Sad girl, walking away with her teddy bear

Have you ever felt this way before? That nobody loves you? If so, you’re not alone. I’ve felt that nobody loves me before, and in fact felt this way during many of my down moments in the past, such as times when I felt neglected or pushed aside. It was only lately that I learned to break out of this thinking pattern, and today I want to share how you can do so too.

In this episode of The Personal Excellence Podcast, I share

Why there has been a lack of updates lately (and my apologies about it!) [0:22]
Why I would feel that nobody loves me [2:47]
How I addressed this negative thinking pattern, and how you can too [4:49]
Why it’s not true that nobody loves you [5:26]
Where true self-love should come from [10:48]
Why celebrities face self-love issues despite having the love of millions of fans [12:13]
What happens when you pursue a relationship for the sake of feeling loved [13:17]
Getting to the root of why you think “nobody loves me” [15:21]
My childhood experiences that led me to this belief [16:08]
Times when I was bullied in school [20:19]
How I resolved these negative memories [23:31]
My gratitude to you guys [28:52]
An exercise for you to dig into the belief “nobody loves me” [30:35]
How to start building up your self-love [34:51]
Why there is no dichotomy between self-love and personal growth [37:14]
My reminder to you [38:36]

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Overcast, Castbox, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Personal Excellence Podcast

Read the transcript for this episode here.

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Nobody Loves Me [Transcript]

Welcome to The Personal Excellence Podcast. The show that’s all about helping you be your best self and live your best life. Now, your host, Celestine Chua!

Celestine Chua: Welcome to The Personal Excellence Podcast Episode 17, I’m Celes from PersonalExcellence.co!

First off, I want to apologize for the slow updates in the past months, if not year. For those of you who are not on the PE newsletter, do join — it’s at personalexcellence.co/newsletter. Even though there haven’t been many updates on the blog, I’ve been sending out email updates that are not posted on the blog. So maybe you don’t see as many updates there but there have been emails sent out — sometimes weekly, sometimes fortnightly, sometimes monthly. If you are on the newsletter, you’ll get access to all of that including announcements of live courses that I’m running.

All that said, I totally recognize that there has been a lack of updates on PE. A large part is because I’ve been busy working on things in my personal life. Things that I feel are important, that deserve my full attention, as opposed to repeatedly running in a rat wheel and working on things that are urgent but may not be as important. I felt that I needed to take time out to work on these things.

But I want to let you know that I have not abandoned PE. Not at all. Those of you who are longtime readers will know that PE is my life. It is what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life, and I’ve just been taking this temporary time out to work on personal things, personal issues, which I look forward to sharing more in time to come. I want you to know that I’m here to stay and I’m not going anywhere. :)

Thank you for your positive reviews on Tunes — reading them has really inspired me. In fact, I was thinking what new content to produce — Should write a new article? Create a new podcast? Or create a new video? — and reading all your podcast reviews has inspired me to return to the podcast and talk to you guys again.

Today’s Episode: Nobody Loves Me

On to today’s episode, about “Nobody loves me.” Have you ever thought that way before? Where you feel that nobody loves you? If so, I can understand. There have been times when I felt this way, particularly during my down moments or times when I felt neglected or disregarded.

For me, one of the reasons I would think this way is due to my childhood upbringing. When I was young, my mom was pretty much emotionally unavailable. She cared for me and my brother in terms of how a housekeeper or house carer would — like she did all the functional duties like laundry, cooking, etc., something that a traditional Chinese mom would do. And I’m really grateful to her for that, for raising me and my brother along with my dad. But she was pretty much emotionally unavailable, and I’m not sure if she ever is [emotionally available]. For the record, both my dad and mom are alive today.

So whenever I needed something from her, needed to talk to her, or wanted to talk to her in any way, she would be very angry and scold me for no reason, or just be very critical and angry in general. Any contact with her was explosive if caught at the wrong time, and as a daughter I never really got to talk to her much, if at all.

This weird dynamic, along with the fact that I grew up in an angry household (something that I mentioned in my anger series where my parents argued every single day in a very volatile manner), cultivated this feeling in me (growing up) that nobody loves me. It was only when I took the time out to address this feeling that I was able to break out of this negative thinking pattern.

If you sometimes find yourself thinking “nobody loves me,” I want to let you know that you’re not alone. Here I share the steps that I have taken to work through this belief, and I hope you’ll find them helpful.

1) It’s not true that nobody loves you

The first thing I want to say is that it is not true that nobody loves you. When we are too trapped in our problems, it is often easy for us to forget or miss out on the love and the good that are around us.

