Why You Can't Feel Loved For Who You Are - Teal Swan -

In this episode, Teal Swan explains why we can’t and don’t feel loved for who we are. She explains the origin of self-hate. Most of us don’t feel like we can be loved for who we are. As a result most of us are inauthentic. Teal Swan explains that we can’t feel loved for who we are because most parents only mirror a child when they are doing something and thus only associate a child with what they DO, we only associate ourselves with what we DO. Our entire identity becomes about what we DO. That becomes our sense of who we are. As a result, it isn’t even that we believe we are what we do. It is that we don’t feel like we exist separate from what we do.

Teal Swan is an International Spiritual Leader. She offers perspective on a wide range of topics including relationships, anxiety, meditation, shadow work, the law of attraction, The Completion Process, healing, PTSD, emotions and spirituality.

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Kuan Yin's Mantra (c) 2002 Lisa Thiel

Why We Can't Feel Loved For Who We Are

Hello there.

The human Ego is essentially

the sense of yourself
being a separate self.

When you learn to call
yourself by your name,

you learn that you are an it, or a thing.

And the minute that you conceptualize
of yourself as an it or a thing,

you become different from every other it

and every other thing

in the universe.

When you are born,

you do not have a solid ego yet,

because you do not have
this sense of yourself

as a separate self.

As we grow,
we begin to identify with things.

Whenever we associate something
with ourselves, we identify with it.

It becomes part of us.

We make it the same as us.

This is what attachment really is.

Its identification.

And if that thing we identify with
is ever threatened,

we experience it as a threat
to our own survival.

If you want to know more about
disidentification and identification,

watch my video on YouTube titled:

Disidentification
(The Practice of Non-Attachment)

I would love to be able to tell you

that your ego is made up of
authentic self initiated associations.

But this isn't the case.

The majority of your ego

is in fact made up

from associations that are
initiated by other people.

In other words,

other people become the mirror

through which we learn
to identify ourselves

as who we think we are.

This means if someone in your childhood

begins to associate you
with artistic ability,

then you begin to perceive
yourself as an artist.

You identify with being an artist
and that becomes part of your ego.

This means if someone in your childhood

associates you with darkness or badness,

than you begin to perceive
yourself in that way.

You identify with being dark or bad

and this becomes part of your own ego.

Part of why identity becomes
so confusing for us,

is that so many people associate us,

with different things.

And many of those things contradictory.

As you can probably tell without
me spelling it out for you,

it's a real crapshoot whether you're
going to end up with somebody

who is going to associate you with things

that are an authentic thing
to associate you with,

or whether they are just
going to associate you

with whatever they want
to associate you with.

Mostly total projections of themselves.

Most people are not conscious.

When you're dealing with
a person who is not conscious,

they don't really see children

as authentic expressions

with a unique purpose,

with unique desires.

More so, they think of children,
kind of like animated dolls.

Essentially believing the child
is whoever they want the child to be.

They associate the child
with whatever they decide

they want the child
to be associated with.

And if the child ever
begins to act in a way

that defies who they want them to be,

they feel personally threatened
and begin to associate the child

with negative traits.

Either way the child
takes on any associations

that the parent decides
to make with that child.

That child's identity and life then become

either nothing but an exact replica of
what the parents decided for them,

or a perpetual attempt to try
to figure out who they really are,

despite their parents.

We live in an emotional dark age.

People do not know how
to emotionally relate

and people have not developed intimacy.

For those of you who don't
understand what intimacy is already,

It's essentially being able
to see into someone,

feel into someone,

listen to someone

and fully understand them.

It is to get into their internal world.

Now ideally parents
would have a high degree

of intimacy with their children.

They would see into their children,

they would feel into their children,

they would listen to them,

they would understand their children.

And so, those parents
would be an accurate mirror

of what is authentically
part of that child.

For example, when the truth of a child is:

"I really love to dance",

the parent would acknowledge
and validate that for the child

and thus strengthen the child's
sense of self by doing so.

The association the child forms
between himself and dance,

would be authentic,

because it came from the child first,

and was then mirrored by the parent.

Positive mirroring is
essentially the process

of reflecting back to somebody,

anything that is true about them,

that they express
verbally or non-verbally.

Essentially we want to let them know

that we hear them, see them,
feel them and understand them.

Positive mirroring,

is to make their sense of how
they're feeling and thinking

and who they are, valid.

An example of positive mirroring

is that a child who's going
to a new school feels afraid

and may go silent or start
whining or act resistant to everything.

A parent who positively mirrors,

would come down to the child's level,

feel into the child and try
to understand the child enough

to figure out what the problem is,

and then mirror their reality
by saying something like:

I know that you must feel really afraid
about going to a new school,

and because you're afraid
you may not want to go to school.

