Self-Love 101 — Part II

The Three Elements of Love

If we want to learn to accept the whole package of who we are it helps to know what it consists of. When we know everything about ourselves and we begin to accept all our emotions, thoughts and fears and see the innocence in all of it, we begin to truly fill our batteries and build absolute confidence. It seems counterintuitive to associate absolute confidence with a deep sense of connection and relative confidence with separateness, but that is what it is.

When we feel separate, we crave other people’s approval so that we can feel connected again. This is what makes us believe that love is something that comes to us from somewhere outside. Take a moment and remember a time when you really felt love. Maybe the first time you were in love or the first time you held your baby or that time when you looked at that puppy for the first time. An overwhelming feeling of bliss and pure love. Where did you feel it? Did it feel like a shower from above? Like wind blown in your face? Or did it rather surge up from within you? From a source deep, deep within your own body, warm, strong, powerful.

There is no love you feel that is not yours.

If we want to feel love, we have to return home. The question is what makes it so hard to do that?

When we are sad, on whose shoulder do we cry? When we look for advice, who do we ask? When we go on vacation, who do we leave the key and the cat with?

Someone we trust. Someone we confide in. We share our secrets with a friend, when we are confident that he keeps it with care. We leave our child with someone we are confident will treat her well. We leave our car with the mechanic, when we are confident that she will work on it with skill and care. See a pattern here? Confidence and love and care. Confident that they love. Confident that they care. Confident that they know what they are doing.

On the other hand, most of us will not allow our child to have a sleep-over with a friend, whose parents we never met. We do not leave our bags with a random guest in the café while we use the bathroom and before we hire an employee, we call their references to learn more about them.

Confidere is the Latin word for trust. The German word for confidence, Selbstvertrauen (self-trust) is a more direct translation of the idea. We trust that we are worthy, good, wonderful human beings. The prerequisite for trust is familiarity — knowing who they are. Just like we want to get to know other people before we decide how much we can trust them, we need to know ourselves before we can trust ourselves.

The more we know every facet of who we are, less we expect other people to affirm an image that we project at them. The more we can trust ourselves deeply, less we depend on other people to approve our very existence.

So, instead of sitting down and pressing hard to squeeze a little self-love out of your pores do this: get to know yourself. I do not mean only the presentable shiny version you have been trying to present to the outside world. I mean the good, the bad and the ugly. Do not worry about loving the mess just yet. Just face it. Only when we look at all of our facets, bring them out to light and face the darkest corners can we discover that there is, after all, no good, no bad and no ugly. There is only the perfect whole.

The good

You would think there would not be much to say about it. Except that, if you are anything like I used to be, you may find yourself continuously doubting your virtues and wondering whether you are just ‘faking it.’ We have tried so hard to be good, we have denied, pushed down, beaten ourselves up for and hidden all the other parts of our being that at one point were deemed not good enough that our good ones have begun to feel fake. Know this: they are not.

What feels fake and what actually IS fake is the idea that we are or even can be limited to only this: the socially acceptable, supposedly love-worthy part. As long as we hide any part of who we are to ourselves and others we continue to be haunted by the fear of being found out.

Here is a thought for you: whatever we fear is what we ultimately want. Think about it. How can we ever feel fully, entirely, unconditionally loved? Certainly not as long as we only allow a fraction of our being or an artificial identity to be visible and present. That part may receive praise, affirmation and positive affection. And that may make us feel good for a moment. Until somewhere in our depths we remember that there is still so much more within us to be loved and accepted. Then we wonder again: is all that real? Am I what people think I am? Am I what people seem to love and appreciate?

You are. And you are much, much more. Just begin with the easiest part: accept all the good that you are. Where to start? Here is my suggestion: if the thought of loving yourself seems too outrageous, unattainable, ridiculous or abstract, start small. Pick one (physical) part of you. Think about what you appreciate about it.

I began with my feet. I like my feet. They carried me, silently, without ever complaining, stuck forever in cheap sandals, and even when I was royally overweight. They walked over mountains, deserts, bomb ruins, foreign cities, and jungles for miles and miles and miles. They were the first things I truly loved about me.

Pick yours. Then work yourself up. It does not have to be literally bottom upwards; you are free to hop around on your body. Just add an inch of you every week or so. Throw in a thought about what you did recently that was actually pretty cool. Think about your loved part every day and thank it. See what happens and share with me if you like.

