Dissolve Barriers to Love

Jan 28

The ability to receive love often can be taken for granted, but if the title of this Connection Gem caught your attention, you know that it's not necessarily simple. Receiving love can be especially fraught with confusion and reactivity. Even the word “love” can trigger a variety of associations that aren’t necessarily life-serving. You might associate love with the pain of not receiving the love you needed as a child. You might associate love with a limiting belief that you are not lovable. You might imagine that true love can never be found or is a magical experience that only the lucky few get to experience.

A possible baby step for healing your relationship to love is to define it clearly so that it can stand freely from subconscious associations. I offer this as a working definition: Love is a living energy that often is experienced as warmhearted acceptance, caring, and generosity. Love can be expressed in many different ways. For example, it might be expressed with physical affection, acts of courage, words, acts of service, radiating energy, positive wishes, gift giving, boundary setting, etc.

With this in mind, you can begin the practice of dissolving barriers to love with three steps:

Set your intention: Learn to notice an offering of love.
Practice subtle observation and awareness: Become subtly aware of how you receive and turn away from love.
Design specific and doable practices: Engage in practices that help you strengthen your skills in receiving love.

Set your intention

Set your intention to be on the lookout for offerings of love. If you know you have difficulty receiving love, then there is likely a barrier to recognizing love as well. You may misinterpret loving words, receive a hug as “neediness,” receive a gift as an obligation, or simply fail to look up and notice a loving smile. Changing this kind of barrier is helped by feedback from others. Ask your closest friend, your partner, or your therapist to point out any time they see love coming your way. For example, as you tell your partner that your co-worker agreed to stay late so you could leave for vacation, your partner might suggest that that sounds like a gesture of love.

Subtle observation and awareness

Self study and reflection are an essential part of the transformation process. You can’t cultivate and strengthen what’s working or interrupt and dissolve what isn’t working without conscious awareness. It's not enough to simply notice that you dismissed a compliment. Each time someone offers love, challenge yourself to get very specific in your reflection. Here are some questions to guide you:

When you turn away from love answer the following questions:

What observable barriers were present? That is, what could anyone next to you observe? For example, in creating a barrier did you break eye contact, physically turn away, or step back? Did you make a joke to distract, or begin to criticize yourself or the other person?

What happened on the inside? What happened in your body? What did you tell yourself? What unconscious beliefs were operating in the background? Are there any associated images or memories that come up with that person's offering of love?

What were the conditions of the interaction? Where were you? What were you doing just before? Who else was present?

When you are able to receive love, answer the following questions:

What observable supports were present? That is, what could anyone next to you observe? For example, in receiving love, did you maintain eye contact, physically turn or step toward the other person? Did you verbally recognize the offering with a “thank you” or other words?

What happened on the inside? What happened in your body? What did you tell yourself? What beliefs were operating in the background? Are there any associated images or memories that come up with that person's offering of love?

What were the conditions of the interaction? Where were you? What were you doing just before? Who else was present?

Design specific and doable practices

As you gather information by reflecting on these questions, you will be able to design and engage in practices that help dissolve barriers to love. Here are two basic guidelines in designing your own practices:

The practice you design is mutually exclusive to the habits that don't serve you. That is, it would not be possible for you to engage the old habits or behavior in the same moment you are engaging in the new behavior.

The practice is easy to remember and simple to do. If this is true you will have a sense of lightness and confidence about your practice. A doable practice not only includes What? When? Where? Who? How long? How often?, it also inspires you with confidence that you can meet this challenge and do something new.

For example, let's say that in your reflections you notice that you most often have barriers to love when in a public setting. In these conditions, you often avoid eye contact and make jokes to distract from someone's offering of love, even if it is a simple kind word or gesture. With this information you might set up a practice like this:

For the next week, when you are home you will make and maintain eye contact any time someone offers love. You will notice the impulse to distract from an offering and instead simply say thank you. Choosing to practice in a private setting will help you gain confidence and strengthen your ability to receive love in a public setting.

The unfortunate thing about barriers around any need is that as one becomes depleted regarding a particular need, an internal set of standards about the way the need must be met is put into place. These standards may become more narrow and rigid over time, making it more difficult to receive from others and creating a vicious cycle of disappointment and depletion.

Perhaps the simplest practice in dissolving barriers to love is to invite love to flow through you. Without pushing or convincing yourself, invite yourself to frame love as something that simply is rather than something you get and give. Concrete practices that open the door to this experience include: