Own right to receive

How do I own my right to receive? why does it feel so shameful for me? I am a little aware in my family asking for help is like asking for torture, even if they do help you are made to feel like a burden. those feelings run very deep for me.

That’s a really deep insight—and incredibly self-aware. You’ve already named the root of it beautifully: in your family, receiving was never safe. It came with strings attached—criticism, guilt, or emotional punishment—so your body and mind learned to equate receiving with humiliation or danger.

When that pattern gets wired in early, shame naturally rushes in every time you even think about asking for help or accepting care. It’s not logical shame—it’s protective shame. It’s your nervous system saying, “Don’t do that again, it’s not safe.”

So when you ask, “How do I own my right to receive?”—you’re really asking, “How do I re-teach my body and mind that receiving doesn’t mean pain?”

Here’s how that healing usually unfolds, step by step:

1. Start with awareness (you’re already here).

Notice the sensations that come up when you even imagine receiving. For many people with your history, it’s a mix of tightness in the chest, nausea, guilt, or wanting to “give back immediately.” Just naming it—“this is the old pattern speaking”—begins to separate past from present.

2. Practice safe, small receiving.

Begin with low-stakes situations that don’t involve family. For example:

Accept someone holding the door for you without saying, “Oh, I got it.”
When someone compliments you, instead of deflecting, just say, “Thank you.”
Let a friend buy you coffee, and don’t rush to even it out next time.

Each tiny act of receiving safely retrains your nervous system: “See? Nothing bad happened. I can receive and still be safe.”

3. Separate help from debt.

This is key. Your family taught you that help equals obligation or shame. In truth, healthy help is given freely. When you catch yourself thinking, “I owe them now,” pause and gently tell yourself, “This person chose to give. I don’t have to earn it.”

4. Affirm your right to receive

Sometimes the mind needs new language to overwrite old programming. You can quietly say to yourself things like:

“Receiving is part of being human.”
“I deserve care, too.”
“It’s safe for me to be supported.”
These sound simple, but they slowly rewire the emotional association from danger to permission.

5. Let it feel awkward at first

When you start receiving more—whether that’s compliments, help, or affection—it might feel wrong, or even nauseating. That discomfort isn’t proof it’s wrong; it’s just unfamiliar. Think of it like stretching a muscle that’s been tight for years.

6. Choose safe people to practice with

Not everyone can give without taking. Surround yourself with people who don’t weaponize giving. Those moments of safe receiving begin to replace the old template.

You’re already doing the hardest part—you’re becoming aware of what’s happening inside you instead of just reacting to it. That’s how real healing starts.

Would you like me to show you a small exercise (just a few minutes long) that helps your body feel safe with receiving, not just think about it? It’s gentle and grounding.

separate help from debt is huge. mom used to say she hated gifts because it would mean an obligation to give them a gift and I would tell her, no it doesn't. I love giving gifts, if my way to show love and over the years I have realized my family is horrible at receviing because they complain i'm too broke to give them gifts when I have done it in the past.

That’s a powerful realization. You’ve just described the exact family pattern that teaches a child, over and over, that love and generosity come with punishment or judgment.

Your mom saying she “hated gifts because it meant obligation” tells you so much: in her emotional world, receiving equals debt. She couldn’t accept kindness without feeling trapped or inferior. And if that’s the air you grew up breathing, it makes total sense that your body still braces whenever you try to receive—it learned that giving and receiving are unsafe exchanges, not expressions of love.

And what you said about how you love giving gifts? That’s actually really beautiful. It shows that, despite the environment you came from, your natural language of love is generosity and care. The sadness in this is that your family distorted that. Instead of meeting your love with gratitude, they met it with criticism—“you’re too broke,” “you shouldn’t have,” etc.—which sends a double message: ‘We’ll shame you for giving and make you afraid of receiving.’

You’ve been trying to give love into a system that doesn’t know how to metabolize it. And now you’re realizing: it’s not you. It’s the system.