For example, when I was thinking things like “nobody loves me,” right beside me would be my husband who loves me with all his might and has always been there for me. It’s interesting to see that when we are so stuck in our own problems, we miss out on these obvious things — the people around us who love us.

Love here doesn’t have to be romantic love. These people can be friends, co-workers, relationship partner (if you are in the relationship), mentors, teachers, an acquaintance (someone you don’t know well, but this person may adore you or admire you or like certain things you do), or even just a stranger — someone who is admiring you from afar.

So there can be all these people loving you, admiring you, and adoring you, and it is totally not true that nobody loves you. If you stop and think and look around you, chances are you’ll find at least one person who loves you. Who supports you, and who is there for you or has been there for you, and it’s just that you haven’t been focusing on this love or this person. You have been too wrapped up in your own pain, which then leads to the thought of “Nobody loves me.”

It’s important to recognize this first and foremost because when we are too stuck in our own pain, that makes us block out the love that’s around us. When we block out the love that’s around us, that makes it difficult for us to receive love into our life.

Exercise: Think of someone who loves you

Here, stop and think. Think about the people around you. Think about your friends, your family members, your co-workers or your schoolmates, your mentors/teachers, your acquaintances, or just anybody in general. Think of at least one person who shares positive feelings about you. This can be feelings of love. Of admiration. Of like. Of support. Of encouragement. It doesn’t have to be romantic love because love isn’t just about romantic love, but here it’s love in terms of human universal love.

Think of at least one person who loves and supports you.

Chances are you’re going to think of one person. This can be someone who has supported you before. Encouraged you before. Been there for you before. It could be an ex-friend, a friend whom you were in contact with before and then somehow lost touch. It could be someone from your past. It could be someone in your present now.

When you start recognizing this, it starts to change this dynamic, this thought of “nobody loves me.” Because then you realize, Hey this may not really be true in the way that I think it is true.

At the end of it all, I want you to know that I love you. That’s important for me to say to you because the very premise of why I started PE is that I truly, truly believe in your potential for success in life. That’s why I create all these resources at PE, be it the free resources or the paid courses. These are resources that I’ve dedicated my whole life, my whole self into creating because I believe in your own personal ability and personal power.

So I just want to put it out there that I love you. But most importantly, there are people in your life who love you. Be aware of these people, beyond what I’m saying here. Be aware of these people and start being open and recognize love around you as and when you see it.

2) True self-love should not come from an external source

Lotus bud

The second thing I want to share is that love should not come from an external source.

Now, even if you truly think that nobody loves you, well that doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter because love (for ourselves) shouldn’t come from an external source. True self-love should fundamentally come from within us.

This is important to recognize because we shouldn’t be looking upon the outside world for the feeling of love. So it’s not about whether you have love from one person or 10 people. It’s not some competition where you try to get as much love as you can from others. True self-love should come from within.

And when the love isn’t coming from within, or there’s something stuck inside keeping the love coming from within, then it doesn’t matter how many people are loving you right now. You would still not truly feel the love from around you. You would still feel those moments of self-negativity because it hasn’t clicked on the inside yet, in that you haven’t resolved this inner issue or the inner turmoil, and that’s something I talk about in tip #3.

Example: Celebrities dealing with self-love issues

An example would be celebrities. It’s not uncommon to see news about celebrities dealing with addiction, overdoses, or deep inner problems. Oftentimes this is because of personal inner issues that they’re working through. Issues of self-love. Depression. These can be people like Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato, and even celebrities in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s important to seek help for this.

But it is important to recognize that these celebrities have millions, hundreds of millions, and billions of fans adoring them. Even then, despite all the adoration they get from the fans and their huge popularity, they still feel moments of such intense negativity that lead them to their personal issues.

This is also why in Soulmate Journey, which is my course on finding love, one of the very basic foundational modules is the importance of self-love. Because if we seek an external relationship on the basis of wanting to feel love, that’s not really going to solve the problem. It’s going to attract fear-based people. Or put you in a codependent relationship where you often seek your partner’s attention to feel loved. And when you don’t [get that], then you feel needy and clingy or you feel unhappy and upset.

This brings me to this quote by Ayn Rand, which is “To say I love you, one must first know how to say the ‘I’.” Here, the point is not to focus on how supposedly “nobody loves me.” Because it is not about whether nobody loves you or somebody loves you, but why would it matter whether somebody loves you right now? Why would this matter, if not for the fact that there is a feeling of emptiness within that’s causing you to feel this way?

