When some of our fundamental needs go unmet in our childhoods, we emerge into adulthood with a hunger or a craving for those needs to be met.

We then seek out ways to get those needs met, often harming ourselves in the process.

You’ll have heard the expression, ‘I look for love in all the wrong places.’

We do that because we have a deep hunger or craving for love, left over from our early life when we didn’t experience the love we needed to feel.

Transfer this to dating and romantic relationships and we end up in trouble.

Deep down, we know intuitively that the person in front of us can’t give us the love we desire, yet our hunger or craving for the missing piece of the puzzle prompts us to override our intuition. The hunger blinds us to the red flags.

I used to look for love in all the wrong places, until I found ways to heal those early life wounds – imperfectly because the scars remain – and to try to give myself what was missing in childhood, again imperfectly.

Only then – only when I had turned down the volume on the craving and satisfied the hunger to a reasonable degree – could I be open to healthy love and feel attracted to emotionally available people.

Thanks to this process, I am now in a healthy and loving relationship.

That’s not to say that I’ve stopped looking for love in the wrong places – I still look for approval, acceptance, validation, affirmation etc. – all of which, in my child’s mind, were equivalent to love – through my work or in other ways, often acting against my best interests and overriding my intuition.

There’s another hunger I carry that’s been getting me into trouble lately.

It’s the hunger for belonging.

I can’t remember how the first few days of my life transpired but I can imagine – I can sense how they went from the wounds I carry inside.

I emerged from the cosy, warm, cocoon of the womb, expecting to find the same feeling of safety and belonging on the other side.

Yet because of my parents’ own emotional challenges, they struggled to connect with me emotionally – to see me and therefore soothe me and help me to feel safe. So my natural desire and need, as a helpless baby, to feel at home, to feel like I belonged, to feel welcome and to feel secure was thwarted.

Those needs went unmet.

That missing feeling of belonging created a hunger in me, a craving – a craving for belonging, to feel part of, to feel part of a family.

Fast forward to adulthood and this craving drives me to run around looking for surrogate families, searching for that elusive sense of belonging, even when I don’t want to, even when I’m tired and need to rest, even when I know deep down that what I’m about to do isn’t in my best interests.

I seek out groups and teams and crowds because I desperately want to belong but my hunger is so strong and is based on such an early wound that it never feels enough.

No matter how much I try to belong, I can never belong enough to heal that early wound.

My efforts can also be counter-productive, because on a subconscious level, people pick up on our hunger for belonging, our craving for attachment, and some people will be spooked by this. They’ll find it too much, overbearing or suffocating and they’ll walk in the opposite direction.

This may be familiar to you from romantic relationships – the more you want someone and the more desperate you feel, the faster you run towards them and the faster they run away.

It’s taken a long time, many years of healing, but I am starting to understand that I need to meet my own need for belonging. I need to cultivate the sense that I belong to myself. And I need to find healthy ways to build a sense of belonging that aren’t based on a desperate search.

I experienced this on the beach this morning.

I spent the first part of my morning searching for belonging, wanting to be part of a group but feeling on the periphery (a familiar feeling).

Then I spent a bit of time on the beach on my own with my dog, watching the sun’s rays glisten on the water and the waves gently roll in, feeling the peace of the early morning, feeling my nervous system relax.

And in that moment, I felt connected. I felt at peace. I felt like I belonged. I felt at home.

It will be different for all of us but for me, Nature gives me that sense of belonging that I’ve craved all my life.

Swimming in the sea gives me that sense of belonging – reminiscent perhaps of floating in my mother’s womb.

Connecting to something greater than myself brings me that sense of belonging.

I hope I can remember this when I feel tempted to run around looking for belonging, exhausting myself and neglecting my real needs.

And if you have a hunger for belonging, I hope you can remember it too.

I belong to myself – that’s the greatest gift.

You belong to yourself – that’s a feeling worth cultivating.

Resources to help you to heal and grow

Thank you for reading. I am here to support you on your journey of healing and growth.

My first book, How to Fall Love, includes many tools to help you to connect to your feelings and overcome unhealthy patterns and behaviours, as well as the story of my personal journey of healing.

I have numerous online courses and I’m offering a 15 percent discount on four of my self-paced courses/recorded workshops that will support you to have a healthier relationship with yourself and with others. Use the code boundaries at the checkout to access 15 percent off any of these items (valid until the end of next week):

Managing Triggers to Build Healthy Relationships (Workshop recording)

Break Free from Emotional Overeating (Workshop recording)

How to Find an Emotionally Available Partner (Course)

Step Inside – Reconnect to Your True Self (Course)

I work 1:1 with clients who are looking to create a healthy romantic relationship and/or build a fulfilling life. Explore my coaching offerings and book a free discovery call on my website.

My TEDx talk on Finding Courage, Overcoming Fear and Breaking Free will be released in a few weeks. Keep checking this blog or my website: www.katherinebaldwin.com to view it.