How Jesus Heals Our Wrong Identities Because We Feel Unlovable
Do You Ever Feel Unlovable?
“Unlovable” is a label we sometimes wear based on our feelings or beliefs about ourselves.
Even when we know intellectually it isn’t true, the feeling can still cling. It can seep into our thoughts, reactions, and even our relationships tainting our understanding and perspective. “When truth is filtered through painful lived experience, it becomes hard to separate reality from perception.” Therefore, many times our perception informs our reality rather than truth.
If I look back over my own life, there were seasons when I felt unlovable. I’m not sure I could always say I believed it as a firm conclusion, but the feeling was there. And feelings, when unaddressed, have a way of shaping how we interpret everything: what people mean, what they don’t mean, what they say, what they don’t say, and what we assume must be true about us.
The “unlovable” label doesn’t show up alone, but it often connects to other wrong identities. Failure can feed it. Unforgiven can feed it. Rejection can feed it. Discouragement can feed it. And here’s the part we don’t like to admit: the more unlovable we feel, the more unlovable we can become. Not because it’s who we are, but because of what hurt does to us if it goes untreated.
When we believe we are unlovable, or even unloved, it shapes our tone, our posture, our assumptions, and our reactions. It can make us withdraw. Or it can make us fight. It can make us guarded. It can make us sharp or mean. And then people respond to our guardedness or sharpness. Often times their response mirrors our own further reinforcing the very fear we already had.
Left unhealed and untransformed by truth, we live in a painful cycle.
Isolation Convinces Us We’re Unlovable
In my newest HER Podcast episode, How A Feeling Of "Unloved" Promotes The Wrong Identity Of "Unlovable", licensed professional counselor, Taylor Draughn, and I talk about the wrong identity of unloved/unlovable through the story of the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5:25–34.
This woman suffered for twelve years—a long time to carry any pain—physical or emotional. Her pain went beyond physical suffering. In her culture, the issue of blood classified her as “unclean” which meant untouchable. Isolated from normal life, she would have lived as an outcast and treated like a threat rather than a person. Imagine the damage to a woman’s soul over time.
Isolation has a particular power to turns us inward, narrowing our world to our wounds. It amplifies our pain because we have fewer voices speaking truth, fewer relationships offering comfort, and fewer reminders that we belong.
Taylor addressed isolation as a big part of depression and that it can become a cycle with depression. She said, “The more depressed you are, usually the more isolated you become. And the more isolated you are, the more depressed… so it's like this cycle that kind of feeds off of each other to some degree.” Whether isolation is forced upon us (like this woman experienced) or chosen by us as a form of self-protection, it can become fertile ground to make us feel unlovable and make us believe that we are how we feel.
When “I Can’t Change” Becomes A Prison
Another thing that stood out to me from Mark 5 is the discouragement that comes from long-term suffering. Scripture says she “suffered many things from many physicians” and spent all she had, and instead of getting better she grew worse.
That kind of unchanging circumstance can create internal narratives:
This is just my lot in life.
I’ll always be this way.
It’s too late for me.
I’ve tried—nothing changes.
Maybe it’s just me - I’m the problem.
Imagine being a woman who had an on-going narrative of unloved or unlovable because of your life circumstances out of your control. “It’s hard to imagine these internal narratives being disconnected from a wrong identity.” I don’t see how it could be. If the prevailing theme of her life circumstances were suffering and a sense of feeling unloved, those two would be woven together. And if they went on and on with no end in sight, it is only natural for discouragement to arise.
The problem with allowing discouragement a place to set up shop in our heart and mind and not allow the truth of God’s word to challenge it is that discouragement can harden to resignation. Resignation is devoid of hope and we are not hopeless people. Because we have Jesus, we always have hope. In Christ, there is healing; there is transformation, and our story does not have to stay the same.
If you have a situation that is unchanging and discouragement has become your prison, allow God’s word to challenge the lies.
Nothing is too hard for God. (Jeremiah 32:17)
With God all things are possible. (Matthew 19:26)
God is able to do exceedingly and abundantly above all we can ask or imagine according the power working in us. (Ephesians 3:20)
Rejection’s Power To Identify Us
When I think about feeling unloved or unlovable, another woman in Scripture comes to mind - Queen Vashti. Scripture doesn’t tell us much about her, but it tells enough to see the pain of human rejection.
The book of Esther begins with Queen Vashti’s husband, the king throwing a party for all his officials and the powerful “nobles and the princes of the provinces.”(Esther 1:3). The king bragged about his possessions and on the seventh day of this extravagant celebration he called for the queen because he wanted to show her and her beauty off, also as his possession.
He did not call her because he wanted her presence or desired her heart. He desired to display his trophy. I can imagine the feeling of unloved she must have had. She reacted with indignation, and I presume, anger. Unloved, she lived out unlovable refusing to come and honor the king. She rejected the king and he rejected her. She was officially removed from her position and rejected by her husband as his wife.
This story portrays a woman unloved who became unlovable. Relational wounds and disappointments can lead to responses that intensify our pain. Sometimes a bad attitude is a cover for grief. Anger can be a coping mechanism for rejection. And being hard to love may be a protective barrier for a deeply bruised or bleeding heart.
But the truth is, a woman identifying with a label of unloved or unlovable is a woman in need of healing. If you have ever thought, “I feel unlovable,” you need a supernatural, spiritual, and emotional healing that only comes from Jesus.
One Touch of Jesus
Go back to the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5. After all the pain and suffering, the unfair and wrong circumstances that labeled her unloved, hope rose when she heard Jesus was near. She desperately pressed her way through a crowd, and Jesus made her whole. No more broken body. No more broken identity. Instead, He identified her as “Daughter.”
That one word was not accidental. It was family language that said, “You belong. You are loved.” And Jesus still does that for us today. He still touches where our hearts bleed. He still calls us “daughter.” And He still makes us new and breaks us free from wrong identities.
What To Do When You Feel Unloved Or Unlovable
Be willing to do some personal soul searching. - Do you ever feel unlovable or believe that you are unlovable? We can’t fix a problem until we find the root or true source of the problem.
Ask Jesus to reveal the root of the problem. “Jesus, where did this begin? What is at the core of my issue?”
Replace lies with the truth of Scripture. (You are loved. You are chosen. You belong. You are God’s beloved child.)
Let God reshape you in the process. This is one reason I wrote My Maker & Me: A Six-Week Bible Study of Becoming God’s Beautiful Vessel based on Isaiah 64:8—God as the Potter, us as the clay. He doesn’t shame the clay. He shapes it. He doesn’t reject what’s broken. He remakes it.
If this is you today, don’t stay stuck in the label. Bring it to Jesus. Press toward Him. Let Him speak the truest name over you. Because “unloved” and “unlovable” are not your true identity.
“Daughter” is.
