The opposite of love is not hate, but fear

We tend to believe that the opposite of love is hate.. However, these two extremes have nothing to do with each other. The opposite of love is fear. A fear that paralyzes us, like many others that we have to deal with every day. Why do we live in fear? And rather, fear of what? What would you do if you had no fears?

What would you do if you werent afraid?

One of man’s innate feelings is fear. It is a natural response to danger. Fear helps us survive but it also limits us and has been used many times to break wills. It also affects both the body and the mind.

When faced with fear, our body reacts with increased blood pressure, our pupils dilate and the heart pumps blood at high speed. However, the fear sometimes it is only in our mind, because it can be imaginarywhen it does not have a correspondence with a real danger.

There are many types of fear, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of loss of power and fear of change.

Carl Gustav Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, maintained that we all have certain traits that we hide, since from a young age we realized that this was necessary if we wanted to be accepted. That set of traits that we do not accept about ourselves is like a shadow that emerges at some point in our lives. Along with “the shadow”, we develop what Freud called “the ego ideal”, which is a self that we create to fit into our environment and not be rejected.

Non-acceptance of the shadow entails many problems, since we don’t accept ourselves out of fear, we don’t love each other. Fear is the opposite of love. We do not love ourselves out of fear of ourselves and we are not capable of loving others.

What would you do if you were not afraid to accept yourself, to recognize yourself, to be rejected? You would be free and enjoy your love for yourself and others.

We do not accept ourselves out of fear, we do not love ourselves.

What is the opposite of love?

Paulo Freirean expert on education issues of Brazilian origin, maintains that:

And even neuroscience has confirmed it to us. Well, When we love someone, the systems responsible for guaranteeing the survival of the organism relax.. As is the case of the amygdala, a brain structure responsible for processing basic emotions (such as fear) and launching responses such as flight, attack or blocking (paralysis).

In other words, various studies have shown that, when we feel fear, the brain’s amygdala is activated; but when we are in love, this brain structure relaxes. Therefore, we can affirm that both feelings are also opposed at the neuronal level.

It is worth mentioning that love is not limited to the romantic partner, family or friends, but rather It also encompasses love for ourselves.

Why are we afraid to love?

Love is always a risk. On each occasion we will have to take that risk and live life, live the passion of loving. Our past experiences and our beliefs limit us and induce the fear of loving.

An article published in Danubina Psychiatry found that people who had difficulties relating to their parents during childhood, due to a lack of love, imitate these dysfunctional patterns in their relationships. That is to say, if this affection was not expressed to us when we were children, it is difficult for us to be able to express this loving feeling in adulthood.

On the other hand, our fear of loving can also derive from our lack of self-love or also called lack of self-esteem. If we can’t love ourselves, how are we going to love another person?

The inability to love oneself prevents one from loving another person.

Our self-esteem, or the consideration we have of ourselves, is an aspect that we must improve in order to love ourselves and other people. Based on the book Learning to love yourself of Walter Riso, we suggest some keys to improve self-esteem:

Encourage self-praise. Every time we do something good, or something positive, we should praise ourselves. How well I have done it!Reward yourself. Any achievement in our lives, no matter how small, deserves a prize. Gratification can be something simple that we like and enjoy.Eliminate repressive beliefs that prevent you from self-reinforcing. Although sometimes we must set limits on our feelings, at other times we must let them out. What’s wrong with crying in public or showing your affection for someone in front of other people?Don’t be ashamed of your successes and your efforts. Enjoy them and celebrate them.

Self-love is essential to be able to love others.

philophobia

The extreme case of the fear of loving is philophobia. A person who suffers from philophobia experiences a very intense fear of falling in love with another person, of commitment, and of maintaining intimate relationships.

Philophobic people use several mechanisms to defend themselves from love and stay in their comfort zone:

They fall in love with impossible people. They begin relationships that are destined to fail, because the two people are very different. They provoke arguments with the other person, to cause the other person to break the relationship. They tend to look for defects in the other person. In this way they justify themselves.

Symptoms of fear of love

In accordance with Cleveland Clinic The typical responses of a person afraid of loving are:

They avoid having intimate relationships.They feel anxiety when being in a relationship.They think and worry about the end of the relationship. They experience fear of the other person and emotions. They push the other person away.They end the relationship for no apparent reason and suddenly.

This same source points out that when a person feels in love they may present some of the classic symptoms of anxiety, these are:

dizzinessdry mouthfeelingnausea or vomitingsweatingincreased heart ratetremorsdifficulty breathing

How can we overcome the fear of loving?

The fear of love is a normal feeling when we have had negative experiences, but we should not give it the opportunity to rule our lives.

Fortunately, we can learn to love and, as we already said, The first step is to work on self-love and self-compassion. To develop these qualities we can use meditation as a resource. Well, various studies in neuroscience indicate that those who carry out this practice develop different frequencies of alpha waves in the brain, compared to individuals who do not carry out this activity.

This helps these people see the world with a kinder tone and with less prejudice towards what surrounds them.. This implies less activity in the amygdala and a greater feeling of connection with others. Therefore, if you want to start this practice, loving-kindness meditation is a good start.

On the other hand, if we feel a certain fear of a relationship with another person, it is advisable to let them know so that they can share in our feelings. Communication is essential to overcome our fear. Furthermore, it is necessary to leave past relationships behind and live the new relationship day by day.

Other suggestions to stop being afraid of love

According to Donna Novak, doctor in clinical psychology, other recommendations that we can take into account when overcoming the fear of love are:

Inquire about the beginning of fear. In order to overcome this fear, it is necessary to know how and when it started. Knowing its cause will allow us to formulate effective solutions that solve the underlying problem.Let go of negative possibilities. It is of no use to us to imagine what would happen if… Fantasizing about a tragic, sad or negative future about relationships is not a good way to overcome fear, on the contrary, it is the direct way to perpetuate it. Therefore, the best we can do is let go of those less than optimistic possibilities.Find someone who values ​​us. It is possible that our fear is also due to not finding someone who does not understand us and who does not share our main values. Therefore, we think that the relationship will be a total failure, which leads us to withdraw and not open ourselves to getting to know others. One way to solve this is to relate to those who share our core values. Embrace the good things about love. Romantic relationships have their plus points too, not everything is as negative as our fear makes us believe. Taking a few minutes to think about what benefits we will obtain from love will help us alleviate our discomfort and will not allow us to nourish the hope of having a relationship. Accept past failures. Sometimes, our loving past settles in our memory to remind us that love is not worth it, to tell us that we do not deserve it. One way to deal with this is to accept the mistakes we made and the failure we experienced. Thus, we can live the present open and willing to enjoy love, despite the disappointments of the past.Request professional help. If we cannot overcome the fear of love on our own, it is best to go to a mental health professional. A psychotherapist will know how to guide us in this process.

The opposite of love: fear

In this article we have stated that hate is not the antagonist of love, but fear. Our fears do not allow us to open ourselves to the world and to romantic encounters with other people. They are like a voice in our head that reminds us of some bitter experiences.

At the end of everything, love is always worth it, even if we are dominated by our fears. It is worth every effort to overcome what prevents us from enjoying it.

You might be interested…