Love Thyself as Thy Neighbor Loves Thee

I am an extremely loved person. I have a network of people around me that support me and root for me, in ways that are difficult for me to fathom. The family and friends in my life rally around me with love that is so unconditional and without reservations that it makes my head spin.

Of course all this love doesn’t compensate for the fact that I am not getting love and support from the one person I really really need it.

Myself.

I have talked about it before on this blog that I struggle with loving myself, or even liking myself. It is not an intuitive thing for me. Sure I have moments where I start to grab a hold of an emotion that appears to be a positive self-attitude. And I am not nearly as hard on myself as I once was.

But the truth of the matter is that I still have a lot of work to do. I am discovering how deep this problem goes.  I am discovering that I rely on my various relationships to make up for the love I do not feel for myself. And it does work… for a while anyway. The trouble is that it’s not sustainable. You can’t rely on others to feel a deficit that is inside of you. It has often made me needy and difficult in my relationships.  Sometimes I make poor decisions based on this need to keep people around whether they are toxic or not. And of course this leads to me beating myself up (something that does come extremely intuitively to me) and in turns depends the deficit. It's hard on the good relationships in my life. I lean on people so much that it puts pressure on them. It all becomes so draining.   

I have also have begun to realize that every accomplishment I have achieved, every talent I have, I use as a way to get others approval. If people approve of me, then maybe I will learn to approve of myself.

But it’s never enough.  And I am tired. I am tired of jumping through hoops to seek others affirmation.  I am tired of beating myself up.

So I think the first step is forgiveness. I have to learn to forgive myself for my for all the things that I am ashamed of, the mistakes I have made both real or perceived. It’s hard to love someone that you are carrying resentment and anger towards. I also think that I need to really start thinking about what motivates my behavior. The decisions I make need to start coming from a place of self love and respect.  

So this might be the biggest transition I have ever made. It may be the hardest thing I have ever done, but if I can learn to love myself unconditionally and without reservation, could be the most worthwhile.