We believe that self-love falls on a spectrum. On one end you have self-acceptance and on the other, you have self-love. Consider the question –Do you like yourself? Take a moment to think about that question and notice what thoughts arise and how you feel in your body. We are usually more concerned with other people liking us or being liked by others – but do you like YOU? With well-intentioned self-love and self-care memes and articles all over the internet these days, it’s a longshot to embody these practices if we don’t even like ourselves in the first place. So, what if that’s where we start – with like instead of love? What if we learn to like ourselves, so we can one day grow our likeness, our fondness of self, into love.

Let’s start with self-acceptance. As therapists, it’s common for us to meet people who come to therapy because they are frustrated with themselves for behaving or feeling a certain way. As humans, we can relate and while this is understandable, it’s not helpful to be self-critical or judgmental about how we feel for long periods of time. Being overly hard on ourselves for how we are feeling is the opposite of truly accepting ourselves. We encourage our clients to come from a place of curiosity about how they are feeling.

To start fully and radically accepting yourself, exactly as you are, think of things that you judge yourself for, things you are shameful about, and practice letting go by learning to forgive yourself. We can reflect on times that we are not proud of, situations we feel guilty about, experiences we are ashamed of and ask ourselves:

What have I learned?

How did I grow from this?

Who do I want to be moving forward?

How can I embody my values?

How would I treat a friend who did this same thing?

“What if we learn to like ourselves, so we can one day grow our likeness, our fondness of self, into love.”

When we hold on to the judgement and shame, we keep ourselves imprisoned in the past and we keep those emotions stored in our body. When we can truly forgive and accept all parts of who we are, we free ourselves from the pain and suffering. This takes self-awareness, time, practice and repetition. It’s about integrating the parts of ourselves that we don’t like, saying, “I accept you,” so we can feel whole.

Self-awareness is a key ingredient throughout the process of accepting and eventually liking who you are fully and completely. Self-awareness is paying attention on purpose. Notice your thoughts, listen to how you speak to yourself in your mind. Try not to judge the judging, instead stay open, bring curiosity in and see what unfolds. We encourage you to start making small daily promises to yourself. When we make a promise to ourselves that we keep, we slowly start to rebuild trust internally. We start to feel and believe, “I matter.” “I am worthy.” “I deserve this.” Start the journey, begin the process, start with like – so you can get to love.

Like Grows Into Love