A childhood love pattern from What Did You Learn About Love Growing Up?
Love Meant Making Yourself Smaller
You learned early that your role was to support, to smooth things over, to hold things together. The adults in your life may not have intended this, but you absorbed it anyway. Love became synonymous with being needed rather than being seen.
What this costs you now
You may have a hard time imagining a relationship where you are not doing more of the emotional labor. Where someone just loves you without you having to manage their experience of you.
What wants to change
You did not choose the role that was handed to you. But you are allowed to put it down. The version of love you deserve is one where you show up as a whole person, with needs and limits and hard days, and still be chosen.
Three journal prompts for Love Meant Making Yourself Smaller
- When did you first learn to make yourself smaller to be loved?
- What part of yourself are you still keeping quiet?
- Write about one space in your life where you could take up a little more room.
Want thirty more?
Pages for You is a 30-day journal written only for you, around what you're carrying right now. One page a day, at your own pace.
Or start small
Printables from my Etsy shop, Innershelfstudio, picked for Love Meant Making Yourself Smaller. Instant download.