Self-love is healing energy.
And the lack of self-love means a life lived in denial, self-breaking, self-disconnection. This will then lead to toxic beliefs and toxic behaviors will lead to addiction, seeking to fill that inner gap we feel because we have disconnected from our soul.
To better understand what self-love means, I invite you to discuss first what self-love is not.
Self-love is not abuse.
Self-love does not mean to leave you in second place in your own life.
Self-love is not self-betrayal and compromises on and on.
Self-love means you do not believe you are:
Difficult to love, insufficient, incomplete, flawed, or that you deserve to be treated poorly…
If you believe that, you:
- don’t deserve it,
- you are not worth it,
- you cannot have love unless you sacrifice and fight.
- you can’t have healthy relationships,
- you can’t have money,
- you can’t have happiness,
- you can’t be successful,
- you can’t have a good relationship,
- you can’t enjoy it,
- you’re not enough…
This is not self-love.
Where do you stand with the beliefs of what you deserve and how much you are worth? How about your judgments and your attitude towards you and others?
The relationship with yourself is like a mirror for the relationships you have with others.
And often the relationship with us is a toxic one, just like with the people around us.
Why don’t we love ourselves and how did we get here?
How about going a bit into your past? Are you willing to follow me?
When was the first moment when you unconsciously made the decision that you are not worthy of love? Or respect? Or care?
Or that you are invisible, so you should not stand up for something that is worth to you,? When did you decide to wallow in mediocrity?
Heed a short trip in this childhood, and remind yourself of the energy and information that was there…
Maybe abuse, maybe neglect, betrayal, humiliations, perhaps the feeling that you are not good enough, or rejection…
No matter what factors prevailed, this is the model we have internalized about us.
A child who is abused will not stop loving their abusers, will stop loving himself.
This is a quote that exposes what happens in our childhood and how childhood traumas mark our lives.
Studies say that children whose parents are not emotionally available, or they have a negative emotional state,
believe they should not display joy, enthusiasm, or stand out with something, because “I risk not being accepted by my parents.”
Thus, we learn in our childhood to become emotionally unavailable to ourselves, to let go of parts of ourselves that are not approved, accepted, and validated by others.
We break away from our souls, with life-long consequences.
We are denying our own emotions and needs, so as not to upset, not to disturb, and not to lose love or attachment from others.
We will disconnect from our body and soul because we have no other defense system.
This is a survival mechanism and the brain learns it and brings it into our lives and our adult relationships.
That, of course, if you don’t do anything to reverse the process.
Self-love is an energy that is a special, healing energy and is an energy we have not been accustomed to.
No one has taught you how to love yourself.
And now you pay a price.
Maybe…
- You are in bad and abusive relationships
- You leave yourself in the last place in your life to win a piece of love from external sources
- You don’t know your value and you don’t respect and appreciate yourself
- Tou find it difficult to say “no” and to set healthy boundaries
- You don’t trust your inner power
- You experience diseases
We expect salvation from the others:
We expect others to love us, to validate us, to put an end to the suffering and the huge gap in our soul, without knowing that salvation, the source of love is inside, in our own heart.
All you have to do is learn to love yourself a little more.
We have already established that regardless of how we have been treated, we do not lose our love for those who have injured us, but we lose our love, self-esteem, and confidence in ourselves.
Why is this happening?
Because a child does not know how to translate what is happening in the environment in a rational way, it translates emotionally, as energy and information.
The emotional brain is more developed, unlike the neocortex, which is not yet fully developed in children and which continues to grow up to 18 years
So we emotionally “translate” what happens in the environment and make the story about us, even if it isn’t.
- If my mother and father quarrel is my fault.
- If my father left it’s my fault.
- If my mother is depressed, maybe I did something wrong.
- If my parents are always angry, always worried, maybe I’m not good enough
The child begins to feel that he or she is not good enough as it is.
You have that injured, wounded child inside.
The biggest problem in our society is that people feel that they are not enough as they are and that is the basis of consumerism, of many diseases, of self-abating our success and vocation, or of the toxic relationships that we maintain.
The trauma makes us disconnect from ourselves and live our lives running away from our souls because it hurts too much.
Pain that we will then try to calm down with other people, with short connections, food, drugs, shopping, with any substance or behavior aimed at calming us in the short term, but with devastating effects in the long term.
What can we do is start to love ourselves?
Self-love is not an abstract concept, but is a practice and is recommended to become a lifestyle.
How do we, therefore, replace the energy in trauma, energy, and emotion for fear, shame, guilt, rage, abandonment, sorrow, peace, reconciliation, total acceptance?
Self-love – practical exercises explained
What are the practical methods to start to love you?
Step one is to let you feel your own emotions.
Let you stop fighting what you feel and just sit and be present with the parts of you that need love and your attention even if it is uncomfortable at first.
Step two. Healing the inner child.
You still have a wounded child in your soul who needs your attention, your love, your acceptance, and not more rejection.
You can begin to tell him that you love him and stay close to this part of you, through meditation, exercises, or introspection.
Step three. The inner criticism and self-sympathy.
We need to calm down that inner voice that is arguing us, that always wants perfection, that wants to defend us but keeps us in the comfort zone.
This voice will calm down by practicing an attitude of self-sympathy and deliberate gentleness.
Patiently, the critic’s voice will become more and more silent and less harsh.
Step four. Increase self-esteem and confidence in yourself.
For that, you need to learn or rediscover your personal values and act as such.
Note whether you act in accordance with what is important to you or not and decide to sort actions that are not in accordance with your values.
Step five. Re-writing your personal story from victim to hero.
It means you realize that you are not a victim of what happened and you can be the one who writes the story differently.
You begin to take responsibility for your life and not blame outsiders for your results.
Even if others hurt you, taking responsibility means realizing that power is within you and you can change the story because it is dynamic.
Step six. Reconnect with your body.
To know what happens in your body, to reconnect with your body, meditate, exercise, do anyways to stop and be present in your own body to rediscover what is important and what it needs.
That’s why I recommend the following exercise:
Close your eyes for a moment and touch your body where intuition tells you that your attention is needed.
What does your body have a message for you? What does it need?
What has prevented you from giving it what he needs?
How could you give to your body what it asks you to?
Step seven. Listen to your intuition
Intuition is the deepest voice that guides us and that we repress, because we do not trust it and therefore, ourselves…
The intuition is like a wise teacher who knew the way and the dangers before and guides us if we listen and leave it to show us the way.
So learn to trust the way intuition speaks and listen to its voice.
Finally, Remember: The lack of self-love is like a poison you drink every day, lying to yourself that tomorrow will be different.
Tomorrow is so short, and the future is just a repeating past if you decide to do the same thing you did yesterday, last week, last year.
That is, to close your eyes.
To close your eyes to treason, abuse, indifference, and emotional detachment, carelessness, power imbalance…
They say we don’t know what the future looks like.
But if you change nothing, why do you think the future would be so different from the past?
Start the transformative process of self-love and in a while, you will thank you for your decision.
Love,
