The Nuances Of Self-Love

I’ve had beef with the concept of self-love for a while. There are many remixes of what self-love means, and I’d love to share my spin on it (DJ reference… LilCDawg).

I’ve come across different self-love workshops for adults and youth, and oftentimes the framing is to “love all parts of ourselves”.

And while I resonate with some of that, I’m not sure that’s entirely realistic. Just as it’s natural for us to not like things about others, there are going to be things we don’t like about ourselves too.

I think we need to be mindful of how we communicate what it means to “love ourselves”, especially to young girls. When it becomes another expectation to love everything about ourselves, literally all the time, I worry it can fuel toxic positivity.

Instead, I’d love to see more dialogue around self-acceptance. Where we learn to ACCEPT both the messy and the marvellous... meeting ourselves where we’re at. This doesn’t necessarily mean we like it, or that we don’t want to change it. Sometimes it’s just being okay with not being okay.

Sometimes self-love is asking:

“Can we accept ourselves when we’re NOT okay with ourselves?”

Because those days will come. Plot twists will be twistin’, and life will be lifin’.

We might feel something we don’t want to feel. There may be moments where we fight our feelings and think: “Gosh, I hate feeling sad about this,” or “I should be over this feeling by now.” Another way to process this emotion through an acceptance lens is: “I am sad, and this is hurting longer than I thought.” Two different tones altogether.

Being human, I recently had a moment where I tried to fight what I was feeling and somehow caught myself midway.

It was a really low-energy day, one day before my period, and things at work were really uncertain. I pushed myself to go to the gym anyway.

Mid-ab workout, tears started streaming down my face.

Immediately, my inner monologue was: “Hide hide hide, look away look away, don’t let anyone see you.”

(Low-key, it was kinda comical because then I tried to sync the timing of my tears with the rhythm of my reps LOL!!)

I was exhausted from trying to hide, trying to fight, pushing it away.

Then I realized OK wait...maybe I’m exhausted because I’m not even acknowledging it.

So I tried something my therapist taught me to say:

“This happens sometimes. Tears happen when something is important to me.”

It's so wild that a simple validation statement can regulate us so quickly. Eventually, the tears stopped, but it was only after I was able to validate my own experience and really see myself.

By no means am I a pro at accepting where I’m at, but I’m trying my best and would love to share three things that have helped me with self-acceptance:

1) Name and Normalize

People who are near and dear to me have probably heard me say this: “I’m in my era of naming and normalizing.” My dear friend Maryam inspired me to do this more, just by watching her boldly share things that she’s experiencing.

This is as simple as saying, “This hurts more than I thought,” or “I’m having a hard time.”

I’ve found it helps to reach out to someone I feel safe with...even just a text or voice note. They don’t need to have the perfect response or fix anything. Sometimes I just want to say it out loud, without expecting a response.

Emotional constipation is what it feels like to me. Sometimes naming it with someone you trust can already feel like half the weight has lifted.

2) This Part’s the Hard Part: Validate & Marinate

We recently had a de-escalation/conflict resolution workshop, and our facilitator was teaching us how to validate and see a person for where they’re at. Interestingly enough, there was a formula: name the feeling + “because”.

“It makes sense that you feel sad because this is important to you.”

Or, more simply: “Of course there are tears. This matters to you.”

And then, we marinate—like seasoning a chicken. Let it soak!

It’s human nature to push away things that make us feel uncomfortable. Heck, I do that often myself. Though I wonder if part of why discomfort feels so hard is that we don’t always feel equipped to process the experience -- and without those tools, it can be difficult to trust ourselves to move through hard things.

So how do we figure out what our tools are? I’d brainstorm the things that make you feel like you can exhale or let your wall come down. Maybe it’s a walk, a run, a cry, a workout, or voice-noting a friend. Everyone processes differently. For me, a voice note and a walk almost always make me feel lighter.

Give your body permission to do what it needs. We don’t need to come out of every hard moment with a lesson. Also -- you’re allowed to take breaks from processing, too.

3) We Are Gifted the Spectrum of Human Emotion for a Reason

Joy is a beautiful feeling...I LOVE feeling joy!! Shoy is one of my favourite words: sharing joy with others.

But anger, sadness, and embarrassment are part of being human too. They can tell us something about what matters to us, what hurts, or what we need.

We’re gifted this spectrum of human emotion. Those feelings come at different times, and it is NOT realistic to expect ourselves to be happy all the time. Conceptually, we might know that -- but do we actually give ourselves permission to live it?

Someone once shared that anger can show us there’s something we stand for, and sometimes anxiety shows up around things we really want to work out well. That won’t explain every feeling, but it’s given me another way to listen to mine.

It is such a gift when we learn to sit with others and ourselves without immediately trying to fix.

To accept that, “Yes, to be human is to be sad sometimes. And it’s okay that we don’t have a solution right now. We just are.”

A toast to being human beings vs. human doings!

LilCDawg signing out byeeee