Evidence of love

I am loved.

The evidence is here.

Somehow, lately, I have got myself in a complete tizz about being unloved and unloveable. The therapist described it as a core belief. Its quite an obsessive thought deep, deep down. I didn't realise how deep it went but I now know it has been there all my life. Long story.

While feeling very wobbly over the last months I decided to try NOT cheering myself up when I was wobbly, just as a test to see how much of my natural bubbly personality was a result of me gee-ing myself up and how much came from outside sources. BAD IDEA FOLKS - DON'T try this at home. Not even if you are a trained professional.

Such a dumb idea. So dumb. IQ the size of a small planet and I thought it was a good idea (because I am depressed and not making good choices). I thought that I had obviously been duping myself into being a happy little soul for years when no-one actually loved me because I was unloveable. But if I was cheerful and witty and kind and clever people would keep me around and I would feel like I belonged because I was at least useful, which was almost as good as being loved for myself.

So I turned her off. The self-nurturer. The cheerer-uperer. And she has been surprisingly difficult to turn back on. I discovered this last weekend.

I had had a reasonable week at work last week, caught a few babies, and had a day off on Friday. My husband and I had a bit of time to oursleves and were spending some quality time and sharing some stuff together. And it pushed some buttons for me (my buttons are HUGE at the moment. And invisible to all, including me.) So I then spent the next 24 hours feeling immensely and increasingly unloved and unloveable and abandoned. Sigh. And the thing that really undid me was getting up on Saturday and feeling very wobbly and anxious, and then I saw these.

DH had got them for me while out shopping for groceries. He does things like that sometimes. So how could I not know I am loved? I fled back to bed (after sobbing in the loo) and had an anxiety attack. Not fun. Not in the least. Was I going mad? Or is it just that my vulnerability buttons are huge at the moment? DH was great. Applied lots of TLC. Kept me safe. Got me down off the ceiling. Helped me pick up the apples from the applecart that were rolling all over the floor. Got me to work that afternoon. Where I was fine if a bit shaken.

We went to the therapist on Monday and told her about my weekend. And she explained about the core beliefs thing. And I told her about the self-nurturer thing. And she told me to turn her back on cos we need to balance self-nurturing with outside nurturing and its too hard to expect it ALL to come from outside. Which I'd realised many years ago and was partly how I got so good at doing it for myself, and why I (felt) I was so happy. I felt I was so happy and fulfilled that I was filled with light. I was so filled with light that it radiated out of every pore, I couldn't turn it off if I tried.

My son had loved lighthouses as a small child and I always had a soft spot for them. He grew out of them and then I realised that my sentimentality was more than nostalgia, it was related to this inspiring light filled image and then at a workshop 2 years ago I realised I WAS the lighthouse, a beacon, radiant. What an experience.

I came to understand that it has all sorts of spiritual connotations, religious significance, new age connections and that it was a huge symbolic object. And I was OK with all of it. I was grown up, mature, insightful, confident and self-assured. I had it all together and was comfortable in my own skin. (And I was happy to have a new thing to collect :) ) I didn't talk about the light thing much to anyone, just me and my journal really, and maybe a few friends. It felt really private. But I include images of lighthouses in many of my creations (see necklace below)

And then this period of depression happened. The slide was gradual at first, and I thought I had enough insight and had done plenty of inner growth work in the past to have had it sorted out. I thought I was over all my self esteem issues, but clearly I wasn't. And I lost the sense of myself as a light filled being. A friend who knows about the lighthouses sends me pictures of them with light and energy pushed into them, but I still felt only flickering. I thought of a pool light to lend me some light as I felt I was underwater! Even that image only lifted me briefly. And then this arrived yesterday.

Oh Lesley thankyou so much. I had opened it (my Xmas present) early as I thought it would be one of her darling little wonky funky Christmas birds and I hadn't even got any decorations up yet, so I opened it to get at least something Christmassy underway. And then this beauty emerged. I was misty with pleasure and delight, and it was just what I needed. It will never be far from me, ever, for the rest of my life. Even if it was Christmassy I would keep it out 365 days per year.

The only thing I want for Christmas this year is love.

And I have it. From many sources. Here's to re-shaping crappy core beliefs with the evidence to the contrary.