I am continuing with my 2010 resolution to write about learning to love yourself after trauma. You can check out the earlier posts in this series Shame and Self-Blame After Trauma and Overcoming Negative Self-Talk.
What does it mean to love yourself? What are your reactions to the idea of loving yourself?
Do you equate it with being selfish? Narcissistic? Stuck up? Do you think it is okay for others to love themselves, just not you? (The last concept is something I commonly encounter with trauma survivors).
Loving yourself means having compassion for who you are. It means understanding yourself in the context of the environment and experiences that have shaped you. It means accepting your real self and all parts or aspects of you. For those that have dissociative disorders, that may literally mean understanding and accepting the different parts within your internal system. It means valuing them even if you do not agree with everything they do.
Loving yourself includes loving and accepting your body. As it is right now in all their glorious imperfection. as compared to if only it were smaller/shorter/taller/a different size.
So why is loving yourself important? Why might your therapist bring this up as an issue to address in trauma therapy? I see loving yourself as both one of the core goals of trauma therapy and something that makes the hard work required possible.
Loving yourself means wanting what furthers your health and growth, learning how to tell the difference and choosing accordingly. Can you see how important this is then, to further your healing? How can you stick with the hard work of recovering from trauma if you do not feel like you are worth the effort? It is hard to heal if you feel undeserving!
I’ve already written about negative self-talk and the damage your inner critical voice does. You certainly wouldn’t talk that way to anyone else you love or value, I bet. Negative self-talk reinforces the messages you received in childhood. It can leave you stuck feeling to blame for the abuse you experienced. Repeating their messages is like continuing their abuse of you. It can feel empowering to choose another way.
We have all heard the oft repeated conventional wisdom that you cannot love others until you first love yourself. There really is something to this. Certainly, actively hating yourself or seeing yourself as undeserving of love may well influence your choice of friends or romantic partners. Hating and blaming yourself can make it difficult to choose and develop healthy relationships in the present.
A therapy relationship may be an important place to learn about caring for yourself. Connection with healthy others in general can help you learn to value yourself. Ultimately, no other person’s care or love can substitute for loving yourself. Until you get there something will continue to feel like it is missing.
If love feels like too big or foreign a concept, maybe you can start with the idea of caring for yourself. I will talk about the “how tos” of caring about or learning to love yourself in an upcoming post. For now maybe just try considering the possibility that loving yourself matters.
Kathleen, this is such a great series – thank you so much. I can see how loving yourself (at least caring for yourself) is fundamental to healing, but not easy for those of us who have spent years not believing we’re worth it. I long for the day when my healing reaches a point that I can do it. For now I accept that it’s important and that others don’t see me as I see myself. That’s progress for me, even if it’s small steps.
Thanks again.
Kerro-
I actually think it is huge progress, so YAY! for you!
I cannot emphasis enough that I get how challenging this is for those with deep seated beliefs to the contrary. That is one of the dilemmas in writing about loving yourself after trauma. Too often it sounds like the author thinks it is something you just snap your fingers and change. If only that were possible!
Every step you make matters. It is a journey.
Kathleen, appreciate your post. This is one area that will take some time with me. Blessings.
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I surrounded myself with people who really loved me until I could start loving myself. This is a wonderful article on loving yourself. Thanks.
As I said over at Patricia’s self-love post, I am still working on this issue, but have made great progress. I’ll repeat what I said there about being self-centered. Where did we get the idea that this was a BAD thing? Being centered in the self FIRST, we can then radiate out to others.
Great post! Thanks for letting us use it for The Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse. I am really appreciating your on-going support of and participation in this carnival. Let me know if you’d like to host it some month. You’d be great!
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Your series is so insightful, thanks.