(((((Tree)))))

I know where you're coming from. I have the same problem myself. I just don't feel worthy of being loved. I have a hard time taking in any kind of praise. It's like i just can't accept that i'm lovable or even that i did a good job at something. When somebody compliments me, it just bounces right off. i can't feel anything. It can't get inside me where i can accept it and feel on some level that it is true. And that's so painful because I WANT to believe i am lovable. But i don't know HOW to believe it. It's like i'm in some kind of armor where nothing gets in. It feels so ALONE, even when somebody is sitting right next to me saying how much they care.

I think alot of us have this problem, and it's a painful, painful thing to acknowledge and sit with, to let ourselves feel this emptiness and self-lack. Somehow, we've come to believe we have an inner core of badness or are just plain invisible, empty, worthless, and unlovable. Something deep inside our psyche won't "allow" us to believe otherwise, won't "allow" us to take in loving feelings from others.

OR. . .we've been hurt so many times in the past by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with someone, to believe they loved us, to take in the good loving feelings, and then were hurt, betrayed, used, abused, or abandoned. So now our armor is so dang thick NO loving feelings from anyone can get in.

I don't know what the most painful part of this is. . .going through life in armor with a deadened heart. . .or the pain it takes to heal. Healing means we have to understand why and how we ever came to believe we were unlovable and unworthy. And to do that, we usually have to go back into the most painful parts of our past, parts that some of us have been running from for years or decades.

Tree, I know you are in alot of pain right now, but you are making good strides in your therapy and your awareness. Just keep putting one foot slowly in front of the other.