I first started seeing the importance of loving yourself about 12 years ago in my practice. I would spend an hour with many patients with my combination Chiropractic essential oil treatments. Some women would open up to me right away, others after many sessions. Maybe they sensed that I cared, maybe they knew I was a safe outlet, that I could relate or maybe they knew I might have a resource for them to help. Their stories were of their past, hurts, heartaches, and wounds.
Sadly the stories were devastating, heart breaking, and some you wouldn’t be able to believe the cruelty in this world. As a result, many of these women’s traumas had directly affected their current beliefs about themselves. Some saw themselves as ugly, some un-loveable, and not worthy of much in life. In addition, they may have had habits that protected them or even pushed love away.
Your habits reflect how you feel about yourself
I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I think everyone would agree that individuals that are plagued with eating disorders, alcoholism, drug addiction, and even cutting struggle with SELF LOVE. In fact some call these behaviors acts of self hate.
But there is another group of people who at a lesser degree still struggle with SELF LOVE. They may sabotage their success in different areas. They lose 30 pounds, start feeling unworthy of being healthy or slim and gain it all back and then some. They may have success in their business and then start believing what their ex verbally abusive husband said “YOU WILL NEVER BE GOOD AT ANYTHING”.
Have you ever wondered why you keep going around in circles in your life? Have you seen patterns of self-sabotage?
If yes, KEEP READING.
How to Overcome your Struggle with Self Love
Loving yourself totally requires that we pull of the roots of unworthiness. See, somewhere in your life a seed was planted. It could have been one boy at the playground calling you fat at recess. It could have been an ignorant parent telling you to shut up and you don’t know anything. It could have been a rotten husband crushing your once beautiful self esteem with awful words. And it could have been years of your own negative self talk.
Seeds get planted but it takes water, sun and nutrients to grow. Sadly, roots grow then the stem, then the leaves and if the process continues without WEED KILLER, we may even see a TREE with FRUIT. Fruit of UNWORTHINESS, LOW SELF ESTEEM, even SELF HATRED.
But we have to understand we can’t just simply pick the fruit. Why? Because it will grow back. Telling ourselves we are “over it” or using affirmations like “I am beautiful, I am successful, I am worthy” is not enough. It’s good, don’t get me wrong but it won’t get to the roots.
I want to share a pattern I have seen in some women. Trauma in their childhood, usually abuse of some sorts with parents who were neglectful or not loving in the way parents should be. The trauma of their childhood led to eating disorders, or some form of self abuse or self hatred. They found themselves in abusive relationships and by their 30’s started struggling with their health. They padded their lives with fat, things, or habits like emotional eating, co-dependency, always saying yes, putting all their energy into a career, child or other person. This padding is a wall… a wall to keep love out. In relationships mostly with men, they might push them away with meanness and cruelty just because of their own feelings of unworthiness.
Now of course this is the extreme, but many individuals do this on different levels.
How to Break Free of Self Hatred
Self Hatred is a powerful force that could leave a person in bondage for life. The good news is there is a force greater than this. A force that can break the bonds of torment, hurt, self sabotage, and pull up the roots of unworthiness. Some call this force miraculous and with bondage breaking over night. Others use this force and break free over months or even years. I personally have witnessed dozens of clients and friends set free from the past junk that controlled their lives. The cool thing is they did it without a decade of counseling, medications, or electro-shock treatments.
Most people believe in it but still don’t know how to harness this force to BREAK FREE.
For over 3 years I have worked with this specific Bondage Breaking Force. It is amazing how radically it can change your life. How good happiness feels, freedom, and joy! I would love to see you experience this same thing and learn to break free. On May 18th, we have a special presentation given by Dr. Lavonne Atnip, a counselor who has helped hundreds of clients including myself harness this 2000 year old force and BREAK FREE from the Bondage of Unworthiness. If you would like to break free too, join us.
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I am already signed up. Still struggling with these issues and going in circles.
this is a source of pain and struggle most of my life and sabotage has been my MO
To see it written like this enlightens me to act NOW
I’ve struggled most of my life with self-loathing and generally being too hard on myself. I’m 23 years old. I’ve gotten a lot better through a few important realizations and habits:
1) I realized the difference between self-hate and self-doubt. A certain amount of self-doubt is healthy and virtuous. If you didn’t have some self-doubt, you’d be an arrogant prick. Self-doubt also allows you to evaluate decisions that you make, and that is extremely important. Self-hate is completely unproductive, not to mention unkind. Would you be as unkind to others as you are to yourself?
2) I tried to be objective. There is nothing I have done that merits being hated by myself or anyone else. I’ve done bad things, but does that mean I’m supposed to go away forever? Of course not. It just makes me human.
3) I dropped religious beliefs and am a staunch agnostic. I do not know about a grand creator or a grand design, nor do I believe I will ever know about it. Having no belief doesn’t make a sunset any less beautiful or make me love my friends and family any less, and there’s nothing I do now that’s any worse than what I did when I believed in God and/or God’s plan. In fact, most of the time beliefs in God only caused me anxiety about things that I had absolutely no control of. I would wonder things like, “What if I believe in the wrong God? What will happen to me when I die? Does God want me to suffer?” Well, that’s not helpful. You’re alive and that’s about all you can be sure of, so work with that. You already know what’s right and wrong. Also, you may notice that religious beliefs don’t prevent any believer from doing horrible things; in fact, many times, horrible things are justified by religious beliefs. Any believer who is moral and decent is that way not because they fear God’s punishment but because they don’t want to be cruel to others because they’re not psychopaths. So, at best, religious beliefs are unnecessary for morality, and at worst they cause anxiety about things that cannot possibly be reconciled. No one knows about hell or heaven, so if you’re worrying about that, don’t expect to ever stop suffering.
4) I started doing things that I found transcendental. I am a musician and it helps me forget about myself. Depression and self-loathing are just forms of self-centeredness and self-obsession. When you look past the tragedy of someone hating themselves, you then see that it requires a TON of time thinking about nothing BUT yourself. Other things are transcendental as well- exercise, laughter, helping others who are truly more disadvantaged than you, thrill-seeking, whatever. You MUST get out of yourself if you want to have decent feelings about yourself. LEAVE THE HOUSE!!!
5) I realized that life is not about being “happy.” “Happy” is a cheap word that is too vague for my liking. “Content” I like much better. Life is a journey. There are good times and bad times, boring and exciting times, awkward times, comfortable and uncomfortable times. Start seeing yourself as an adventurer on the frontier of life. This time is yours whether you want to be here or not, so dive in. We all have opportunities if we look hard enough.
Everyone knows these things- but you have to drop that bag of bricks.