First and foremost, before expecting to help yourself in the best way possible, you have to understand what the fear of love really is.
If you suffer from Philophobia, you’re terrified of being in love, loving someone or forming any type of romantic attachment to the other person.
At first, this fear doesn’t manifest itself much, and you see it as a way of dealing with your past traumas.
After all, it is completely natural that we all want to avoid getting hurt.
However, with time, this fear becomes your defence mechanism.
It makes you build walls around your heart, and it causes you to become a closed person who isn’t ready to let anyone in.
As well as every other fear, the fear of love is also irrational and something you can’t control, as much as you’d like to.
It’s not that you have the ability of waking up one morning and deciding that you want to stop being afraid.
Actually, in most cases, people are not even aware that they suffer from this condition because they get themselves involved in different relationships which they run away from when things get serious and the second they catch themselves developing feelings.
Some people are scared of attaining a deeper connection with another person, some are terrified of intimacy, and some fear commitment.
People with diagnosed philophobia are ready to do whatever it takes to run away from love, and the mere thought of falling in love scares them.
Once you’ve learned everything there is to know about the fear of love, it’s time to deal with some introspection and admit to yourself that you have a serious problem you need to fight.
Remember that this is nothing for you to be ashamed of and that many people deal with the same issues—with or without knowing it.
Besides, repressing your emotions and pretending that everything is OK when it clearly isn’t will only make things worse.
It might be easier to act like your fear of love doesn’t exist, but sooner or later, everything you’ve tried to hide under the carpet will get to you, and you’ll have to face it.
So, why not start now?
You’ve obviously recognized yourself in some of these symptoms of philophobia, and that is always the first step toward helping yourself.
It’s time to be brave enough and look at your fear of love straight in the eye.
Time to remember how strong you are and to be certain that you’ll successfully defeat your fear of love.
Remember that this condition is quite serious and not something you should disregard.
However, the fear of love can be worked on, and here are the ways to overcome it.
1. Get to the bottom of your fear
One of the first steps in the process of overcoming your fear of love is analyzing all of its segments.
If this is something you want to defeat, there are some questions only you can give the answers to.
When did you first feel this fear of love? How did it manifest itself? What was your reaction?
When was the first time you started doubting that you might have a problem? How did you choose to deal with it?
Did you ignore your fear of love or did you decide to work on it right away?
Why did this feeling appear for the first time? Was it due to a negative experience you went through?
Were you hurt in the past? Do you regret letting the wrong people in?
Did a negative experience kill your faith in love? Did one wrong person made you believe that every time you give a shot to someone new, the outcome will always be the same?
Did your toxic ex convince you that you aren’t meant to be loved and that you should give up on romantic relationships all together?
Is there a possibility that at one point in your life, you subconsciously came to the conclusion that the only way to protect yourself from any more pain is to put your guard up?
Were you ever truly in love? Or has this fear of love been present for as long as you can remember?
Were you impacted by the events in your surroundings? Was your childhood abusive? Did you go through some relationship-caused trauma with a friend or and family member which had a severe effect on you?
2. Identify your specific fear
The fear of love isn’t manifested in the same way in everyone. It has different subtypes and aspects.
Actually, nobody is afraid of love itself because love is one of the most beautiful feelings in the world–we’re afraid of the things that we expect to come hand-in-hand with love.
Some people are scared of putting themselves out there.
With time, being single became their comfort zone, they convinced themselves that a romantic partner would just disrupt their lives and that they’re better of alone.
On the other hand, some are scared of rejection. Their ego is so fragile that they couldn’t stand getting NO as an answer.
This group is panically afraid that they’re actually not good for anyone, so they prefer not giving it a shot with the opposite sex at all.
There are also people whose fear of love is actually nothing more than the fear of heartbreak.
Naturally, we’re all scared of getting hurt, but with these people, it goes beyond that–their fears control them and block them completely.
That is why it’s important for you to determine your own specific fear. What is the thing that scares you the most out of all those mentioned above?
3. Remember that you can’t control everything
Another thing you should have in mind when it comes to overcoming your fear of love is the fact that you can’t control all life circumstances, other people and their actions.
However, instead of trying to change that, embrace the beauty of the unknown.
As much as it would be easier for all of us to always know what will happen and to be able to control how everyone else treats us, that is simply impossible.