A kind word is always a kind word. When you are ready, move on to

The bad

Most of our thinking is negative self-talk. All day long we hear that nagging chatter in our ears about what we have done wrong again and how we could have done that one better. How bad is it really? You dropped the sandwich. Inside your head, the rant starts: “You stupid, clumsy bum!! Can’t you hold a sandwich? And, if by all means you have to drop it on the floor, can’t you — for the love of God! — make sure it doesn’t fall on the buttery side.” No, you cannot. God’s love created the law of gravity, which requires that the heavier side turns downward.

Once you have got your physics right, take a deep breath and ask yourself: would you ever break out in such a burst of rage if your best friend let their sandwich drop? I sure hope not. It is not a big deal, is it? Can happen to anyone. Then why can it not happen to you? Are you beyond the laws of drop and flop? What makes you believe that you, of all people, cannot drop your sandwich or the keys, that you cannot make a mistake, that you cannot ever make a fool out of yourself?

A common symptom of various psychiatric diseases is grandiosity, which puts people into a state where they consider themselves superior, infallible and invulnerable. Often, these outbursts of grandiosity are followed by plunges into the depths of depression, when the person feels reduced to rubble and not worth more than the dust in the corner. While we do have mental health problems that affect a person’s life (and the lives of those around them) to such a degree that an intervention or treatment is necessary, it is helpful to understand that psychiatric diseases do not necessarily mean the person’s mental condition is inherently different to that of a ‘normal’ person. It often simply means that the insanity we all carry in us is blown up to a proportion that makes their lives unmanageable.

We ‘normal people’ suffer the same insanity, when we believe that we should not make mistakes, be perfect, be in control. We need to understand that the delusion of grandiosity and the devastation at constantly being confronted with the fact that we do make mistakes are not separate concepts, but simply describe the extreme edges of the same continuum of judgment. Then we can also see that moving up or down the continuum until we find the perfect spot cannot be the solution.

Whether we like it or not, accepting our bad sides means we have to face the idea here that we are not superior to anyone else. We are human, too. We are as little in control of life and often of our emotional reactions as all the people around us. This is called humility. If we want to become better in the sense that we grow emotionally, spiritually and mentally, the way is not to eradicate our mistakes, but to accept them and embrace them with grace as a beautiful reminder that we are human.

Once we have at least begun to allow ourselves to be somewhat human, we can move on to

The ugly

Now this includes all the thoughts, actions and memories that we hide even before ourselves. Somewhere deep, deep down in the darkest corner of our consciousness. The things we never share with anyone. The things that are too horrible. The things that, if people ever found out, would make them recoil, turn their heads in disgust and never look at us again.

Or maybe not.

Like the monster under the bed whose ugliness becomes unspeakable as we refuse to look at it, those parts of ours may turn out some ragged little things that need some brushing off and loving embrace once we turn the lights on.

So, you secretly wished someone would die. There were times you did not like your own children. You cheated on someone, stole from a friend, lied to a loved one, peed in your pants, aborted a child, killed the neighbor’s cat, ran someone over in a drunk drive, entertained violent sexual fantasies, murdered someone in your mind. Maybe you cannot admit that you are fearful sometimes, that you are needy, sad, weak, or confused.

Know this: there is nobody out there that does not have this hidden closet somewhere in the dark. There is no scale or objective way of measuring the ugliness of what is inside. Simply because ‘ugly’ is just a name we have given to what we do not want to admit in ourselves. As long as we keep it hidden, it will stay with us. As long as we keep the lid on very tightly, it cannot be released. If we want relief, we need to look at it.

Spell it out. Write it down. Take a piece of paper and write. Do not worry about what comes out, just let it run. You can later burn the paper or tear it up and throw it away. Or you keep it and read it until it loses its terror.

There is no need to publish it on social media. I would actually recommend you refrain from doing that. Do not try to get other people’s affirmation that what is in the closet is okay and part of you and lovable. First, you might not get it from all eight billion folks out there and second, even if you did, you would still not be convinced. *You* need to look at it, accept it, let it be. So that you can then let it go. You need to understand that you all do the very best you can with the physical, mental and emotional strength you have at the time and in the state of consciousness you were in at the time.

All of us want relief form the tormenting thoughts in our minds. Until we realize that the only thing left to do is to question those thoughts, we will act out to every possible degree of frenzy to find relief. Would the murderer kill if they had no tormenting thoughts of fear and shame? Would we yell at our children if we were not troubled by stressful thoughts in that moment? Would the child hammer the toy bus into their friends’ head if they were not distressed by some story going on in their mind?

The moment we fully accept everything that makes up our wonderful, miraculous being; the moment we relinquish all judgment and release the guilt, nothing can hurt us anymore. The moment we fully embrace who we are, we no longer need other people to give us permission. We have found love.