“Why Am I Not Loved?” | The Need for Self-Love

It’s normal to feel shy or not know what to say at times. This really happens to everyone.

In fact, it is completely normal for your thoughts to be disapproved and for you to make wrong decisions.

However, if you think that people generally do not like you, if you beat yourself up the most and, moreover, if you constantly ask yourself “why am I not loved?” If you ask, you need to get support from a psychologist who is an expert in his field.

“Why Am I Not Loved?” Are you one of those who ask?

To be loved, praised, to be the person of interest in any community; All of these are emotions that motivate people and increase their life energy.

Therefore, the lack of these emotions causes you to be in the psychology of being unloved; It damages your self-compassion and respect.

You were very in love with someone but you couldn’t get anything back, you couldn’t make friends with the people you wanted to spend time with, or you couldn’t perform as well as you wanted at work. All these and more are situations that every person can experience at any age. When you feel unloved, you may be asking yourself these questions:

• Why am I never loved?
• Why can’t I find love?
• Why am I so ugly?
• Why am I alive?

First of all, you need to remind yourself that everything in life goes both ways. There may be people you are not in love with and do not want to be friends with. You may also disapprove of someone’s job performance.

Therefore, when you feel unloved, you should get away from negative thoughts such as what should I do to be loved, I don’t deserve it, why am I not loved?

How much do you love yourself? How much respect do you show yourself?

The Need to Be Loved and Self-Love

As humans, we are social creatures with a need to feel closeness and affection from colleagues, acquaintances, families and close friends. But some of us need more love than others.

If you feel the need to be loved by everyone, you may be more sensitive to people who don’t love you.

If you think this might apply to you, the best thing to do is to spend more time focusing on what you’re doing and your accomplishments and not worrying too much about what others think of you.

So, let’s start by learning what happens when we love ourselves, shall we? It’s important to love yourself – because you spend the rest of your life with only yourself!

Self-compassion involves finding a healthy balance between self-acceptance and working to improve yourself. Instead of criticizing yourself for making a mistake or drowning in pity when things don’t go your way, it allows you to take a gentle but realistic view of your experience.

To learn more about self-love and personal development, you can read our articles below:

Self-Compassion: The Art of Self-Love

How does one improve oneself?

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

“Nobody will ever love me, why am I not loved?” You should pay attention to absolute prophecies such as.

These can become self-fulfilling views and leave you feeling helpless.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is the idea that if you believe something strongly enough, it will come true not because your belief is true, but because it changes your behavior, actions, and attitude toward it.

For example, when you worry that no one wants to be friends with you and constantly repeat this in your mind, you start to distance yourself from people.

You sabotage yourself with thoughts like, “They don’t like me anyway, why should I invite them somewhere, or they met without me, they didn’t invite me because they don’t like me.”

Do You Really Want the Approval of Others?

By definition, approval means believing that something is good enough or acceptable. When someone seeks approval, they want others to accept who they are or what they do. Seeking approval from others usually means you’re not providing it for yourself.

The aforementioned desire for approval means “why am I not loved?” It is directly related to the feeling. However, if you feel good and safe when someone approves of you, it is time to say stop to something inside you.

How many of the following behaviors do you observe in yourself?

• Do you feel fear before telling someone in your life about a decision you’ve made?
• Do you change your actions out of fear of how someone else will react?
• Can you look back and realize that something you regret doing or not doing in your life is not in line with what you wanted?
• Are you having trouble setting boundaries or communicating properly?
• Do you unintentionally lie or omit the truth when talking to someone because you are afraid of their reaction or opinion?
• Do you let other people’s opinions dictate the choices you make?

If your answer to all these is yes, the need to be loved may reveal the feeling of why I am not loved.

How Do We Overcome the Feeling of Why I Am Not Loved?

Develop awareness

The first step is to try to develop an awareness of excessive approval seeking. Recognizing your approval-seeking behaviors can help you understand them better. You may want to learn to recognize what triggers your need for approval:

When do you most want to be approved by others?

When you make major life decisions like planning your finances or buying a home?

Is it about your appearance and clothing? While at work/school?

Recognizing your root cause for seeking approval can help you understand what underlies that need.

celebrate successes

Celebrate your moments of success.

Celebrating your own success allows you to congratulate yourself instead of depending on the approval of others. It supports your self-worth and acceptance of who you are. It motivates you about what you can do.

• enjoy the solitude

Spending time alone to improve your relationship with yourself will be very good for you. Spend some time alone instead of being around others all the time. This will help you feel more comfortable and understand what you can do without approval from others. To enjoy being alone, you can try:

• traveling on your own
• Eating alone in a cafe while enjoying a good book
• Doing a hobby or activity alone
• spending time alone at home

• Positive Affirmations

You need to learn to use positive affirmations.

These statements can help you challenge negative beliefs about yourself. Instead of waiting for approval from others, you can approve of the person you are.

Try saying the following every day:

• I am valuable
• I deserve respect
• I have the ability to make good decisions
• I am loved

You can repeat the instructions out loud like a mantra or write them down daily in a journal.

• Consult a therapist

The most important indicator that you feel the need to be loved is that even in moments of minor crisis in your social, family and romantic relationships, you get caught up in the thought of why I am not loved and cannot get over this for a long time. Moreover, the psychology of not being loved can even lead you to the feeling of knowing what are the unlovable human characteristics, I have these and that’s why I’m being rejected.

You may not be able to cope with these challenging emotions on your own. As the Terappin family, who have successfully completed their master’s degrees and work with psychologists who are experts in their fields, we are here to help you.

Frequently Asked Questions About Love

1. Why Am I Unloved?

There is no definitive and objective answer to this question. Each individual’s life experience and personal characteristics are different. Therefore, with a special therapy, you can understand why your need to be loved and your anxiety arise.

2. Is it useful to meditate to get rid of the feeling of why am I not loved?

Of course! Mindfulness meditation is a thought exercise in which you try to clear your mind to notice thoughts while focusing on your breathing and heart rate. This gradually trains you to become more in tune with your thoughts and feelings, so you can deal with them in healthy, productive ways rather than letting them get out of control, as in cases of overgeneralization and projection.

It helps you understand what you’re doing and why.

Another important method is to balance your thoughts.

Think of it as a combination of a mental awareness exercise and journaling. Balancing your thoughts involves taking a thought that worries or scares you and looking at it more deeply. It’s not just about accepting these thoughts and feelings, it’s also about understanding whether they are realistic or whether they are fictional stories we tell ourselves.

When balancing your thoughts, it is good to write a list of evidence for and against negative thinking patterns. This way, you can better see whether the negativities that make you feel the need to be loved are real or a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Although the feeling of “why am I not loved?” can be challenging, you can overcome it with professional therapy.

Meet Terappin psychologists and start a treatment that suits you!