Now this doesn’t negate what we are talking about in tip #1 which is to recognize that there is somebody who loves you. But rather, when we stop to think about the people around us who love us, and that there are people around us who love us (be it love, admiration, adoration, support, or encouragement), and yet we still find ourselves thinking “nobody loves me,” then it suggests that there’s some kind of gap, issue, or blockage within that’s stopping us from receiving the love.

3) Understand and address the source of “nobody loves me”

This brings me to my third point, which is to understand and address the source of this feeling. Here is where we really get to the root of it: understanding the source of this belief, “Nobody loves me.”

How did it start?
When did it start?
Why is this thinking there?

This may take a while to unravel, and it may even go deep into your childhood. Because this is where most of our foundational beliefs start forming, and this forms the basis of a lot of the work that I do with my participants in my courses.

My experience: Growing up with an angry mother

For me, when I think about this thought “nobody loves me,” there are probably two key sets of experiences leading of this.

One of which I shared at the beginning of the podcast, which would be my childhood upbringing, where my mom was just not really there. Like not there in terms of the spirit, if it makes sense. I felt like she was there in terms of someone who performed the functional duties of a mother — which I am grateful to her for, for raising me and my brother — but it was somewhat damaging to me, I think, the way that she raised me in terms of the other elements of her behavior. Such as her anger outbursts and how she would often shut me off, even in times when I needed her.

So there was a time when I had fever and I think I was 13 or 14. I was a young kid and running a somewhat high fever. She was going to take me to the doctor, like I told her about it and the next step would be to take me to the doctor. On the way to the clinic, she started shouting, criticizing, and reprimanding me for walking slowly. And I was already dizzy and walking in the hot sun and trying to keep up with her fast walking speed. So that was one memory.

Another experience I shared in my article on childhood stories. When I was young, and I was six or seven at this time, there was soap that went into my eyes and I thought I was going blind. I was smarting in my eyes and I already knew from past experience that my mom would tell me not to disturb her while she went about her household chores. But in reality, she was never free. My mom was just never available regardless of what was happening.

Lonely child

So I knew from experience that I shouldn’t talk to my mom, or that I should avoid triggering any negativity by simply not talking to her.

So that was a moment when I was really scared. I was scared that I was going blind. So I started to tell her about this, and true to that, she started shouting at me, saying that I was disturbing her. When I pressed on further because I truly was feeling discomfort in my eye(s), she just quickly looked at me and said I was fine, and then brushed me away and continued doing what she was doing which was laundry at that time.

All these moments added together, along with the constant arguing in the household between my mom and my dad on a daily basis, all these moments created a feeling of void and emptiness. And this was not something that I was aware of at that point as a child. I think as children, we are just not aware of the feelings going through [our minds]. But that doesn’t mean that these feelings are not happening. We are not aware of these feelings forming, but they do affect us in our life, if not at that point in time.

So thinking back, when I thought about why I would have this recurring thought “Nobody loves me,” I realized that a part of the reason is that all these moments, this upbringing, created a feeling of void in the family and made me feel like nobody loved me.

Another experience: Bullying in school

So there would be one set of experience, family. A different set of experience would be — and this would be to a lesser extent, like the main set of experience is my childhood and my family upbringing — school.

Because of all these things happening at the family level and parental level, that make me a very awkward child in school. In the sense that my mom, in addition to what was happening at home, inhibited me from talking when I was a kid. Like literally talking in any way, and this would be a separate topic for a separate post or podcast.

But she basically inhibited me from talking, so I never really got to speak or develop my communication skills as a child, except in school. So when it came to school and forming friendships, I was very socially awkward. I couldn’t really express myself or my thoughts in the way I would have if I was given the space to naturally talk as a kid.

So that made me socially awkward and made it difficult for me to form proper friendships. So I was bullied in school. You know girl cliques and all these very childish behaviors that would go on in school. And there were guys and guys being nasty to girls and all that too. So there were a lot of these experiences where I would be negatively teased, bullied, put down, or criticized and I never really knew how to handle these situations. These contributed to me feeling worse about myself.

Girl alone in the classroom

So these two sets of experiences hand in hand cultivated this feeling of “nobody loves me.”

It was when I was 18 years old when I started having the first moments of liberty because that was when college started and I entered university. I started having the starting reins of independence. Of being given the space to handle my life. I guess it was when I was 18-19 when I also truly started the journey of conscious self-development, which I feel should have and could have happened much earlier. But for me, that was when I really started conscious self-development and learning about myself, my life purpose, figuring out my values, and so on.

