Love's Inherent Pain
It’s February, which means in about one week we’ll be inundated with messages to spend money on loved ones, make sure we don’t forget our kid’s cards and also maybe eat a heart shaped pizza. This year, I’m more excited because I ordered a flower bouquet from my friend Kalin at Sweetwater as a gift to myself.
February has us thinking about the joyous parts of love, but love is hard. And I feel like I’ve finally found the words for why.
TOOLS
I do not think I knew the depths of pain until I had children. Not the pain of labor, nursing or pulling my earrings. But the pain of love.
All of us have a choice if we want to love someone. We choose to put ourselves out there, to care so deeply about someone else and to endure the anxiety of what if something happens to them.
It takes courage to love.
Because love is inherently vulnerable.
You cannot love and escape vulnerability.
So many of my clients struggle with anxiety. And most of them with the feeling of “the other shoe will drop”. They expect bad things to happen to them or their loved ones, they worry, they stress about what they cannot control.
Anxiety then feels like the antithesis of love. But what if anxiety is in relationship with love?
What if a tool for working through our anxiety is that our anxiety IS love?
GRATITUDE
If you are someone who…
loves someone so deeply that it hurts
worry so much about what may happen to a loved one it keeps you up at night
you feel an ache when you think about them experiencing pain or hurt
lose your breath when you have a scary thought of your loved one being ill
feel fear instead of joy when you look at your loved ones
Then I ask you this, can you have compassion for your anxiety?
You have given yourself the gift of loving someone. Choose to reframe those scary thoughts as LOVE and the natural consequence of CHOOSING to love something. Anxiety is a deal we made to feel when we decided to love.
When you’re able to take those anxious thoughts and label them instead as LOVE, you can release the nagging fear. You can be more present and grateful.
The more you can be present in your day, the more you build a focused attention to then keep the scary thoughts at bay.
INNOVATION
A while back I launched a “Self-Love Challenge” during the month of February. At the time, I was single and just starting out in this field and felt my idea of redefining Valentine’s Day was innovative.
Well, it’s not really…at least not anymore. But do you really love yourself?
A client of mine is struggling with body acceptance. I told her you may never accept your body, but you can choose to love it.
Acceptance is not love. Acceptance is saying, “okay, it is what it is and I can be okay with that”.
Love is unconditional. Love means you honor yourself, even on the days you’re mad at yourself. Love means you don’t punish yourself, even on the days you feel it’s broken. Love means you love yourself even when you do not like yourself.
FEELS
Sometimes I do not like my kids. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE them. I love them so much again, it hurts. But sometimes they can be jerks and intolerable.
Love is a choice. It’s an active choice over and over and over again. It means being courageous and in pain. It means being vulnerable and heartbroken. It means being anxious and afraid. It means being mad and tender.
But what is life without love? Would you really choose anything else?
I ask you this Valentines season to define love for yourself. See it for ALL the hard parts and fully embrace it.
You can choose not to feel full, robust, scary love…but I have a feeling we’re meant to be on this Earth to feel it all, learn from it and grow.
Love really is the answer to all.
Click here to learn more about anxiety therapy.
