Last night, my spouse told me so sweetly and honestly that he loved me—and yet, the words couldn’t land.

My inner core had no space for such a big feeling. Instead my mind turned it all back at him. Why would he say that tonight of all nights? What was wrong? Was he lonely? Needy? Guilty?

What did he need?

What did he want from me?

Sometimes kindness is just as hard to hear as meanness.

Many of us experience this.

Many of us lash out in the face of love and comfort.

Of course, this is just a reflection of discourse in the inner state. However, this idea that everything outer is a mirror of the inner can be a hard pill to swallow.

It can quickly turn to blaming ourselves for our own pain. It can build up a type of manifestation guilt where we turn the knife against ourselves when the suffering from the outside world is in our faces.

When I hear kindness, compliments and I love you’s and they hurt me, what I know is that I hurt inside.

What I know is that there are places where my own belief in my inadequacies, my sense of being less and and my uncertainty about my own value have not been healed.

Therefore, the nice words and the kind words are out of sync with my own belief systems—and the discord of this is really uncomfortable.

And in a strange way, realizing it is empowering for me because what it means is that having more love, finding more compassion and experiencing more comfort is in my power, not someone else’s.

It means I can search out the places I hurt and heal them. I can create love in the crevices of my own being where hate presently lives, and then life will mirror back to me love.

And each time I don’t trust the I love you’s, each time the “you’re beautiful” feels like rubbing alcohol on an old wound, I get the information I need.

I see that there are more bits inside me that need a good shining.

And I know I am the only one who can do it.

~

Relephant Read:

Training Ourselves to Trust in Love.

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Author: Ruth Lera

Editor: Alli Sarazen

Photo: CIA DE FOTO/Flickr