Be Yourself—And Reconnect With the Love and Aliveness Within

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.” ~Rumi

There’s a deep and constant human impulse to change ourselves to be loved. To a child, love and acceptance are as important as food. So we abandon parts of ourselves to stay connected to our caregivers. Dr. Laurence Heller—founder of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) for healing attachment, relational, and developmental trauma—explains it this way: If I just show up less, have fewer needs, avoid being a burden, not be dependent, or look perfect, then I’ll be loved.

The child learns to try harder and blame themselves when love feels out of reach, carrying this belief into adulthood: If I’m not loved, I must not be enough.

Dr. Heller reminds us that love is our deepest nature, "the basic nature of consciousness," - just look at a baby or young child to know this to be true. But when her love isn’t reflected back—especially by primary caregivers—she doesn't know that love is who she is and being herself is how nature intended it. Instead, she learns she must be a certain way to receive love, and continues to seek love outside herself to validate her worth and existence.

A heart that has been tightly knotted by unbearable pain early in life often becomes deeply defended. She may even have had an available caregiver, but lacked the capacity, their own heart closed from unhealed wounds passed down through generations.

She may find herself with partners who don’t truly see her or meet her needs, unknowingly re-enacting early attachment wounds. She might react—lashing out in anger and pushing others away—or cope by numbing out.

She may carry a deep shame about existing, and so isolates. But with emotional and somatic support to help her unbrace her heart and body, receiving care becomes possible, from others and from herself. As she lets in care, vulnerability becomes safer. And in that vulnerability, intimacy can begin to grow.

But this process must be titrated—taken in little by little—to build the capacity to tolerate the expansion that comes with a heart beginning to open. This belongs to the realm of trauma healing, a vital layer I found missing in the spiritual traditions I was part of for decades. Have you been on a spiritual path for years and still struggle to love or take in love?

From the place of tenderness, she can begin to reconnect with the love that has always lived within her heart.

After a breakup, she may grieve the loss of love, believing it’s just the partner’s love she’s missing. But could it be that the deeper grief is about not having her love truly seen—her tenderness, her essence—for simply being herself? The ache isn’t just for the other, but also for not having the experience of being loved as herself?

If you've gone through a breakup and still yearn to be with that person—even though you know it isn’t going to work — what if, instead of acting on the impulse to reach out, you allow yourself to feel the love? What happens in your heart when you stay with that energy? As you gently contain and allow this love to be felt—even if it’s uncomfortable as your heart breaks open—you may begin to discover that this love isn’t just about the other person, it's the essence of who you are.

You might consider experimenting with energetically "containing" love inside that you feel for family and friends if you habitually give a lot. What happens in your heart when you stay with the energy of love? It may be uncomfortable not to reach out and give.   What if it's you who needs some love from you?

To expand this theme of being ourselves, from both NARM and NeuroAffective Touch® (NA Touch)—developed by Dr. Aline Lapierre—I’ve come to see that the journey toward being ourselves involves reconnecting to our Essence. Essence is the core of our being: the deep, authentic qualities that are innate to us before conditioning, trauma, or survival adaptations cover them over. Some describe it as our true nature, characterized by love, aliveness, joy, peace, strength, creativity, and curiosity.

From NA Touch, which focuses on womb and preverbal attachment ruptures, I'm intrigued by how our life force carries the innate developmental blueprint that orients us to grow and thrive into our fullest potential. This blueprint shapes us from the single cell that divides and organizes into an embryo, the fetus that instinctively knows when it’s time to push out of the womb, the newborn who reaches for the mother’s breast and so forth. Trauma can disrupt this connection to the blueprint, leaving imprints that affect how we move through life—such as difficulty in receiving care.

When clients begin to reconnect with their essence, there is often a deep ease—a sense of wholeness and aliveness. So much energy is freed up from the exhausting cycle of thinking, fixing, and striving.

I’ll be writing a series that explores how we disconnect from our essence—our real self—and offer some tools to begin returning home to ourselves.

Brianna Lia Ho, MBA, BBA-PSYC, is a NARM Master, NA Touch, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. She's trained in other somatic modalities as well as in spiritual counseling with One-Spirit Interfaith in NYC. She works with clients internationally via Zoom. www.Essence-Alive.com

Disclaimer: Please note that I am not a psychotherapist or mental health counselor. The info above is not a substitute for licensed medical, psychological or psychiatric help.