How do I love me?

How do I love me?
J

jimrh

Registrant
Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone had any advice.

I keep getting told by others (therapist, here in chat, etc) that it's important in the healing process to first begin to love yourself.

Well, I'm stumped here and can't figure it out. So my question to the group is how do you do that? How do I love me?

Take into consideration, before you respond, that the answer must account for someone who get's no validation at all on being likeable/desireable. You gotta understand that there's only so much rejection a person can take before you just settle into the fact that it just ain't gonna happen.

Please don't patronize me by saying that people don't generally take looks into consideration and they only consider the personality. That's BS.

Thanks.

Jim
 
I don't know how to do this either. I don't think that loving/not loving oneself has much to do with looks, though. I know that I hate my looks but I also hate my personality as well. I really don't know how to fix this but I guess maybe it will just happen as we grow...?
 
Jim,

At best I'm only just beginning to love myself, so I have a lot more questions about it than answers myself.

All I know is what I believe--that love is a decision, a choice--and try to practice--making those choices to love myself every day in every way I can.

Like you I for most of my live had little to no love, respect, affirmation or validation of any kind. I was a piece of meat, a surrogate adult in a kid's body, and apparently an all around pain in the universal arse!

Abuse & rejection, I've had my share I guess.

Not to mention being patronized. Which like you I despise, whatever the reason for it.

What it seems to come down to is that loving myself is something that started to happen when it was my only option besides utter hatred, despair & darkness, which I'd had long enuf after over 40+ years.

Experiencing the love of others helped, but not until I started loving myself, in the acknowledgement that I am indeed loveable. Only then could I begin to see the love others were giving me or could give me.

Victor
 
I too struggle with loving myself.
For me it is being honest with and about myself.
I have spent my whole life "lying" to people about who I am and how i feel and what my homelife and family were like, etc. I told lies about it all because I was and am sooooo ashamed of it. I also lie about it because I know that if people knew the truth they would find me as disgusting as I feel I am. So I hide the truth all the time. In hiding that truth and lying to others I find it hard if not impossible to love myself. Sometimes I don't even know if I know who I am - in order to love me I assume I would need to know me. That is what I am working on with my T. Who am I? Am I lovable? Can I love another?
Not much help in answering your question I suppose but I just felt the need to add my thoughts to this post.
Thanks,
Ron
 
Jim,
I struggle with this same question, especially when I found MS and started recovery. It always seemed like the people who told me to love myself even had a very inadequate grasp of what they were saying. It left me more confused than anything else. I almost felt like it was one of those Zen type questions where there were really no answers.

But from my point of view I would have to echo Ron's words. It's more like I have to make a commitment to reality and quit avoiding my problems. It also ment that I have to be open with the people around me because I can no longer afford to hide in the shadows.

Actually, I don't think I had a decent grasp of this until a few weeks ago. I started a thread called "Intimacy" and it really helped me out to understand this. Check it out. Other than this I don't know what to say.
Good luck,
mike
 
I've heard it too. Love myself. Parent myself. The problem is example. If you've seen and felt enough examples of love, then I imagine it would be easier. It's sort of like pushing on a locomotive that's standing still. Lots of effort required for those wheels to begin to turn. But what I have been hoping and praying for feels like it is slowly happening--those rusty wheels are beginning to turn.

I've also been trying to break down the word "love". It's so broad. There are many "flavors" to it, and the psyche may need one flavor of it more than another, depending on the day. For example, I have been giving some thought to the idea of "affection". What is that? I think I know it when I feel it, but I had almost none of it growing up. Yet I feel such a thirst for it. Recently I felt this quality--"affection" after visiting a close friend in another state. Through that example, I can work on applying that to myself. And then for me, I must take it one step further. Affection, as a facet of love, is truly a quality of God. That's where it originates for me, but I also need to see and feel it tangibly.

