Feeling 'Too difficult' to love?

This weekend I was crying, laughing, crying, laughing. Every few hours terror hit me and I had a wave of feeling like I was worthless, unable to cope, a drain on everyone around me and a terrible person. Then, as quickly as the wave of terror came it ended-- and there I was again eating breakfast, chatting with friends, singing along to a song.

I spent a lot of the weekend afraid (as always) that I am unlovable. There are times when I am terrified that my emotional instability makes me 'too difficult' to love. In fact, my biggest fear is that I am too 'difficult to love'. That my emotions are too strong, too overwhelming, my emotional states too shifting, too volatile, too chaotic for me to be lovable.

Image from one of my zines stating 'until you have a hurricane inside yourself' and 'fear'.

When I reflect on this fear I can come to several conclusions. Firstly, maybe it is me who finds my own emotions too strong, too overwhelming to love, rather than others around me. Perhaps I am projecting my fear onto others. I find living life with this emotional intensity very difficult, so perhaps it is me who is finding it very hard to love myself as I am.

But then I think about my experiences and I realise that I have been treated in such a way that turned my emotions into hurricanes. I think about how I couldn't learn how to regulate my emotions and they swelled up until they turned into huge, churning forces.

I also think about all of the painful experiences that I kept inside me in a huge sinkhole of loneliness that tried to swallow me. I think about my flashbacks, my persecutory inner monologues, the parts of me that split off in an attempt at self-preservation when I was in so much pain I thought I would die.

I know rationally that I am lovable. It's clear to me that I have so much love to give and that I deserve to receive it. During those times when the terror comes over me, it is time for me to acknowledge the pain enclosed inside this terror and listen to how much affection it is craving.

Do you experience waves of terror where you feel unable to cope and that you're scared you're unlovable? How do you cope with it?