I once had a therapist tell me I needed to love myself. I said, "How?" She told me I needed to figure that out for myself. I stuck it out with her for a few more months, but looking back, she basically just took my money and never helped me. One thing I have learned since then is to make sure progress is being achieved in therapy and that you are making strides. Otherwise, get a new therapist. Thankfully I did!
6 days ago | 58
I remember a popular Instagram therapist did a Q&A a few years ago and I asked what to do if I couldn't get out of my comfort zone and their answer was a smug 'just expand your comfort zone' and stared down into the camera as if they just dropped some deep truth. It's been years and I still have no idea what I was supposed to do with that advice or why she picked my question at all. 😅
1 week ago | 197
Thank you it’s always the ones who don’t understand the trauma to make it surface level
6 days ago | 39
Inner child reparenting, IFS and EMDR were the game changers that unlocked C-PTSD post growth for me. Fully understanding who my inner child was, understanding what they needed from me to feel safe and learning how to build trust internally has built unshakable trust in my nervous system/gut. I'm grateful to all the brilliant, gentle and compassionate professionals I've had along in my journey. It was a slow but methodical process of many aha! moments as my awareness and understanding expanded. I was fortunate to work with many great people and only a few short-lived duds. I never knew I was capable of becoming who I am today... and that started with partnering with a great therapist who gave me the roadmap of teaching me principles like boundaries and self regulation- linking new skills and approaches together like a quilt around me.
6 days ago | 25
Yes I personally think that if you have not been appropriately loved by others then how can you have ever learnt what it means to love yourself. I find it less stressful to frame it as 'respecting myself'. Respecting myself as the ultimate authority in my own life. This is a helpful mindset for me.
6 days ago | 111
Loving yourself is hard when you're coming out of a place and time where you didn't have it modelled for you. There's no blueprint to follow, no instincts developed. You can't think yourself into self-love if you don't have the thought patterns established.
4 days ago | 2
One of my narcissistic exes told me that once. I realized what he was doing to me mentally and I just had to get out of there as fast as I could. He said that exact line to me "you need to love yourself first", boy, that's why I'm leaving you, because I love myself, and you are dragging me down. Looking in the review, wish I had left him years sooner, I do love myself and I'm in such a better place.
6 days ago | 37
Sooooooooo much this. Before therapy this phrase used to fill me with alternating waves of rage and resignation. Like, HELLO do you think if that were an option I'd take a hard pass?!? It's sort of like the kind way of saying "get over it"
6 days ago | 6
Selflove is the daily willingness to try and accept your current state of being including all emotions instead of acting from the them. And that's a hard and long path because the emotional awareness is buried by trauma response at first. That's why I said the daily willingness to try instead of the daily actual achieving that.
6 days ago | 7
Definitely a letdown. As if we didn't know... yet we end up feeling invalidated and shamed, bc we failed even at loving ourselves
6 days ago | 11
Thank you! When people would say that, it was like Chinese! I didn’t have a clue how to love myself, because I hadn’t been shown love.
6 days ago | 13
I had to speak to myself well and treat myself well and the feelings of love followed the actions of love.
5 days ago | 1
I had to start small find things I like about me and cultivate those. I no longer hate myself, some days I feel it could be love or at least close to loving myself I am still working on it little by little.
6 days ago | 6
This is the damn truth! I hate this phrase. I don't know if I'll ever "love myself." People get mad at me when I say that. I'm learning to accept and respect myself. I still have a long way to go and don't know if I'll ever get there.
6 days ago | 4
Right! There's no self to love other than the one you were given, which is a composite of all their cast-off parts and pretty unlovable
1 week ago | 16
This! I used to say those things to myself and others, slogans that were repeatedly said to me! I didn't know what the F I was talking about. You can't just leap from A to Z with no steps in between. It is actually a long, slow and quite difficult process learning what I didn't know. I literally never knew connection, safety, love, respect, healthy boundaries, never had any of those things from birth on but I'm learning now.
6 days ago (edited) | 10
Spot on, thank you. ❤ Usually, I hear this stated as "You need to love yourself before you can love anyone else," which may not be the same phrase you're referring to. The implication that only fully-actualized people are worthy of love and/or capable of feeling it deeply is absolutely inane, dehumanizing crap. For one thing: perfection doesn't exist. For another: life is not lived in a linear sequence, especially not when growth is involved. We are worthy of love for who we are, not whether or not we were gifted with loving caregivers during our formative years. It's the partner's business whether they choose to love me now or not, that's not my decision. I remember trying to explain to a friend years ago what's it's like to not have self-esteem and he said, "Well, why don't you just get one?" He didn't mean to be unkind, he really just had no idea how something so fundamental to his existence wasn't automatic to mine.
6 days ago (edited) | 3
We need to behave towards ourselves with a love that we were never shown, and therefore don't know. First we have to learn how to love.
6 days ago | 7
Oh gosh, Patrick thank you for this. I have struggled to put mental and emotional distance from my family who for a long time haven't realized the effects they have on me, and carrying that with me consciously and unconsciously. And I keep getting told to go to therapy, to love myself more, and in a vacuum, I'm sure I could. It so often feels like "if you can't be a confident badass queen, don't try to get a boyfriend" and like, that's unfair I feel. Shaming yourself into change doesn't work.
6 days ago | 5
Boy is that ever an understatement. Not so easy to accomplish. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to acheive and it always, always, lives just beneath the surface. That negativity that comes to you whenever you try to convince yourself that you are worthwhile and not worthless. God bless each and every one of you who reach that stature in life. Recovering your selfworth. Maybe even trying to recover something you never even had.
6 days ago (edited) | 2
Patrick Teahan
That phrase is usually a confusing and shaming letdown.
Poof, just love yourself and stop:
*dating beneath you
*feeling suicidal
*being codependent
*struggling with addiction
*submitting to others
*being so stuck
Does the phrase make us feel better?
I know it's meant well, but it's one thing that leaves us with an overwhelming "how?"
How do I go and love myself?
Do you have some steps?
Do you have any exercises?
A book even...?
When I started my childhood trauma recovery in my early 20s, I was blessed to have a therapist who had a plan. I had someone who knew the specifics and had a therapy model.
She knew I needed to get my adult in place to get myself together and start caring for an abused child instead of having that child seek attachment and rescue from others, which doesn't work.
It changed my life and wasn't just a platitude.
1 week ago | [YT] | 4,272