And anyone who's afraid of going
to a new school would feel that way.

It's okay to be afraid.

And then potentially the
parent could help the child

brainstorm ways to feel better
about going to a new school.

But let's face it,

positive mirroring is not
exactly a "forte"

in today's day and age,

when it comes to parents and children.

So most likely that's not
going to be the reaction.

The most common reaction
would be something like:

"What are you crying for?
Every kid has to go to school?

You're lucky you even get to go to school,

because there are kids across
the world that don't even get that."

~ Laughter ~

Oh my God.

That's an example of a negative mirror.

Not only did it not mirror

what was authentically inside the child,

instead, what it mirrored was

the perception that the
parent had of the child,

which is that "you're wrong".

So the child comes to believe

that there's something wrong
with the way that they feel.

More than that,

that they have to distrust themselves.

And more than that,

they develop an identity around
being wrong or being bad.

This is the beginning of shame.

So this turns into an adult

that not only has a baseline of shame
for their personality structure,

this is also an adult
that cannot self reference.

The parent has taught them
they can't trust the way they feel,

they can't trust their
own sense of reality,

and so they have to outsource
their reality to other people.

Obviously, if you begin
to develop awareness enough

to figure out who you really are,

in other words,
what you really associate with,

that's going to fly directly in the face

of who your parents think you are

or wanted you to be

(what they associate you with).

As a result,

they're going to reject you.

They reject you because they reject
what you're associated with,

which is the very thing
you're identified with.

and like I said, when you're identified,

any rejection of something
you're identified with,

comes across as a personal rejection.

As a result, you cannot
feel loved by them.

For example if a boy grows up
to realize that he's gay

and the parents do not
want him to be gay,

they will reject gayness
and therefore reject their son,

because their son
is identified with being gay.

So we can say that the son
cannot be loved for who he is.

Because the people who do not
love him for who he is,

are his parents,

he will develop a belief that no one

can love him for who he is.

Essentially, with most parents,

the child has to develop attributes

that the parent will positively mirror,

in order to get any love.

So their identity is a perfect reflection

of their parents agenda.

So, if you're interested in
figuring out how to develop intimacy

and how to positively mirror,

I suggest you watch
two of my youtube videos.

The first is:

The Emotional Wakeup Call

and the second is:

How to Connect With Someone

But what if I told you

that the reason that we can't
feel loved for who we are,

actually goes even deeper than that?

We don't live in a world
where most people understand

that they can have intimacy

with their child.

As a result, the child
is not actually acknowledge

for being any certain way.

They are only acknowledged
when they are doing something.

Especially, when they are doing something

that benefits the parent.

A parent and child normally
cannot be together,

they have to be doing something together.

And then the mirroring in that scenario

or when a child is acknowledged,

is when they are doing that thing.

So here's an example

let's say that you're
playing a game of catch,

and the child throws a ball,

the parent goes:

"Wow. That was amazing
that you threw that ball."

The child now starts to identify

with the action, the doing,

which is throwing the ball.

So I'm going to sum this up
in a lovely little nutshell.

It's basically me answering your question

to why we can't feel loved
for who we are, in one paragraph:

Because most parents only mirror
a child when they are doing something

and thus only associate
a child with what they do,

we only associate ourselves
with what we do.

Our entire identity
becomes about what we do.

That becomes a sense of who we are.

As a result,

it isn't even that we believe
we are what we do,

it is that we don't feel like we exist

separate from what we do.

In an extreme case,

something like extreme childhood neglect,

what we see is that when
a child gets no mirroring,

they have no sense of self.

Now, that's an extreme example.

However, if a child
grows up under a parent

who does not acknowledge them
for anything other than what they do,

This child has no sense of self,

no sense of identity,

separate from what they do.

They've had no mirroring.

Obviously, we can't be loved
for who we are,

instead of what we do,

if who we are does not exist.

How can you love something
that doesn't exist?

If we...

Now, try this for yourself right now,

just to see whether you've got
this kind of mirroring in childhood.

And it's pretty easy,
just think of who you are,

separate of what you do.

Most of you are going to identify yourself

by virtue of what?

"I am a spiritual teacher",

that's a doing, right?

~ Laughter ~

So what happens if you've been
raised in an environment

where all that's mirrored is what you do,

is that when you try to think about
who you are separate of what you do,

you draw a big blank space.

It's kind of like ----

This is the real reason we can't
feel loved for who we are.

Because who we are
does not even exist.

Because we have an identity
only by virtue of what we do.

So now you know why it is

that you can't feel loved for who you are.

Plain and simply,
it's because your entire identity,

that which we call the ego,

is formed completely

out of the things

that made you exist for your parents.

Have a good week.

Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte