Self-worth and validation: Questioning the 5 love languages
What we tell ourselves is a projection of what we experienced.
SELF-TALK & SELF-WORTH
“I’m not worthy” or “I’m not good enough” is self-talk that many of us say to ourselves when trying a different career, new adventure, or going into a relationship. We put walls up to protect ourselves from being hurt or we also create personas that are somewhat contradictory to our true selves. We are told to “be ourselves” within all walks of life, but many of us have a difficult time trying to understand our true selves.
Why do we say these negative things? Have you mindfully processed why we create these self-fulfilling prophecies in our minds?
For the most part, the main reason why we create negativity to ourselves is that at some point in our lives, we encountered an experience where we felt unworthy or not good enough to achieve a certain goal. The people involved in this circumstance made us feel this way—this could be parents, a guardian, or someone who you gave your trust to or looked up to. Our validation was set from the approval of these people and have subconsciously been the reason for our fear, shame, and guilt.
As we grow and try to understand life, all we are trying to do is figure life’s circumstances. It is the duty of our parents or caregivers to guide us through the trials and errors—knowing that we will mess up along the way. So—for the most part—we are doing nothing wrong as we are just trying to figure out life; but along the way, our parents or caregivers may have felt hurt, frustrated, or impatient with our behaviors and actions that made them react to make us feel invalidated. We question why they react a certain way when we know deep inside that we weren’t trying to be hurtful. We question our own selves and our worthiness when our parents or caregivers gave us the cold shoulder, get disappointed in us, or become purposely hurtful.
We have to tell ourselves that if we were trying our best to move forward from a situation without the intention to be hurtful, WE DID NOTHING WRONG.
What is “wrong” is the reaction we received from our parents or caregivers who were purposefully being hurtful back towards us. The reaction towards us is what we feel when we say to ourselves “I’m not worthy” or “I’m not good enough” which sticks for a lifetime if we aren’t aware of it.
The goal for ourselves is to first be aware of this self-talk, mindfully process where it is coming from, then choosing to accept that we encountered this hurtful experience. From this acceptance, we must then choose to forgive ourselves and/or the people involved.
We must forgive our parents or caregivers because they probably do not/did not know how to react to our mistakes. They only act and react from what they learned from parents or caregivers. We have to also forgive ourselves because we only act and react from what we knew at that moment.
THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES & QUESTIONING IF THEY ARE IMPORTANT
What are the love languages? Dr. Gary Chapman—a long-time marriage counselor—states that we all give and receive love in 5 different ways: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch. Many of you reading this feel love by giving or receiving one—even all.
From my personal experience in healing, I had to question if these were important to me or if I needed them due to an overcorrection with my history of pain and trauma.
When we look at each of these 5 love languages, we have to start questioning why the one(s) that we call our love language are important to you. There are always reasons for our values or our behavior, so knowing why your love language is important to us is crucial to your mental health.
From my own healing, I thought that words of affirmation and physical touch were necessary for me to feel “loved” or validated. Seeing a therapist and being coached made me process if I truly needed these love languages.
Weeks would go by of journaling and trying to unlock doors in my head that I tried to not open again. I needed to re-open these doors of pain and trauma to truly understand why I thought these love languages were necessary.
From the breakdown of my emotions and resurfacing the past, I realized that I was trying to overcorrect my past pain. I realized that I believed it was important that I received these love languages because of 2 things:
1. I once had the love language and it went away.
2. I never had the love language and now I want more of it.
Now that I was aware of this, I had to ask myself if these were necessary for others to give them to me or if I just need to heal from my past.
HOW TO MOVE FORWARD
The first step to understanding self-worth and validation is to first question why you feel unworthy. We must question why our love language is necessary for our sense of validation.
Journal your emotions and dig deep into your thoughts to try to unlock these doors of your past that you try to forget. We can try, but we will NEVER forget our pain or trauma, but we can always work though them to heal from them.
Once you write down your thoughts on why you feel unworthy or why you need a love language, you have to do 2 things:
1. Accept that the situation happened.
2. Forgive the people involved and/or yourself.
These 2 are the hardest acts we can do within their minds because of the pain involved, but is important for us to move forward and heal.
For love languages, we have to acknowledge these languages as actions we should be grateful for rather than expecting them from others. If we expect these love languages from others, we will be disappointed because people are flawed—they won’t be able to execute the language in all times we want or need.
We must first be aware of why we think and act the way we do, mindfully process if they are beneficial to our mental health, then choose the best path forward.
We have and will always be worthy of all gifts this life has to give—we just need to be aware and change our thought process.
Gratitude is the key to everything we receive because all the gifts that come our way in love can always be taken instantly.
- Lloyd Sarte
