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I believe we are love.

All of us.

Nothing more and nothing less.

Underneath all the conditioning, labels, names, nationalities, religions , histories, and so on. Beneath all those layers, we are love. Every cell, every atom, every fibre of our being is vibrating at the frequency of love.

I also believe love is the reason we are alive. I believe love is what makes life worth living. I believe love is what keeps us going. I believe love is the most powerful force in the universe. Nothing can beat it. Not hatred, not pain, not fear, nothing.

So if we are love, why do so many of us push love away?

Why do we run from relationships and people who can bring inner richness into our lives? Why do we hide when we feel we are really falling hard for someone and sometimes even end up “ghosting” that person?

So often I hear the phrase: “I want to love, but I don’t know…I’m just too scared.”

I believe the answer lies in the subconscious mind. Our subconscious minds are made up of all of our past experiences, all our fears, our memories (both good and bad), our traumas, our limiting beliefs. And in general, society as a collective has a deep negative conditioning made up of fears and limiting beliefs that can really limit our happiness.

When we have had painful pasts and experiences with our families, friendships, and relationships, our subconscious mind stores the memories—all of them. This then explains why we become so hesitant to open ourselves up to love. About 90-95% of our mind is made up of the subconscious mind. This then makes sense why the conscious part of our mind (the much smaller part) might want to love, but why it may be hard to override that bigger part (the subconscious).

I have put together four key reasons why I think we unintentionally push love away. Here goes.

1. The fear of being hurt.

Heartbreak is probably one of the most painful feelings in the world. I remember my first breakup. I thought the pain would kill me. Understandably, this kind of pain can make you say to yourself, “I will never love again. It’s not worth it if it ends up in heartbreak like this.”

As humans, we naturally run from pain. (Especially if we have been taught that pain is not safe to feel—hey nervous system!) It’s a perfectly normal defence mechanism.

Sometimes in relationships, our trust can also be broken. Many people lie, manipulate, and cheat in relationships and this can leave their partners feeling destroyed. Naturally, it can then feel hard to trust anyone else, ever again.

When we love someone with deep intensity, losing them can bring hurt that feels equally as intense. It takes real guts to put yourself out there again after a big heartbreak.

2. Relationships trigger the hell out of us.

Every single relationship we have in life is going to bring up our triggers and our “shadow selves.” The shadow self is a concept that was first developed by psychoanalyst Carl Jung. He came up with the term to describe the things we tend to repress, or don’t want to acknowledge about ourselves because they are “bad” or too painful to confront.

Some manifestations of the shadow can be feelings and traits like anger, fear, shame, jealousy, lack, laziness, insecurity, being uptight, critical, and intolerant, and so on.

Often when we are single, these traits can go unnoticed (also, the ego loves to live in denial), but when we begin to share our lives with another person, lots of these issues will come up and can quite frankly shock us. Notice that these things don’t make us “bad people.” They just haven’t been safely processed at an early age and show up in the “now.” Arguments, discussions, and differences between two people in a relationship can drag up the mud from our subconscious mind.

This is why good communication is an absolute key component of having healthy relationships in life, as well as self-awareness and being able to admit when we are in the wrong.

3. The fear of intimacy.

Ooh. This one is a big one. And no, I’m not only talking about sexual intimacy; I am talking about emotional intimacy. One of the not-so-great parts of being human is that we tend to suck at feelings. We don’t like feeling them ( the hard ones) , we don’t like talking about them, and in fact we want nothing to do with them. They’re too icky and yucky.

Haha , well, we can’t get away with that in a relationship.

Being emotionally available is so important when it comes to the success of a partnership. Being open about how we feel and how the other person’s actions make us feel are nonnegotiable. If we have grown up in an environment where feelings were not allowed to be expressed— they were shamed or shoved under the rug—we will naturally have a hard time with emotions as adults.

Thankfully, our brains and nervous systems are hardwired for change. And if we can learn that intimacy and emotions are not safe, we can also unlearn this. And honestly, this is probably the most powerful and important thing we can ever do. Our lives become so much easier.

 4. The core belief “I’m not good enough.”

I think most people in the world somewhat have the core belief of: “I’m not good enough.” Louise Hay has many great books on this topic.

This is an incredibly painful wound that has profound effects on the quality of our self-esteem and relationships. If we don’t feel good enough, we may also feel unworthy of ever being loved. If we can’t love ourselves, it becomes incredibly difficult to let someone else in.

Not feeling good enough usually starts in childhood. Perhaps the child felt like a burden at home, or grew up with emotionally unavailable parents or caregivers where love was not shown as it should have been. Being loved is one of our core needs. When a child does not feel loved, it can feel absolutely traumatic and it affects their development.

We should absolutely work on self-love before ever getting into a relationship. Many people also run into relationships as a way to escape themselves, but this is not a healthy alternative. This often results in co-dependency.

We often push away love without intention, at least we don’t do it consciously. Our past experiences shape our present and whatever we have stored in our subconscious minds will absolutely impact our current behaviour and actions.

But we always have the option to heal. I cannot emphasise this enough:

We need love. We need companionship. We need intimacy. All these things are what make life rich and worth living. They give life colour, vitality, zest. and vibrancy.

Healing takes time. So give yourself time. Be patient as you do the unlearning. Be patient as you open up your heart again. It takes guts. It takes bravery. It’s probably the bravest thing you can ever do.

But it’s also the most worthwhile.

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