Hi Alterrans!

You may notice that the self-love movement gains more awareness these days, which is good! It’s very easy to spot a poster or content that says something like “love yourself!” or “love yourself before you love others” on social media such as Instagram. But… 

Is it true that you gotta fully love yourself before anyone else? Should we be emotionally, physically, socially, and spiritually healthy before getting into a relationship?

Well, self-love is different from isolating ourselves from others in order to put ourselves first. No one will get better when being alienated tho. Self-love is also deeper than some routines we know as self-love acts such as taking long baths, doing skin-care, or having a trip alone. Those are definitely great, but when the gap between us and our friends and family grows wider, it can help us to think about what self-love looks like in real practice.

Don’t mistake self-love for self-reliance

Some alone time like treating ourselves to something nice, putting on a facemask, cooking a nice meal for one can be great. But that’s more of self-reliance than self-love. Instead, self-esteem is closely tied to self-love, which is the ability to recognize ourselves as flawed, imperfect beings while still holding ourselves in high regard. It’s like the ability to prevent ourselves from slipping into the abyss of self-hatred.

Bear with your messy thoughts and feelings

Our thoughts and feelings can be messy and make us feel terrible but that never means we’re doing life wrong. Difficult emotions are an unavoidable aspect of being a fully functioning, messy human being. So allowing space for our emotions, rather than rushing to our emotional exits, humiliating or ‘shoulding’ ourselves out of what we’re feeling, is part of the effort of loving ourselves.

Self-love is not easy

There’s a day when we make a mistake and feel bad. We don’t always like ourselves very much. It’s okay, let’s start with self-compassion, give yourself a little empathy and gentleness just like how you do to your loved ones. Self-love is no different from every other skill we have to learn, it takes practice and constant work.

Let others in on it

Loving ourselves doesn’t have to be a radically individualistic pursuit. It’s also allowing others to love us even when we feel unlovable. Because even when we try our best to love ourselves, deal with our emotions, understand, praise and feel confident towards ourselves, we still tend to beat ourselves hard for not doing it perfectly. Letting others in will make us realize that we’re never all alone in this battle. Reach out for help if you are overwhelmed. Let’s challenge ourselves to let people in on what’s truly going on with us. 

So actually it’s not true that we have to be full and complete before loving others. In fact, we need them to complete our journey of self-love. May this year comes along with the strength to love ourselves even more.

Source: theselfspace.com