When someone who has given love to everyone else tries to direct it toward themselves, the habitual response is to run. The running takes many forms: feeling bad about running, intellectualizing, looping into familiar patterns, returning to caretaking others. Joe points out that “one of the ways you run is to feel bad”—even the guilt about not loving yourself is itself a form of avoidance.
The key insight is that running is not the problem to be fixed. It’s the pattern to be noticed and allowed. Joe says “it’s okay to run” and “I don’t have any judgment”—and in that acceptance, the running begins to slow. The person starts letting love in, described as “tingliness through my body and shoulders… like goosebumps.” The love was always available; the running was the only thing keeping it out.
This reveals why self-help strategies often fail: telling yourself to love yourself becomes another form of trying, another performance, another thing to get right. The actual shift happens when you stop judging the running and simply notice it.
“It’s like I’ve given that love to everyone else. Feels like when I try to give it to myself, I want to run.”
“One of the ways you run is to feel bad.”
Related Concepts
- Self-love is somatic welcoming, not affirmation
- Chasing love is also pushing it away
- Avoidance is the stuckness, not the feeling
- Caretaking as strategy to feel love
- Longing and loneliness are love in disguise