Relationships
The Secret to Feeling Love and Stop Confusing it with Attachment
by Ina Backbier
When someone used to say “I love you,” sometimes I’d feel a quick dopamine hit.
But most often? I’d feel flat, disconnected, even tense.
My mind would instantly list all the reasons I wasn’t worthy of love: I’m too much. I keep messing things up. It would remind me of all the times I felt like I didn’t do enough—or didn’t do things well enough. I would push their words away.
I didn’t realize it then, but my survival system was doing its job. It didn’t feel safe to let love in.
Love can feel dangerously vulnerable — it is handing someone the power to hurt you.
When we carry repressed hurt and anger in our bodies, no matter how much we think we want love, we can’t actually let it in.
That dopamine hit? It’s just temporary relief. A fleeting high that covers the buried grief and rage around not having received love in the way we needed or wanted as children.
Later in life—after two broken marriages—I told myself the story that I didn’t need anyone’s love. I hid behind the spiritual ideal of freedom. But the truth was, I was just repressing the need—along with the hurt and anger that fueled it.
We all long to be loved. That’s what we’ve been taught—by our culture, our families, Hollywood.
But here’s what I’ve come to see: we’ve been confused. What I’ve learned is this: we are love. Love just is.
This isn’t just an empty spiritual “truth”. I can feel it in every cell of my body after years of KI Emotional Repression Inquiry. Embodying this didn’t come easily.
For years, I made others responsible for giving me the love I wasn’t able to receive—or give—myself. I unconsciously chased love. I chased acknowledgment. I chased validation. Mostly by being useful, working hard and people-pleasing.
I settled for breadcrumbs and then spiritualized my settling. I told myself it was ‘acceptance,’ but deep down, unconsciously, I resented the ones I settled for.
And when someone actually did show up with love? It couldn’t quite enter my heart.
Does anyone else recognize this?
What I couldn’t see was that I was confusing love with attachment. Honestly, I think most people do—until they start to unwind emotional repression in the body.
We chase love as an unconscious attempt to fill a void that’s been there since childhood—a void that we project on people currently in our lives because the hurt and anger around our need for love not being met is so deeply buried in our bodies.
That hungry, grasping pull toward love or validation?
It’s not love.
It’s attachment.
It’s a survival strategy born from an unmet need — and from the unprocessed hurt and anger we couldn’t feel when we were a kid.
When you check this somatically, you’ll find that the unmet need for love is often tied to trapped hurt and/or anger, depending on your dominant repression.
When you bury hurt and anger during childhood—about love not being there when you needed it, or being tangled with terror, neglect, or other painful conditions—it quietly turns into autopilot programming. Without even realizing it, you demand from a partner to fill those needs that parents never did.
But no partner can ever satisfy that bottomless pit of unmet childhood needs. Why? Because those needs don’t simply disappear—they harden into unconscious demands we start placing on the people around us. Or we retreat into solitude, telling ourselves we just like being alone—when really, it’s the only place those old needs feel safely met.
These demands feel bottomless because they’re not really about the present—they’re about a past that can never be rewritten.
This old repression programming keeps running on autopilot until you stop and gently begin to unravel it. The frozen fear around the hurt and anger needs to be met, felt, and dissolved—because that’s what keeps it all trapped in the contractions in your body.
If you, like I did, tell yourself the story that you are worthy of love, but your partner just isn’t capable of meeting you—check carefully. Is that “acceptance” actually a way of settling for safety instead of facing the hurt and anger driving that story?
When we repress our authentic emotions—our hurt, sadness, anger—we have to create identities that are false. We chase love and validation — in our relationships, in our work, in our social circles. Some of us resort to solitude, calling it freedom. What we are really doing is sliding back and forth on the pain-pleasure continuum, never really landing in freedom.
For me, the real work was facing the hurt and anger that has been buried in my body since childhood. That’s what unraveled the pattern. That’s what ended the suffering.
The buzz line that is used abundantly in spirituality ‘Opening up to love’ wasn’t like opening a door or pressing a button. It meant making conscious programming that judged my need for love. It meant breaking through those layers of protection, those buried pockets of hurt, anger, and fear. It meant making conscious that the deeply embedded command that I had to be afraid all the time—even when I didn’t feel afraid. That fear was repressed too.
This work of embodiment has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It felt like risking everything.
I bought into the spiritual narrative that freedom meant not needing anything or anyone, being fully free from attachment. But inquiry showed me something else: by not needing anything (including love), I actually got love from my parents—through acceptance and approval. Independence was highly celebrated in my family and because of circumstances I learned very young to rely on myself. So unconsciously, by staying alone (and not being needy or a perceived burden to anyone), I kept unconsciously chasing love.
Real freedom isn’t becoming untouchable.
It’s not not needing anything. It’s not staying safe. It’s about courageously dismantling the unconscious programming that’s kept you protected — but never free. When we unwind emotional repression and survival patterns, we can finally stop confusing attachment for love.
And when someone tells you, “I love you” — you don’t flinch.
You don’t push it away.
You can let it land.
You can feel it.
Because love isn’t something you chase anymore.
Love just is. It flows.
About the Author
Ina Backbier is a certified mentor and trainer in KI Emotional Repression Inquiry, with backgrounds in transpersonal psychology, somatic inquiry, clinical counselling hypnotherapy, and international project management.
More than thirteen years ago, a perfect storm and a health crisis became the catalyst for her deep dive into trauma and emotional repression. That journey led not only to full recovery but also to a life infused with love, joy, and awe. Ina is passionate about helping others break free from unconscious survival patterns and emotional blocks, so they can reconnect to their body’s truth and live with greater authenticity, clarity, and freedom. Visit https://inabackbier.com/ to learn more about her journey and work.
