There are all different kinds of beautiful love to experience. There's the platonic love of friendships, romantic love of partners, passionate love, companion love, familial love, the fleeting love shared between strangers that lasts both a moment and forever, and the list goes on. You can experience multiple types of love with a single person, or just one. The best kind of love that we could all do with more of is self-love.
Self-love is the beautiful state of accepting and loving yourself as you are, as you have been, and as you will be. Self-love is recognizing your flaws AND your strengths. Self-love is honoring all that makes you who you are and loving it—the good and the ugly. Self-love is one of the strongest forms of love that we can experience because, despite how selfish the title sounds, it is only through profound self-love that we can truly give unconditional love to others.
Self-love, at its root, is knowing your self-worth and telling yourself that you have worth and that worth comes from how much you love yourself and who you are. When you have that worth within yourself, that love, then you know what you deserve to accept from others, and what you are capable of giving.
Understanding self-love is a complicated thing. That's why it's referred to as a journey. The best place is to start by identifying what self-love is NOT.
There has been much written on narcissists and the narcissist/empath dynamic. Whether you are familiar with this condition and/or dynamic, or if you just believe that self-love is equal to being selfish and self-absorbed, it is this fear and misunderstanding that negatively impacts our self-love journey.
We are so terrified that if we love ourselves too much, we will become the dreaded narcissist. While that's a valiant fear to have, that's not how it works.
Self-love and narcissism are not the same.
Not at all. Not even close.
They are not even part of the same scale. There is no self-love that can be pushed too far to become narcissism. It is this misunderstanding, in whatever form it is recognized, that poses the greatest obstacle in learning, accepting, and embracing self-love.
Yes, the Greek myth where Narcissus rejected an offer of pure love (from the nymph Echo or a male suitor depending on the version) and was given his comeuppance when he caught sight of his own reflection and fell in love with himself to the point that he drowned himself or melted from the passion within him (either way, he can't have the object of his desire [himself] so he dies and becomes a flower) because the depth of his love could never be fully realized in the physical world thus he perished does seem to carry the message that if we love ourselves too deeply we, too, deserve such a fate and are horrible monsters deserving demise.
But that's not what that story actually means.
Narcissus (where the word "narcissism" derives from) first rejected pure love. He rejected all of his suitors. Male and female. No one was good enough for him. He could not accept love, no matter how pure, and he pushed it away. He destroyed others without a care. In the version with his male suitor, Ameinias, he even gave Ameinias the sword with which he killed himself. In the version with the nymph, Echo, she was so devastated by his rejection and demise that she became weak and faded away until all remained was her voice which could only repeat back that which was said to her.
His comeuppance wasn't because he loved himself, it was because he rejected love and annihilated it.
Narcissus was given the treatment he gave to others: unrequited love.
Here's the important bit: Narcissus' love was unrequited and unrealized in the physical world because he did not possess any true love for himself. What he saw in his reflection was someone of great beauty, yes, but more importantly he saw himself as others did: someone worth loving. He did not have that love inside for himself, thus is was unrequited in his own reflection. He fell victim to his own rejection, just as Echo and Ameinias had, and thus perished.
The true message of Narcissus and the condition of narcissism is that someone becomes so self-absorbed, taking from others and never giving back, hurting people and not caring, because they don't have love for themselves and thus cannot accept or give love to others. They take the praise, the devotion, the admiration, whatever others are willing to give them as tokens of love, because inside they are empty. These people are so empty because there is the complete absence of self-love within them. They cannot truly accept the love that is given to them, only the token of it, because they don't believe they are worth loving. They are just an empty pit where love is tossed in but can never be filled and thus never returned.
That's why self-love and narcissism are nowhere near the same. In fact, you are at a greater risk of becoming a narcissist when you lack self-love.
When you lack self-love, you lack the ability to accept and give love and this leads us down toxic roads and perpetuates toxic cycles in relationships.
When you lack self-love, you become desperate for something external to fill that space. This is the Lack of Self-Love Scale. On the extreme end, there's the narcissist. On the other end, there's insecurity.
