"How can you love me?"

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I also felt unloved off and on growing up.

Yes, mix-matching words from different country is something I always did. I don't know japanese but greek and german are language highly specific whe it cames to psicology/philosophy.

I still have this problem wth my NT family members. I generally keep a tally of all the nice things they have done for me and generally, the good stuff is usually longer than the bad list. If the bad list exceeds the good, then they no longer love me. It sounds supidly simple but it usually works. Of course there is a few exceptions to the rule, like my father... I inherited autsm from him and we are often at odds with each other. On the plus side, he has never lied to me.

Well. Being a teenager is hell on legs so I dont know what you could do but wait another decade...

nothing to add on the advice part.

but i wish that phrase "can't love you if you don't love yourself" would just fade away. because it sounds true, but it's not. i can assure you, from having been on both sides of it, that yes, you can love someone who doesn't "love" themselves.

how would one even define that anyway? what if they loved, say 68% of themselves? would that alter things? (i'm being silly to try to illustrate this point.)

more accurate: if you internally denigrate yourself, what will be hard to come by is getting *respectful treatment* from others. by respectful, i mean others listen to you and take your ideas and well-being seriously, and don't try to change a bunch of stuff about you, etc.

and always remember: what you think of yourself is merely one person's opinion. just as you have opinions about others--which can change, and which obviously are not a definitive statement about that person--so people have opinions about the person that is themselves. and this opinion can and does change.

it's made up of a combination of the reactions of others to oneself and the "ideal self" one has and how you think you measure up to that. so: social/cultural conditioning plus inner likes/perceptions/sense of what's desirable and what's not.

others may or may not share your opinions, about anything.

I feel so much better. I read some of your responses to my daughter and she agrees with what most of you said. She doesn't "understand or relate" to love. She knows I will do anything for her and have, but she still struggles with the emotion itself. Thank you for helping me "get it". She means the world to me and I wouldn't change her for anything. I only hope she may one day know how much I love her--no matter how she interprets it.

You're very welcome Carolina girl.... Have you ever thought of getting her to sign on this site? She would enjoy it there, maybe she will start to understand more of who she is? Because that's what its done to me

That's just an thought that had came up in my mind

She will eventually find out someday but its not very easy. Have you also tried to explain it in full details, sometimes that helps with me...

Your daughter will figure it out eventually. Be patient.

Mine just made it hard to understand why anyone loves me.

I think that is love: being willing to do anything for someone and not wanting to change who they are because who they are is OK. A very wise woman once told me that love is not an emotion. Love is a choice.

If she knows that you will do anything for her, she knows that you love her. And I think knowing you are loved is superior to feeling you are loved. From what I understand and have dealt with on a limited basis, feelings change over time. Knowledge does not. Knowledge may eventually prove to be false, but it will not go away. I will always "know" that Pluto is a planet, unless I have a stroke or something. That will be in my base of things I know. Even though some people have said it's not a planet anymore, that doesn't make my knowledge of it as a planet go away-- if that makes any sense.

There is a big difference between knowing with ones head and knowing with ones heart. I struggle with the latter, and it is a struggle. Your daughter will struggle with those concepts and she may never reconcile them. But she does love you. Love is just different for her than it is for you. No less real and no less genuine, just different.