Identifying Your Origins of Self-love

Identifying your origins of self-love is a recurring topic of conversation with most of my clients. In order to understand this, you must reflect on the messages you received in your childhood about who you were as a person. Were you a “good boy or good girl?” Did you receive praise and reward for getting good grades or succeeding in sports? Did anyone notice when you succeeded or only when you failed? To begin pinpointing when your beliefs about yourself were formed, you specifically want to examine some of the following moments from your past:

1. When and how did you receive praise or recognition, assuming you received any at all?

2. What messages did you receive around your mistakes or failures?

3. When did you receive value labels (i.e. lazy, smart, good, bad, wrong, mean, selfish, etc.)? Who provided you with these labels?

4. Were you encouraged to share your thoughts, feelings, wants and needs?

5. When you had emotions, what messages did you receive about your feelings? For example, “Stop crying or I will give you something to cry about.”, “Boys don’t cry.” or “You are overly sensitive.”

6. When you were in need of support, how was that provided?

7. When there was crisis in the family, world, school, etc., how were you treated and supported?

All this information together, tells a story about how you learned to value and love yourself. If you were raised in a home with emotional support and an emphasis on emotional awareness and regulation, then you likely value your needs today and seek to make them known to others. If you were raised in a home where emotional needs were ignored or shamed, then you likely learned to suppress these needs from yourself and others. None of this is information is good or bad; it simply is. Knowing where you are in your ability to love yourself can inform where you want to go.

Recap of Topic: Origins of Self-love

Identifying your origins of self-love can be a painful and emotional journey. If it is for you, know that you are not alone. In case no one has ever told you, most helping professionals go into their chosen field in a desire to give back, fix, or repair what was not given to them. I am certainly an example of this. If your origins were less than ideal, know that you can heal and recover from these messages that were planted in you from a young age. Acknowledging these messages, however painful, is the first step to healing yourself from them.

Identifying Your Struggles with Self-love

Most, if not all, of us struggle with self-love, self-compassion and/or self-forgiveness. This is demonstrated in how we speak about ourselves, how we treat ourselves and how we allow others to treat us. In last week’s newsletter, we discussed the idea of lifestyle design and choosing good or productive behaviors for the wrong reason. For me, this is where I can spot my struggles with self-love on a regular basis. Raised with messages that my actions equated to my worth, it is very easy for me to become hyper-productive and lose sight of the impact this habit has on me. Over time, I have learned to attend to feelings of doubt, anxiety, guilt, worthlessness, sadness and resentment as cues that I am not practicing self-love. While there are commonalities to most of us in the ways we struggle to embody self-love, the exact way it is demonstrated in your behavior or sounds in your head, will be unique to you. To strengthen your awareness of your struggles, learn to look for the following:

1. Learn to listen to your internal and external dialogue about yourself. What are you saying about yourself and are these statements you would freely say to another? If the answer is no, then you may struggle to love yourself in how you talk about yourself.

2. Examine your beliefs about your capacity to perform. Do you shy away from excelling in your performance? If so, why? Do you feel like you need to be a top performer? If so, why? These questions are intended to help you evaluate if you are seeking or hoping to avoid the opinions of others in your performance. If you value another’s opinion about your performance more than your own, this may be a sign that you struggle to love yourself with messages of perfection or failure.

3. Evaluate how much you expect yourself to accomplish. Similar to #2, this varies slightly in that we are shifting our focus from quality to quantity. Do you feel the need to fill each minute with accomplishment? Do you feel anxious, guilty or worthless when you do not accomplish enough for the day? Are you frequently late because you are trying to do one more thing? I am very guilty of this. If you notice internalized pressure to accomplish, then you may struggle to love yourself through rigid expectations of achievement.

4. Consider which of your coping skills are more harmful than helpful. Many coping skills, in moderation can be helpful. An occasional drink with a friend, a consistent work out routine, word jumble games on your phone and house cleaning are all helpful coping strategies in moderation. When we are evaluating if coping skills are harmful, we want to consider the impact this behavior has not just to us, but to those around us. Drinking to excess can be harmful to your health, finances and relationships. A helpful coping skill should not create distress in other areas of your life.

5. Look for situations where you may over-function. Do you feel the need to be the mediator in your household? Do you regularly do for your children or partner what you know they are capable of doing for themselves? Do you frequently feel drained and like you have nothing left to give? If you answered yes to these questions, you may struggle to love yourself by failing to control the flow of your energy to activities with which you can control.

Recap of Topic: Struggles with Self-love

Most of us struggle to practice self-love in one or more areas of our lives. without conscious awareness, our behavioral and thought patterns can become our standard for normal. Simply put, we can learn to accept demeaning self-talk, taxing and unforgiving schedules, impossible standards for accomplishment and controlling for the actions of others as normal. The first step to recognizing your patterns is to lean into your feelings of self-doubt, guilt, anxiety, sadness, worthlessness and resentment. Treat these feelings as you would a check engine light for your car. They are merely a warning that something harmful or hurtful is likely occurring.

Understanding How Self-love Influences the Love You Receive

It probably makes logical sense that if we struggle to love ourselves we may accept inadequate love and, at times, abuse from others. This has been a lifelong journey for me as I continue to discover how I need to be loved, how I sabotage other’s ability to love me and when I accept less love than what I am deserving of. I share this vulnerable truth with you to normalize that life is truly a healing journey for the soul and every soul, even the soul of a therapist, is on this same journey. Some ways to begin examining and evaluating the love you receive from others are to reflect on the following:

1. Your ability to ask for and receive help. If you find yourself rushing about the house trying to get everything done while everyone else stares at their phones, you might struggle to ask for help. When you struggle to ask for or receive help, you do not empower others to show up for you thereby perpetuating the belief that you are alone.

2. Your relational dynamics. Are you frequently the giver or taker? Do you find that others often fail to show up in the relationship the way that you do or when it’s your time of need, they just aren’t there? If you struggle with reciprocal relationships, then you may struggle to choose relationships with supportive people. Sometimes, this occurs when we believe that our worth is tied to our usefulness so you have created relationships where you are the useful party.

3. Your acceptance of treatment from others. Do you accept unacceptable behavior from others? Do you allow for lying, stealing, cheating, gaslighting or any other behavior that you objectively know is not okay? If the answer is yes, then you may maintain relationships that come at a detriment to yourself. The reasons for this can be varied and it is usually an indication that your are struggling to love yourself.

4. Your attachment to others. Are you close to anyone or do you keep a part of yourself reserved to exit stage right when indicated? Do others know of you but not about you? A pattern of distant interpersonal relationships can be a sign that you are struggling to believe that others are capable of loving you and being safe for you. The unspoken and often unrealized belief here is that you are not capable of keeping yourself safe in relationships or choosing safe people so you will not choose anyone at all.

Recap of Topic: Receiving Love

When we struggle to love ourselves, this usually shows up in the ways in which we receive love from others. To increase your awareness of how you receive love, you were asked to examine your ability to ask for help, your relational dynamics, your acceptance of treatment and your attachment to others. With this awareness, you can make conscious choices about how you want and need to be loved.

^{Recommended Product of the Week}

This week’s recommended product(s) is A Year of Self-Love Page-A-Day Calendar 2024. Creating new ways of thinking takes time and concerted effort especially if you consider how much time you have spent thinking as you do now. This calendar is a quick and efficient way of reminding yourself to choose self-love and compassion each day.