Being on a spiritual journey means your ideas and beliefs will shift over time as you learn and discover more about yourself. As I’ve shared before, I used to preach about the power of forgiveness, but a couple of years ago I realised that approach simply didn’t resonate any longer, so I stopped talking about forgiveness (more about that here). A similar thing has happened with my feelings around self-love, a philosophy that’s very popular in self-development circles, with countless Insta quotes, podcasts and books on the subject. Many people have shared that developing self-love has been enormously helpful for their healing and personal growth. It makes sense to me that being able to love yourself would have a powerful impact on your wellbeing and relationships, so I’m not opposed to the idea, as such. And yet. It just didn’t work for me.
(Photo by Mitul Gajera on Unsplash)
I tried so hard to embody self-love (so please, don’t @ me telling me I just didn’t try hard enough). I adopted Louise Hay’s mirror work, but saying ‘I love you’ to my reflection never ever got comfortable (lord, though I tried). I studiously repeated ‘I love you’ as an affirmation in my head, but it turns out that trying to force yourself to believe something you don’t believe deep down is often not particularly effective. The result: I felt like a failure, and ended up resenting myself more. Which, of course, is the very opposite of what self-love aims to achieve.
Why was I pushing so hard to develop a loving relationship with myself? So many spiritual guru and thought leaders had told me it was vital if I wanted to attract the healthy long-term relationship I longed for: ‘No one will ever love you if you don’t love yourself.’ I diligently parroted this motto all over the place. Somewhat shamefully, I even foisted this damning indictment on other singles in the same position as me. But it turns out that this motto, while well-intended, was entirely wrong (in my case, at least). I still don’t love myself, but lots of other people do. Their love for me has not made me love myself either, because the way people feel about me has nothing to do with the way I feel about myself, but I can NOT love myself and still be absolutely fine. Thriving, even.
I’m not saying self-love doesn’t work, I’m just saying it wasn’t the right approach for me. I might change my mind on that later, but for now, this is where I’m at.
(Photo by Radu Florin on Unsplash)
Rather than trying to love myself, I have found resonance with the idea of self-compassion. This approach is about trying to be a friend to myself. It’s about seeing myself as a good human who is doing the very best she can. It’s about encouraging, nurturing and supporting myself so that I can continue to become a better human. It’s about self-care and self-respect, reflected in the choices I make and the relationships I invest in. It starts from a place of already knowing I’m good enough and giving myself permission to reach for more, even if the reaching is messy and thorny and flawed. I could only get to this stage because of the work I’ve done on improving my self-worth in recent years, and I could only settle into this space because I’ve been able to let go of the things that someone else told me I should be striving for. At least, that’s how I understand it. And I might change my mind on that later, too.
US researcher Dr Kristin Neff has done a great deal of study on self-compassion, that I recommend you look into if any part of this article is hitting a nerve for you. One of Dr Neff’s findings was that self-compassion is significantly more likely to result in positive changes than shaming yourself would. Read that again. Not once in my life has self-criticism resulted in me doing better – instead it only made me wallow in self-hatred and stop trying to change. Yet, on a good day, self-compassion has proven a pretty fruitful platform for healthy choices, on everything from nutrition to the way I show up for my clients. So if, like me, self-love isn’t working for you, perhaps exploring self-compassion might help you develop a better, more truthful relationship with yourself. Certainly can’t hurt to try, right?