How many of you have heard this bit of so called wisdom: "You'll never find love or be able to be loved or give love until you learn to love yourself first."?
And how many of you, upon hearing it for the first time, nodded to yourself and thought, "hm, yeah, I guess that makes sense."?
And how many of you have allowed this sentiment to get in your way or to define your experiences with love of all varieties, because you don't "fully love yourself" yet?
If you've struggled with this adage, you're not alone, and you're not broken. On the surface, this sentiment is quite nice. It sounds encouraging, it sounds full of hope, as if one day you could accept every facet of yourself fully, and that once you did, you'd find the love you've always hoped for and dreamed of. As if coming to this magical, mythical place where you take no issue with any part of your life will cure any and all issues you may have within your relationships.
But how does one come to fully love and accept themselves when around every corner is some new billboard, some new advertisement, some new workout or diet that's reminding you that you're actually not good enough as you are, not now, not ever? (I recently saw a commercial for some sort of neck cream -- NECK CREAM! -- that was marketed towards women and their old, saggy, wrinkly necks. Because apparently necks need to look a certain way now.) How can one come to embrace their experiences, their strengths, their struggles when the bar for perfection and the standard for beauty and inherent worth keep moving? How can one come to experience #selflove when the only images splashed across social and other media behind the tag are all images of thin, white, able-bodied young people?
The answer is, you can't.
Changes are happening in the self love movement, and that's a good thing. But if you search the tag or the phrase now, what you're going to find is still an overwhelmingly exclusive subculture of people who fit into a pretty narrow box, and when that pretty narrow box is the current face of the movement, it sends the message that anyone outside of that box is an other, and isn't worthy of being a part of the movement. It's almost like a really bad self-fulfilling prophecy.
As it stands now, in the physical realm, self love tends to mean working out, dieting (or, as social media calls it, "eating healthy"), and trying to be thin (or at the least, trying to not be fat), while still pretending you're okay with your body as it is. In the emotional realm, it tends to mean being happy all the time, not letting any sort of uncomfortable feeling like sadness, anger or frustration affect you, and being what I like to call "social media perfect." In the mental health realm, it looks like people who have never gone through a traumatic experience in their life, who do not have depression, anxiety, eating disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, or anything else that one may see a psychiatrist or therapist for, and if you do have it, you certainly don't take any medications for it (and as woo woo as I am, I know for a fact that sometimes, crystals and meditation just aren't the cure all a person needs). In short, the current image of self love looks like someone who literally never ever ever has any issues or feelings beyond sheer joy at all times about all things.
Raise your hand if you've achieved this level of self love yet. Are you even close?
I didn't think so.
We all have bad days. We all experience uncomfortable emotions. We all have parts of our body or appearance we'd like to change (and hey, by the way, it's totally okay and NORMAL if you're at peace with your body and still would like to change things). And if you add the complex issue of mental health on top of it, those bad days, uncomfortable emotions, and body image issues can get exacerbated way beyond the reaches of this Instagram-able catch phrase. And when you're told that you'll never be loveable or able to love others fully until you can change all of that, what are you left with? Not a whole lot, I'm afraid.
It's hard to live up to today's standards of perfection. It's hard to do that AND also try to love yourself. And it becomes an even more complex vicious cycle when those who are trying can finally get to "I feel okay about myself" and are told that's still not good enough, they're not good enough. So now you're not good enough for not loving yourself and ALSO you have to love yourself. What?
I want to challenge that perspective. What if, instead of trying to love yourself fully, and accept every single part of yourself without condition, we allowed space for everything within the spectrum of self acceptance? What if "just okay" was actually great? What if "I hate myself a little less than I did yesterday" was something to celebrate? What if "I don't have feelings one way or the other about myself" could be cheered on?
It can. It should be. In fact, for folks who are really struggling to embrace themselves and everything that makes them up, neutral can be the best and safest place, because it removes all judgement and morality from your very existence, good or bad. When we do this, when we take the value judgement out of defining ourselves, the gap between who we are and who we want to be suddenly gets so much smaller. Our worth and value become self evident in the simple fact of our very existence; we are, therefore we have value, worth, and are deserving of love.
The fact of the matter is that you as a human being, regardless of your life experiences, your traumas, your beliefs about yourself, are worthy and deserving of love, and capable of giving love. Your loveability and worth are actually not determined by the size of your body, its physical limitations or capabilities, or your past experiences. It is absolutely okay, normal, and expected as part of being human that whatever you've gone through in the past, and whatever you're going through now will have some impact on you, and if that impact leaves you with uncomfortable feelings of anger, sadness, grief, and/or a desire and a need to protect yourself, that in no way detracts from the amount of love you deserve to receive or are allowed to give.
And maybe, just maybe, by allowing ourselves to be loved fully by others instead of putting it on hold until we can be 100% satisfied with ourselves, we might just be able to come to accept and love ourselves a little more deeply too.
Comments