I needed others to love me first
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I can’t stop thinking about some wisdom I read in the book, The Courage to Be Happy. In essence, it’s the idea that when you are an infant (and helpless), you need an external person to love you. You literally cannot survive without the love of a mother or caregiver supporting you. And yet, the author explains that our courage to be happy in life comes from the ability to be the giver of love. Unfortunately, many of us are still rooted in that early developmental stage of being the receiver, trying to survive on love from someone else. (Honestly, this need is what the classic romance tales are all built on. As soon as you are chosen as the beloved of someone else, you can live happily ever after because securing their love will sustain you.) While we outwardly perform both sides of being the giver and receiver throughout our life, what is being spoken to here is your own orientation to love towards yourself. Are you still fully dependent on others to love you, or are you resourced enough to be able to give this love to yourself? Even into my 40s, my orientation (especially in challenging moments) was still coming from a place of dependence. I needed others to love me so I could survive. At this point, it wasn’t about physical survival, but emotional, mental, and spiritual. My unconscious beliefs about love sounded like this: If others love me, then I belong. I was deeply confronted by this dependence when I navigated trauma and betrayal in a close relationship. I was no longer “chosen,” and I had lost their love. I will never forget a powerful awakening moment, lying in a crumpled heap on the floor, crying and broken-hearted, begging for this person to love me so I could feel okay about myself. It was the first time I consciously awoke to just how dependent I was on someone else to love me. I clearly saw that I needed to mature from this early stage, or I would never be happy or at peace. I was still the baby crying for an outside person to come meet my needs. (Or the maiden anxiously waiting to be chosen by the prince to secure her need for love.) It took me 40+ years to see it. And you know what? I have the deepest compassion for how long it can take, because no one ever taught me how to insource love rather than outsource it. This second developmental stage of love is when you move from being the dependent receiver to being the resourced giver. This is only possible by becoming a source of love to yourself. Insourcing Love: Insourcing love is when we transition from full dependence on an external figure to love us, and we mature into being the giver to ourselves. We sit with our childlike parts within and hold space. Something remarkable happens as you INSOURCE love:
However… When you are fully dependent and OUTSOURCE your need for love… It is not sustainable. The external person’s “love” only lasts so long before you need more. There is a better way. Teaching others how to do the work of insourcing is what my coaching — and my *NEW* podcast, Practicing Wholeness— is all about. To celebrate, I’m kicking things off with a FREE Creation Circle on Sunday, March 15. (In case you missed it, I’m choosing to record one podcast episode a month as a live gathering, and the first one is this week!).
This changes everything. If this piques your interest, I’d love to have you come. Namaste, brooke P.S. This is the first time in ten years of podcasting that I’m not going to be recording a podcast episode by myself in my studio. I’m so excited to gather with like-minded people in community for this one! I’d love to have you come! This Week on Creator Field Notes... |