How Learning to Love Myself Changed Everything

There is a part of my healing story I’ve kept mostly to myself.  Sometimes I hint at it, dance around it. I share some of the things I’ve been doing to help myself with the issue, without saying this is why I started practicing these things in the first place.  The truth is, one of the biggest hurdles I’ve faced since diagnosis is discovering that I didn’t love myself.  The reasons for that are as complicated as falling out of love with someone can be.

The truth is I hadn’t been friends with myself for years.  Running from a traumatic childhood through a topsy turvy adulthood, I’d become a master at ignoring my own needs while blaming myself for whatever was going on.  Looking back, I now realize I needed therapy, desperately.  I needed to acknowledge what I’d been through and let myself off the hook for all that had happened.  Running from myself had led to more wrong turns, more regrets, more shame, more blame.  I see that now, after a decade of solid work, sifting through that shame and blame, uncovering the roots of my unhealthy relationship with myself. 

When I was first diagnosed?  I hated myself.  I blamed myself for everything that had gone wrong in my life, especially my failing body.  I added it to the stack of proof I’d collected over the years that grumbled “you are not enough.”  I was sure if I’d worked more, eaten better, taken better care of myself, gone to the doctor sooner, done something different, I would not be where I was.  Sick, on the verge of disability, miserably depressed, and mad as hell at myself for all of it. 

Feeling like I’d let myself down, I began to try to fix myself from the outside in, asking my body to get stronger, to stop beating itself, while mentally flogging myself with an endless stream of hateful thoughts.  Unaware at the time that what we think plays a huge role in how we feel, I made changes in everything from diet and exercise to adding medications.  As none of it worked, my disappointment in myself grew.  The hateful thoughts came more often. 

I still remember the moment when I became aware of the problem.  The words that flipped on the switch of awareness and changed everything.  “If you wouldn’t let a friend talk to yourself that way, why would you talk to yourself that way?”  It blew me away.  What a question!  Why would I??  I’d shown people the door for treating me like shit in the past. Never would I ever let a friend talk to me the way I spoke to myself. How had it gotten to this point? When did I become my own worst enemy?  Most importantly, how could I repair the relationship as divorce was entirely impossible.

Finding out I wasn’t even friends with myself anymore gave me a direction to start poking in.  The guidance of my friend and mentor began to place the tools in my hand to start the repair process.  Aware of the abuse I’d experienced as a child, Rebecca recommended I start there, do some inner child work, talk to my child self. Try this meditation she said.  I’ve rarely cried so hard as I did the first time I did that meditation for healing the inner child.  I knew I had to keep going, hard as it would be to face the reasons I had no trust, respect or love for myself, I needed to do it anyway. 

I started with some small changes, adding meditation into my routine, breathing exercises, counting myself calm.  I practiced grounding and body awareness. I spent time just being uncomfortable in my own skin in the never-quiet of my own mind. Eventually that would shift to comfort and quiet but in the beginning it was loud and painful.  With the encouragement of my dear friend, I began to write letters to those who had hurt me and burn them, still my favorite release ritual to this day.  I added affirmations to my daily practice, leaving myself little encouragement bombs on post it notes around the house, slowly building a habit of self-love. 

Most important of all, I stopped ignoring the mean voice in my head and began redirecting it.  I made a deal with myself, for every negative thought I notice, I must stop and tell myself three things I love about myself.  At first that was sometimes challenging.  It felt silly.  I’d roll my eyes at my I love you statements.  Or scoff that I didn’t really believe that, as that negative voice fought to stay on board.  Eventually I’d make peace with even that part of me and thank it for trying to protect me from myself, adding a forgiveness prayer to my growing self-love toolkit. 

It turns out that loving myself requires loving all of me.  My strengths and my flaws.  The wins and the losses.  The good, bad, ugly, beautiful, all of it.  Digging in and working on that, shifted so many things.  Loving myself led to treating myself with more care.  The more I accepted myself, the more love I had for the person I am, the easier the changes I needed to make to feel better became.  The things that felt too hard to do without belief in myself, become easier by far with belief on my side.  As someone who would do anything to help a loved one in need, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made was to put myself back on that list.