My issue is that I associate love with putting other people’s feelings before myself. My dysfunctional belief is that love = putting others over myself, getting their needs met over getting my own needs met. I associate love with giving what I think the other person needs, not what I need. I give them what I think they need to maintain the connection, I can see that I’ve been trying to give my mother empathy to keep our connection going, but it’s only intellectual. The attention is on the other person, not me. My mom can’t have empathy for me to process my feelings because she doesn’t have it for herself.

I can have intellectual empathy for the victimizer (my mom) but not the victim (me), which is not true, heartfelt empathy. True empathy comes as a byproduct for having empathy for myself. A deep seated part of me thinks that I don’t deserve my own or anyone else’s empathy because I’m “bad”. I have patterns of putting others needs before my own as a means to maintain the connection because I don’t have empathy for myself and getting my own needs met.

I think if we don’t give ourselves empathy, we will consciously or subconsciously play our lives out selfishly because we aren’t giving ourselves what we need, and we are looking for it in the wrong places.