The Fear of Loving

Love. We all want it. We develop many ways of trying to get love and be loved. From the time we are infants, we do not thrive without it. When we don’t get it, we may turn to many addictions to fill the emptiness that occurs when we don’t feel loved. When we feel loved, we are on top of the world.

Yet many people have a fear of loving. Not a fear of being loved - a fear of loving.

Why Would Someone Fear Loving?

Unless you have done your Inner Bonding work to create a strong loving adult who knows how to handle rejection and loss, loving might feel scary to you.  

We learn this fear early. Many of us experienced much rejection and loss as little children - way too much for us to handle without a loving parent to help us through it. But far too often, it is the parents who are doing the rejecting, through various forms of abuse. Or, our parents, siblings, or grandparents might die, leaving us with no one to help us manage the intense pain of loss.

When we are rejected or abused by people we love, or we lose people we love, we may become fearful of loving.

Danny was a highly sensitive child. He grew up with an emotionally unavailable mother and an angry, critical father. He recalls numerous times as a very young child where he was devastated by his father's anger and his mother's coldness. Danny decided early that it was too risky to love, so he closed down his heart and learned various ways of trying to get love without risking loving.

Now, as an adult, he loves only when it is safe. He loves his pets and sometimes his children, but finds it very scary to love his wife. The problem is that Danny never learned how to love himself - his inner child - so to love his wife and risk losing her, and with no spiritually- connected loving adult to help him through it, it feels too scary.

A friend of mine, Greg, lost his sister to illness when he was small. Greg's father, Hector, was so devastated by the loss that he completely shut down and left the rest of the family - leaving his two other children and his wife. A brilliant man, Hector took a menial job picking crops, traveling around the world so that he never attached to anyone or anything. This was his way of protecting himself against his fear of loss. Because Hector had no inner resources to manage loss, his terror of loving led him to leave the world of caring and sharing. The damage this did to his family was sadly recounted by his son Greg.

Losing A Loved One To Death Is One Of The Most Heartbreaking Experiences In Life…

The only way we can manage the heartbreak of loss is when we have a strong connection with the love and comfort of our spiritual guidance. Without this source of comfort, loving might be too scary.

Yet, if we don't love, we never experience the greatest joy in life - the sharing of love. We never learn the important truth that getting love from another does not fill the emptiness and aloneness within - that it is filled only through loving ourselves and sharing our love with others.

As you practice Inner Bonding and learn to connect with Spirit and bring love to yourself, it becomes easier and easier to share love - to take the risk of being hurt - the risk of loving. As Danny is discovering through his Inner Bonding practice, it is only in loving himself and then sharing his love with his wife and children that the alone and empty place within him gets filled.

"I'm not as scared as I used to be to love, and it feels so good!" he said in a recent phone session.

Learn to connect with your spiritual Guidance with Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom, A 30-Day at-home Experience with Dr. Margaret Paul.

Experience profound healing and the two secrets to at-will Divine connection in my book, “Diet For Divine Connection.”