As for the looks thing, I can understand. I have a birthmark on my face. That meant, as a kid, continuous, unrelenting rejection. Feeling ugly, different. Hard to feel I was lovable with that kind of burden! Recently I had a session of "grieving" over this. It's a deeply distressing memory. I'm told by my therapist that grieivng helps release a little more of the pain, so that I can be whole. Lots of pain deep inside. Hard to feel love toward myself when there is all this pain.

It makes it all a real push-pull. Love, release grief, get back on track and love some more. Sigh. Not the straight line I'd like, but making progress.

Rick
 
Ok, I am going to disagree with your T. Most survivors I know have a whole lot of work to do before they can even like themselves, let alone love themselves. Healing and recovery is different for each of us, because each of us rationalizes and internalizes differently. Each of us must find those things which finally set right, and say to us that we are not sick, weak, perverted, or whatever negative labels we have stuck all over our lives. Only then, once a person can move past all the flaws that seem so glaring now, can you move on to liking and loving who you are. How can you love someone you see as sick or ugly? Lets face it; you arent going to.

For me, I always thought of myself as flawed and sick because I had severe sexual issues in my life. Take masturbating every day for example. I felt that something was wrong with it, and with me for not being able to control it. I felt sick or perverted, and there was no way I was going to love myself feeling that way. It took coming to the realization that God didnt call it a sin, and that most men do it at least some of the time. It took me defining what I felt was healthy, and changing my life to meet that ideal, before I could finally make peace with it. Only after I achieved this with each of the things that made me feel sick or ugly could I finally love myself.

Before recovery, I didnt deserve anything good. I was messed up, and I knew it. Now, I know I am well adjusted, healthy and complete. I know my needs and wants, and have a life that fulfills most of those most of the time. Those issues I have left are fairly small and unimportant, so I am able to love myself while dealing with them. Loving your self has to begin by not hating yourself.

jeff
 
I love the little things that mark my recovery, and if I do better today than I did yesterday then I love that.

But- the only person who made me do better today was me, so I guess I love myself a bit with each small step.

Dave
 
How do I love me? It is a difficult question to answer. To explain this for myself, I go back to the analogy a therapist on a psych unit I worked on used.

He said to go to a new born nursery at a local hospital and pick out even one newborn child that was not born precious and loveable. This is an impossible task for anyone with a heart. They are all precious.

Yet, within a few weeks, some of them are going to learn to believe deeply that they themselves are not precious and loveable, and that it had always been that way.

Those who now believe they are not precious are probably going to come to believe they are worthy of contempt.

Here is a piece I wrote a while back. It was about resisting love because I had learned to not trust that I could truly be loveable, and the terror of learning to accept love. It is about ambivalence

I know now this young man never had a chance at normalcy.
Sometimes what he needs most is what he fears most,
...love ...understanding ...and acceptance. These are all the qualities
that evoke getting in touch with vulnerability, ...a place where
breathlessness lives.

Once, later in my recovery my wife brought to me her awareness of my
most recent need for emotional distance.

I acknowledged this and said to her there is a fourteen-year-old boy in
the room who is desperate to have someone to hold him. But there is no
way he can let that happens. If someone tries to do that he will bite, fight,
scratch or do anything else he has to keep anyone from getting that close.

If I grab him and hold him, will you hold me?

As soon as she said yes, the young man in me went limp and cried
nonstop for about two hours in both of our arms.

He is still skittish about this thing called intimacy. I expect this hesitance
to be there for a lot longer, but I understand him better now and he feels
more and more accepted in his frailties."

Co-dependency is about trying to get unmet needs met through our adult relationships. The time for getting those needs met are gone forever. We have to learn to meet those needs for ourselves. She could hold and support the man she saw before her, but I had to hold the adolescent in me, myself.( on this topic check out NECESSARY LOSSES by Judith Viorst.)

I will often look at a young man/child and see myself at that age. It helps me to see how vulnerable I was. I was destroyed.

