Gift of Love

I see the Gift of Love as a plea to be loved. A desperate longing. If I am like you, if I hate the things you hate, if I love the things you love, if I see myself the way you see me, I will finally earn your love. If I am the same as you, does that make you love me more?

If you hate that I don’t want to spend a lot of time around the family, I will hate myself for not wanting to spend a lot of time around the family.

If you see external success as a core metric of being worthy, then either I will agree and take on the same metric, or I’ll rebel against that like I had to when I was little, opting out of the game because I fear I won’t ever actually succeed. But it won’t be my grounded, adult self choosing to opt out, it will be the child part of me that actually agrees that my worth is tied into success and can’t bear to fail. To possibly get the confirmation that indeed, your love for me is only conditional on these metrics.

What can make working with a client caught in the Gift of Love somewhat confusing is that often the client can vent a lot of anger at the parent for their unrealistic standards. You might hear the client clearly be able to state that it’s an unfair standard, an impossible, no-win situation. This clear anger can send a confusing signal to the therapist - so are they freed from the Gift of Love, if they are able to see it as wrong/impossible/unfair?

I think not really. While it’s a good step to break some of the ego-syntonicity, listen carefully to make sure their anger isn’t railing against the parent “as if they are still in charge” as Lorna Smith Benjamin might name. If their venting is ultimately a pleading, a young version of them fighting with their parent, saying, “This is ridiculous! I can’t win here! Why can’t you love me as I am?” then I think you’re still hearing their Gift of Love vibrating.

Something to think about:

The Gift of Love is a longing to finally be approved of, accepted, and loved by a very important person. It is an understandably enmeshed stance, and agreement to see themselves as the other sees them.

Something to try:

A complex reflection if a client is expressing anger but still seems caught might be -

“A part of you can see of unfair this is, how impossible this is, and understandably another part of you might be begging them to see you are worth loving even if you aren’t exactly the same as they are.”