What are you unknowingly doing to get love?
I’ve known for a while that when I was little, one of the reason’s I had such a drive to excel academically was to get love and attention. What I didn’t realize was that this belief—learning being a critical way to get love—was still running the show!
Here, I share my process for noticing this, and how it’s created more space for me to love myself with self-care. It is quite personal, sharing a series of small steps that organically came in my Focusing. And as we’ve been learning in the Empathy Circles, it’s in our sharing of the details where we’re able to connect and see ourselves in others. I hope you’ll find some of this useful. Maybe you’ll notice something you do to get love, rather than giving it to yourself directly.
A false pleasure
My heartwork journaling of the realization (again!) that spending time on X takes time away from self-care, like my walks in nature.
In a blog from a few years ago, I shared what I call my Twitter scroller: a part that jumps in when I’m scared and stressed and helps me look for good news. Back then, it was taking up too much time and while my efforts to spend less time on the site now called X worked for a while as we came out of the pandemic, slowly my rising climate anxiety had me spending more time there as our environmental context shifted.
This wasn’t surprising. Gendlin says in APM “body and environment are one.” And Judith Herman says in Trauma and Recovery, “new conflicts and challenges at each new stage of the lifecycle will inevitably reawaken the trauma and bring some new aspect of the experience to light.” My increased time on X reflected my increased fear.
This past April, I did a doodle your emotions course with Maritza Parra. It was fun to draw with my tablet, and on the left you see one of the “heartwork journaling” entries I made. What I see now when I look at it, is there is an emphasis on learning and a worry about “how bad” climate change could get.
What Maritza says in the doodle course is that instant gratification solves a “false pleasure.” And at the time, I could clearly see that the time on X (and these days increasingly Bluesky) took time away from self-care like my walks in nature.
But there was more to unpack. Later in the spring, I came to realize that the Twitter scroller, while looking for climate and other danger, has a vigilant quality.
A handle “vigilant learning” came. This aspect of my personality was new to me. I hadn’t noticed it before. And this way of learning wasn’t just in the evenings while relaxing on social media. I began to notice the vigilant learning part kept me learning constantly. By trying to read too much, or at least have access to information (I find it hard to unsubscribe to newsletters, or close unread tabs). I also have been known to sign up for too many webinars and can spend too much time consuming content, rather than creating it.
The scroller is an extreme version of the ways I learn, but edging it on was this vigilance. Here are all the ways that I learn that I’ve identified and how they map to Jan Winhall’s Felt Sense Polyvagal Model:
the Twitter scroller: a way of looking for comfort, but also a time eater (fixate)
the professional self: full of curiosity and creativity while working with others (flock)
vigilant learning part: on high alert to find things we don’t know and presumably we need to know; preventative (fight/flight)
the analyzer/perfectionist: very mental (body is numb), looks for right answers and processes what is taken in (fold), and
freeze - don’t argue: this part has no thoughts and ability to learn at times (freeze).
Why vigilant learning? The real need revealed
Another Focusing session brought clarity: vigilant learning lives in my body; it has access to a protective suit which brings a heaviness to my arms, head and back. When I’m in that space, I feel small and on guard. This part of me really feels I need protecting. But protection from what?
Around the same time, I discovered vigilant learning. I attended a roundtable on aging wanting to Focus on the self-care I wasn’t doing, that was leading to some noticeable aging. It was in a breakout room at that event that it all came together.
My body shared with me again that I don’t have enough time for self-care and anti-aging as I spend too much time learning. My body also told me I was still learning so much because I was “scared to not get enough love.”
This shocked me. I knew that had been my pattern as a child. On my timeline, the way I symbolized my Analyzer part (the fold one that deals with all the information I learn) was to show me looking at the bulletin board in grade 4, to see what my grades were and how they compared to others. I did this as good grades (learning) got me attention as a child. I didn’t realize this belief was so strongly informing my actions today.
Now I saw that I was looking for love with all this learning—to somehow get it from others—rather than giving it directly to myself. The vigilant learning protected me from not having enough love. Now, I could give myself more love by using my alone time differently.
Giving myself love and celebrating shifts
The felt shifts from the spring stayed with me over the summer. I saw shifts in my behaviour. I found it easier to spend more time living and I saw it in the signs of new things: harvesting more herbs and flowers from the garden; buying peaches and making jam; sleeping more; and reading for fun again! I’ve been giving myself love by spending time just being with myself, rather than the constant doing of learning, I’m learning the joy of (un)doing.
There’s also a stronger sense of confidence. In fact, after the aging workshop, on the same day I happened to be teaching my 8Cs course, and we were doing the exercise on connecting to an experience of confidence. I was so delighted that my body told me that the courses are now a living thing. There was a feeling of pride of what I have created. A pleasant settled feeling in my belly and an aliveness in the chest and face.
Over the summer I also got announced as a Coordinator. So as I write this blog, I’m really excited to be on this next phase of the journey of co-creating PUPA with my felt sense, our students and participants, and really the entire universe. I learn so much from my students and clients now. The learning flows. In fact, these days I don’t try and anticipate what I need to learn; I just wait and it comes to me!
Giving yourself love
I love the concept of Indra’s pearls (or net). That the “pearls in the net reflect each other, the reflections themselves containing not merely the other pearls but also the reflections of the other pearls. In fact the entire universe is to be found not only in each pearl, but also in each reflection in each pearl, and so ad infinitum.”
So maybe you see yourself in what I have shared, in my many carrying forward steps. Perhaps, as you read this, a memory, an image, or a felt sensation has started to emerge about how you unknowingly seek love.
If so, I invite you to allow yourself to get curious and gently turn inward now. Maybe there’s a feeling or a sense that’s trying to come into clearer awareness—a knowing that’s there in your body, wanting to be felt—wanting your attention.
As you stay with it, perhaps you notice a behavior, habit or pattern, something you do to try and receive love or approval from others? Take a moment to sense into the whole of it. Could you simply offer this love to yourself, directly and unconditionally?
Or maybe you notice something other than love, that you try and get from others. Perhaps you could give that to yourself directly.
What’s emerging now? I’d love to hear in the comments what resonates and what comes for you now. And of course sometimes what will be most loving is to receive something from others. If a Focusing session is what you need, then I invite you to book one with our PUPA Trainees, or directly with me.