I once spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring a coach to help teach me self-love. Afterall, self-love is the pinnacle of the healing journey… that’s what we are told. Love your inner child in the way they did not receive. Change your self-talk to one less self-deprecating and more self-loving, with mantras about your inner Goddess/God to override the deep hatred that you have for yourself. Pamper yourself with self-care as proof of how much you love yourself.
Yeah?!… that’s self-love?! However, I was not always the skeptic that is writing to you today. I too fell for all of these outward superficial displays of self-love because that is what I was told I need to do to heal from the outside world of gurus that I followed. And before I get all the naysayers coming in here and telling me not to poo-poo on their journey to self-love… these things that we have been told absolutely have their place. I used to indulge in these beliefs and this way of being myself. It was a needed part of my healing journey. So, you do you. Continue with these wonderful things AND know that there is also more.
I’ll never forget the day when I turned to my co-worker and said “I’m just so tired of hating myself.” It was an average day, nothing special, but it was not an average moment for me. I remember it like it was yesterday because it was a turning point in my awareness. After years of doing what everyone else told me to cultivate self-love, the subconscious realization began to bleed through into my conscious mind that what I was doing was not working, and that there was more to this self-love journey. But at the time, I didn’t realize the awareness that was beginning to develop within me from that moment nor did I have any idea what else I needed to do differently so I just continued with the exhausting application of the external . In that moment, I believe I began to let go of,
What I didn’t quite understand at that time, is that all of these things I was doing to teach me self-love were surface remedies that I needed to keep applying to manage my self-hatred. I needed to counteract all the negative with the positive. And I did, over and over and over again… and it was exhausting. So I must be doing something wrong and I continued my search for self-love outside of me by hiring the coach. With a much smaller bank account in toe, I had learned a lot from that experience and found a bit more room for myself in the process but I did not walk away feeling confident that I had found self-love.
All of these surface ways of being were not getting to the root cause of my self-hatred. They were going in the back door using the mind to manage the self-hatred . Like throwing water balloons on a fire in the hopes there is enough water to put it out. That’s alot of water balloons. But what was needed is a fire hose at the base
As our good friend on Google AI…
“When attempting to extinguish a fire with water, the best way to apply it is at the base of the flames as this directly reaches the fuel source and is most effective in putting out the fire; throwing water from the top is generally not recommended as it may not reach the burning material efficiently.”
All the positive self-talk, massages and manicures, and journaling to my inner child was like throwing water on top of a fire. The fire still burned, maybe not as strong, and I had to keep throwing water on top to keep it under control.
Because the getting to the root cause of self-hatred is not about finding self-love but about finding self-connection. When you can connect to who you are, to what you desire, to how you feel, to what you need… self-love automatically happens. But not in the way of these outward applications but from an internal integrated authentic place of self. You don’t need to convince yourself that you are worthy or remind your inner child that they were always worthy or . You just need to get to know yourself and a very deep way so that you can respond to those needs. This is what some might call self-parenting, a term I’m not opposed to if it helps you in your understanding. But also, it’s more than just self-parenting.
You are learning how to regulate, which is something you werre likely not taught well from your caregivers if you have a self-hatred script running. That is the job of caregivers to teach us children how to regulate, we are not born with the apparatus for regulation and it is the job of caregivers, many of us had less than stellar examples and coregulating caregivers to learn this lesson.
So how do you learn regulation. Well, you can force yourself to regulate by applying outward techniques.
When your nervous system
What these external applications of self-love taught me is what boundaries can look like. Carving out me time to journal and connect with my inner child, caring for myself in ways that support my health and well-being, what it sounds like to be more compassionate with myself. But these things were meaningless until I internally connected with myself via my somatic xperience and accepted my thoughts, feelings, until I saw myself.
The financial lessons can sometimes be the hardest ones. and it wasn’t until years later that I was led to the path that would eventually have me realize the self-love myth. What I learned is that no one can teach you self-love, or self-connection for that matter. You have to do the heavy lifting of connecting with yourself and it’s helpful to have a guide along the way to
If you would like a guide on your journey to somatic self-connection contact me to book your discovery call.