Revealed: The secret to loving who you are in 3 important steps
To love yourself is to experience freedom.
Freedom from self-criticism and self-doubt.
Freedom from believing thoughts that harm you.
Freedom from actions that limit you from joy and connection.
Loving yourself is liberating and oh-so-enjoyable. But, why is it so hard to do it?
It’s a complex and unique mix of things. This crapshoot can include:
Residual emotions trapped in the body
The nervous system has been conditioned to remain in a stress response
Energetic blockages
Trauma and/or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
Conditioning from culture, government, media, religion, family, schooling
Poor health practices
Disconnection from nature and natural rhythms
Parallel/past life patterns continuing into this incarnation
Unhealthy relationships
Unmet needs in childhood
Lots to unpack there and that’s definitely not a comprehensive list.
But this complexity points to the fact that there can be no silver bullet, no “right path” or “right way” to embody love for who you are … there’s only the way YOU forge yourself.
The ultimate guidepost for loving who you are
That being said we can lay out a path of guidance for others.
From where I sit, the ultimate guidepost for loving who you are is:
Loving yourself = discover who you truly are
Who you Truly Are isn’t:
a list of likes and dislikes,
what you own,
your job,
the relationships you have,
or even what has happened to you in your life.
Who you Truly are is the deepest and truest aspect of your Self that carries you through all apparent changes and turmoil.
It’s the aspect of Self that provides unconditional acceptance and love to all - including yourself.
Your True Self has the power to safely hold the space necessary for your continuous healing, unfolding, and becoming here in this life.
3 important steps in loving all that you are
These steps are not sequential. They happen at the same time and/or in random order. The process is not linear!
1. Unlearning and reconditioning
Discovering who you truly are involves unlearning what you absorbed from your family, schooling, government, religions, and culture over the course of your life.
This process of unlearning could also be described as the process of becoming a sovereign adult human being who is able to lead a self-directed life.
In my experience, this unlearning process is intimately linked to working through the emotions of anger, outrage, and grief.
Because all of those institutions have somehow failed you or the people you love on some level.
Another aspect of the unlearning process is having a “spiritual” experience - that is - having an experience of unity and oneness or a “dissolving of ego.”
This can occur through meditation practice, psychedelics and other consciousness-altering substances, near-death experiences, birthing, sexual and sensual practice, and life-changing events.
2. Discovering what you value from an intuitive place
At the same time, as you unlearn, you begin to explore what YOU truly value.
What is important to you? What gives your life meaning?
When you begin to turn inward and experience yourself beyond the thinking mind - that is, you can feel or sense with your intuition - you discover your truth and are able to begin living in alignment with these values.
This increase in awareness reduces the frequency in which you behave in ways that are destructive, self-sabotaging, self-deprecating, and unloving.
After 2 decades of self-abandonment, I finally quit drinking. I got a clean break from binge drinking once I become pregnant and, in sobriety, could no longer avoid my internal landscape.
I was able to discover that every time I drank I abandoned my goals, the promises I would make to myself, and would break boundaries for myself I set in sober times.
Turning inward I discovered I valued myself and I began the process of making new choices that reflected that.
3. Provide yourself the love, acceptance, and worth you didn’t receive from the external world
This IS “the work”.
Inner child work.
Shadow work.
Healing work.
This is the challenging, uncomfortable, disorientating, painful, fucked up shit that prevents you from truly loving yourself.
It’s embodying who you Truly are and realizing you have the power to provide yourself with the love, acceptance, and worth you didn’t/are not receiving from your parent(s), partner, culture, society, or anything else.
It’s aligning with that all-loving aspect of your Self and showering that love onto your current and younger selves.
Finally,
Don’t get tricked into thinking this is a final place you reach.
There is no “I am healed.”
There is no “I have no ego.”
It is a perpetual pendulation between unconscious past patterns and conscious new choices.
And slowly you may begin to notice yourself spiraling upwards toward embodying self-love more and more frequently (with lots of slips back into old patterns)!
That’s great, but can you offer me anything more practical and concrete to work through these steps?
The most important tool for moving through these steps is …
a toolbox!
Because there’s no one practice, therapy, or remedy to healing your hurt and embodying love for yourself and others.
I’ve come up with the 13 pillars of self-care that aim to grow your healing toolbox and deepen your self-awareness so you may liberate yourself from the thoughts, feelings, energies, and ways of being that no longer serve you.