Have you ever found yourself resisting loving energy that someone directs towards you? Most of us want to love and be loved, so why would we push it away?
This may seem like a strange thing to do, but you’d be surprised by how frequently I see it happen. I coach many clients on how to dissolve their energetic blocks to love, because they often feel unworthy of receiving it when the Universe aligns a soul mate. This dynamic can occur with professional as well as friendship relationships. It is something that I also deal with occasionally, but more on that later.
Loving energy stands in direct contrast to low self-esteem or any other deeply held negative beliefs that we might have. When we are faced with someone who wants to love us unconditionally, our subconscious may find various ways to push it away. Time and again, I have seen people sabotage a relationship so they don’t have to address these issues. And if we aren’t careful, this whole process can unfold without us even being aware of it. I was recently faced with a situation like this, here in Japan.
Last week I taught a two-day version of my “Empowering the Empath” workshop in Tokyo, and it may have been one of the most powerful events I have ever held. On the first day we focused on opening our empathic abilities to help connect with and support others in a more profound way. The second day was geared towards protecting ourselves from the negative energy of others in various situations. I also introduced a new exercise to help release energetic ties to people who may have caused us pain. This exercise brought about healing tears and a release of old resentments for many of the participants. Witnessing the loving, supportive energy swirl around the room freely was such an extraordinary event. The participants were kind, open and verbally expressive with each other. It was an honor and a joy to facilitate that kind of experience.
As the afternoon came to a close, participants had time to come up and say hello personally. I love what I do, but I always feel a little insecure when this happens at an event. Even though I help others work through their energetic blocks to love, I too have moments of feeling “not good enough.” But for this to be a fair exchange of energy, I would need to shift from giving to receiving the love.
Normally when people are speaking English, my brain focuses on the words, and I can process this information in my mental body. Being in Japan, I could not use language to be my focus and could only understand the energy that they were sending to me. This information went straight to the core of my soul. Each person would come up to me and try their best to convey how they felt.
Perhaps a detailed, intricate gift would be presented, often representing the pride of their country. Or they would try to express in Japanese how they felt about the experience. To fully understand them, I would breathe deeply, open my heart and intend to be fully present. I truly feel like I gave myself permission to receive their loving energy. This was permission to accept the deeply intimate experience that the workshop participants had. But it was also permission to acknowledge that I had a goal in my mind, took action on my vision, and in this moment was experiencing a dream come true in real time. I was allowing myself to accept the love.
My heart was racing and tears welled up in my eyes. Thoughtful gifts were presented with intricate packaging and personally inscribed cards. The room was full of intention. I could feel the love so deeply that I thought I might burst. My inner “negative Nancy” voice was chiming in to say “you don’t deserve this!” But I have worked with this energy long enough to recognize and be conscious of it, so I kept breathing to stay as present as possible. I breathed and told myself that I deserve to love and be loved. I allowed myself to receive that beautiful energy, and I made sure to give the love right back to them.
Our critical inner voice may never completely go away, no matter how much work we do on ourselves. But I want you to know that you absolutely deserve unconditional love, and you are good enough.
Have you ever resisted loving energy in some area of your life? Is there a negative belief about yourself that you want to release? Please let me know in the comments below, I’d love to support you and send you some love!
22 Responses
I know this may sound odd. But I feel I’m not worthy to be loved by someone who is very intellectual and wealthy or financially wealthy. I’m a Gemini with sag moon and Taurus ascendant. I’m finding that from studying my chart that is something I have to really pay attention to. And since venus is in retrograde in my 5 th house I realize that I feel not worthy of creating anything of significance to or for others. Which includes myself. Thanks for listening. Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated.
What an awesome experience you had!
I understand about receiving love. As a child living with a perfectionist mother and non demonstrative affection wise I have felt unworthy and rejected many boyfriends based on that inability to receive love.
Hopefully I’ll get the chance again some day and be able to accept it as you did!
I am worthy!
Thanks for sharing Madelyn, I am proud of you for being aware of the inability to receive love. Please know that this is not an inherent trait, it is something that you learned. You can learn to receive the love that you deserve with practice. And you are right, you ARE worthy!
