Self Love: How To Learn To Love Yourself When It’s Hard To Like Yourself
I really think that the term “self love” has been commodified in a lot of ways. The path to loving yourself has been simplified into catch-all actions like meditating, spending time in nature, and journaling. And while these things can be great tools for fostering a sense of wellbeing in oneself, self love just isn’t that simple. For people with mental illness, trauma, or just low self-confidence, liking oneself, or sometimes just even tolerating oneself, can feel like an insurmountable task. And sometimes the forced positivity of “self love” slogans and campaigns can make these feelings worse.
So this isn’t going to be a guide on how to get to a point of always 100% loving yourself. Rather, it’ll be a starting point; we’ll offer a few suggestions of ways to get out of that familiar pit of self-hatred we’ve all been trapped in at certain points in our lives. When it’s hard to like yourself, or even appreciate small things about yourself or your actions, it can be really demoralizing to hear advice that falls into the trappings of toxic positivity. But self-love is still not something that’s unreachable, or that can’t be worked on. The simple fact is that liking yourself, as well as eventually loving yourself, takes work. It’s slow work, and a long journey. But it’s necessary work for reaching a place of comfortable contentment with yourself.
What Are Some Small Ways To Learn To Like Yourself?
1. Self-Forgiveness
First, I think it’s very important to learn the skill of forgiving yourself. Now, this doesn’t have to be for, say, the biggest mistake you think you’ve made in your life. Start with small forgivenesses. You know that moment at night where you’re awake and overthinking a social interaction you feel you messed up on that day? Let yourself know that that was okay. Your brain might be telling you that one awkward thing you said makes you a horrible person, or a failure at conversation, or worse. It also might tell you that the one thing you said made the people around you not like you, or that they never liked you in the first place. These are called cognitive distortions, which are negative patterns of thinking. This concept comes from the world of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, if you’re interested in learning more.
These two cognitive distortions in particular: labeling (name-calling yourself) and mind-reading (automatically thinking others dislike you) can often get in the way of personal forgiveness. Learn to challenge these distortions. Tell yourself that although you may have felt you said something off in conversation, this does not define you as a person, and definitely does not make you a failure at conversation. Remind yourself of other times you may have succeeded in similar situations.
Forgiving yourself also doesn’t have to end at things that have happened in the past—it’s important to forgive yourself for things in the future as well. This is challenging another cognitive distortion, fortune telling, where you negatively predict the outcome of things that have yet to happen in your life. Confront the voice in yourself that tells you you’ll automatically fail: the future is never set in stone, and if you believe every time you begin something that you’ll fail at it, you’re not giving yourself the confidence you need to actually make it through. Keep your mind open to possibility, and accept that you truly don’t know what will happen in the future. Have faith in your ability to come out through the other side of a difficult situation.
2. Take Pride in Your Successes
On the other side of self-forgiveness, try to let yourself be proud of yourself when you can. Learning to love yourself starts with celebrating little victories and successes that you may typically tend to discount or ignore. Did you have a day when it was super difficult to shower, but you were able to make yourself anyway? Celebrate your clean skin and the way it feels, and your relief for having gotten something as important as self-hygiene done. This may be hard to do, as your brain may be telling you that showering is something easy, or that it’s something everyone can do. But this isn’t always true. Sometimes mental health can get in the way of taking care of basic needs, and when you are actually able to take care of those needs, it’s something worth honoring. Think of something you’ve succeeded at lately, no matter how small, and let yourself take pride in it for a moment. Self love can be built by stringing together those moments of pride, and building confidence in yourself as a result of them.
3. Take Care Of Yourself; Work On Yourself
I’m definitely not the first to advocate for the “treat yourself” mentality, but it goes beyond just buying yourself gifts or having an at-home spa night. Self love starts by checking if you’re taking care of your basic needs. This includes things like hunger and rest of course, but also extends to things like entertainment and socialization. Referencing the popular life simulation video game “the Sims”, I always ask myself if my personal health meters (little bars in the corner of the screen that track “hunger”, “fun”, and “socialization”, among other things) are empty or full, and if they’re the former, my first goal will be to fix that. Aiming for optimum health can be stressful, but simply making sure that your basic needs as a person are being met is the first step towards caring for your body and mind.
Once you’ve covered the basics, you can move on to a different type of self care—working on yourself as a person. This can be your appearance (like buying new clothes, trying a new makeup look or haircut, etc.), a skill, anything. One of the many stops on the way to learning to like yourself is to like and accept the different aspects of yourself, and to grow any parts of yourself that you think would feel good to nurture. This is obviously easier said than done, and can get harder depending on what parts of yourself you’d like to grow, but if you focus on putting time into nurturing particular parts of yourself, you may find that you can appreciate yourself just a little bit more.
It’s also worth acknowledging that society puts a lot of pressure on people to behave or look a certain way, and a lot of the ways that people are encouraged to grow or change aren’t necessarily worth investing your time and effort into. So, being discerning about what your values are and what growth looks like within those values is an important step to fostering a sense of self love.
4. Spend Time Alone With Yourself
Take some one-on-one time with yourself when you can. If you’re constantly surrounded by others, it can be hard not to compare yourself to them, or to wish you were someone else. Even without these negative thoughts, it can be hard to truly get to know yourself when you’re constantly surrounded by distractions. Take some time to get to know yourself by yourself. And this doesn’t have to be through serious reflection or contemplation. It can be fun things as well. Think about the love languages, but in regards to yourself rather than others. For example, one love language is “quality time.” Giving yourself quality time with just you, where you do something that you actually like, is a great way to build a healthy relationship yourself.
5. When You Do Spend Time With Others, Spend It With Those Who Love Themselves
Self love can be contagious. Think of some people in your life who are making an effort to love being with themselves, or are walking the path of attempting to like themselves. Ask them how they got to where they are, and listen to their responses. In times I’ve been in pits of self-hatred, I’ve asked friends how they’ve gotten out of similar bad areas, and their responses were usually very helpful in deciding what to do for myself. Others can influence your life in amazing ways, and it’s important to take advantage of the resources you have around you.