Debunking these negative memories

When I think back to these core moments that caused me to think “nobody loves me,” challenging these thoughts became important. Because it is not true what I had concluded at that point.

a) Debunking my negative childhood upbringing and the conclusion “Nobody loves me”

For example, with the way my mom treated me, how she was emotionally unavailable and so on, when I thought about it, it’s not true that her behavior meant that nobody loves me. I would say a large part of it had to do with herself. Her and herself, and her stories, and maybe the way my grandma raised her. I have no idea how my grandmother raised her; my grandmother has passed away, and to be honest, I don’t know much about the past because these are simply not things that my parents talk about in any way. But I do believe, thinking back, that my grandmother probably treated my mom in a very similar fashion when she was growing up.

And there are obviously a lot of baggage and negative stories that come from being part of a low-consciousness upbringing. My parents came from very low-income households and I was raised in a low-income household, and I think that there are a lot of difficulties and problems that come associated when you’re dealing with [deep financial] struggles in life.

So I would say that my mom’s own emotional unavailability, issues, and anger, they had more to do with her and her stories, and the kind of upbringing that my grandparents put her through rather than it being about me.

Now as a child growing up, the only conclusion that I could derive at that point, from my own [limited] subset of life experiences then, would be that nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. That I’m alone in this world. That maybe my mom hates me. That people hate me.

So thinking back, clearly this is not true. My mom did the best she could. Despite the limited circumstances, she did her best and that’s something that I’m grateful to her for. Similarly, if my mom didn’t love me in the way that she could or my dad didn’t love me in the way that he does, then they wouldn’t have worked so hard in the routines that they were in to raise me. My dad was always busy working in a low-income job, raking in the dough, supporting the family financially. My mom was always busy with the household chores, the laundry, the cooking — just toiling her 30s, 40s, the good parts of her life away to care for the household. These are not easy jobs at all. So clearly this belief is simply not true.

b) Debunking my negative school experiences and the conclusion “Nobody loves me”

As for my experience with school, basically these were just kids struggling in their own personal growth, their self-identity, discovering who they were on the inside. Just as I was working through my own problems, the other kids were also working through their own problems. Not really being self-aware. The people, the kids who were being critical or nasty, they were just doing their own thing, figuring themselves out.

And there was really no need to interpret, even if subconsciously, that any of these experiences had any meaningful meaning because they pretty much didn’t. They were really just a bunch of kids growing and figuring themselves out in life.

So thinking back and addressing these stories then helped me break out of this belief of “nobody loves me.” Because it’s simply not true. It was an erroneous belief that was formed from a bunch of random incidences that just happened that way, that really had nothing to do with me.

Objectively seeing these incidences as they were and unraveling them then helped me break out of this thought of “Nobody loves me,” and to recognize the love that’s around me, all around me right now, be it the love from my husband, the love from the people around me, the love from people who love me, and the love from you guys. My readers.

Gratitude to you, my readers

I want to express how grateful I am to you guys for allowing me to do what I do. Thank you for being patient with me in the past one year or more, where I haven’t really been updating the blog much, where I’ve been busy working through things, and I’ve pretty much been silent. I felt that if there’s nothing good to share, then just don’t say anything — and by that I mean in terms of content. I didn’t (and still don’t) believe in writing and churning out stuff for the sake of it. I wanted everything to matter especially if I’m writing out something and many people would be reading that. I wanted to make sure that it counts for something, that I’m treasuring your time spent in reading my material. And I just want to thank you for supporting my work and allowing me to do what I do.

So whatever it is, whatever capacity that you support the blog, be it by just listening to my podcast, reading the emails, buying my products, or joining my courses, I’m grateful for that. I just want to let you guys know and put this out there so thank you so much. :)

Exercise: Probe into the feeling, “Nobody loves me”

Now back to the point which is to understand and address your feelings for thinking this way. If you think that nobody loves you and you have moments when you think nobody loves you, I would like you to start questioning this thought. Start thinking further and probing into this feeling, “nobody loves me.”

Because is it really true?

Think back to when this feeling started. Chances are it’s going to go back to childhood.

Probably from some childhood upbringing.
Some experience you had when you were a child.
Maybe some comment someone said to you.
Maybe a series of experiences that you had.
Maybe from how your parents raised you.
Could also be to do with school experiences.
It could also be from the lack of experiences that you had with your parents, with your mom, your dad.

Try to pinpoint and understand where this feeling came from, when it started.

As you do that, question this assumption or conclusion of “nobody loves me.” Is it true that because Event A happened that “nobody loves me”?

