Self-Love

Self-Love; these two little words are so incredibly powerful that they can change your life. Honestly, they really can. If you want to understand how, read on.

What is it?

Building self-love is a life-long pursuit but it is one that is not only worth the effort, it can also be a joyous journey. Self-love is all about the relationship we have with ourselves and just like any love, it needs to be nurtured.

Of course, how we see ourselves will change as we go through life. Sometimes we might feel a healthy pride when we think about who and what we are and other times we can be faced with feelings of doubt and lacking value; not really worthy of being loved. Yet, self-love is capable of holding us through the difficult times and helping us get through them.

Self-love is about holding ourselves in high esteem and having confidence in our worth, no matter what is happening around us. It is different to arrogance. Arrogance tends to come from a deep-rooted fear of not being enough or lacking in some way and so arrogance steps in to counteract these feelings. Self-love is about loving oneself with all of our flaws because we retain confidence in our worth. It’s about loving, liking, appreciating and accepting your individual qualities. It’s the degree to which you believe that, deep down, you are worth treasuring.

What are the benefits?

When we take the time to understand who we are and how we are evolving as a person; when we learn about ourselves, we can learn to love that person. It’s difficult to love when we don’t know a person well.

With a better understanding of yourself you learn what you needs are. Self-love then helps you to have positive regard for yourself so you meet those needs. This means that self-love and wellbeing are intrinsically linked. With self-love life’s frustrations become more bearable and this enables a more considerate attitude towards others and to yourself. In this way our relationships with others improve also.

There’s evidence for this too, a study published in the journal, Clinical Psychological Science, found that participants who told themselves kind thoughts displayed lower heart rates and sweat responses. This suggests that being able to support and be there for ourselves turns down the threat response and helps us to feel safe and relaxed.

What gets in the way?

When we take a look at ourselves there are a number of things that might get in the way of self-love. Here at Hazelwood, these are the top five obstacles.

Being too hard on yourself
Telling ourselves we are not lovable
Not communicating boundaries
Not meeting our needs
People-pleasing

Being too hard on ourselves

It’s one thing having high expectations but striving to excel all the time is the land of fantasy. Being too hard on yourself is not a loving act. There is no shame in making mistakes; sometimes things happen so we just cannot follow through on our promises; and it’s human to act badly sometimes. When we do things like this it can cause us to feel guilty. We have guilt to push us to right a wrong and/or to learn from what has happened. The process of improving our lives includes taking those lessons that will be helpful for us in the future. We have to learn to be kind to ourselves and remember that we are all facing lessons as we go through life.

Not Loveable

If we are told something often enough, we are going to start to believe it. If you find yourself telling yourself that you are not loveable think how you can change the dialogue.

Setting Boundaries, Meeting our Needs and Avoiding People-Pleasing

All of these set the parameters of what we will and will not tolerate, both from the people in our lives but also from ourselves. When we meet our needs we tell ourselves that we are worth caring for. When we ignore our needs we disregard ourselves and so tell ourselves we are not worth caring for. Remember if we are told something often enough we will start to believe it.

Getting More Self-Loving

Taking care of yourself is an important part of self-love. You check in on those people you love to see how they are, so a good start is to check in on yourself. Ask yourself:

I feel…
I need…
I accept… about myself
I accept… from others
I do not accept… from others

Self-love is simply doing for you what you would do for someone you love totally and completely. Here’s an example. When someone you love pushes themselves really hard, berates themselves for getting flustered and tells themselves they are useless, would you stand by and not defend them? Most people would soothe that person and reassure them that they are doing well. Most people would encourage that person to take a rest and try again later with a fresh, healthy mind.

If you start changing how you treat yourself to how you would treat someone you completely love – you’ll soon see that you are on the right path.

Now is the Time

With self-love in your life you open the doors to fulfilment and joy. With self-love, things can only get better.

If you want to learn more about self-love and how you can learn to give yourself more of it, contact us to arrange an appointment with one of our counsellors.