And that is the beauty of life–never being certain of what tomorrow brings and never knowing what to expect.
The thing which will without a doubt help you with your fear of love is to let go, just for once.
To let go of your need for control, to let go of expectations, and to be a little more spontaneous.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t think your decisions through before making them, but relaxing and going with the flow from time to time won’t hurt you.
Besides, you have to learn that you can’t change the past.
You can’t impact how some people treated you before, and you can’t make them change their ways.
Nevertheless, what you can do is accept everything you can’t control, including your history.
You can learn from it, and you can take it as a growing point.
4. But you can control yourself
Even though not everything going on around you is in your hands, what you can have full control of is how you react to things.
You’re the only one who chooses how to accept life’s circumstances and the only one who has control over your own emotions.
I know things don’t look that way, but the truth is that you’re a master of your own fears, including your fear of falling in love.
You’re the one who made it, the one who allowed it to grow, and the one who will conquer it.
Your fear is the product of your own brain, and your brain is the only one who can make it vanish and the one who can chase it away.
So instead of trying to change the world, change yourself–or to be exact, the parts of yourself you don’t like.
Instead of expecting someone to show up out of nowhere with a magic stick which will make all of your fears go away, remember that the magic stick is in your hand and that you can only count on yourself when it comes to overcoming your fear of love.
Instead of expecting someone else to save you, start saving yourself this instant!
5. Stop focusing on the negative things
A fear of love is not a positive emotion.
Instead, it is something that overwhelms you with negative thoughts, and something that makes you feel bad about yourself.
Consequently, due to this fear, after a while, you start connecting love with something bad and negative.
That is exactly why you have to get rid of these prejudices concerning love if you want to move forward.
Nevertheless, this is much easier said than done.
How many times have you heard people telling you to start thinking more positively?
After all, wouldn’t we all like to have a switch in our heads which gives us the ability to turn off pessimistic thoughts and turn on optimistic ones?
Well, sadly things don’t work that way.
So how can you stop connecting love with something dark, negative, and painful, especially when most of your past relationships brought you nothing but resentment, fear of abandonment, and other emotional traumas?
Well, even though your romantic history is an awful experience which made you feel like this in the first place, I’m sure that each one of your loves also brought some good things.
Remember how being in love felt like having butterflies in your stomach? How you felt like you could accomplish anything you set your mind to?
Remember how it felt good walking next to someone you love? How it was amazing to feel that deep connection with another human being?
Not having any of these things at the moment shouldn’t make you depressed because you’re the only one not allowing yourself to experience them once more.
That is exactly why you have to force yourself to think about all of your beautiful memories connected with love every time your brain involuntary starts having pessimistic and negative thoughts–it’s the only way for you to start connecting love with happiness, peace, and other positive emotions and the only way toward your full recovery.
6. Allow your broken heart to heal
If you’ve been through intense emotional pain in the past, it is perfectly natural for you to be traumatized.
It is clear that you carry a lot of emotional baggage around which has been weighing you down, and that is something you can’t get rid of as easily as you’d wish.
Pretending that you’ve healed overnight and that your fear of love is magically gone won’t make you feel any better.
Jumping from one relationship to another or getting yourself involved in casual sex or meaningless affairs won’t fix you either.
Don’t get me wrong–I’m not saying that your fear of love should be the reason for you to stay single forever or that you should let this fear paralyze you for the rest of your life.
What I’m saying is for you to take your time and do things at your own pace and rhythm, now that you’ve identified your problem and have decided to do your best to resolve it.
Don’t expect everything to fall into place overnight. Instead, give your heart time to heal and to be ready for new battles.
Establish small, reachable goals, and be proud of yourself every time you achieve one of them.
See this healing as a step-by-step process that takes time, devotion, patience, and energy.
Start with baby steps–such as letting someone new into your life without immediately labelling things or cracking your brains open about what will happen next.
Live one day at a time, and give yourself a high five after every day in which your fear of love didn’t get the best of yo.
Before you know it, you’ll turn around and see that you’ve made incredible progress without even being aware of it.
That all of your baby steps have brought you a long way and that you were never closer of getting rid of your fear of love completely.
7. Don’t idealize love
One thing many people who struggle with their fear of love do wrong is that they idealize love.
