How To Love Yourself?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

One of my Facebook readers brought up the topic of "love yourself" advice from psychologists. I think this advice is one of those that infuriate the client. Because it is with this that a person comes to a psychologist, that he does not have this experience of love for himself and most likely there is no experience of love of significant people in early childhood.

After all, it is no longer a secret that many parents only declare that they love their children, but in fact replace love with care, overprotection, control and power over the child. So how can such a person have any experience of self-love?

And here the most interesting thing begins: a person comes to a psychologist and asks how to "love yourself"? And it is desirable for the psychologist to tell in one consultation how it is, give instructions for action, the client took it, did everything quickly and immediately, fell in love with himself today, and everything in his life worked out. But often psychologists themselves do not know how to do this. Indeed, today you will not find step-by-step instructions on this issue in any book.

Even when I used to say in other words "first try to shift the focus of your attention from another to yourself" - but this also causes anger in the client. Like this? he asks. And really how can he know how to pay attention to his feelings, needs, when from childhood he was "sharpened" to make him comfortable for others, adapt to other people's needs, satisfy other people's needs … Otherwise !!! (This is how the client thinks and this is from his personal experience so) If you do not please others, do not hide your true feelings, then you can remain completely alone, abandoned by all dear people, abandoned, rejected. But the client wants the psychologist, like a magician, to quickly wave his hand and everything will work out! No, no! These are the years of your work on yourself in the process of psychotherapy, you learn to walk again, talk, scream, cry, express your discontent, defend your boundaries, show anger, love, talk about shame, guilt, fear - this is all that you previously could not do out of - at the risk of losing those whom you loved or love, and above all, you learn to do this in contact with a psychologist who will not leave you for being uncomfortable for him, who will allow you to "practice on yourself" and find that golden mean in which and your needs and feelings will be taken into account and the psychologist will also declare his boundaries and respect yours.

So in the process of this contact with a psychologist, you gradually acquire the experience that you have been deprived of all your life since childhood. Further, this experience, the passage of which may take 3-5-7 years, you bring into the world from laboratory conditions, having experienced it with a psychologist, assimilating it, assimilating it. In this way, you gradually learn to love yourself and love another in living contact. Here is a detailed answer to the question "how to do it?". The key points that you will have to go through in the process of psychotherapy in order to learn to love yourself, I will nevertheless outline here: Realize your fear of loneliness and fear of loss, learn to say "no" to loved ones, realize how often you act out of guilt, how you suppress anger, learn to express your feelings to loved ones in an adequate form, learn to build your own boundaries and respect other people's personal boundaries, become aware of your projections and attitudes (introjects), learn to be in the "here and now", return yourself to reality from travels to the past and the future, and much more. As you can see, the task is big … And it cannot be solved in a day or even in a few months …

Do you know how to love yourself? Will you be able to refuse a person if he violates your personal boundaries?

(c) Yulia Latunenko