You saw how I shared my breakdown just now. I shared the experiences, or some of them, when I developed this thought, even if unconsciously. At the point when I was a kid, I wasn’t aware that this thought was formed, but as an adult looking back and thinking back, I realized that some of these moments might have led to the conclusion, “nobody loves me.”

So then, question the thought: Is it true that because this happened, that Event A happened, that nobody loves me? Chances are you’re going to find that it’s not true. You’re going to find that it was an erroneous conclusion made at that point when you didn’t know better. When you could only conclude things in this way. And then looking back as your adult self today, you’re able to break apart that incident and recognize that this feeling of “nobody loves me” might not really be what you think it was. That it was more of an erroneous conclusion formed at the point in time when you didn’t know better.

The above might sound a little bit confusing, and I go into these things much deeper in my courses, but hopefully you understand what I’m trying to say here. There were incidences that happened when we were a child that made us think a certain way, but often time these incidences don’t mean that. And we only concluded that conclusion, that thought, that belief, because we didn’t know better at that point in time. Because there was limited data. And when we truly go back and question that experience, then we find that our belief was formed from a set of poorly formed conclusions, a set of poorly understood experiences.

Really take the time out to understand and address your feelings for thinking this way. This tip is super, super important because this forms the foundational basis of how we see ourselves, really addressing this belief of “nobody loves me.”

4) Work on your self-love

Sad woman in forest, sunlight behind her

My fourth and last tip is to start working on your self-love.

So we have already addressed and looked into the fundamental basis of how this feeling of “nobody loves me” got formed. The next step is to work on your self-love, because we can never stop working on that.

If we ever feel that nobody loves me, remember here it’s about first loving ourselves. When we love ourselves, and we start loving ourselves, then we’ll be able to truly appreciate and see the love that’s coming from around us.

So ask yourself: Are there things that you are doing that’s keeping you from self-love? Come up with a list of actions that you can take to start loving yourself. Maybe you are often really hard on yourself — and this may be something I want to do a podcast on, about not being hard on yourself — but maybe you’re just often being hard on yourself. Maybe you’re often pushing yourself. You’re often berating yourself. You’re often being critical of yourself. And these are things that you shouldn’t do to yourself. These are things that shouldn’t be happening. And these are things that you can stop doing to herself.

Now instead, start appreciating you.

Start loving you.
Start loving your body, if you aren’t already doing that.
Start loving your beautiful facial features.
Start loving your hair, if you aren’t already loving that.
Start loving your face.
Your whole self.
Your work, what you create.
Start loving your behavior.
Your actions.
Start loving your goals.
Your attitude.
Your beliefs.

There is no dichotomy between self-love and self-improvement. We can love ourselves and also be working on our personal growth at the same time. It is from truly loving ourselves that we see this opportunity for personal growth.

And personal growth not initiated or rooted in a place of fear or competition or feeling that we are not good enough. But rather, personal growth rooted in seeing all the unlimited potential we have and how we can simply be better.

So here, as you work on your self-love, also work on the things that you love to do. The goals that you wish to achieve. The things that you wish to do for yourself. Taking the time out for self-care. Taking the time out to support yourself in your endeavors. Taking the time out for your personal goals.

Think about the things you love to do. And the things that you can do to start loving yourself or to love yourself more. And start working on them today.

Closing Note

We’ve come to the end of the podcast. If you think that nobody loves you, or you have moments when you think that nobody loves you, I just want to remind you that this is not true. There is someone who loves you and most importantly, you love you and you should love you.

If ever there’s something blocking you from loving yourself, then it’s simply about understanding what it is. Why this blockage is. Where this blockage is. And then addressing that as I’ve shared in the tips of this podcast.

I hope you’ve found this podcast helpful. I’ll be including links to related articles and resources in the show notes, so you can check them out.

If you’ll like today’s podcast or you appreciate The Personal Excellence Podcast, I would truly appreciate it if you can take the time out to leave a positive review on iTunes. That would truly mean the world to me and help spread the podcast to more people out there.

I look forward to speaking to you guys soon, this time definitely not one year later! Let me know what episodes you guys are interested to see, what kind of topics you guys are interested to see. Or even, you can record a question for me at personalexcellence.co/podcast — there’s a link where you can send a voice question over to me.

So until next time, remember you’re beautiful, you’re complete, you’re perfect the way you are. Whatever it is, I love you and most importantly, you love you and you should love yourself. Talk to you guys soon. Bye guys!

Endnote: Thanks for listening to The Personal Excellence Podcast! For more tips on how to live your best life, visit www.personalexcellence.co

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