Lack of Self-Love Scale
Less Extreme Extreme
Insecurity ___________________________________________________Narcissism
It's important to note, self-love is not on this scale. That's a different scale and most of us will find that we reside somewhere on both and that's okay. It's likely impossible to have zero insecurities, but that doesn't mean you can't also have a whole lot of self-love to balance it out. Self-love will look at those insecurities and say, "that's okay, I love you all the same."
When we look for external factors to fill this void where self-love should be, we find that there are only temporary solutions and nothing that will actually keep the empty space within us filled.
Some toxic cycles that can emerge from trying to fill this void externally are:
Eating disorders
Lack of personal boundaries
Over-giving and Rejecting receiving
Abusive relationships
Inability to form deep connections
This may seem like a strange list and you may not see how they all relate to a lack of self-love but they do. I've experienced all of them and can tell you that at the root of each one of these symptoms was a lack of self-love.
None of these are victim blaming. People still suck and do horrible awful things that they should never do. That's not your fault because you didn't love yourself. But, I have learned, a lack of self-love gives space for some toxicities to perpetuate and go on longer than they would have if I loved myself more.
Eating Disorders:
Emotional eating anyone? Feel stressed, lonely, heartbroken, anxious, sad, etc. and all you can do is stuff your face. Hollywood makes fun of this with after-break-up scenes in films where people are binging on take-out and ice cream but it's a real problem. Not feeling like you have any control over your emotions so you eat to make the feeling go away or feel better. Eating as if ice cream can numb you or fill the empty space within you. Eventually the effects of the ice cream melt away and you need more. This is now an eating disorder that as disastrous health effects, like all eating disorders.
When you have self-love, when you get these emotions and feel out of control you know at your core that you will be okay. You know at your core that you love yourself and can manage whatever you're feeling because you got you. You don't need to emotionally eat because there's no void for that ice cream to fill.
You still need an outlet for these emotions, yes, and you're better equipped to find a healthy one because when you have self-love it's about releasing the emotions and not filling a void.
Lack of Personal Boundaries:
Can you be reached by anyone at any time? Do you respond to every message immediately? Answer every call? Will you drop everything to go somewhere or do something for someone? Will you go out because you were invited to something despite the fact that you're tired and drained but you're too terrified that if you say "no" they will hate you and you'll never get another invitation again?
Lack of personal boundaries makes you desperate for affection and acceptance. You will do anything for anyone despite how it makes you feel because you're seeking validation. When you don't love yourself, you don't draw any lines and that allows for people to take advantage of you. Not just narcissists, but well-intentioned people, too. If you give everyone everything, why wouldn't they take it? You create an expectation that'll you've give all you have and always be available and always attend things so people stop considering your needs because you aren't advocating for yourself.
You're trying to fill the void within you with the acceptance from others and you fear that if you enforce a boundary then you'll lose that acceptance and validation and feel empty again.
When you have self-love, you know your worth and what you're willing to give and accept. When you have self-love you have boundaries and can enforce them with love and kindness.
You know that the people who love and care about you will be okay if you take a day or two to reply to a non-urgent message. They will be okay if you choose to stay in and have a night to do whatever you want to do for yourself and they will invite you again another time. They will find another solution if you can't drop everything. They will be okay. If they aren't okay, it's either an emergency or they don't actually care about you and are seeking to fill their own void through toxic means.
Over-Giving and Rejecting Receiving:
These two go hand in hand and it is the combination that marks the toxic cycle and lack of self-love. Giving is a beautiful thing, but over-giving is toxic. Over-giving happens when you give more than you can, more than you are capable of, more than you can sustain in an effort to gain approval, acceptance, and validation. Combine that with rejecting receiving from others and you've got a toxic imbalance.
You want to give because you want to be validated. You want people to appreciate you and thus fill that hole. But when you over-give and over-extend, you create a bigger hole that takes more to fill.
You don't accept receiving because you don't feel worthy, that's why you're over-giving in the first place. So not only are you giving too much but then your lack of self-love makes it so that you won't let others give back to you.
When you love yourself, you know how much you are capable of giving to others without depleting your own resources whether that's time, money, effort, emotional capacity, mental cognition, etc. You stop the over-giving, and give in a renewable and sustainable way.
