The Art of Self-Love
The concept and practice of self-love unfortunately has many misconceptions and misunderstandings. Learning the art of self-love takes time and practice. For some, unlearning unhealthy ways of relating to self will need to take place to set into motion new behaviors and patterns of self-love. Self-love deserves the chance to be fully understood and practiced.
What is the first image that pops into your head when you hear the phrase self-love? Chances are it’s one of a selfish, vain, or egotistical individual who spends too much time in front of the mirror, treats others badly and spends money on their every whim at the neglect of others and their personal responsibilities. In this extreme love-of-self example, this indeed would be selfish and an unhealthy version of self-love.
What Self-Love Is
• The healthy ideal version of Self-love is the opposite of vanity and selfishness. It is a healthy and essential internal concept of making one’s own well-being a priority with love, care, awareness, compassion, worth, and kindness.
• Author Brene Brown states, “Practicing self-love means learning how to trust ourselves, to treat ourselves with respect, and to be kind and affectionate to ourselves.”
• Having self-love is about having a healthy, unconditional respect for yourself and paying attention to all your needs: emotional, mental, physical, spiritual and so on. It is about having a healthy identity, as well as knowing and accepting of your weaknesses and strengths with a healthy perspective.
• Self-love means caring about yourself and all its needs while not sacrificing your well-being to please others or at the detriment of your own needs. Megan Logan, MSW, LCSW in her book Self-Love; Workbook for Women states, “A person who sacrifices their own needs and desires for everyone else is likely to eventually become resentful and frustrated, losing sense of self and can become exhausted, bitter and unfulfilled.”
• Self-love motivates you to have healthy behaviors and make healthy choices in life. It starts with your daily habits of self-care: sleeping properly, eating healthy, exercising, practicing gratitude, reflecting, and meditating.
• Self-love can help manage mental health symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and other mental illness with self-compassion and an understanding that mental illness does not make you a failure and is not your fault.
• When you validate your own needs and practice positive self talk, you are practicing self-love.
Lack of Self-love
• A lack of self-love can be seen in poor self-image and self-esteem.
• Unhealthy behaviors and patterns with body image such as excessive dieting, binging, and imbalanced comparison to others.
• Relationships that are unhealthy: trying to find value and worth in partners and looking to others to make us happy or to feel worthy. Social worker Megan Logan states, “Learning to self love allows us to have healthier dynamics and expectations in relationships.”
• Self-critical with negative self-talk and internal messaging. Not validating one's own feelings through minimization. People who are self critical can be at higher risk for depression and stress, and they are less effective at implementing coping strategies
Components of Self-Love
Self-love has many aspects and components to it such as self-compassion, self-kindness, self worth, self-care, self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-acceptance.
Self-Compassion Components:
1. Mindfulness: self compassion involves recognizing when we’re stressed or struggling without being judgmental.
2. Self-Kindness: being supportive and understanding towards ourselves when we’re having a hard time, rather than being self critical such as with negative inner self-talk.
3. Connectedness: remembering that everyone makes mistakes and experiences difficulties at times. We are not alone.
Self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff, Ph.D. gives the following steps for how to work on being less self-critical:
1. Self-talk and critical internal messaging. Notice how you talk to yourself. What’s your tone of voice, even if it’s inside your head? Example: “you're not good enough.”
2. Say to your critical voice, “I know you’re disappointed, but you are causing me pain.”
3. Reframe the criticism. Instead of, “I failed, and I embarrassed myself,” reframe the criticism by saying, “I’m proud I even tried, and that took courage” or instead of “I give up” use “I can use a different strategy.”
4. Act kindly to your body; hug your arms.
Self-Kindness Components:
Psychiatrist Elizabeth Guinto promotes these five ways to be kinder to yourself:
1. Think of a situation that is difficult and causes stress such as cleaning the house, being in traffic, stressful work situations or an unhealthy relationship.
2. Remember the specific context and situation. As you think about it, see if you can feel and locate where the stress is in your body such as your head, neck or shoulders. These are often places where a person carries their stress and anxiety.
3. Use mindfulness. Notice what’s going on for you emotionally in the present moment without judging that experience as good or bad. You can say to yourself, “this hurts”, “this is grief” or “this is stress”. Use whatever statement feels natural to you for the context. Ex: “This is stress and it feels overwhelming. I am okay.”
4. Recognize and acknowledge you are not alone, and suffering is a part of life for all people.
5. Healing Touch: place your hands gently on your heart, feeling the warmth of your hands as they are gently placed on your chest and say, “May I be kind to myself” or "May I give myself the compassion that I need right now” or “May I learn to accept myself as I am.”
Self-Worth Components:
Self-worth are the core beliefs we have about ourselves. It is the internal sense of being good enough and worthy of love and belonging from others. Self-worth is often confused with self esteem, which relies on external factors such as successes and achievements to define worth and can often be inconsistent, leading to someone struggling with feeling worthy.
According to Choosing therapy, there are five steps to improving self-worth:
1. Stop Looking Outside Yourself for external approval and validation which includes looking for approval from others such as your partner, friends, or boss.
2. Increase Self-compassion & Be Kinder to Yourself which makes you healthier, happier, and more successful. Being kinder in the way you talk to and treat yourself is a key step towards improving self-worth.
3. Separate What You Do From Who You Are. Your identity, value, and worth is not in what job or title you have. Instead, work to get in touch with your feelings, beliefs, and your core values (the things you want, need, and care about most in life). This reminds you that your worth is not tied to your successes and failures, while also helping you get in touch with deeper parts of yourself.
4. Stop Competing & Comparing, Start Connecting. Recognize when you begin to compare yourself to others or feel the urge to compete. Instead, look for common ground, similarities, and things you can bond and connect over. This will help interrupt the unhelpful cycle of comparisons and judgments that feed into self-esteem issues, while also helping you feel more connected to people, which helps to boost self-worth.
5. Develop a More Positive Mindset. A positive, optimistic mindset forms a mental condition that is conducive to high self-worth, while negative thinking contributes to low self-esteem and self worth. Negative thinking is often a bad mental habit, but one that can be broken with consistent practice.
Learning the art of self-love takes time and practice. Poet Rupi Kaur states, "how you love yourself is how you teach others to love you.” Practicing all the components of self-love is essential to your emotional, mental, and physical well-being.
Roubicek & Thacker Counseling is Fresno’s premier provider of individual, couples, family, and group therapy. We offer in-person and online remote therapy sessions. Contact us today to change the way you feel.