Receiving Block

The majority of us feel Joy, Gratutide, and Excitement when we receive. If receiving feels so good then why so many of us struggle to live with ease and find that being on the giving side is much easier than on the receiving?

Not many of us talk about feelings of shame and guilt around receiving. It all comes down to our childhood patterns, and how unconditional love and receivig felt back then.
I realized that I compare my own way and ability of giving to other people with how much they give to me. And that part of me that compares makes me feel shame for receiving, because I don’t give as much as I receive.

From classical psychology, we understand that if there is a part of us that prevents us from feeling something good — which in this case is gratitude — it means that we have been conditioned to protect ourselves from feeling good about receiving and from receiving in general by being shamed for it. In moments of receiving, we may have felt that we either couldn’t keep what we received, or we felt ashamed for receiving it.

Usually, from childhood conditioning, this comes from a parent who compares us to other people around us, to our siblings, or to how much they do for us versus how much we can do for them in return.

Then it occurred to me that my mom probably felt very unsupported in her life while raising me. She was doing a lot on her own. And of course, in a state of uncertainty and lack of safety, a woman may not be able to give unconditionally to her child. She will most likely project her own sense of victimhood, inability to receive, and the anger of not being supported onto her child, which makes the child feel like a burden.

Every time a child receives something, it can put them at odds with their own parent. Because how can I receive when I don’t see that my mom is receiving enough and feeling safe in her own ability to receive?

As a child, I would often give away things that I received in order to support my mom, or things I received from other people would be taken away to support her. And that gave birth to a protector part that protects us from feelings of gratitude when we receive by replacing them with shame and guilt.

So when we come to understanding how to process this emotion, we don’t just have to be present in the moment of receiving. Of course we will feel the emotions connected to our protector. These are the little parts of us, parts of our ego that are stuck in the past and still feel fear around it being safe to receive.

We have to turn toward them and ask: what bad consequences are you expecting would happen if you were to receive? And you will receive an answer:
“I would be shamed.”
“I would be blamed.”
“I would have to give away what I received to somebody else in order to support them.”

Because a child will always unconditionally love the parent and give everything they can in order to support them, in the hope that eventually it would lead to receiving love in return.

And this is where codependency actually comes from — when we try to give people a lot in order to get connection from them, because we feel that by simply being ourselves and receiving freely, we do not deserve to be loved for who we are. We feel like we need to feed the relationship with extra effort in order to be accepted and receive connection.

This is another block that can be found in the realm of receiving gifts and abundance from the universe — the things we all crave — because we feel low-frequency emotions in moments of receiving. We do not feel joy, gratitude, or appreciation. We feel shame and guilt because we are always striving toward some invisible perfect person we were never able to become as children.

So a part of our soul remains stuck in that reality, still operating from the same perspective:
“If I receive too much, if I receive and allow myself to be happy, it’s not really going to be mine. It will be taken away.”

So I would rather protect myself from disappointment, accusation, or punishment from a parent who may even have felt jealous of me as a child when I received something, by feeling guilty and shameful whenever I experience receiving from other people.

Can you relate to that?
What do you feel when you receive?
What are you afraid would happen?
And what feelings, mixed with gratitude, arise in you in moments of receiving?