As we enter the last week of the month of love, let’s talk about how we can achieve self-love.

If I were to ask you to describe yourself kindly or list things you were good at, you would probably only make 2-3 points before you start to stall out and maybe even get uncomfortable. Trying new things can often lead to anxiety of failing, “setting ourselves up to not get excited,” and maybe even an overall refusal to try new things. Failure almost certainly comes with negative self-talk, punishment, and emotional pulling away. If we were to expand that picture out to a parent and a child, and most of that child’s desire to try new things was met with dismissive statements or irritation, and that child’s mistakes were punished by ways of condescension or even verbal/physical abuse, would you expect that child to want to continue to try and learn new things or be confident in themselves? Maybe I’m even talking directly to a few of you reading this. If we don’t expect a child to reach their potential or have a ton of self-confidence in that type of setting, why do you apply the same behaviors to yourself and wonder why you aren’t able to improve your self-talk or self-worth?

Here’s the good and the bad news… the brain is a very literal organism.

Our brain cannot tell the difference between our own thoughts and reality, our brain isn’t always able to distinguish if it is you or someone else talking in the immediate environment, and our brain isn’t designed to want happiness or change. Here’s why that can be bad news; we have to make the decision for ourselves to choose happiness or change on our own, it will never come naturally. The brain very much craves safety through the same day every day, even at the expense of the person being miserable, abused, or uncomfortable. I know this and you can feel this, that this decision isn’t made lightly. It’s important to know that to choose happiness or change isn’t to ignore or invalidate the pain, emotional struggles, and very real barriers many of us face, but instead to choose in the belief of self to navigate through it. The good news of this is that because of our neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to adapt to change), the change you want, the self-worth you want, and the achievements you want are there for the taking. You can choose at any moment to change your life and you’ll likely do it if you continue to engage in that thought process more times than not.

Why do we even lack self-love in the first place?

A lot of the therapeutic process in self-love is identifying “inherited thoughts” or the exoskeleton of our mind. We aren’t born inherently believing certain things about ourselves or naturally disliking ourselves. We watched our families dislike themselves, we felt them lash out at us, and we learned unspoken rules on how to get love and to understand how the world works. For a lot of us, those understandings included, “I need to believe that I am bad so that I don’t try anything new and fail and let myself or someone else down,” “I’m not good enough or haven’t done enough to believe kind things about myself,” or “If I dislike myself first, no one else can hurt me when they dislike me.” Just in the same way that the brain isn’t designed for happiness, it’s also not designed for sadness or self-hate. Identifying and unlearning or undoing that exoskeleton of negative self-belief allows space for you to live in a more neutral or positive head space. As you navigate what thoughts “belong” to you, you’ll start to find that you have a lot more room to have belief in yourself and the general expectation that you can do hard things, you’re an overall good person, and deserving of love.

Want to talk to me more about self-love and your thought framework? Visit my homepage to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.

Stephanie Townsend, LMSW, CCTP, ART Practitioner.