How to Feel Loved

How to Feel Loved

During my teaching years I asked many people the
question, "How do you receive and feel loved?" Almost
always the answer was, "By giving love."

One problem with this belief is that we cannot give
what we haven't received. That is, if I didn't receive
sufficient love as a child during my developmental
years, I will suffer from love deprivation for the rest
of my life--unless I become involved in a recovery
program. 

So how then do we find the love we need? If we love God
because He first loved us, it fits that we find and
learn to love people because someone first needs to
love us.

Furthermore, we can only be loved and accepted to the
degree that we are known. An excellent place then to
find this needed love is in a high quality, safe
support group, where we feel fully safe to expose our
real selves--warts and all--and become fully known. And
as people know us fully and love and accept us just as
we are (without the compulsion to want to fix us),
little by little we learn to love and accept ourselves
as these supporting people love and accept us. In other
words, love is learned. And it has to be learned first
before we are able to become loving and give love to
others. 

Again, we can only ever feel loved and accepted to the
degree that we are known by safe and loving people. 

  -- Dick Innes