I have had a pattern of “trying” to get love from people who don’t really empathize with me or like me, while pushing away love from people who actually love me! I know I wasn’t what my parents wanted or expected and that the “trying” part came from needing to “survive” them as a small person.
But man – the “letting the good stuff in” part isn’t habitual and frankly, I am pretty sure that my personal most favorite parts are still buried and even I don’t know they are there and need love. Also interestingly (?), I noticed in reading the comments before me that I am also a Gemini with a Sag moon!
Thanks much for inviting us into this and sharing! It really feels like right timing for me! And hey – much love and many blessings to _you_!!!
Hi Katherine, thank you for the comment! I love your awareness of the “root” of the block – this is a very good sign! So many of our deeply held beliefs are picked up in our early years, and it sounds like you were given a misleading lesson on what love looks like very early on. I’m sure your parents didn’t mean to pass that message on to you, but it is nonetheless something that you need and deserve to heal from.
Dougall, this is beautiful! (brought tears to my eyes 🙂 )
I am very familiar with worthiness issue. It shows up for me in the areas of relationships, success and money. There is this (subconscious?) pattern of not knowing how it feels and what to do with true love, admiration, recognition of achievements, and sliding back to “familiar” rut. I would love to learn how to resolve these.
Hi Yulia!
I know what you mean, and I applaud you for being open to looking at this. I think the first step to overcoming this block is to be aware of the resistance in the first place. Try and give yourself a chance to focus on where the love might be blocked. If you see it in meditation, do your best to love this part of you and keep it in your awareness.
I love you Dougall! Thanks for sharing your experience. I found it comforting to know that even you sometimes have a negative voice in your head. It had never occurred to me that no matter how much work you do, the voice will not completely go away. But now that you said it, it does make sense. And it makes me feel better.
I don’t really know if I would say I feel “unworthy” of love. There is definitely no crowd of kind, good men beating down my door trying to give me love and respect. If there was, I would probably accept it. I don’t really understand my romantic situation/feelings at all. Mostly I’m just very, very tired of the whole thing.
Sending you love right back! And in my experience, even the most accomplished and successful people deal with self-doubt. What sets them apart is that they move forward with their goal anyway. This is what the Universe wants to see so they can make magic happen for us.
Great article! It really touched a nerve with me. By any chance, would you consider putting your “Empowering the Empath” workshop online?
Hi Lynn,
Thanks for your kind words, I’m glad to hear that it resonated for you! We do offer the course online occasionally, it is usually offered as part of an online package. If you are subscribed to the newsletter, we will let you know the next time it is offered!
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Thank you for sharing this. We all struggle. Due to a very difficult childhood, I had been programmed my entire life to believe I was not worthy of anything ‘good’ and healthy in my life, and sure enough, guess what what I attracted? Among other things, I am working very hard with positive affirmations (in the present tense, of course!)…’Who I am is good and I am good enough’, ‘I am in a healthy and loving relationship’, etc. We are what we tell ourselves. Peace and love to you.
Hi Suzanne,
I completely understand what you mean, it is very common to pick up those limiting thoughts in childhood. And you are right, we teach people right from the start how we think we should be treated, even if we’re not consciously aware that we are doing it. Affirmations are a powerful way to counteract this, and I often recommend doing mirror work frequently throughout the day. If I may suggest an affirmation for you, rather than being “good enough” I think you could also try saying “I am perfect exactly as I am.” Stare into your own eyes when you do this, and experiment with standing various distances from the mirror. Try standing so that you can only focus on your eyes and nothing else. Eventually you will find that your physical body will dissolve and you will begin speaking directly to your soul.
Thank you! Now that I think about it, I understand why you suggest that affirmation could be changed… “good enough” for what?? From now on, “I am perfect exactly as I am” ! Much love to you 🙂
I have felt unworthy of love for a large part of my life, I’m 57 years old. I realize that my life depends on me loving and appreciating myself. I have become very sick and have had to depend on others to help me out. I was feeling like I just wanted to die because I didn’t want to ask for help because I didn’t think I deserved to be taken care of and thought of myself as a burden to deal with. I realize that my friends and family truly want to help me and do love me and that I deserve to be loved. I’m still working on this because I often feel like giving up because, there seems to be complications to getting well that send my brain thinking in the wrong direction. Thank you for allowing me to put this up here, I actually needed to get this off my mind today.