They assume that when they overcome their fear, everything in their life will magically fall into place.
Well, I hate to be the one to break your bubble, but it won’t.
Yes, love can make you feel better and a healthy relationship will improve your life, but it certainly won’t make all of your worries and problems go away.
You need to stop idealizing love and expecting it to be this omnipotent force which can do anything because these high expectations are one of the things which brought you here in the first place.
When you expect too much of love, it is natural for you to get disappointed faster and easier than everyone else.
If you pin all of your hopes on one person, seeing them as your lover, best friend, family member, your rock, biggest support, and your entire
Universe, it is natural that losing them feels like the end of the world.
That is why you should avoid seeing love as the only purpose of your existence and the only thing which can give you meaning.
It is one thing if you’re in a place in your life right now in which you don’t need and want a romantic relationship—which is completely acceptable and more than OK.
It is something completely different if you’re escaping love out of fear.
8. Stick up for your standards, but don’t ask for perfection
Another thing you need to understand in the process of overcoming your fear of love is that everything you’re feeling isn’t exclusively your fault.
Even though taking responsibility for your wrong choices is a mature thing to do and a huge sign of progress, remember that there is a thin line between being aware of your mistakes and constantly blaming yourself for everything bad in your life.
Your fear of love probably would never have existed if it weren’t for some toxic people in your life who broke your heart and emotionally damaged you.
It wouldn’t have been real if it weren’t for your shitty ex who convinced you that everyone in your future will be the same and who made you believe that it’s better to spend the rest of your life overly careful and afraid rather than risk getting hurt once more.
Well, instead of wasting your energy on overthinking about the people who did you harm and about events that went on, learn from your past mistakes and make a decision of never repeating them.
After all, you can’t expect someone who has all the qualities of the person who hurt you to help you heal and to help you chase away your fears.
That is exactly why you need to realize that there is a difference between not letting the wrong people into your heart and not letting anyone in it.
Keeping yourself guarded and protecting yourself from potentially toxic partners means that you’ve learned your lesson and that you’re one step closer to overcoming your fear of love.
Healing this fear doesn’t mean making yourself available for everyone who wants to become a part of your life.
Instead, it means choosing better and knowing who is worthy of you tearing down your walls.
Remember that not everyone has the intention of using you and choose the people who will value your efforts, the people who will give you back the love they’ve been getting from you and the people who will appreciate you as a person.
Instead of running away from everyone you see yourself falling in love with, listen to your intuition and move away from those you objectively see might take advantage of your vulnerabilities.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that you should wait around for a perfect person.
The truth is that you can never be 100% sure about who will hurt you and who is worthy of your time and energy.
Even if someone seems flawless, that is not a guarantee that they won’t break your heart in pieces.
Being choosy about your potential partners is a must ,but cutting people off at the first sign of trouble doesn’t mean you’ve gotten rid of your fear of love.
9. Remember that you will survive
Heartbreak is never easy. Losing someone you love or being betrayed by the person you thought you could trust your life with is one of the most devastating feelings in the world.
When you’re going through something like this, you see it as the end of the world.
You don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, and you never see yourself making a full recovery.
However, all of it is a part of life, and these things happen—as insensitive as this might sound. We’ve all been through it, and we’ve all survived.
After all, you are the one who made it through each one of your breakups.
Yes, all of them left scars on your soul and they even caused this fear of falling in love but not one of your heartbreaks killed you, did it now?
Well, even if something like this happens to you again, I promise you that you will survive.
Yes, you’ll go through hell but eventually, you’ll see all of that pain as a tough but valuable lesson.
On the other hand, you can never know what might happen unless you take a chance.
The truth is that you might fail once more when you overcome your fear of love.
Nevertheless, there is also a possibility that putting yourself back out there is the best decision of your life because is could be a chance of you meeting your soulmate and forever person. Trust me—that is a risk worth taking.
10. Ask for help
Fear of love is a serious condition, and it has to be treated that way.
So, if you think this is something you can’t overcome on your own, there is no shame in asking for help.
Even though a lot of introspection is needed in the process of defeating philophobia, talking to someone you trust about your problem is always helpful.
You can start by sharing your thoughts and feelings with your friends and family and if that doesn’t help, seeking professional help is always a good choice.
