Why Your Baggage Makes Love Hard — And What to Do About It
- May 27
- 6 min read
Why the heart rules the mind, even if you don’t think it does. Plus — 4 simple tools to develop a consistent state of unconditional love for 5 minutes a day and no money.
A lot of people think love is hard.
It’s really not. Love is actually very simple — we all know how to love. We’re born knowing how to love ourselves and the world, unconditionally. Infants don’t know hate, don’t know shame, and don’t know fear. They are deeply attuned to their emotions, and express them clearly.
We start to learn fear at an early age. It’s impressed on our nervous systems by the people closest to us before we’re even able to speak. If your parents lived in fear, anxiety, or distress, your nervous system absorbed this as your “default” and adopted the associated behavioural patterning demonstrated by them. We continue to learn conditioning throughout our entire lives, unless we think to question it. This of course is often helpful — but it can equally be detrimental.
Fear tells us it’s not safe to love. Cultural conditioning tells us that love is conditional, typically wired to some form of scarcity and control. Disney tells us that love is a final destination, that eventually you reach a point where it’s happily ever after. Religion has taught that love needs to take one particular form, in one particular type of relationship — and if it doesn’t fit in that container, then there’s something deeply wrong, even shameful, about that.
But my experience is that love is not shameful. Love — the genuine desire to see you and the world around you thriving — is innocent, beautiful, and deeply transformative.
Love is an ongoing process. It’s a choice. And it’s simple. Love doesn’t ask questions about whether somebody is worthy of love. It just is, and it shares itself. That doesn’t mean love is without boundaries, or agreements. But it doesn’t deny, doesn’t repress, and doesn’t prevent anybody from accessing and fulfilling the life they want to live.
What’s interesting is that science backs this up. That conditioning in your mind — mental patterning, mindset, and trauma — is actually a secondary set of filters to your source of love — the heart. What challenges us the most is the conditioning that sits like a filter on top of love, obscuring our true nature. It obscures, distorts, and overshadows the brilliance — and simplicity — of our hearts with shame, old wounds, inherited stories, performative relationships, and fear.
Your heart has 40,000 neurons — quite literally a simple brain. And the vagus nerve carries more signals from the heart (and organs) to your mind than the other way around. Biologically speaking, we’re wired to live from the heart first, with evolution placing your mind with all its wonderfully complex analytical abilities downstream. Stay with me, I promise there are sources at the end of this.
What’s even more interesting is that these signals influence areas of the brain that modulate adrenaline, relaxation, sleep, anxiety, hormones, attention, fear, stress response, trauma, and emotions — in particular the amygdala, the insula, and the hypothalamus.
And there is significant evidence that practices that directly influence heart-rate variability — the rhythm of your heart — have downstream effects on the state of your mind, emotions, and reactions.
The simplest practice — you can try it right now — is to just breathe slowly. About 6 breaths per minute, if you can manage it. It’s proven to synchronize heart, breath, and blood pressure, and to meaningfully reduce depression, anxiety, and stress.
It’s a bit of a leap — but not really a very big one from where I’m sitting — to say that developing a practice of unconditional love is the simplest way to influence the mind and body to become calm, peaceful, and well-integrated. But I recognize this is easier said than done for many people, and it’s a practice I’m still building — and probably always will be.
The Tools
Here are four tools that can help you supercharge this journey. They’re simple, they’re free, and they're backed by science.
Slow breathing. About 6 breaths per minute, or as slow as you can comfortably manage. This settles the body through the heart/organ to brain axis we discussed above.
Witnessing thoughts. Yup, meditation. You don’t need lotus pose, you don’t need a meditation cushion. Just sit comfortably anywhere, and watch the thoughts that show up without identifying with them. Easier said than done, and I find setting a timer for even 1 or 2 minutes can be a great place to start. If I hear the timer and realize I haven’t been tracking my thoughts but rather just running away with them, I’ll start over for another 1-2 minutes. You want to get to the state where you’re witnessing the thoughts, but not going along for a ride with them.
Gratitude. Start small — find one simple thing, person, or circumstance in your life you’re grateful for. If I’m stumped, I find gratitude for the fact that there’s an unlimited supply of air to breathe in front of my nose at every single moment. If it’s available, see what else you can be thankful for. Make it genuine, not forced. This shifts you from sympathetic into parasympathetic — out of stress, and into relaxation.
Intentions/Affirmations. Once gratitude is established, there’s space to rewire your mind with new ideas. Lately I’ve been affirming that “My heart overflows with love.” And it does. Make sure it’s genuine and not forced… if it feels forced, try a different version that feels more true.
And then take it out into the world. Do your best to radiate love into every interaction you have. It’s a practice, not a perfect. Self-forgiveness is essential when challenges come up. But keep coming back to this idea: that if you and every person you meet truly thrives, everybody benefits. Your job is to help yourself and others thrive, simply by overflowing with love.
With love,
— Chris
References
Heart's intrinsic nervous system / heart-brain communication
Armour, J.A. (2008). Potential clinical relevance of the "little brain" on the mammalian heart. Experimental Physiology, 93(2), 165–176.
Vagus nerve afferent/efferent ratios: any current autonomic physiology textbook.
Hachem, L.D., et al. (2018). The vagus afferent network: emerging role in translational connectomics. Neurosurgical Focus, 45(3), E2. — Maps vagal afferent projections to brainstem, subcortical, and cortical structures.
Frangos, E., Ellrich, J., & Komisaruk, B.R. (2015). Non-invasive access to the vagus nerve central projections via electrical stimulation of the external ear: fMRI evidence in humans. Brain Stimulation, 8(3), 624–636.
⠀HRV biofeedback meta-analyses
Pizzoli, S.F.M., et al. (2021). A meta-analysis on heart rate variability biofeedback and depressive symptoms. Scientific Reports, 11, 6650. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-86149-7
Lehrer, P., et al. (2020). Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback Improves Emotional and Physical Health and Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback.
Goessl, V.C., Curtiss, J.E., & Hofmann, S.G. (2017). The effect of heart rate variability biofeedback training on stress and anxiety: a meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 47, 2578–2586.
⠀Meditation / mindfulness
Goyal, M., et al. (2014). Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(3), 357–368.
Hofmann, S.G., Sawyer, A.T., Witt, A.A., & Oh, D. (2010). The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(2), 169–183.
⠀Gratitude
Emmons, R.A., & McCullough, M.E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389.
Templeton Foundation, The Science of Gratitude — free white paper, accessible overview.
⠀Self-affirmation
Steele, C.M. (1988). The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 21, 261–302.
Cohen, G.L., & Sherman, D.K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333–371.
Creswell, J.D., et al. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Science, 16(11), 846–851.
⠀Affirmation caveat (worth knowing)
Wood, J.V., Perunovic, W.Q.E., & Lee, J.W. (2009). Positive self-statements: Power for some, peril for others. Psychological Science, 20(7), 860–866. — Affirmations a person doesn't actually believe can backfire for low self-esteem. → Reason gratitude comes before affirmation.
⠀Early fear learning (in utero, infancy, preverbal)
Debiec, J., & Sullivan, R.M. (2014). Intergenerational transmission of emotional trauma through amygdala-dependent mother-to-infant transfer of specific fear. PNAS, 111(33), 12222–12227.
Debiec, J., & Sullivan, R.M. (2017). The neurobiology of safety and threat learning in infancy. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 143, 49–58.
Aktar, E., et al. (2013). The interplay between expressed parental anxiety and infant behavioural inhibition predicts infant avoidance in a social referencing paradigm. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(2), 144–156.
Forbes, E.E., et al. (2019) / Kataja, E.L., et al. — eye-tracking study of 362 infants showing maternal prenatal anxiety predicts infant threat bias at 8 months. Journal of Affective Disorders.
Howland, M.A., et al. (2017). Developmental origins of the HPA axis: Implications for individual differences in depression and anxiety. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.
Feinman, S., et al. (1992). A critical review of social referencing in infancy. In Social Referencing and the Social Construction of Reality in Infancy. (Foundational source on social referencing emerging 10–14 months.)
Comments