The pandemic of closed hearts

Many talk about how beautiful it is to find “true love”™. Not many speak about how actually difficult it is to accept it - in your body.

Many (most) movies, books, motivational social media posts etc tell us about how beautiful it is to find - and how easy it should be to accept “true love”™, when readily offered.

Not many speak about how actually difficult it is to accept love in your body & nervous system - when one didn’t experience safety when doing it in the past.

In reality, opening the heart to love can be an excruciatingly painful experience: as often times we learnt in childhood that (1) love is unsafe; (2) expressing the need for love is unsafe as our most loved person ever (usually, a parent or caretaker) doesn’t respond to our needs and hence is prone to abandoning us if we do express these needs - i.e. leave us alone crying our guts out in a crib because they got too overwhelmed...

So early on, we decide to close our heart to protect it from breaking again. We stop expressing our authentic, very valid needs (love, connection and safety) to people around, grow into adulthood with a shield around us and probably an inner narrative of “I don’t need anyone” or “all (wo)men are b*tches / idiots” ©.

What happens when we grow up with the shield

We can’t allow our nervous system to relax in the state of love - feeling & enjoying the expansion of our hearts, pleasure and warmth of love which comes into our heart space.

(Unconsciously we still can, of course, feel love as we all still have our authentic self which is always loving and subtle - it doesn’t ever go away).

But we don’t allow ourselves to surrender to the inner experience of love.

We can’t allow ourselves to be expressed in totality of who we are and what our heart desires.

And when given love, we reject & unconsciously sabotage it because of the fear of being rejected again - because, in fact, we indeed already rejected ourselves before. Long time ago, we already chose to disconnect from that vulnerable loving part of us, ever-present within each of our hearts.

This is a pandemic in the society which doesn’t allow us to elevate through true love, community and mutual support in the way which is truly possible.

The pandemic of closed hearts leading to psychological defenses, rudeness and coldness, which manifest in recognized diseases such as anxiety, loss of meaning, depression, autoimmune illnesses and cancer.

Slow down

Opening the heart to the truth & love can be hard and even physically painful, but it doesn’t have to happen all at once - a gradual, tender and nourishing process is important to allow a gentle & integrated process, where a person is able to take in the benefits into the daily life.

For the nervous system to adjust to the new range of feelings and emotions.

And for the fear to step down and give the reins to the care of the person’s adult part, so it doesn’t need to close the heart again in the process.