Love yourself first they say - but how?
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Have you ever read a book or an article on intimate relationships, and the advice that stands out is “love yourself first before you can love someone”? It says that if you don’t love yourself, then nobody else will ever love you – and if they do, you won’t be able to recognize it.
On one hand, it makes sense, from an intellectual perspective. On the other hand, it is absolute cruelty for people who have a hard time loving themselves. Once I am told that I must love myself, I feel even less worthy of love, because loving me seems a mountain bigger than the Everest to climb, and if I need to first love myself to be loved by someone else, I may never be loved by someone, and that just adds to the sense of unworthiness and despair.
Loving myself, yes but how?
Self-help books sell us affirmation sentences to repeat to ourselves in front of the mirror such as “I love myself, I am worthy...”. But it doesn’t work. Why? For one, it is mental and doesn’t address the emotional pain we hold inside.
Secondly, it doesn’t come necessarily from a place of love inside of us – remember, we don’t love ourselves. It may come from a place in us that rejects us and says “you piece of shit, from now on you are going to love yourself, or I’ll hate you more.”
As a matter of fact, research has shown that self-affirmation sentences work for people who already have high self-esteem of themselves, but for those who have low self-esteem it just reinforces it – it reminds them how much they don’t love themselves.
The key element that is missing is compassion, whose purpose is to allow the heart to stay open in the face of fear and pain. In other words, it means to increase my capacity to go through a wide range of emotions without freaking out, shutting down, or running away.
To face my ugliness, my darkness, my shame, under the warm and beaming light of compassion, that will effortlessly melt the ice of that Everest mount – so it becomes easier to climb it. And when other souls join their compassionate warm light to mine, it becomes even easier.
So no, you don’t need to love yourself first to receive love from others. It is a parallel and complementary process, you learn how to love yourself as you learn to receive love from other people.
Some questions to ponder:
What loving yourself means to you?
What would it take for you to trust that you are loved?
What would it take for you to trust that you are lovable?
How would it be to talk to yourself as if you were talking to a friend?
Sometimes, answering those questions on our own is not easy. What you may need then is some external skilled support that will help you to face and heal your parts that prevent you from receiving love from others and yourself.
In February, BMC offers its signature program, the Mindful Self Compassion 8 weeks course. Under the guidance of an experienced mindfulness practitioner and coach yu will go through the maze of your internal self-rejection and find that compassionate voice in you, so you learn to talk to yourself as if you were talking to a friend – instead of your harshest enemy.
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