Self-Love & Mental Health: A Personal and Social Responsibility

by Amy Goldbeck, LCPC, CHt

www.amygoldbeck.com

Self-love is the foundation for being your best self.  It's the building block for living out your fullest potential, having healthy relationships and a fulfilling career.  To really love yourself means loving your strengths and challenges, and everything in between.  It's loving yourself just as you are.  It means putting your well-being first.  Self-love is regarding yourself, health and happiness as important.  This is accessible to everyone, although some have an easier time.  It's that part of you that looks out for yourself and befriends you when you most need a friend.

Many similar terms are out there, like self-worth and self-care.  While individual acts of self-care are great, self-love is more about a way of life.  The relationship that you have with yourself on a regular basis.  This can be cultivated and strengthened with conscious efforts to integrate self-care, self-connection and self-love into a committed practice.

Current research verifies how much healthier people are when they engage in more self-compassion and less self-criticism.  Self-love has been shown to reduce depression, anxiety and disordered eating.  Studies show that self-love improved sleep, motivation, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.  We are most mentally well when we love ourselves.

When we are kinder to ourselves, we are kinder to the world.  We set an example.  

In my work as a therapist, I've come to see that self-love is at the heart of everyone's personal journey.  No matter what their identified goal is, self-love supports that goal inevitably aiding them along the way.  Many mental health issues are relieved with the practice of self-love.  Like an inner best friend, self-love can remind us that we are worthy of love, forgiveness, acceptance and belonging.  Self-love can remind us of our resilience if loss is inevitable.  With self-love, we can find courage to ask for help when we don't know how to help ourselves.

When we learn to love ourselves, we learn to respond to our pain with patience, gentle dialogue, and healthier coping skills.  It's understandable if you've fallen short in this department.  We've been swirled up in conflicting messages from society, religion and family expectations.  But it's never too late to turn that train around.  Committing to personal work is a courageous act of self-love.

So then, how do we begin to love ourselves?  We start by noticing more mindfully our inner dialogue.  What are the stories you tell yourself?  How do these affect the decisions you make?  Notice what your inner-dialogue sounds like, and try to be more loving and compassionate.  This is the most important place to start.  From there, we latch onto self-beliefs which influence our feelings, behaviors and choices.

Self-love means caring for your own heart.  It's a basic need: to be cared for and loved unconditionally.  So why depend on others.  We can do this for ourselves, and if others do as well- that is a bonus.  We can get so caught up in taking care of others, that we forget about ourselves.  With women, and moms especially, we focus on our kids and family and repeatedly put our needs to the side.  Loving others is awesome.  Loving others by neglecting your own needs and feelings is unhealthy.

Yes, we have been trained to give, serve and put ourselves last.  Altruism can be taken too far, to the point of self-sacrifice and self-abandonment.  In some settings, this can be seen as saintly.  But why would our Higher Power congratulate us for neglecting ourselves?  There is no grand prize for being cold and unkind to yourself.  There is no gold star for ignoring your own beautiful heart.

As responsible adults, who have to take care of bills, homes, children, and jobs, we can certainly take responsibility for our heart.  We are worth it!  The research reminds us how important it is for our overall well-being.  By treating ourselves with love, we live longer, healthier lives in alignment with our truth and purpose.

This work of self-love requires a lot of undoing.  I was taught implicitly that self-love was selfish and shameful.  It took root in my psyche and the message got lodged in there causing me to assume it as true and operate accordingly.  We don't realize we are doing ourselves a disservice.  We think we are following the rules and doing good.  But it tends to catch up with us at some point.  And we realize that the way we are showing up in the world is through inferiority.  

Sometimes we need science to validate what we already know deep down and wish for.  Because let's face it.  The external messages are confusing.  What we need to come back to is that self-love is not just allowable, fine and okay.  It is healthy, and therefore recommended for your well-being.  Could it even be considered your personal responsibility?  You know, kind of like staying on top of your medical health?  Only with mental health, too?

What about self-love as a social responsibility?  What does your relationship model to those around you?  We have an opportunity to break cycles and reset generations to come.  Self-love sets us up to be our best selves.  To live out our fullest potential.  Not only that, but it teaches others to do the same.  There's a ripple effect.  And it begins with you.

Habits are hard to break but with mindfulness, we have control.  We have the ability to activate our personal power, choose healthier practices, and take care of our hearts.

By the way, your Higher Power loves you, too.  Not just your kids and family.  You are so loved and celebrated by the spirit world, you have no idea!  They are celebrating your wins and mistakes, because they know the valuable insights you'll gain from those mistakes.  They want you to love yourself so that you can be all you are here to be!  You see, they are rooting for you unconditionally.  This is how you can install the belief that loving yourself is spiritual as well as scientifically healthy. 

Science and Spirituality both confirm that self-love is your best bet.  And if that doesn't encourage you, I hope that your own heart will.