My own growing daughters taught me by how precious they were. They showed me that when you are loved and can feel that loveability then the world is yours to choose from. That meant I had to show them what self respect looked like by my example.

They are grown and my report card is in. It looks like I did a good enough job. There is a saying that you dont have to be a perfect parent, you just have to be good enough.

Being kind, gentle, understanding, patient, firm, loving, are qualities I attempted to practice to raise my daughters because I love them. So in order to love myself I need to do the same for me.

P.S. I think all newborns are ugly, even my own, but it never stopped me from seeing them as being precious.
 
I think it is important to love your Self. However, on any given day, I can find it challenging just to think or feel clearly. I think/feel/believe that to love our Self, and others, that we need to get grounded/centered in what we're expereiencing NOW so that we can see our Selves and others clearly. Love follows.
 
RJD..your response is excellent. Your recount of the moment with your wife when you felt the 14 year old boy inside you wanting to be loved triggered a memory in me.

A few years ago after my parents divorced, I was talking openly with my mother about my father. I became emotional and suddenly felt as if I were 12 again, cried and told her that all I ever wanted was for him to love me. And you know what, she didn't respond. She became distant and that 12 year old inside me felt abandoned once again, just like old times.

I have a nephew who is now 14 and in watching him grow up as well as my own daughters, I observe their actions and interactions with both kids and adults. He is normal, popular, loved and innocent and sure of himself. And he's a kid. When I see him play, run, interract with other kids, I feel like I often feel when I see other kids happy, I am crushed. I know I cannot go back. I know I cannot change history. But the loss of innocence, the constant frog in my throat that says WHY most times is overwhelming and crushing. I see these kids loving themselves, loving life and family. I see them BEING KIDS.

I see babies, I see kids and they are all beautiful. Many if not most are loved. But that wasn't me and I know that affects every aspect of my psyche.

My wife told me last night that she remembers me taking our middle daughter out in our backpack carrier to mow the lawn. I wanted to be with her and she loved being outside, so while I mowed , she rode on my back in the pack, an innocent 1 year old happy as a lark, falling asleep before I even finished the front yard. It was like that all summer. We both talked about the fact that we know nothing like that ever happened to me in fact I don't believe I was touched by my father unless it was a beating. I cried again.

Touch and love/affection from mom was minimal at best. I guess I should be grateful for that, without it maybe I'd be in the slammer now for some crime.

Logically and intellectually, I understand these issues. In my heart, I cannot cope with them because I cannot find the reason to like me. It feels sometimes as if I see it where I didn't ever get the validation that I am worthy, therefore I must not be worthy. That's why most times I feel that love is a one way street from me out.

My only redemption is that I know my own daughters will not fail to love themselves and to be validated as I was.
:rolleyes:
Jim
 
I believe the process here is to learn to re-parent ourselves. That is what my story of the 14 y.o. is about.

A few years I began to explore the possibilities of the what-if's.

What if there were a loving father for the 14 y.o. in me? Hard for me to believe, but what-if?

What if he cradled me lovingly and sang to me like I did with my daughters.

Could I take it?

Would I recognize it as love, not having known such an experience.

I was on a road trip to St. Louis when this was going through my mind. The tears began to well up in my eyes. My face stayed wet for the whole two hour trip....Just what if?....


If someone gives me a compliment I get suspicious. What do they really want? My wife does the same thing.

We are both shame based people.

To hear something good about ourselves doesn't fit with what we believe about ourselves, so we automatically reject it, defensively..

Consider the big black holes of the universe that suck up all matter that passes near it, never to be seen again. For years my wife was giving me all the love she had, as did my daughters. I just sucked up all they had through the big black hole in the middle of my soul and didn't feel like they were giving me enough. All because I couldn't love me.

To love myself gives their love something to build upon.

You might consider an organization called the New Warriors here. I've experienced some powerful work around my father issues with that organization. I describe it as an organization devoted to recovery, accountability and life mission. I have utmost respect for the men in it.
 
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