It's a feature, not a bug.
“How in the world could our love for God be ‘groundless’ and ‘unmotivated’, let alone ‘sovereign’? It would indeed be ‘a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast, ‘I’m no beggar. I love you disinterestedly.’ Our love of God cannot help being largely if not entirely need-love…. But such need-love, whose goal is its own fulfillment, is also the nucleus and the beginning of all our loving. It is simply the elemental dynamics of our being itself, set in motion by the act that created us. Hence it is fundamentally impossible for us to control it, let alone to annul it. It is the ‘yes’ that we ourselves are before we are consciously able to say ‘yes’ (or even ‘no’).”
-Josef Pieper, “On Love,” Faith, Hope, Love pp 221-222.
Your need for gentleness, kindness, love, and compassion is not a weakness. It’s a beautiful, integral part of your humanity and a reflection of the nature of your particular soul. Cultivate these things everywhere you can: in how you care for yourself, in how you care for others, in how you commune with God. This need is the way, not the obstacle. Everything else that arises as an ‘obstacle’ is just an illusion, just an attempt to keep you small, to keep you in the hall of mirrors.
Your fear of abandonment is absolutely reasonable. It is the knife wound around which your heart grew and took shape. You’re not going to heal this wound by neglecting and demeaning it. You’re not going to heal it by fawning and grinning while you dig your heel into it to stop the bleeding. You’re not going to heal it by burying it in apologies. You’re not going to heal it by becoming nicer or prettier or more competent.
You don’t have to optimize your appearance or your endurance to hide every bad hand you are dealt.