When you love yourself, you know that you are worthy of love and deserve love. When you love yourself, you know that others love you, too. Others want to give to you the way that you give to them, and accepting it is a form of accepting their love which you deserve because you are worthy of love.
Abusive Relationships:
This is a more extreme version of a lack of self-love and a complicated one. You are not to blame for the way others treat or mistreat you. If someone is abusive, it is not your fault. Not all abusive relationships pertain to this. I will only address a specific dynamic to which I can speak to personally.
Where this one fits in is that, when we don't love ourselves, we don't know the level of love we deserve to receive because we haven't set that bar within ourselves. That gives space for us to accept and stay in abusive dynamics because we don't love ourselves, and thus have no way to measure the love we should accept.
To quote Stephen Chobosky, "We accept the love we think we deserve." If you don't think you deserve love because you don't love yourself, then you will accept a toxic form of it that can be abusive. My lack of self-love allowed people to mistreat me and I stayed in abusive situations because I didn't love myself enough to leave. Eventually, I did. Eventually I found the line, and I had a support system so I could leave. I know not everyone is so lucky.
These can be friendships, romantic relationships, family, etc. There's not only one kind of abusive relationship. There are many and they look different which is why they can be so hard to spot.
When you love yourself, you know what love you deserve and how that should look because that's the love you give yourself. If someone doesn't match the love you give yourself, then it's not a relationship you should be in.
Inability to Form Deep Connections:
This may seem strange because this whole list is all about trying to fill the void where self-love should be with external means that typically come from the acceptance and validation of others. If that's what you're seeking, then how can you struggle to form deep connections with others? Well, that's because you're not seeking a mutual connection based on understanding and companionship, you're seeking validation which can come from ice cream as much as it can a person. That's not a connection. That's a service.
When you don't love yourself you can't really connect with others because you're always second-guessing that connection. If you don't love you, why should they? You want validation which is easy to get and give, gold star for you! An actual connection means vulnerability and showing all the ugly bits of yourself and learning theirs and loving each other all the same. When you don't love yourself, you don't want to do that. You believe they will run away when they see who you are so you keep everyone at a distance because then you can get just enough from them to fill that void but not so much that they may see too much and want to leave.
It's a terrible balance that's not truly reciprocal and not at all a genuine connection.
This applies to friendships, family, romantic partners, etc. Anyone you can form a connection with and choose not to because you don't love yourself so you don't think they will if they saw the real you and you'd rather have a hallow relationship than no relationship at all.
When you love yourself, you know that you're not perfect and you accept and love that about yourself. We all make mistakes and poor judgements and do the wrong thing sometimes. We all have flaws and bad habits, but none of that means we are not worthy of love. We are worthy of love all the same. Love doesn't judge. Love isn't conditional.
We aren't worthy of love despite those ugly bits, we are worthy as a whole and those ugly bits are part of the whole.
When you love every bit of yourself, it's not scary to let someone see you because you love and accept you, so why wouldn't they?
When you love and accept all the bits of yourself, you can love and accept all the bits of someone else. Self-love means you understand the complexity it is to be human and live a life. When you have self-love that makes you more compassionate for others and their journey.
Here's the truth: self-love isn't a scale. Self-love is unconditional and all encompassing.
You love yourself for all that you are, all that you've been through, all the mistakes you've made, lessons you've learned, ways you've grown, who you are, who you were, and who you want to become. You love yourself as a whole, because we are whole. We are not parts. We are one: our body, our mind, our spirit, our past, our present, our future. We are all of it. You cannot choose to love your lips and hate your thighs for both are you. You cannot love your sense of humor but hate how easily you cry for both are you.
You are magic. You are amazing. You are who you are because of all the parts that make the whole and you, exactly as you are, are worthy of love.
You, no matter how much you may want to change, are worth loving in this moment just as you are. It's as true now as it was when you were born and will be for always.
When you understand this and find this love for yourself, you can give a love to others that is so pure and has no limit because that love will say, "I see you as I see me, and I love you for all of it."
Imagine a world where we all loved ourselves and others this way. It's possible, by loving ourselves one step on this journey at a time.
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