Do you need to love yourself? If you do, what is everything you need to know about self-love, do?
Have you ever wondered what self-love is about? Or is that selfish?
Do you ever struggle to love yourself? Why is that so?
And is that repairable?
Can you “fix” yourself and go from – lack – to know about self-love and feel lots of love for you?
These questions have arisen in my private practice with many clients, and I have asked myself along my path (or previous life mess, whatever).
Afterward, I looked it up, studied, and compiled all you need to know about self-love.
Self-love:
A definition:
According to the Oxford Dictionary
Regard for one’s own well-being or happiness, considered as a natural and appropriate attitude towards oneself.
Oxford Dictionary
Reading this description leaves one feeling like dah, of course, we all must love ourselves. I mean:
Who on earth would do something different?
Show me someone in their right mind who wouldn’t.
Turns out that you and I are not that right-minded after all.
Here’s what the numbers say:
Self-love statistics, according to Gitnux:
- 44% say that self-love is a crucial element of mental wellness.
- One in every three persons worldwide struggles with self-acceptance and self-worth, aka self-love.
- 60.2% of American women report having negative thoughts about themselves daily.
- 64% of people say that what they learn and know about self-love improves their entire lives.
- 78% believe their self-esteem is inferior to that of others.
- Over 70% of respondents believe that self-love significantly impacts their career and job happiness.
A fair amount of people (almost half of the population) consider self-love as a critical element to mental health. Even so, 1 in 3 people still struggle to love themselves. And out of these, 2 of 3 are women. Men seem to know about self-love more than women do.
Image found in Creative Commons. Picture taken by Sara Alfred
But:
- Why?
- Where does that come from?
- And Why do women struggle more than men to love themselves?
Please hold your horses. I’ll take you there and tell you powerful things you need to know about self-love.
First, Why do you struggle to love yourself? What do you know about self-love?
Doctor John Amodeo is a coach and family therapist. He stated in his Psychology Today article “Why it’s so damn hard to love ourselves? ” that loving others and being compassionate with them can be challenging for us. However, it’s more challenging for us to direct love toward ourselves. We treat ourselves in forms that we would never dare to treat others.
Why don’t we know about self-love?
The reasons for such behavior, according to what we know about self-love from scientific studies and research, can rely on the following:
1. Your childhood imprints:
Suppose you experienced abuse, neglect, excessive shame, and insufficient acceptance as a child instead of being told or shown you were important and worthy. You are likely to struggle to find a sense of love toward yourself. Simple, you don’t know about self-love.
2. Negativity bias:
He also points out that science tells us the survival mode our ancestors developed caused us to live with a negative bias. That is why you might always look for the hair in the soup or the wrong things and not give importance to appreciating the good or beauty around and inside yourself. That allowed humans to survive back in the wild then, but it’s more harmful than helpful nowadays.
Know more about The negativity bias. Why won’t what brings us here take us there?
3. Inner dialogue:
Finally, beyond self-care routines, self-love comes from an inside job in which you take accountability for your inner dialogue.
Allow your entire range of human emotions without judgment, and learn to embrace them all. Knowing about self-love is also knowing how to accept your whole self.
4. From another perspective, we can see the physiological basis behind self-love or its absence.
According to the article Self-Love and the Neuroscience Behind It, Neuroscience proves that self-love is no longer just a subjective feeling but is based on the brain’s functioning.
The article was published by the media PSYchreg by Dennis Relojo-Howell. He’s the chief editor of the Psychreg Journal of Psychology and is recognized as the world’s first blog psychologist.
The brain is a complex organ with a ruling role in our lives. It governs our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It’s made up of multiple interwoven networks. One of these is the limbic system, which oversees emotional processing and is especially important for self-love.
Brain functioning:
According to research, self-love correlates with more significant activity in the prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the amygdala. The first one manages self-awareness and self-control, while the second processes negative emotions like fear and anxiety. This shows that self-love can improve our emotional regulation.
It’s safe to say that what we feel and think about ourselves has the potential to change our brain’s functioning and activity. Moreover, lower-frequency emotions down-regulate our brains, and higher-frequency emotions up-regulate them.
Body chemistry:
Furthermore, self-love has been linked to the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, provoking feelings of pleasure and reward. On the contrary, self-criticism and negative self-talk are associated with increased cortisol.
We can see now that a relationship with oneself can change brain function and body chemistry. It turns out that to know about self-love, we need to learn about brain functioning. Who would have known? Go figure.
Now, it is true that we are a “whole” unit of life. So, it can be “tricky” to speak about the “relationship with oneself.”
From a mystic perspective, that’s unthinkable. According to Sadhguru, The great mystic and yogi from India, we are individuals, and that means we are indivisible. Furthermore, we can’t (or we shouldn’t) make two or more of us if we want to remain on the side of the sane. In that order, we can become love but not love ourselves.
I see it. Making us more whole and complete through spiritual practices. That’s one of the most important and fulfilling things we can pursue.
Yet, for some, we encounter ourselves often divided into too many pieces that we almost crumble. Or may we have left part of us behind as Voldemort did in Horcruxes…damn lust and youth, oh boy!
Anyway…Where were we?
Ok. Exploring what we need to know about self-love.
Why do we struggle to love ourselves?
According to experts like Richard C. Schwartz and Bessel Van Der Kolk:
5. Traumatic events can make us dissociate from parts of our SELF or our bodies.
Internal systems:
Dr. Schwartz is the developer of the Treatment “Internal Family Systems” for trauma, anxiety, depression, PTSD & substance abuse.
He says we all have an internal system of countless parts interacting with other people on the outside and with each other inside us. While some parts are enjoyable and desirable, others are unwelcome barbarian parts that betray, threaten, hate, and terrorize. Perhaps some others are less abhorrent but have feelings like guilt, self-loathing, anxiety, or depression.
Some of us who have been through challenging situations might have such radical parts terrorized, trying to escape, protect, look for revenge, or maybe solace that those parts sometimes appear to be so detached from the habitual way of someone’s behavior that they make them look possessed or nuts when the situation arises.
Sometimes, loving, integrating, and making peace with our less-favored parts is difficult.
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Inhabiting our bodies:
What we experience as a traumatic event is not yet a memory. It is still alive today, manifesting as bodily emotions and sensations.
Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk is an expert and great researcher who provides invaluable information on understanding oneself, brain functioning, and body chemistry. In his Best-Selling Book, The Body Keeps the Score; he tells us that sometimes it might be so painful to feel what we feel that we quit inhabiting our bodies.
When we repeatedly re-create or re-live the experience over and over again, we turn our bodies into a scene of misery. We cannot live there; thus, we part up with the body. We are no longer one with ourselves.
To the extent that many people are incapable of recognizing their feelings, a phenomenon known as
ALEXITHYMIA
In a video for NICABM, Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk says when a person experiences childhood trauma and is unable to form essential attachment relationships, often they struggle to feel like they belong into adulthood.
Instead, they can convey the devastating message that they’re undesired, unneeded, and never genuinely accepted.
And there’s yet another layer to this already fascinating yet somehow disturbing tangle that leads us not to love ourselves and is the “girl thing.”
What’s that?
Simply put, It’s about being born into this world as a girl, not a boy.
As I learned while trying to understand Why women struggle more with self-love and self-worth, I found the answers were right in front of the eyes and in our very social structures.
6. Girls’ arrival to adulthood:
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has an outstanding dissertation called Self-Esteem and Young Women. It contains much helpful information, such as Emily Hancock’s research on the female growth process. She ensures every woman has a fundamental identity concealed within her, defined during childhood.
A distinct and vibrant self is often lost as she steps into adulthood. This phenomenon has been referred to by several titles, including:
- “losing the voice,”
- “the confidence gap,” and
- “hitting the wall,”
and can give us a crucial understanding of what it’s like to be a woman.
As she approaches adulthood, this girl now realizes:
Games of power control the world she lives in. And in this power game, men are the rulers and the winners. She was once a confident and capable girl. But now she’s also being told what she should be doing with her body, what she should think, and what her worth is.
All this makes her go through a challenging internal process. Meanwhile, many things are also happening in the outside world. Her surroundings assume by default the roles she should be playing by now.
Girls respond differently to external demands depending on the culture to which they belong. Studies indicate that middle-upper-class women react to these pressures by losing confidence in their thoughts and opinions.
Nevertheless, low-income women face much less pressure to adhere to society’s standards than middle—and upper-class young women.
Speaking out?
According to Robinson and Ward’s “A Belief in Self Far Greater Than Anyone’s Disbelief,” when young women grow up, they realize they can’t speak out without paying a toll.
The norm of femininity historically has been submission. Women frequently fight it by being loud or asserting themselves with their voices.
