Maybe you grew up feeling like you were hard to love, and you ended up in situations where you couldn’t leave someone who treated you badly. And you wanted them to change and treat you better.
You might have ignored the warning signs, put up with the mean behaviour and chased after the people who didn’t care about you or like you. These are all things that you learned from your childhood.
Your subconscious was really drawn to this person, because it wanted to ‘fix’ the past. It thought ‘if I can get this person who doesn’t care about me to love me, I will then prove to myself that I am worthy of love. And it’s not as hard to love me as I thought’. But the problem started with the people you got into relationships with. It would have been great, imagine, if someone who didn’t care about you, suddenly loved you the way you wanted.
But that never happened, did it?
And that’s where you need to learn the concept of ‘reparenting’. To teach your inner child that love doesn’t have to be hard to get. Love is not found in people who don’t care about you. Love is not about you proving your self-worth.
With time and patience, you can unlearn to put up with bad relationships. You can learn to love yourself so much that you don’t let yourself be pulled into these situations.
But where do you start with this journey?
First, set firmer boundaries with people who are not helping you to heal and grow. Second, start reparenting your inner child. Get a trauma-informed coach or a therapist who can help you.
Finally, understand what it means to love yourself. Ask yourself ‘would I do this or be in this situation if I really loved myself?’
And remember, life is too short to waste on people who don’t appreciate you. You deserve better. And trust me, there are people who want the same thing you do. You have to see them. Or better yet, let them see YOU.