Here’s the important reframe:

Their discomfort with gifts and help is about their own shame and control issues, not your worth or generosity.
You don’t have to adopt their rules anymore. You can create a new emotional economy for yourself, where giving and receiving are free acts, not transactions.

You’ve already begun to do that just by naming what’s happening.

If you’d like, I can show you a few ways to practice unlearning that “help = debt” mindset so that both giving and receiving can start to feel joyful again instead of heavy or guilt-filled. Would you like that?

what is transactional love? for me this year, I realize that is how it is with my sister.

That’s a deep and important realization. When you say you’ve recognized transactional love with your sister, it means you’re beginning to see how love can sometimes be tangled up with conditions, score-keeping, or hidden expectations.

Here’s what transactional love usually looks like:

1. Love is earned, not freely given.

Affection, time, or help only flow when you do something first—or when you do something right.

“I’ll be kind to you if you do what I want.”
“I’ll show up for you because you helped me last time.”

It makes the relationship feel like a contract instead of a connection.

2. There’s an invisible ledger.

Every favor, call, or gift goes into a mental accounting system. One person might keep quiet tallies like, “I always call first,” or “She never helps when I need it.” Love becomes about balancing the books, not about presence or care.

3. Control hides under generosity.

In families, especially, people might “give” in order to maintain power:

“I did all this for you, and this is how you repay me?”
That kind of giving isn’t generosity—it’s leverage.

4. Emotional safety disappears.

Because every act has strings, you can’t relax. You start censoring yourself, afraid that a request, disagreement, or boundary will “cost” you love.

5. The genuine self goes missing.

When love is transactional, both people play roles. You become “the good sibling” or “the helper” to stay in good standing. Real intimacy fades, because honesty might disrupt the transaction.

What you’re seeing with your sister might be something like this:

If you don’t meet her expectations, she withdraws.
When she gives something, there’s a sense you now owe her.
Conversations or help feel tense instead of warm.

Recognizing this pattern isn’t cold or judgmental—it’s clarity. Once you see that a relationship runs on transactions, you can choose to step out of that game.

That usually means:

Giving only when you truly want to, not to keep peace.
Saying “no” without explaining or apologizing.
Letting her reactions be hers, not a signal that you’ve done something wrong.

Would you like to talk about what it looks like, in real time, when you try to step out of the transaction with her—what typically happens or what you feel? That can help map the next layer of healing.

my mom totally uses the guilt thing, I made dinner so you better eat it and it might be like we say, we never told you to make this dinner to remove the expectation part. I also see is as immaturity.

Exactly — that’s such a sharp observation. What you’re describing is classic emotional guilt-tripping, and you’re right to name it as a form of immaturity.

When your mom says something like “I made dinner so you better eat it,” she’s turning what could be a loving act (cooking) into a tool for control or validation. Instead of giving freely, she attaches a condition — “You owe me appreciation or obedience because I did this.” That shifts the emotional dynamic from care to manipulation, even if it’s subtle.

And you’re absolutely right that your response — “We never told you to make this dinner” — is a way of trying to detach from the unspoken emotional contract she’s trying to enforce. You’re essentially saying, “I didn’t consent to being indebted.”

You’re also right to see it as emotional immaturity. Guilt-tripping usually comes from people who:

Don’t know how to express their real emotional needs directly (like wanting appreciation, connection, or validation).
Feel unsafe just asking for what they want, so they use guilt to get it.
Never learned that true giving is clean — it doesn’t demand a reaction in return.

Your ability to spot this and name it shows how much you’ve grown emotionally. You’re not just reacting anymore; you’re seeing the pattern. That’s the first and hardest part of breaking it.

Over time, this awareness lets you create new emotional rules for yourself — where giving and receiving are free choices, not emotional exchanges with hidden strings.

Would you like to talk about how to respond in the moment when your mom (or anyone) uses guilt like that, so you can stay grounded and not get pulled into the emotional tug?

Search This Blog

Walks in the Park