Again, this behavior frequently results in unfavorable experiences. These women quickly learn that it is the quiet ones who fare best. For many of them, it can lead to adopting a servile posture to succeed. This attitude might be seen as a survival mechanism.
Taking this submissive posture exposes girls to feelings of emotional isolation and self-alienation. “Being a good woman centers on being loyal to their families.
Sticking themselves to cultural and familial restrictions” for various cultures, such as Latina, Portuguese, and possibly Asian young women. As a result, these women frequently “self-silence” to conform to societal and familial expectations.
7. The negativity receptor:
On the other hand, Aimee Lee Ball, in her article previously cited here, “Women and the Negativity Receptor,” written for Oprah Magazine, wonders why women store criticisms forever but let compliments evaporate right away. As if we pick up on the slightest slur but never hear the good?
Well, I have assigned a whole brain area to negative thinking. (Oh, wow! I can’t say there were no signs.)
It’s what Louann Brizendine, MD, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California and the author of The Female Brain, says. This area is responsible for making judgments, measuring our social interactions, and working as an alert. It’s like a life-worrying machine part of the brain in the anterior cingulate cortex. In women, brains are considerably more prominent and more influential than in men (we already suspected it, right?). And this is where the brain circuitry for observing other people’s emotions resides. That makes so much sense, as we’ve been programmed to respond immediately to the needs of children. It can work for or against us.
Dont forget the hormones:
The hormonal surges in our female brains make us more sensitive to emotional nuances, such as disapproval or rejection. It doesn’t matter how much we have tried to deny this. How we interpret feedback from others can depend on where we are in our cycle.
Jessica Henderson Daniel, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, says that One of the significant tasks of adolescent girls is to answer the following:
‘Who are you?’.
Finding our place in the world and sorting through our strengths and weaknesses will inevitably be imprinted by what others see in us because none of us lives in a bubble, even if we try. Hence, almost always, girls think they don’t look like they should.
Nonetheless, the Harvard professor says there’s a critical window of opportunity in early childhood when infusing a girl with a sense of self-worth not based on external factors is possible. Girls who take pride in accomplishment are more anchored.
Sadly, for some, the roots of disbelieving in oneself as an adult might come from traumatic experiences. However, for many others, the origins of believing the lousy stuff as adults might be due to parents who doubt their value as children.
8. Negativity:
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Yale University and the author of “Women Who Thinks Too Much,” adds that depression is easily transmitted from parents to kids. Parents who see the world through a filter of negativity train their kids to think this way too, as we mentioned earlier as the negativity bias.
Therefore, kids with hypercritical parents tend to adopt self-critical thinking and perpetuate it in every aspect of their lives. They don’t get to know about self-love but self-criticisms.
University of Toronto psychotherapist Zindel Segal, Ph.D., explains that our moods shape our ability to recall things about ourselves. Therefore, when feeling down, it’s easier to recall failures or times when we’ve messed up.
Until we receive a wake-up call that moves us to explore ourselves. Then, we’ll be able to identify the barriers and triggers in our worlds. It could be a partner who tells us we’re not good enough or a boss who makes us feel unworthy. This happens especially to those who have grown up caring for others but not themselves.
9. Regrets and lack of forgiveness:
As we mentioned in our blog post, Can You Be a Hostage of Yourself? According to Triana Arnold James, when we have committed what we consider a perceived colossal mistake in any area of our life, we often have difficulty forgiving ourselves and might experience many regrets. So, we keep recriminating and punishing ourselves, treating ourselves in very unloving ways.
10. We don’t know ourselves enough:
Humans fear and reject what they don’t know. It’s a survival skill we inherited from ancestral times.
Conversely, Sadhguru thinks, “Romance is getting deeply involved. The distance between love and fear could be measured in terms of involvement. Therefore, to love yourself, you should know yourself.
Know thyself
Socrates, Heraclitus – Pythagoras
LOVE THYSELF
As we have learned here, many reasons can limit our ability to love ourselves. The good news is that each one of those causes can be reversed or re-trained into more constructive patterns and behaviors.
How?
Fortunately, there are several life-changing yet straightforward practices we can easily add to our daily lives to improve and even build a healthy, strong self-love foundation. From there, we can grow a better life experience.
What can we do?
Well, both Doctor John Amodeo, a coach and family therapist for the last 40 years, the first expert we mentioned in this article, and Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, the world-renowned psychiatrist and trauma expert, agree in the fact that we should allow ourselves to feel what we feel and inhabit our bodies:
One procedure we can derive from what they teach is this exercise:
Whenever you meet yourself on the negative side of emotions (such as loneliness, sadness, fear, resentment, humiliation, or whatever it is.
