Happy June and Happy Pride Month Everybody!
Since it is Pride Month, I thought the theme of this newsletter would be self-love.
I have been preaching this shit for 14 years of being a therapist and I tell ya- I am only now really starting to feel it IN MY BONES!
So.. what does it take to love yourself? And what does that even mean anyway?
Let’s start with the last question, I would say that some good markers of self-love are:
- You don’t take things personally.
- You set boundaries when you need to.
- You know what you like and you go after it.
- You don’t put up with shitty behavior from other people.
- You believe and trust that the people in your life ACTUALLY like being around you.
- You like being around you.
- You don’t ruminate on mistakes, but you absolutely take accountability when you make a mistake.
- You understand that YOU ARE ENOUGH just as you are AND you value learning and growing.
- You show up for the people in your life with BIG LOVE, but NOT Marytry self-sacrificing caretaking and codependency.
- You have done some deeper shadow work, you know what your areas of growth are without being too critical of yourself AND you can also experience joy, pleasure and lightness of being and you know what strengths you bring to the world and relationships.
- You have reciprocity in relationships.
- You trust your decisions.
- You attend to your emotions and the emotions of others with love and kindness and with the value of reciprocity (giving AND receiving love freely).
That’s a long list. Maybe you can see that there are some of these things that resonate for you or feel like you do pretty well with and some are harder. Notice how you respond to those things on the list that are harder for you. Are you kind to yourself about it? See What I did there?
So what does it take to love yourself?
Shadow Work
If you haven’t done some deeper work, I would invite you to start there. FInd the parts of yourself that you really don’t like and find a way to love them. If your parents were physically violent and you are still going around telling people you “had a great childhood,” if you are punishing yourself every time you eat a piece of chocolate cake, if you are overly reactive if someone sets a boundary with you or if you sacrifice your own needs almost always in relationships, I would invite you to start going deeper and getting to the root of that.
This often involves doing some parts work. We all have inner exiled parts (like wounded inner children), parts that manage us and (try to) manage others (critics, pessimists, judgemental parts), and parts that come in and wreak havoc (like addictions, rageful, checking out or numbing parts). BUT … THERE ARE NO BAD PARTS! They likely either tried to keep you safe, give you some power, or get you connection. We have to get to know the different parts of ourselves and reclaim them as our own.
I tell ya though- doing the trauma/shadow/”feeling the pain of it all” work is HARD, but the liberation and light on the other side is SO WORTH IT!
Taking care of your basic needs:
Sometimes we can confuse self-love for self-indulgence. I absolutely champion a warm bath and a piece of chocolate as self-care, but sometimes, self-care is having that difficult conversation you have been avoiding, putting some vegetables and nutritious food in your body, moving your body in a way that feels good, and getting at least 7 hours of sleep are foundational. Sometimes focusing on what we NEED over what we WANT can be the foundation that we need to really start loving ourselves. What are the blocks to these things for you? It might be that there is some trauma/ shadow work that is keeping you from being able to meet these needs.
Embody body love and kind self-talk.
One of the things that I always say is “Trauma doesn’t give a shit what you know.” You can’t self-affirmation yourself into loving your body or loving yourself. Positive self-talk is great, but sometimes we have to be with the inner critics and recognize that they were likely trying to protect us. (If you had a really critical parent, it was likely helpful for you to develop an internal critic so that you could try to prevent that outside criticism). Not to mention, we are swimming in the soup of comparison culture- measuring ourselves and our bodies up against other people so no shit- we have internalized some of that.
So pause.
Recognize what the story is and then start to identify what you would want to FEEL in YOUR BODY INSTEAD- Ease? Flow? Self-Compassion? Love? What represents that for you? Nature? An Animal? Universal love/spiritual consciousness? How can you begin to dip your toes in the water of what you would want to FEEL like in your body instead of self critical?
Play and Reconnect with Joy
Play and silliness is really underdeveloped if our nervous systems are organized around self-protection. Start to follow the breadcrumbs of what lights you up- even if it is a little bit. What did you like to do as a child? Can you do more of that? What would having the intention of play and joy mean for you?
Here are some things that bring me joy:
Dancing to Prince, Madonna and/or George Michael in my kitchen (don’t judge me- I am an 80’s kid:-)
Walks, especially with flowers blooming
Hugging people
Theme parties (I love dressing up)
Singing in my car
Sitting by a river or creek
A warm bath
Building a fire in the outside fire pit
Time in Nature
Dance parties with my kids
Petting my dog
If these don’t resonate with you, that is okay.. AND it is also pretty normal that if you have unresolved trauma, “loving yourself” can feel like an impossible goal. So.. how about you try to just “not be an asshole to yourself” today? Can you just give your humanity a little space to be here? I promise you- if criticism and shaming ourselves were effective tools of change, we would all be enlightened by now. Gentleness and love are the enzymes that help us digest our pain and release it so that we can be free.
A.V.O.S. Counseling 