I dunno why it’s so hard to get super lovey-dovey with myself. To tell myself kind, mood-boosting things about who I am.
But it is.
It might be because of the fact that when I did this as a child, I was told to knock it off. That sort of thing was boastful. It made you a show off. Understandably, this was the viewpoint of other children, but it wasn’t just limited to them. My parents told me similar.
You could think kind things about yourself, but don’t you dare say them. And over time, I got so I couldn’t really think kind things about myself either. Not without feeling guilty about it. Or hearing the arguments against it.
While I crave kind words from others, particularly from people I respect, I have a hard time saying them to myself. I just argue with it. And argue. And argue.
But there’s good news. There’s another reasonable path to feeling good — or at least decent — about myself: I can work on self-love via a different love language. Instead of using kind words directed towards myself, I can do kind things for myself.
Basically, I can try to take better care of myself.
And so I’ve been working my hardest on that. Some days I do better than others. But I’ve been trying to not only do nice things for myself but to also make sure I’m not practicing this pattern that I call self-disrespect chicken. Basically, these days I don’t easily slip into patterns of self-abuse. But I find it easy to neglect myself and to cause problems that way. And for me it’s been important to remember that it’s not enough to not simply self-abuse. You also have to make sure you don’t stop doing the good or even neutral things you need to do in order to stay healthy.
Anyway, trying to take better care of myself has been a more realistic goal for me than self-love.
And at the end of the day, I think they’re leading me to the same place anyway.