Hi Ellen, I’m so sorry to hear of your health issues and the resulting struggle. I’m sending you lots of love and support right now. It sounds like accepting love from others has been a real challenge for you. My wish for you is to try and step past those limiting thoughts and allow your friends/family to support you at this time. You DO deserve to be loved and supported, no matter what your deeply held beliefs may tell you.
On my journey I am learning a lot about myself and my gift. Through these steps along this path I have learnt to embrace who I am. Allowing myself to accept is learning to feel divine love. In order to know love you first must be able to love yourself.
After having participated Dougall’s seminers in Tokyo and Osaka, I think I was able to come to my own answer about “loving myself”. Of course, I will continue to pursue the answer, but for now, I now really knew that to love myself means to forgive myself. I now think that my “negative side” called “Ego” which I have been trying not to see is rather important for my life, since my spirit is able to feel and touch varous emotions from “experiences” through it. And the bitter experinces will bring us the wonderful feeling that we would like to heal others and to be healed by others” because of such bitterness and the sweat experiences will give us how to express love. As Dougall said to us in the seminers, most important is to keep the balance.
Dougall and David, I really thank you very much. I could feel the moment that the fog around my life was wiped out.
Thank you for this article…from someone who does wish to be loved unconditionally and have that in my life…I think deep down I know I am worthy yet I’ve just been through over the last 2 years some of the most trying times in my life and yes I have been tested but through it all I seem to have developed a mindset that I struggle to get past and that mindset is I’m not good enough to “receive”, guilt, bad decisions….I left a good job and moved away with no job in line and my mom got sick and I moved again and was out of work for a year and now work at a level that I haven’t worked out since starting out working back in the 70’s. Dad had a breakdown and my Mom has since passed and my nephew last year and then dealing with the “loss” of financial security and not being able to support myself without help is very frustrating and demoralizing on some level even though I was able to recently purchase another home with my dad….but now I have these “fears” that I didn’t really have before all of this….so I would love to receive love…
Thank you for this article.
As a teen and later on in my early 20s, I developed a fear of violence.
I had been physically attacked as a teen by a group and I remember vividly how I was trying to run away to find safety.
In my early 20s in the army I was bullied (I wasnt the only one) and I spent most of my time there living in terror.
I grew up in a family where fear was a censored emotional. Right from childhood, my parents would harshly criticise me when I would be afraid and crying. Men werent supposed to be weak. That was the message. My parents were also highly emotionally abusive and I was always afraid of my father as a figure.
So, in these two instances later in my life, I didn’t project myself as I thought I should. And that meant beating the crap out of everyone who would mess with me. So, I started hating myself cause I thought I was weak, a coward and ‘not enough’ of a man.
This has been my personal blockage to allowing love. I beleived I didn’t deserve it. Actually, I was punishing myself for many years, for my perceived weakness of character.
Through much personal work and therapy, I uncovered my inner strenght and bravery to overcome so many things (fears and all) and be a person I really admire and love today. But, this irrational fear of violence came up today when I was out on a walk with friends and a group of three people were walking behind us. One of my friends mentioned something about them in low voice and my internal response was a rush of fear and the need to stay hidden and quiet cause they would attack us.
And all the old programming of not being good enough and unworthy of love, came back in full force.
I try to see these feelings and thoughts with loving eyes, but sometimes that’s very difficult. I would really appreciate your feedback on this.
I am an empath, and for the first time in my life I am aware of this fact, and I am noticing that everyone in my life up to this point has been narcissistic and many of my family members have abused me in various ways. I am struggling very hard to replace the emotional negativity that has been ingrained in me with positive energy, but it is hard for me to allow others to love me, as I struggle so hard to love myself. I constantly find a reason in my mind as to why I don’t deserve love, and I over analyze my past to the point where I am in constant fear of making a mistake, or justifying why my past mistakes make me unworthy of love today. I feel like I’m drowning in my own mind, and even though I know it is just overthinking and anxiety, it’s hard to calm down and it is hard for me to actually BELIEVE the little things I tell myself to make myself feel better. Do you have any tips on calming the overthinking and truly ACCEPTING that making mistakes is part of being human, and I should not let my past affect my present?
Thank you so much in advance for any advice you can send my way 🙏🏼