Please Don't Tell Me To Love Myself

You just need to love yourself.

For the past several decades, I have heard this declarative from self-help books to Oprah, good-meaning friends to social media memes.  If you are anything like me, part of you thinks, “Hmm, what a good idea!”  Another, louder and feistier part, thinks, “What does that mean?!”

I’m personally not a big fan of slogans that sound good but then leave me with my head cocked, a single eyebrow raised in skepticism as I wait for the rest.  “And…?” Ms. Feisty growls. “If you are going to tell me to go love myself, then you better damn well tell me how!  Otherwise you can just leave your chocolate-coated platitudes at the door and take a hike!"

So, let’s get curious. What does it mean to love yourself?  What does loving yourself actually look like?  And why, from a spiritual perspective, is loving yourself totally spot on AND off the mark at the same time?  

The first challenge comes with the words we use: I, Love and Self.  

Let’s start with Love.  Love is such an unwieldy word, with multiple meanings and very different expressions. I would venture to guess that many of us would describe love as a feeling in our bodies, a warm, tingly and expanded sensation in our chest that radiates outwards. The tough part is making ourselves feel love. Making ourselves feel any emotion, from love to anger, giddy to calm, is difficult. What's easier is to take action. So, how do we get from love as a feeling state to love as an action?

Try the following exercise. First, think of someone for whom you feel great love. Then, make a list of all of the ways you EXPRESS your love towards this person. For instance, when I think of my love for my children, this is what comes forward:

When I love my kids...

  • I am present with them and listen with attention and caring.

  • I am generous with my time.

  • I feed them wholesome food and am a gaurdian of their health.

  • I play with them.

  • I appreciate their unique gifts (and verbally share this with them).

  • I have compassion for their pain.

  • I accept their limitations and their mistakes.

  • I demonstrate healthy boundaries.

I could write much, much more. When doing this exercise, I encourage you to keep going until you have exhausted every way you express your love for this person. As you can see, love has vast and varied expressions.

The real gem of this exercise comes in the next step. Now change the first part of every sentence to: "When I show love for myself...." This simple switch gives us the ability to see what "loving myself" might actually look like in action. We could say that the many "faces of self-love" are self-compassion, self-care, self-respect, self-acknowledgement and so forth. Although the specifics of what this looks like will vary for each of us, self-love might include making time to journal your thoughts and feelings everyday, actively reminding yourself to drop perfectionism when recognizing a mistake, or engaging regularly in an activity that feels like play. It is much easier for us to ACT lovingly towards ourselves than to try to FEEL love for ourselves.

This bring us to the word Self. The human mind has a tendency to separate this idea of self into parts. These fractured parts then relate to one another in often less than loving ways. Even, as a mere 6-year-old, one of my kids would say, "I hate myself!" They would say this global declaration of self-disdain to express a more complicated inner experience. If I were to help them say what they really means, it might sound like this: "The part of me that believes I should be perfect is angry and embarrassed at the part of me who is still learning how to draw faces well and makes mistakes." In the mind, these parts become divided into "good" and "bad" with the so-called "good" parts exacting judgment and all sorts of negativity on the so-called "bad" parts (ironic, huh?).

The need to love oneself comes ONLY from the fact that our sense of self is divided.

Therefore, what loving oneself means (in part) is that we are relating and behaving in loving ways towards the "bad" parts of ourselves that the "good" parts have judged, hated, ignored, blamed, criticized, and shamed. Loving oneself is about having a loving relationship with ALL parts.

From a spiritual perspective, engaging in this practice is brilliant. A divided self is going to be in a state of "inner against-ness" and this state is filled with conflict. Through the practice of self-love, these divisions begin to dissolve and we start to feel more peaceful, clear and whole. Self-love can assist us in integrating these warring parts so that, instead of experiencing ourselves as a dizzying array of separate and competing selves, we experience the Self as unified.

So why do we feel so squirmy inside when we think, "I love myself"? One reason is psychological in nature. We tend to twist away from the notion of self-love when we believe that we are truly made up of "bad" parts that are unlovable. If we believe this without question, then we will find it nearly impossible to relate to these "bad" parts in a loving way. There is another reason though--a spiritual reason--for why the whole notion of loving oneself feels a bit off and even absurd.

Let's look at those challenging words again: I, Love and Self.

On a spiritual level, we intuitively know there is no difference between the I and the Love and the Self. We sense that we are not truly divided, that the I who is loving the selves is just another self and that all the selves are actually one integrated aware I. We sense that this I is not some static entity but has an active and dynamic expression. The essence of this expression is Love.  

If we know this to be true in our spiritual hearts, then why would we say, “I love myself”? This would be akin to saying “Love loves love" and, even though true, that just sounds goofy.

So, if something feels a tad strange when you say, "I love myself," it could be that you are bumping up against the belief that there are parts of you that are "bad" and unlovable.  It could also mean that you are touching on the spiritual redundancy of saying, "I love myself." It could be a little of both. What's important is to have a self-love practice. As this practice works its magic, healing the inner divisions of "good" and "bad," the act of loving yourself will become a natural expression of You.

Naturally. . . with love, Kirstin

 

P.S.  There is just so much to share on this topic of Love and Self, so I would love to hear from you if you have something to add.