Learn to Love Your Flaws!

“Many people, especially cancer patients, grow up believing that there is some terrible flaw at the center of their being. A defect they must hide if they are to have any chance for love.”

Dr. Bernie Siegel, Love, Medicine & Miracles

Most every addict grows up believing that they are inherently flawed in an unacceptable and unchangeable way. This is certainly what I learned at a very young age: That I had major flaws that made me unlovable.

Deep down, all of us know what are alleged flaws are. We’ve been carrying them around like boulders inside of us for years and years. As a result, these flaws have been major stumbling blocks in all of our relationships. Either we’ve lived with the crippling fear that if someone we love finds out, we will lose their love. Or we’ve never even allowed ourselves to truly open up to love for fear of being “found out.” And so we’ve used our flaws like two-edged swords to 1) beat ourselves with and: 2) to thrust at other people in order to keep them away from us.

Dr. Siegel goes on to say “Feeling unloved and unlovable and condemned to loneliness if their true selves became known, such individuals set up defenses against sharing their innermost feelings with anyone. Because such people feel a profound emptiness inside they come to see all relationships and transactions in terms of getting something to fill the vaguely understood void within. They give love only on condition that they get something for it. And this leads to an ever deeper sense of emptiness which keeps the vicious cycle going.”

This is one of the best descriptions of the addictive cycle that I have ever read. In particular, it describes the codependent cycle almost to a “T.” Codependents grow up feeling unlovable at the very core of their being. Feeling this way is devastating and it causes us to believe that we must keep our secrets locked-up tight inside of us. I grew up believing that no one, absolutely no one was to know who I really was inside. If they found out anything at all about my flaw, even the smallest clue, then I was doomed. Rumors would spread like wildfire and no one would ever accept or love me.

This led me to believe my only salvation was to be able to hold tightly to my secret and to try bargaining for love. And I chose to bargain through people-pleasing and caretaking others. My hope was that if I could just please people enough they’d need me so much that they might even be able to love me eventually. And that once they needed me, they might still love me a little even if my flaw should become known to them.

So I gave “love” in the futile hope that I would receive something back for it. But because I held myself so tightly inside to avoid being “found out,” I never had enough of my self that I could share with others in order to sustain a true relationship. Relationships demand that both people show-up and freely share themselves with each other. I never showed-up emotionally and I usually chose people who weren’t capable of showing up emotionally, either. Looking back now, I realize that in all of these sad excuses for relationships, we simply fed off of each other and then spit each other out. And as each relationship ended, I felt a deeper sense of emptiness inside.

The solution to this problem is as simple as it is difficult. It involves facing our alleged flaws. I use the word “alleged” because someone else thrust these flaws onto us when we were too young to think for ourselves. We accepted them and we’ve clung to them ever since. Today, we need to look at these alleged flaws with adult eyes. We need to honestly decide for ourselves whether or not they truly make us unacceptable or unlovable. In doing so, we also need to take into account that a few billion other people in this world share the same flaws that we are so terrified of revealing. Understanding that everyone is in the same boat that we are makes it easier to embrace our alleged flaws with love, compassion and understanding.

Once we have accepted that our flaws actually help us to form a common bond with most everyone else in this world, we may be ready to take the next step, which is to learn to love our flaws. It may be that when we embrace our flaws, they can actually begin to work in our favor. For example, if your flaw is that you are gay, and you’ve been too afraid to open up to anyone about it, then you have completely isolated yourself from all other gay people. Accepting this alleged flaw and coming to love it will actually help you to open up to other gay people who will love you just as you are.

None of us are flawed in such serious ways as to render ourselves unlovable. Everyone has their flaws and everyone is lovable and acceptable despite their flaws. We must come to a spiritual place inside ourselves where we believe this. To get their we have to connect with a Higher Power or Higher Love. Once we make that connection, we will have the help we need to turn our inner-lives around in positive and life-giving ways.

We will no longer see ourselves as flawed and we will then begin to open up and share our true selves with others, who are also willing to reveal and share their true selves. And we will then be on our way toward building authentic relationships built on honestly, transparency and love. This journey has to begin, however, inside of us. We need the power from a Higher Love to enable us to better love ourselves. Work on loving the person that you are—every day. You have the power within you to transform you flaws into virtues. Ask Higher Love to open up the doors within your heart and your mind to all that is beautiful and lovable about you—and then work at believing it!