. All the years that I thought it was me -- well, it wasn't! There really were pieces missing from the puzzle, there really had been a web of lies, there really were legitimate reasons for my growing up feeling the way I did, and ending up a confused and not-so-happy adult.
I cannot possibly adequately describe the freedom I gained from finding out that IT REALLY WASN"T ALL IN MY HEAD! So, if you have the opportunity and the will, look into your past and really observe what the realities may have been. It can be painful (but isn't that what you're dealing with anyway?) but can provide answers. And with answers can (eventually) come peace.
I hope this helps a little.

Thank you so much, Kathryn, Dianne and Fiftyandfine!

From Kathryn: But it is a subtle beasty who only whispers...there are not absolute answers...toxic dna thing.
Your whole message touched me, but these words especially resounded...after so much brutally intense searching for the "root cause", I have to accept that there may indeed be no absolute answers. I just have to keep overwriting those ancient whispers with the Truth.

From Dianne: I can remember when I was younger, having great joy over a possible event or person and it was like lighting a fire.
I think that's what's behind my yearning and searching...I too can remember deep passion and great joy, and the flames of excitement, delight and possibility leaping in my heart over even the smallest things. Now there are only shadows and feeble flickers, and a thirsty yearning to rediscover that wellspring of emotion. I know it's still there. But it's buried under a lot of "I don't know's".

From Fiftyandfine: look into your past and really observe what the realities may have been
I've discussed before in other forums how the death of my Mom in late 2001 hit me harder than I could ever have imagined it would. Dad's death in 1999 really shook me, but Mom's death - or perhaps the accumulative grief of losing both so close together - totally devastated me. I'm still working my way back from the subsequent collapse and total breakdown I experienced shortly after Mom died.

While these feelings of "unloveability" do go back to early childhood, and I've uncovered some of the reasons why, they seem to have blown up out of all proportion (and control) since losing my parents.

It's still a "wading game"...wading through the chaos caused by those ancient whispers that refuse to go away...but to be perfectly honest, I don't mind this journey. It's baffling, why I can't find my way out to the other side of this numbness, but there's a little bit of Sherlock Holmes in me, so I'm enjoying the challenge. Well, what else can I do?! I can either wallow here in this empty numbness and continue to despair about it, or I can take the beastie by the horn and embrace it with truth, over and over again if that's what it takes to still those toxic voices.

It's so much more of an interesting, worthwhile journey when there are caring others in my life now against whom I can bounce some of these long-held questions. Thank you again for your caring...it means so much to me and is an immense comfort and help as I continue to dig for that well.

[ August 16, 2005, 01:31 PM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]

OK, I'll throw my 'two cents' in. I had been in a loveless marriage for almost 24 years (turns out he was gay) He spent years blaming me and allowing me to accept the blame for a lackluss, sexless, abusive relationship. I felt unloved by him. I felt unloved, abandoned and betrayed by God. It took a long time for me to stop blaming God for my circumstances and accept God's unconditional love for me. I slowly did it by putting my trust in Him (that was a minute by minute struggle on many days.) I would sing that song we all learned as children, "Jesus loves me" over and over and everytime the word 'me' appears I would tap my heart. I would make it personal. Jesus loves ME, this I know. I know it sounds way too simple, but this song eventually broke the wall. One day I started crying while singing it. God became real and personal to me again. It was after that that I began to heal in many areas. It would still be another 10 years of living in a loveless marriage before the gay thing was revealed.

But I know realize that God in His wisdom needed it to be that way. I needed to know I was loved by God and have a solid foundation before my marriage dissolved. AND I needed to know it wasn't a shortfall in my self--I didn't caused that marriage to be bad, it wasn't my fault.

From a strictly spiritual point. We all know that Satan seeks who he may devour. He wants to keep you bound and locked up. You can't fully reach out and help another when you are crippled in your own life. So Satan's going to do his best to keep you feeling numb. But restoration is available to you through God's Word. The woman with the issue of blood touched the bottom of Jesus cloak and was healed. Later Jesus tells her "that her faith has healed her"--that was the physical healing. Then he said "Go in peace"--this was the restoration of her mind and emotions.

We also have to take the risk and allow ourselves to feel again. Sometimes (even unconsciously) we can hold ourselves apart as a reflex or a protective tool. We don't even realize we are doing it--even at the same time wishing we could laugh, cry or love! But it comes down to a matter of choice we choose to be happy, sad, etc. We choose to live in fear, anger or love. We sometimes don't realize it because we are locked in a place emotionally and don't know how to break free, but we can with God's help. Tamar in the Old Testament is a perfect example of what we are NOT supposed to do. She was raped by her half brother. Instead of running to her father, she ran to her brother's house and lived there the rest of her life as a desolate woman. Her father was the king--didn't she think the king would help her? avenge her? protect her? love her? Instead she ran somewhere else for help and found none. She chose to stay locked in a world of pain and torment.

We do the same thing. Something bad happens and unconsciously we blame God (as well as others) for what has happened. We run off and find relief in relationships, drugs, alchohol, shopping, food, etc. Sometimes this is very destructive when all we really needed was to allow God to touch us and restore us.

I know I got on my spiritual hat again, but this is so real to me, having walked out of a very dark and painful time. I KNOW what God can do and He has given me a fresh voice to share with others. I hope this helps. You are loved, every minute of every day. You are precious in His sight. He has know you since the beginning of time. He knows, right know, how many hairs are on your head--you don't even know that! He knows more about you than you know about yourself. He is there for you 24/7 to meet your needs. You are His beloved. He is waiting for you and will bring you through this with renewed mind and spirit. He has plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope. Seek Him and find peace.

P.S. We all love you too, even when we have never seen each other's faces! That's the basis for this website!