Why Self Love is important even in context of personal and family relationships

Radha Ghanekar, Counseling Psychologist, IWill

As Jeffrey Borenstein, President of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, puts it: “Self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth. Self-love means having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness. Self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others.”

Modern society is shaped in such a way that it makes difficult to have that time for ourselves where we are engaged in an activity of one’s interest. We often tend to ignore the areas we have grown in. We forgot to take care of our basic needs such as psychological safety, companionship and personal creativity. This necessitate a lot of self-criticism and constant demand of we could have done things better in order to be perfect. The battle of competing and achieving things for luxurious life than healthy life continues. We are constantly believing in shape shifting phantasm of perfectionism. People aspire to be perfect and sacrifice is considered to be a greater attribute than self-love. The pressure is always to attain unrealistic standards. In this process we lack motivation to keep ourselves fueled to do everything. Results in being too hard on ourselves. Above all put us at the higher risk of sever physical and mental illnesses.

We all living life like programmed tots than being human being. We are so busy loving others that we tend to disregard inward empathy. What are we afraid of here?! Perhaps a tag may be. It is ok to spend a weekend at home. Very often solitude is tagged as loneliness. The more we compare the more we lose ourselves.

Self-love is often confused with traditional negative connotations such as narcissism and selfishness which makes it to seem more like an empty one. Most of the time we take break after taking care of other’s needs. We feel so exhausted by that time that we tend to skip self-care. So, no matter how much love we give to others we never feel happy. If you are not happy how can you make others feel happy. When we seek happiness inside consequently it lowers expectations from others which automatically improves our relationships with others. This internal relationship has countless magical benefits. Happiness and self-care are interconnected. Self-love isn’t luxury rather a necessity.

A lot of studies have shown that self-love can have positive impact on your mental health, self-esteem and overall life satisfaction. Self-love is loving your mind, body and soul by picking up healthy habits. It can give you better mental health, more self-acceptance, higher self-esteem, more motivation, stronger determination, increase self-awareness, less anxiety, reduce stress, better sleep. When we are less anxious, can lessen our insecurities. Having less stress gives us more opportunities to show compassion.

In simple words Self-love is managing our inner critic so we develop more understanding view of our failures, mistakes and appreciate our efforts for personal growth, wellbeing in kind, compassionate and respectful way.

Let us start by realizing that we are human beings and allowed to make mistakes. It is ok to have failures, lose at times, it is ok to have bad day or days. Listen internally. Listening internally helps you to notice how you perceive yourself when you make a mistake, correcting it with kinder words and understanding helps you to avoid cognitive distortions during emotional distress. Let us be kind to ourselves. Self-love builds resilience in the face of adversity, better cope with failure, embarrassment and helps you to change your perspective amidst conflict situations which leads to more positive attitude towards life.

When you practice self-love, you start taking ownership of your actions. It helps you to reduce stress hormone cortisol to have better physical health.

Self-love helps us to set boundaries and feel proud of who we are which restricts us less prone to people pleasing and provides greater inner locus of control. Self-love isn’t about loving yourself more than others. It is about bringing that equality in love and kindness towards oneself which you give to others. Learn to say no, to protect your time and energy is a powerful way to practice self-love.

Self-love gives us ability to maintain space and independence in order to nurture your soul. When we have more understanding of ourselves it becomes easy to understand others perspective in relationships. When you work on yourself you meet your own needs which results in expecting change in others. It is not an overnight journey to learn self-love but with practice it can become a daily ritual with no efforts. Let us normalize having some free and me time. You do not have to be busy all the time.