How I Shed My False Self & Found True Love <3

The program that has you constantly looking for love outside of yourself is--how do I say this nicely--bullshit. Most of us are conditioned from birth by society, family, and church to disown parts of ourselves seen as unworthy. In rejecting these parts, we reject our truest self. Our whole self. 

As children, we understand through modeled behavior and praise that to be worthy of love we must DO something. It is in this doing, that we are then valued and loved by our parents, church, school and society at large...this helps us to create our false sense of self in order to be what they deem as lovable and worthy.

For me this looked something like this--

you are loveable if you are helpful 

you are loveable if you put others before yourself always

you are loveable if you take care of others

you are loveable if you sacrifice yourself

you're a good girl

a nice girl

a helper

a fixer

always agreeable

you don't rock the boat

you don't have an opinion 

you do what everyone else wants and you do it with a smile on your face

you hide your pain

you blend in

and you have NO needs

you're only here to fulfill others' needs. 

That's the only thing you're good for and if you can't do that, you're useless and invalid. 

This created a belief within me as a child that I was only loved and valued for what I could do for others. That I needed to seek love outside of myself in order to fill me up and make me happy. My worth was determined by what I could DO for others, not who I am. 

And this showed up in my life in my career choice of nursing, my relationship patterns with abusive men who I thought I could fix, my relationship with my family who I did everything for and became the parentified child, the counselor for people on the street who were naturally attracted to my lack of boundaries and hence would pour out their whole life story onto me and I would take it, and the friends I attracted that walked all over me because I was nice and agreeable--a pushover, a doormat. 

I lived like this for a long time, gathering my worth from the opinions of others and what I could do for them. And collecting everyone's thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and stories, taking them as my own and burying them deep inside my body. When this brought me ill health and I could no longer hold up to the standard I created for myself--that was created for me--I didn't know who I was anymore. Who am I if I can't even help myself?? Sometimes breakdowns lead to the biggest breakthroughs and after a very long dark night of the soul, I started to see the truth.

We are loveable because we ARE. Because we exist, because we ARE God experiencing itself through our unique, individual and beautiful perspectives, because we are the Universe in ecstatic motion with stardust in our veins and we don't have to DO anything to be deserving of love. WE ARE LOVE. It IS who we are at the core of our beingness and THAT is ENOUGH. What a revelation! This instantly changed everything and I hope it can help you too.

Stripping away all those false layers of conditioning to find the authentic true self underneath takes courage and a brave heart. It requires us to do hard things like accept all of our parts-the shame, the guilt, the anger, the frustration and worry, the uncertainty, the fear, the trauma--everything that we've been told is unworthy. Everything we've been told NOT to feel, it's bad to feel those things so we deny them and stuff them away deep down in the body causing physical symptoms. 

It requires us to accept and love the wholeness of our being, our darkest and lightest parts. To love ourselves unconditionally in all of our humanness, flaws and mistakes included. I find so often we are trying to escape our humanness when we should be finding a way to integrate ALL of it--the good, the bad and the ugly. Because in the end, it's ALL Divine. Every single part of you is Divine, not just the "good" parts.

Filling ourselves up with the love we've so easily given away to others is not always easy at first. It feels selfish, especially to women who've been deeply conditioned to always put others first. But it is absolutely vital and necessary for our healing and growth, for re-programming our own consciousness and that of the collective. This time we get to CHOOSE who we are and what we accept. 

What does it mean to love yourself? A question so often asked.

To me, truly loving ourselves isn't about just taking bubble baths or going to the salon or giving yourself 'me' time or reading a self-help book--although those things are quite lovely--but truly, madly, deeply loving ourselves requires action. We can read all the self-help books in the world and have all the knowledge we need, but it doesn't do any good without putting it into practice. 

Loving ourselves requires us to do the hard things. Things like setting boundaries with people when you've never done that before. Saying no. Period. Without explanation. Honoring yourself. That can be quite difficult and scary at first!! But we push past the fear anyway, little by little making baby steps towards freedom and authenticity out of love for Self. (God) If you love yourself, you're loving God. There is no separation. Everything you do to and for yourself, you're doing to God/Source/the One Infinite Creator - - whatever word you use--it is ultimately the highest form of unconditional LOVE there is. 

Loving ourselves requires us to make decisions for our own highest good like leaving relationships or careers that we realize are not in alignment with our truest self. Again, leaving a long term relationship or a career you've worked your entire life for can be super scary! But we push past the fear out of self-love knowing we are always Divinely supported on our path to authenticity. 

Loving yourself requires you to do things like speaking your truth, standing up for what you believe in, maybe for the very first time in your life, without worrying about who you may offend or what other people may think of you. Yes, loving yourself requires doing the hard things. But you can do it!!!

We hear all the time that we have to love ourselves first before we can attract a partner that will love us unconditionally. I find this to be mostly true. Both people need to be conscious and keenly aware of self so that they're not projecting old wounds onto each other and they each have the ability to recognize when they may be triggered and reacting from a trauma. 

We have to love and accept every part of who we are so that we're not looking for someone else to fill us up, to make us feel validated and happy because that, at best, is only temporary which is why so many relationships fail- they're built on rocky ground, a lack of foundation and true friendship and support. The belief that another person can complete you or make you whole is a fallacy. A dangerous one that is part of the old relationship paradigm. Only YOU can be whole from within. And when you are whole, you attract another whole. Two whole humans come together in harmony, unity, acceptance and love--not two halves. 

When you love and accept every part of yourself, you're no longer looking to the outside world to make you feel worthy. You KNOW you are worthy. You FEEL that worthiness within you. You feel the LOVE within you. You feel GOD within you. No human can replace or satisfy that feeling of Divine Love.

If you're looking for love and validation outside of the Self, you will always be disappointed. No one can give that to you, humans cannot live up to your expectations. They can complement it, support it, be your partner in helping you achieve that state of being, but they cannot fill that void for you. Only you and God can do that and you are quite capable of achieving it! 

Know you are not alone in your journey to self-love and wholeness, you don't have to do it alone anymore. You are so loved and honored, respected and cherished by your team of guides and angels. Verbally call on them for assistance, they will always point you in the right direction for your highest good and always remind you of just how loved you really are. You are a perfectly imperfect Creation of God and YOU are worthy of all the goodness and magic life has to offer. You are loved, you are loveable, you are love and you are enough.

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. What you seek is seeking you." ~ Rumi

In Love, Tena