Why do some of us fear love?

 
[1]According to Author and Journalist Dr Angela Heppner it is a common behaviour for some people to have very strong feelings towards another and to not share these emotions. This is  because we are fearful and afraid that if we show our true feelings and thoughts then the other person will not return them. We develop a “stuck in sand syndrome” where we perhaps prefer to shut down the idea of committing ourselves in a relationship in case it all goes wrong.
 
Angela offers some advice and suggests that we don’t really have anything to lose if we allow ourselves to think rationally about the matter at hand. She suggests that we replace the “ifs” with “do” therefore – Don’t think about it, just do it!
 
When we meet someone that we like for the first time we often wonder if things will “pan out ok” . Perhaps we were doing just fine before so why would we need a new love to stir our worlds up? But in truth many of us feel as if we are doing just fine and it’s not actually until love finally hits us in the face that we begin to realise.
 
Even if the love doesn’t last, “It is better to have loved than not to have loved at all”. It gives us something to remember at least, even if painful we will know that we have lived through the true spirit of the fire and taken something with us. Sometimes love creeps into your life to wake you up and to tell you that you need to start living now! Allowing a different energy to take over your soul can help to reignite the old self that you had packed away in a box.
 
Love can indeed be a risk and there are many reasons why we choose not to allow ourselves to fall  into the rapids of love. One could be that we feel we are not worthy of the other person’s love. We may put our new love interest up on a pedestal and force ourselves to believe that there is no way they could find us attractive, not when we beat ourselves up consistently and lean too much on the negatives.

Love can be a test in this sense, it can ask you to face the side of yourself that others find beautiful. More often in actual fact, the flaws you hold on so tightly to no one else can see! Perhaps the game of love in this case is to let someone else be your own judge – only then will you begin to see what everyone else sees in you.
 
Love exists in our hearts for many different reasons. If we were to truly imagine how it would feel to be told that we would never have the ability to feel anything again we would feel distraught because love is part of being human and our experiences are what gage us to make sense of the world around us.
If you have just met someone and are fearing that they will not accept you for who you really are then you could try and think about the following:
 
Think about moments in your life where you have relaxed and felt good about yourself. Ask yourself why it is that you felt good about yourself? Was it because you felt the people around you accepted you for who you were? Or was it because you felt that there was no competition at the time and you could just be yourself? Forgetting that others were around you judging you for whichever reason?
 
Perhaps some of these specifics make sense in your head now where you recall a time where you didn’t have any fear because you felt you fitted in perfectly. But in reality the truth tell us that we can bring that feel good factor back into alien situations that we don’t feel ourselves in by simply reminding ourselves of those experiences that we encountered when we felt at ease with who we are.

It is important to realise that our animal instinct tells us to react when we feel threatened in some way, it changes the way we approach people, it affects our body language and it even affects the way we speak!  But being aware of these factors when we are caught up in the moment will help us to release the anxiety.
 
Just remember: 

• Everyone has bad experiences.
• You should never completely give up, but perhaps instead  choose a different path if you feel you have reached a dead end.
• Everyone meets someone eventually! Even if it means going through countless experiences – these experiences often provide us with the right amount of strength and direction to find the one that we are meant to be with.
• Allowing yourself to experience fear, uncertainty and uncomfortable feelings will make way for new, positive experiences – something has to give eventually!