Have you ever pondered over the concept of self-love?
What is the opposite of self-love?
It is not just a buzzword, I swear, not in the way I use it.
Mull these questions over.
I will answer them. Partially. (You keep many answers within yourself, you know.)
It is a rosy-hued Valentine’s Day so obviously I told you to Ditch Valentine’s Day and Hype Yourself Up! and now I will cover the ‘hype yourself up’ part further.
So What The Heck is Self-Love?: The Foundations
Theoretically, I have 6 answers for you that form the bedrock of self-love and well-being:
Mental Health - duh.
Self-Acceptance
Self-Care
Boundaries
Inner Voice
Self-Discovery
Since I am pitching you self-love, here is a little multi-coloured pie chart:
Before I go any further, My Self-Discovery Self has always been carrying books so she has to share two invaluable resources:
If you don’t sniff books, click on the title and you can access the audiobook or the Kindle version.
Fellow book-sniffing companions, there is a soft- and hard cover for us.
Maybe a from-you-for-you present for February 14th could be: How to Be the Love You Seek: Break Cycles, Find Peace, and Heal Your Relationships, Nicole LePera.
It is not your usual self-help book because it is, in fact, based on scientific research that teaches the reader how to heal relationships - starting with oneself, how unmet needs from early relationships create dysfunctional patterns (and leave us in constant internal threat - yey us!) and how to address this, namely how to create a safe space within our body and mind.
I will take emotional resilience, heart coherence, and building healthy emotional connections over pink balloons and postcards any day!
“Trauma occurred when we consistently betrayed ourselves for love, were consistently treated in a way that made us feel unworthy or unacceptable resulting in a severed connection to our authentic Self.
Trauma creates the fundamental belief that we must betray who we are in order to survive.”
— Nicole LePera
The Self + The Love
The ‘You have to find love’ messages have been suggesting that ‘love’ is a destination outside of you.
Um, okay. I will get to the whole finding-love thing but… if I don’t love myself how can I love someone else?!
Ha. Take that, finding-love statement!
Since I am genuinely annoyed with these two statements, I will give you another one:
Be the love you seek.
And that, my dear reader, requires more effort than climbing a mountain with 0 preparation and 0 equipment.
So let’s prepare: to understand self-love, you need to break it into two parts - the self and the love.
THE SELF
Let’s start with the good old mental health.
Trauma - think, things you have been through or behaviours you have witnessed that you disagree with - can cast a pretty thick shadow upon your sense of self (and, naturally, your perception of what love is).
Now, if we do not address this, we are sending ourselves on a journey of self-criticism with an end destination of ‘self-betrayal’.
To avoid this station, we need to acknowledge and honour past experiences, to befriend even the most painful ones by finding their worth.
The question you answer is, “Apart from the pain, what did I get from this?!”.
Leave nothing out - the lessons, the ‘I don’t want to repeat’ pile, the ‘I may accidentally repeat because I am used to it’ pile, the ‘this was not about me, but about him/her/them' pile.
Especially don’t leave out the narratives that are created in your mind - hear them out but do not listen to them. Hear them out but challenge them. Hear them out so you can silence them (pretending they are not there doesn’t mean they are not there).
Talk to yourself as if you are talking to your 5-year-old self and be a little kinder than you need to.
Add “self-compassion” to the pie chart because sometimes, most times, the harshest critic we face resides within our own minds.
Hug the hell out of this critic, he/she has not always been this harsh.
There is only a hurt child behind this critic - love has never been a destination but the path itself.
And it is this hurt child who empties his/her pockets and gives you a fun approach to self-discovery: Childlike wonder, spontaneity, playfulness. Inner joy.
Why is it so hard to enjoy your life?
THE LOVE
Do you know what a radical act of self-acceptance is?
Embracing yourself in your entirety.
Repeat after me, “My worth is not contingent upon external validation”.
But for this ‘entirety’ to show up, you need to honour your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.
Think of your entirety as a matryoshka doll - you give it nourishing food, it opens up a little, you give it movement, it opens up a little more, you let it express itself creatively, it shows you its essence.
Around this essence, around your healing self, you need a circle. A circle that delineates what is acceptable and what isn’t.
A circle that may change as you change, but it never changes because of someone else’s proximity to it.
What do we call this circle?
Your best friend - Boundaries.
Before we part ways for today, I have an answer and a task for you.
So, what is the opposite of self-love?
I don’t think it is self-hate. That just doesn’t do it.
I think it is self-hurt, self-sabotage, self-disempowerment.
Now, pick one.
Pick one piece of the pie(chart) and eat it.
Creatively yours,
Katrin