The Problem with Self Love

We can consider today’s article as a really unpopular opinion. I’m going to tackle a very delicate subject that we are very familiar with in our society but without the rose colored glasses we often view it with: Self Love

Self-Love means having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness, taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others, not settling for less than what you know we deserve. It is accepting our nature in its entirety and it’s a wide concept that means something different for each individual.

Seen like this, there is nothing wrong with it, we can even say it is a vital thing in a person’s life. Indeed, self-love can have lots of positive effects it helps with mindfulness, it gives you the desire to set healthy boundaries in every aspect of your life and have discipline, you are more kind with yourself, in short, it improves your whole life.

But there is a dark side of self-love. It can unrealistic and toxic, bitter and problematic.

Why?

Because, sometimes it reminds you that you have to give yourself what you want, and even need to receive from people every once in a while because let’s be honest, we need to be loved. I am not saying that you should be depending on others by any means but as human beings, we want to receive: we want to be appreciated and taken care of by other human beings and for some people the regular “have self-love” is quietly followed by “because nobody loves you” and it’s bitter.

For example, if you tell the girl who just got dumped to love herself you are reminding her that the person she loves doesn’t love her back. Yes, she has to love herself but in the moment, she is just visualizing in her head all the ways she will never be loved by the person she wants.

If you tell a person who is dealing with childhood trauma to show up for himself, you are just reminding him that no one did when he was innocent and vulnerable.

The thing about the negative side of self-love is that when it is not properly understood, it causes isolation, we become comfortable in our loneliness, selfish and self-centered because we don’t receive enough love and we try to compensate this lack by redirecting onto ourselves the love that we should be giving to others, we have this toxic positivity, we are less teachable and accountable, we develop trust issues and our inner child is literally starved.

We need to stop lying to ourselves every once in a while. Yes, we have to love ourselves, pour into our own cup, show up for ourselves and be rooted in ourselves in a way that nobody’s absence or presence can disturb us in order to live a good and healthy life, respecting our boundaries and all this stuff but we do have a heart as well as a brain and the thing about the heart is that it doesn’t want to process and control everything like life a big Sudoku, it wants a hug and tenderness, it wants to feel valued, appreciated and loved, it wants to be at ease, comfortable in vulnerability. Just like the best surgeon cannot perform an operation on his own body, there are wounds that no amount of self-love can heal.

So I hope you love yourself but I also hope you love others and you become open to receive love. I promise, it isn’t as scary as it seems and deep down, you know you need it.