How Can I Love Myself?

In this session, I answer the question, "I have a lot of difficulties with self-love, any advice on how to deal with this?" Offering insights drawn from cognitive behavior therapy, insight, somatics, mindfulness, meta meditation, and parts work.

With practice, you can grow to love yourself.

Transcript

Question. I have a lot of difficulty with self-love. Any experience with this or tips for this? Good question. Simply put, Yes, I have had it. Experience and challenges with self-love. And I think that most people do from time to time. But if you've had a challenging past, If you've had things arise in your life that you've had to process and deal with, It can be extra challenging. Can be extra hard. When we grow up. It's the role of our caregivers to model. How we are spoken to is often how we end up speaking to ourself. If we are accepted and guided with love and compassion. That's typically how we process our inner space later in life. We haven't been offered that, Either through neglect or abuse or just a lack of knowledge. Circumstance. It can be a challenge. So yeah, I have experience. With. A struggle with self-love. There are a couple of responses that I would offer you, And I guess I can model this around the cognitive behavioural therapy idea of thoughts, Feelings and behaviours all impacting one another. What I mean by that is, Is we can impact. Or we can address the idea of self-love in a number of different ways. The first one could be through a metta meditation or a loving-kindness practice. Nurturing ourselves, And even if we don't fully believe it, And with the words of the intention behind the words, May I be free of ill will, May I be free of suffering, May I be full of loving kindness, May I be happy. Again and again and again and again. Hand on the heart space, Connecting to ourself in this moment, Or us as a child. Initially that practice or that process will likely feel forced. Or fake. That's okay. There's something with this practice that if you do it enough, It opens you up. And starts to work, You sort of start to believe it. But there's a number of little tricks you can do imagining yourself as a baby. Imagining the good aspects of yourself and similar things like that. But you can also approach this self-love. In a roundabout way. You get curious. Why do I struggle with self-love? Like asking the question. And just feeling the body. It's like, Oof, Self-love. What part of the body is speaking up? This is like a mind-body connection. It's the idea of the body keeps the score. You're holding onto something. There's a barrier there that needs to be listened to and released. Ooh, Self-love, When I say self-love. Certain. Certainum. Parts of my body activate. That come along with certain memories. Okay, What's underneath that? So I'm almost doing a cognitive introspective approach. As I go deeper and deeper and deeper asking why, Why am I struggling with self-love? Way, Way, Way, Way, Way, And eventually you get to the core answer. And that core answer will be unique to all of us. Often times it's a function of something that happened in the past that we haven't yet accepted. Things happened and it impacted you and changed you. This is true of all life, You know, We're shaped by the. . . Times in society we are in, Inevitably, Obviously. But we may have been shaped. Beyond that due to. Less than ideal circumstances. Nonetheless, We need to accept the reality of that. And move through. So you ask yourself, Self-love, See where it's activated in the body? Connect to that part of the body, Get curious, Keep asking why, What's underneath, What's underneath, What's underneath. Now the response is to recognize how you feel about other people. You love and respect them. You are a person like them, Therefore you deserve love as well. Another response is, This is a bit sort of tongue in cheek, But it's to treat yourself like a dog. The idea being is that, You know, Let's say your dog gets sick. You take them straight to the vet. You care for them deeply. You look after them. But when it's you. You don't for some reason. It's almost like we need to detach from ourselves and go, Okay, There's the observer, The self, Us. The camera lens, Whatever you call that space and place, The heart space. And then there's. . . Different part of us, Us that we're sort of observing. And sometimes that part of us is quite judgmental. But that's like a radio or that's like just another stimulus to be mindfully observing of. If you look at internal family systems, They believe that there's a self that is sort of beyond the different parts that are in you. It's untatable, It's pure, It's just there. And you can connect to that space through a variety of different practices. The self through internal family systems, And I sort of prescribe to this model. Is compassionate, It's curious, It's creative, It's connected, It's courageous, It's calm, It's got clarity, It's confident. You foster those feelings. They call it the eight C's of internal family systems. You get into this sense of self? And then from that perspective, Or within that perspective, You at your core. It's very hard not to be self-loving. Because from that space you will notice there are different parts of you. Some parts that are easy to love, Some parts that are not so much. And there's a whole bunch of theory down the internal family systems part, And that's not really that important. But the point is, Is if you're in that sense of self, You'll see different aspects of you. Different component parts of you. Parts that do need attention and love. I guess I'm saying all of this to say that. . . With time, With practice, With concerted effort, With an intention to. Getting to that sense of self to do these practices. Self-love will come and will foster. And I guess the final thing would be to find people who are good at. This practice of self-love. Right? Not in an egotistical way, Not in like a narcissistic way, But someone that is just happy and comfortable in and of themselves. And you'll sort of get the vibe. And once again, It's not, This isn't a pathology, But some people are just happy and comfortable with themselves. When you're around those sort of people, You get happier and more comfortable around yourself. Because people that are happy with themselves typically accept other people. This idea of unconditional positive regard. This idea of radical self-acceptance. Accepting all of you, The good, The bad, The ugly, The unknown, All of it. So just practice. Long-winded answer to just say continue working at it and it will come. And just be curious. So a follow-up question. Why would I feel very loving to myself until I'm around others? Interesting question. Perhaps there is a feeling of unsafety. Feeling of overwhelm, A feeling of Mmm, Something else going on. When you are by yourself, You can be loving to yourself because you are by yourself. It's just you. That's safe. If you're around other people. Maybe you feel less safe, Maybe in the past, Or maybe in the present those people or people have not been safe to you. Physically or psychologically. So a part of you has become guarded, Has become on edge, Hypervigilant to attack, So to speak. That's normal, That's natural. And if that is the case, Then it is a matter of ensuring that your current world is safe. That's the first step, Like physically and psychologically safe, If you're associating or around people that are not safe. Makes sense why you got it. And it makes sense why you're on edge, Because you're preemptively protecting yourself. If you're building yourself up and someone cuts you down, That mismatch on top of the cutting down adds extra pain. It's easy to blend in, To hide, To keep safe. Right? We need to do that fight, Flight, Freeze form fantasy response. It's easier to phone to protect, To do something different. But if the current environment is safe, Then this could be a learnt response from the past. End. It would be a matter of when you're in those rooms, Safe rooms, Ones that you know you are safe, Going, Okay, I know that I'm practically, Psychologically, Physically safe right now. And yet I'm getting these feelings of self-loathing, Self-hatred, Guardedness, Whatever's coming up for you. A lack of self-love. And get curious about that. What's going on here? So a part of you is feeling it, And then with mindfulness practice you'll get more of this. There's the observer, The self. Checking that and going, Okay, Why is this happening? What's happening in my body? What's happening in my mind? What am I feeling in this moment and why? And there will be answers that come up in response to that inquiry that will really give you some insight into the nature of what's going on. So step one, Make sure your current environment is safe. Step two, Get curious as to why and what is arising. And from that perspective, You will get those answers.