Has this ever happened to you? Your coworkers are laughing at a joke that you were too late to hear, and when asked what’s so funny, they say, “You had to be there.” You scroll on your phone and see pictures of old friends falling in love and having kids. You see pictures from that one friend group’s vacation that you weren’t invited to. You think to yourself, “I feel like no one loves me.”
Feeling undesired and unwanted is a truly painful experience. Humans are social creatures, and we need relationships to hold us up and keep us healthy. When our relationships suffer, our mental health suffers.
The good news is that no one is unworthy of love. Although there are some mental health disorders that make it feel as if you are unable to love, through therapy and medication, these challenges can be overcome.
The belief that you are undeserving of love or unwanted is a cognitive distortion, an untrue thought pattern and belief. Although this belief is a lie (you are worthy of love), you will struggle to feel desired and wanted so long as you believe it.
So, if you’re ready to open yourself up to love and fulfilling relationships, read on.
Why do I feel unworthy of love?
Feeling unworthy of love is not always a sign of mental illness, but many mental health disorders can result in feeling unworthy of love. This is because those who feel like nobody loves them often struggle with these aspects of their mental health:
- Low self-esteem: Self-esteem is how much regard you have for yourself. At its simplest, it asks the question, do you like yourself? Those with low self-esteem will struggle with their self-image. They may believe they are a bad person whose faults are irredeemable. Beliefs that they are annoying, unwanted, and a waste of space or time are common for those with low self-esteem. Low self-esteem is also connected to many mental health disorders.
- Insecure attachment style: An attachment style is how you relate and form connections to the people around you, based off of the relationship you had with your caregivers as a young child. A secure attachment style will be in which you can balance independence and intimacy healthily. Insecure attachment styles are anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, or disorganized attachment. An insecure attachment style can make it difficult to form relationships with others, and overtime this can cement into the belief that you are broken or unloveable.
(Take our free, online quiz to see what type of attachment style you have here.)
- Rejection Sensitivity: The fear of rejection, often paired with commitmentphobia, is a powerful deterrent for forming relationships. And if you never form relationships, you’ll never experience love and acceptance. You might feel unworthy and are afraid of everyone else around you seeing that. Maybe you feel like if someone got to know the real you, they’ll leave. These are lies based on cognitive distortions and anxiety.
- Past relationship trauma: Relationships are crucial to our health, but that means that our brains and bodies remember when we’ve been hurt. If you had a bad, toxic, or abusive relationship in your past, it can manifest in your present as feeling undesired or unworthy of love. This sort of trauma can be worked through in therapy.
There are reasons that you feel unloved. You aren’t crazy, and you aren’t broken. Feeling undesired is a more common experience than you might think. You aren’t alone, and there is a way to get out of feeling this way.
One way is to address the underlying mental health issue. Many people who struggle with feeling unlovable are struggling with an untreated and undiagnosed mental illness, including:
- Depression: Depression can distort your perception of self-worth and lead you to believe that you are a burden to others or unworthy of affection.
- Social Anxiety: Social anxiety causes intense fear of judgment and rejection in social situations, making you feel like you're not good enough or likable.
- Trauma: Trauma instills deep feelings of shame, guilt, and unworthiness, often leading to difficulties in forming and maintaining healthy relationships. Both PTSD and c-PTSD can cause one to feel unworthy of love.
- ADHD: People with ADHD often struggle with low self-esteem and feelings of self-hate, along with rejection sensitivity. Combined, these experiences can make them feel like they are broken or inherently unlovable.
- Personality Disorders: Personality disorders influence how you perceive yourself and others, contributing to unstable self-image, fear of abandonment, and difficulties trusting in and feeling deserving of love from others.
Many more! This is not a complete list. If you think you’re struggling with a mental health issue, contact our team at Lifebulb to be matched with a therapist near you.
Feeling Undesired and Unwanted? 7 Ways to Love Yourself Better
What can you do if you feel undesirable and unloveable? For many people, they’ve felt this way for years. The belief patterns that make them feel this way are deeply rooted.
Often, therapy and sometimes medication are needed to make real and lasting change in a person’s mental health. However, there are substantial steps you can take on your own, too. Here are some ways to go from feeling unwanted to embracing love in all its forms:
- Be around people: Maybe it seems counterintuitive to hang out with people when you’re feeling undesired and unwanted, but love cannot come to you when you’re alone in your bedroom or scrolling on your phone (online communities being an important exception). In order to love, you have to be there. You have to be at your local coffee shop or that work gathering after hours or that event an acquaintance invited you to. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) teaches “action before motivation”, meaning sometimes you have to do something before you feel like doing it. The motivation will follow. The same is true for love.
- Challenge negative thoughts: “No one will ever love me.” Really—No one? Ever? That’s quite a hyperbole. How do you know the future? Could you change that thought to “I don’t feel loved right now, but that doesn’t mean I won’t find it.” Identifying negative thought patterns is an important step in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). At first, just notice these errant thoughts. Once you begin to understand their pattern, try to challenge them and replace them with thoughts that are positive and true.
- Build your confidence: This will look different for everyone. Where does the bulk of your insecurities lie? What is something you can do to change that? For example, if you hate your hair, you can change it. If you want to start dressing better, you can. Some things are unchangeable, and the goal here isn’t to change yourself into someone you aren’t. We are the most confident when we are the most ourselves, and confident people inspire others to be around them more. So, what can you do today that brings you one step closer to your most true and authentic self?
- Practice affirmations and gratitude: It sounds cringey, but the science backs both affirmations and gratitude journaling. Try to be specific and apply them to yourself. What are you grateful for about yourself? Is it your creativity or your wit? Maybe you have a wealth of knowledge in something very specific or can name the song title of every 80s rock song within the first few seconds. These may be small and feel insignificant, but if they are important to you then they will be noteworthy to someone else, too.
- Celebrate the small wins: Your goal may be to have a big friend group and a partner with a family. This is great, and something you should work towards if it’s important to you. But just as important are the small steps. You shared a fun conversation with your local barista. You had a fun night out with a friend. You successfully moved someone from “acquaintance" to “friend”. You went on a date, even if you didn’t get to a second date. It can be frustrating when you’re stuck on the small steps, but it’s important all the same.
Remember that it is also hugely important to address any underlying mental health issues. Things like depression and anxiety will steal chances at love before they even have time to reach you. Talk to a therapist today about how counseling and medication can help you feel loved, desired, and worthy.
