When Do You Feel Loved?

Like many of us, I grew up in a household where obedience, conformity, performance, and excellence were the currency of love. It wired me with the false belief that I wasn't inherently worthy — that love was something to be earned. And I developed all kinds of dysfunctional strategies to earn it.

Those strategies worked for a while. But by my late 40s, the cracks started to show. I was burned out, a stranger to myself, and quietly hopeless. I had nothing to show for decades of striving. The love never arrived no matter how hard I worked, how much I sacrificed, how much I endured.

I fell into the cracks.

From those depths, I began a dedicated process of healing, rebuilding, and self-discovery. A few months in, a friend posed a question their therapist had asked them: "When do you feel loved?"

They weren't sure how to answer. I wasn't much help. I said something about feeling loved when I feel truly seen.

The question stayed with me. Something about my answer felt incomplete.

A couple of weeks later, I did my first therapeutic MDMA journey. It was a beautiful experience — one that filled me with compassion, empathy, and genuine love for myself, for my path, and for who I was becoming.

A few days later, the answer to my friend’s question came to me like a joyful revelation.

I feel loved when I love myself.

I'm not sure the therapist intended it as a riddle, but I was quietly amused to stumble onto the only real answer.

Nobody can make you feel loved if you don't love yourself. When I love myself, the world mirrors that back to me — in how I allow myself to be treated, how I choose to live, the environments I inhabit, the people I surround myself with, what I prioritize, and what I'm willing to ask for.

The world reflects our level of self-love back to us.

For most of us, freeing ourselves from early programming around unworthiness is a lifelong process. The layers run deep. It's not just what we absorbed from our early caregivers. It's also the trauma we experienced, what was passed down through generations, the culture and society we grew up in, and all the ways our sense of unworthiness got reinforced along the way.

The intentional, therapeutic use of psychedelics can be a powerful catalyst for discovering and really feeling that you are worthy and lovable exactly as you are. When that realization arrives during a journey, it can be beautiful, liberating, and profoundly moving.

That discovery is a kind of rebirth. But unlearning old habits rooted in early programming, and rebuilding your life from a foundation of worthiness takes time.

For me, staying in relationships and dynamics that didn't honor me slowly became intolerable. I left. I learned to stop people-pleasing, stop over-extending myself, stop saying yes when I meant no. I learned to take responsibility for my own joy, to stop waiting for rescue, to go after what I wanted, and to trust my intuition. I also learned to be patient with myself, to forgive myself and others, to surrender to the inevitable ups and downs.

In essence, I had to grow up again — but for real this time. It was uncomfortable, awkward, and sometimes deeply painful. (It's not called "the work" for nothing.) But given a do-over? I would always choose the red pill.

So tell me — when do you feel loved?