You can then take the following steps:
- Seat in a quiet place.
- Breathe slowly and gently a few times.
- Notice how your body feels.
- Put a name to your feeling: Is it itchy, heavy, painful, or something else?
- Try to allow the emotion to be just as it is.
- Let go of any urge or necessity to eliminate it or judge it.
What we are training ourselves to do with this exercise is teach us self-compassion.
What it means?
That means that I can accept myself as and where I am. I can be compassionate and kind to myself and meet my feelings with loving kindness instead of trying to change or fix myself.
It also means I am learning to befriend myself. I’m getting to know about self-love.
Now, you are befriending, seeing, listening, and integrating all your segmented parts rather than rejecting, hiding, and silencing them. This will be a process in which you’ll go from “broken pieces” to an “individual” self-loving and whole being. You now are getting to know about self-love.
From another standpoint, when you take a closer look at all the causes mentioned before for lack of self-love, they have a common denominator:
Environmental roots.
The good news is this: If you can make yourself sick or reject yourself for what’s been told to you. Whatever stories you tell yourself and believe it, you can also make yourself healthy by telling yourself the right things.
As you already learned here before:
- What your caregivers teach or imprint on you acts like a program running your life.
- You were taught to think about the bad or the negative to survive.
- You learned to speak to yourself as hard critics.
All of that had an impact on your brain functioning and body chemistry.
Now,
Now,
You can affect and change your brainwaves and chemical expression with proper training, the right words, and the correct script.
Science says it does.
There’s enough evidence to affirm that “nerve cells that fire together wire together,” as Dr. Joe Dispenza makes his students repeat until tiredness to wire the idea in their brains.
You form brain circuits with your thoughts, ideas, and knowledge. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your view of the glass), you only have a certain amount of “glue” available to connect brain circuitry. So, the ones you reinforce will stay together, while the ones you don’t will fall apart. Can you make your brain know about self-love better than anything it knows about self-defeating thoughts?
You can achieve all of this by implementing the following steps and routines that can help you achieve a healthy state of Self-love:
- Changing the inner dialogue: How do you speak to your BFF? You are kind, supportive, encouraging, and forgiving when they make mistakes, right? Observe how you talk to yourself and try, at least, to make it less critical.
- Learning Forgiveness.
- Meditating and breathing change brain waves and produce more coherent brainwave patterns of order. You must practice both regularly to retrain the body and make it a haven. The autonomous nervous system creates emotions, and meditation and breathing are ways to access them. How much you tell your logical or analytical mind that you are secure in a location or scenario makes little difference. And here’s where “positive affirmations” frequently fail. If you don’t access the autonomous nervous system, where your survival mechanism is located, you’ll be unable to make lasting changes in your mental and emotional health. Hence, it’s vital to include meditation and breathing practices in your strategy for making lasting changes and improving your relationship with yourself.
- Getting involved with you: Know yourself, be curious as if you were starting to date you. I am talking about going beyond recognizing “who you are today.” Which still has its merits. It’s foundational to acknowledge “who and where we are” as a starting point to get anywhere. But moreover, you should take up the journey of self-discovery to the real you. The person behind all your I have to, I need to, I own, I shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t. That is the unfiltered unlimited you. The one you’ll be without your social roles and status, obligations, partnerships, and conveniences. Accessing, knowing, and befriending yourself is the path to love yourself.
- Journaling involves making yourself conscious of your unconscious thoughts, being accountable, and realizing who you are, who you want to be, and who you no longer wish to be.
Conclusions:
What do we know about self-love absence? The causes of lack of self-love can come from a wide range of roots, being the most likely:
- Your childhood imprints
- Ancestral negativity bias
- Inner dialogue
- Brains circuitry and functioning
- Emotional regulation
- Traumatic events
- Social structures
- Lack of forgiveness and regrets
- Lack of involvement with oneself
And what practices can you develop to improve or build self-love in yourself and your lives?
- Self-observation
- Acceptance
- Meditation
- Breath works
- Changing the inner dialogue
- Journaling
- Forgiving
As you have seen, there are many reasons why you may experience low self-esteem or a poor sense of self-love. However, you have also learned many ways to improve and even develop a healthy and fulfilling relationship with yourself.
Powerful things you need to know about self-love
This content doesn't replace professional medical or psychological advice.
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