Your relationship with yourself is reflected in your relationships with others. If you didn’t receive much unconditional love as a kid, you do not know what it’s like to give yourself love and attention. And if you don’t give those to yourself, others won’t be able to give them to you because you teach people how to treat you. Disregard your own feelings and other people will follow your lead. You also can’t receive what doesn’t already exist inside you, so if you’re looking for someone to fill an internal void, it won’t work. You will continue to struggle with your relationships if you do not become emotionally available to yourself first.

So how do you become more emotionally available to yourself? Start owning and valuing your own feelings. This will be uncomfortable because you’ve probably spent your life avoiding and/or discounting them. But if you don’t value your feelings, no one else will. You will continue looking for people who give you breadcrumbs of love and attention because it’s what’s familiar. Your feelings matter—even the ones that seem silly, stupid or wrong. Accept and embrace ALL of them. Do that and you’ll build your value, which in turn will make you more open, loving and emotionally available.