Do you know how to reconnect to love after a stressful event? Do you get down on yourself when you make a mistake or start to spiral?

Stressful situations have a way of revealing the stories we tell ourselves. Often times these stories are full of self-judgments, shaming, and negative self-talk. But are those narratives really helping you?

What Are You Clinging To?

My guess is that at some point in your life you began to cling to self-judgment and shame to protect yourself from more pain. This is a common way we try to shield ourselves from the pain we’ve already experienced. We make vows with ourselves saying “I will never be treated like this again.” We might put very high expectations on ourselves to achieve and then when we don’t get it exactly right every time, we judge ourselves critically and take love away. This is called conditional love.

But what if there was another way? What if self-judgment and shame didn’t have to be the narrative you cling to? What if you could cling to love for yourself? How would that change your view of yourself? How would that change your confidence in yourself? Would you feel more brave to do things you couldn’t before? Would you have more love and compassion for others? Wouldn’t that change the way you relate to every relationship in your life, including your relationship with God?

My guess is it would. Most definitely. And from experience, I can say this is one of the most valuable things you can give to yourself and others. Learning how to keep your love on at all times.

How Do You Reconnect To Love After A Stressful Event?

So how do you change the narrative? How do you keep your love on and reconnect to love when you’ve disconnected yourself from it?

It’s important to note that love is always on. It doesn’t run out, it never leaves, and it sticks through the tough times. Love is always available. How? Well, who is Love? God is Love, right? And God is always available. Always ready to listen. He is always there to bring compassion. Always constant and consistent. Even when you are not loving to yourself, God is loving to you. That’s important to know. Because Love is not something you conjure up on your own. It’s not something that is conditional or something that leaves. Love is always on and always available. Love comes from God, Love is God. They are one in the same.

Step Into The River Of Love

If that is true, then stepping into love is easy. To reconnect to love is simple, not hard. It’s an act, a choice. Always.

Something that God told me recently is that love is like a river. No one tells a river to flow, it just does. And you get to choose to stand on the sidelines or step into it. Stepping into love is as easy as stepping into the flow of a river. You don’t have to try to make it flow, you just step into it and the flow is automatic. You join in with what’s already running.

If stepping into love is as easy as stepping into the flow of a river, then it’s simply a choice to step in. When you start to spiral down a hole and judge all the ways you could have done something better, remember “Step into the river of love”. You don’t have to let the spiral keep you.

What Does This Look Like Practically?

Okay, “stepping into the river of love” sounds great, but how do I practically do that?

Great question! Practically this looks like bringing in self-compassion and self-love. If God is the source of love, all the love we can give ourselves actually comes from God first. That said, learning more about God’s love for you is going to help you tremendously. You can always ask God to teach you more of His love for you. A good question to ask God is “God, how do you see me?” Asking these kinds of questions and inviting God into this journey will really help you see yourself from His perspective.

Bringing in self-compassion can look like validating the feelings that are coming up. I talk about this a lot in my blog posts, so you can find more ways of understanding this by reading other posts. Validating the emotion, means first you have to be aware of what you are feeling. This means shutting down, avoiding, or using other things to fill the void or meet a need will not be helpful for you. You have to be okay with having big, uncomfortable emotions.

Validating the emotion can look like, identifying what you are feeling, saying it out loud, and recognizing it, “I see that you are feeling sad, do you want to tell me what happened?” Just like talking to a child, this is going to allow you to feel safe with yourself and open up.

Then, you allow space for yourself to process what happened. Listen to what is coming up and validate by saying things like “I’m so sorry that happened, that must have felt very scary. Was that scary for you?”

Identify The Need

Next, identify what the need is. This is another way to reconnect to love when it’s been disconnected. When you can identify the core need, you can get your need met in a healthy way. This will bring stress levels down. When stressful things happen, our internal world starts to panic and ask the question “will my needs get met?” Instead of expecting another person to meet that need for you, like a parent or spouse, or friend, you can bring that need in yourself. Or invite another person in to ask if they are capable of meeting that need.

Asking the question, “What do you need from me?” will help identify the core need. Core needs are safety, security, affection (hugs, safe touch, etc), being seen, feeling heard, being validated, being taught/helped, and basic food and water. If things come up like “I need a glass of wine or a vacation, or I need that person to change”, those are all ways to cope that don’t actually meet the core need. Those are just more ways to escape the pain rather than address it. So it’s important to know what the core need is.

How To Respond

You can respond to those types of responses with “I know you think you need a vacation right now, but maybe you just need time to yourself?” Or “You said you need the other person to change, the truth is that person may never change. That’s tough to acknowledge, I’m sure that’s painful for you. What did you need in the moment for that person to give you?” And then when you have a more direct answer, you can work on getting that need met.

She might say “I really needed them to hear me and allow me to share my thoughts.” That’s great, now you have the need identified, you can then address that need. This can look like saying “I see, I’m really sorry this person couldn’t give you that space to feel heard. Your voice is valuable and it hurts that they couldn’t see that. How could you have stood up for yourself at that moment?”

The Benefits Of Learning To Reconnect To Love

This is a great way to learn how to prioritize yourself and your needs in relationships with others. A healthy response to that question could be “I could have paused and told the person that I really appreciated their care for me, but that I didn’t feel their advice was needed.” This way you learn to stand up for yourself, set healthy boundaries, and get your need met in relation to others.

Having these back-and-forth conversations with yourself will help you to understand yourself more and learn how to better meet your core needs. This will also help you discover your voice and give you more self-confidence. Practicing reconnecting to love and identifying when you’ve disconnected from it will boost your love for both yourself and others. Compassion really changes things.

Was This Helpful For You?

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Also, If you’re looking for resources, I have a basic step-by-step guide here on how to unpack triggers and connect with your heart.

If you are wanting to learn how to process pain and want to start a healing process for yourself, I am offering one-on-one coaching sessions. These sessions will help in learning how to process pain in a healthy way that actually brings lasting change and self-confidence.

I’m also creating a course that goes into the depths of all this as well. The course will take you step-by-step in how to walk through a healing journey. You will get live group coaching calls, a community of support, and one-on-one coaching with me. Also, subscribe to my email list to get updates for when the course is launched! If you have questions about anything, please reach out! I would love to chat with you via email.

You can email me at co*****@dy************.com with any questions you might have.