is loving yourself inauthentic?

on trying to force self-love

A lot of my work, in both my writing and my coaching, is about inviting people to be kinder to themselves. Despite that, I try to avoid the term “self-love”, as it feels vague and nonspecific. How do you “do” self-love? What if you just don’t love yourself? Are you supposed to force it? Is that even possible?

Someone on Instagram recently described me as a “self-love healer” which made me cringe pretty hard, but cultivating love has been a big part of my inner work. Much of my progress over the past few years, in terms of giving myself a better internal and external experience, has come from me learning to give myself more and more loving attention.

That “loving attention” is what I’m really advocating for, which is a bit different than classic self-love. It’s less about saying “I love you” in the mirror and more about adopting an attitude of loving curiosity towards yourself. It’s asking the question: “why do I feel this way?” and listening to the answer with a complete lack of judgement. It’s greeting your feelings with warmth and acceptance, as Rumi calls for:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

[…]

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

— The Guesthouse

But a common objection I get from people, both readers and coaching clients, is that self-love feels fake. “How can I give myself love when I’m frustrated with how I’m acting? How can I feel warmth and acceptance when I’m depressed and anxious?”

In these situations, it can feel like we’re trying to force ourselves to be inwardly loving, which feels hollow and inauthentic. It can even make us feel worse, because now we’re bad at loving ourselves, and now it’s another thing we’ve failed at.

Forced love isn’t really love at all, and that experience can make us feel even more broken and abandoned. It’s like when you know someone is trying to be nice to you, but they’re struggling to do so, because they don’t actually want to act that way. We can feel their inauthenticity, and it ends up making us feel worse. That’s not the love we want.

love creates relaxation

Let’s take a step back here and talk about what we’re after when we talk about self-love: what is our actual goal?

Loving yourself isn’t “inherently good” or anything like; or at least, I can’t know that with any confidence. I don’t believe there’s a moral imperative from the universe to love yourself. It’s not something we need to do to be a good person, or to be admired or liked or accepted. It’s not something we have to do at all.

Here’s why it really matters: love is relaxing.

Love helps us relax because it is, at its core, the experience of being cared for. It feels like safety; it’s the same experience we had as infants, being held and nurtured.

As social animals, love is literally a measure of safety. How loved you are by the tribe determines how well you’ll be protected and how much access to resources you have. It can be a matter of life and death, in that environment.

Love is safety, and safety creates relaxation.

Why do we care so much about relaxation? Because relaxation, in turn, creates growth. When we’re relaxed, our mind is better able to perceive our environment, which allows us to see more options and choices. We’re able to go slow and put more care into our work and our relationships. We can release “self sabotage” behaviours and do what feels right.

Relaxation doesn’t mean stasis. We can take bold action while feeling relaxed and at ease; in fact, it’s more effective to do so, because we’re able to observe all available options from a place of calm decisiveness.

Link to tweet

Our body also releases physical tension, which allows us to move better. At every level, our system benefits from relaxation. Our nervous system switches from “fight or flight” to a mode called “rest and digest”, which helps keep us healthy.

Creating an internal sense of “I am loved and cared for” is the fastest way to create sustainable relaxation. That’s what we’re after when we talk about loving ourselves; it’s just a means to an end. As a bonus, it also feels really really nice. :)

self-love in practice

But as mentioned, I avoid the term self-love because it feels vague. “Just love yourself” immediately prompts the question of “How?”

A better term is practicing loving curiosity. Loving curiosity is a certain quality of attention that we direct towards ourselves. It’s how you pay attention to a beloved friend, listening to their every word, noticing their good qualities, noting how they’re feeling, ready at any moment to provide support or compliments.

We all know how to do that. We all naturally do that with certain people. It’s not a new skill we need to learn; it’s just something we need to practice turning inward.

But again, we have the question iof “How?” It can still feel forced to try to adopt that “looking at a beloved friend” stance towards ourselves. If I’m feeling anxious and I really truly just want my anxiety to go away, it’s going to be tough for me to try to love that anxiety.

It can become a fight between the part of you that wants the anxiety to go away and the part of you that is trying to love it; a push pull tug of war that ratchets up the emotional tension and the anxiety. We’re left thinking: “Oh no, I’m doing self-love wrong.”

uncovering what’s already there

Our goal is to cultivate loving curiosity. But we don’t want to force it, or try to create something that doesn’t already exist. Here’s the important thing to learn: the loving curiosity already exists within you. Our job is just to uncover it.

The truth is that you already love yourself. Every part of you loves you, even the parts of you that seem to hate you and think you’re a piece of shit. The anxiety, the self-loathing, the depression, the rage… they all love you.

We know this because at their core, those feelings are just trying to keep us safe. The self loathing is attached to this idea of “I need to be better.” What happens if we become “better”? “Well,” the self loathing voice might say, “then we’ll stop screwing up opportunities and have more friends and lovers and then we’ll finally get to feel joy and peace.”

Ah, so the self loathing voice wants you to find joy and peace! It is, in a roundabout way, trying to take care of you. It’s not doing it in a particularly nice way, but the impulse is there.

The anxiety and the part that wants to get rid of the anxiety… both want you to be safe. The anxiety wants you to be on the lookout for people who are unhappy with you, so we can respond appropriately and make sure you still belong to the group. The part that wants to get rid of the anxiety wants you to be calm and relaxed so you make a good impression on people and make sure you still belong to the group. Both want you to be loved and accepted and warm and cozy and relaxed and at peace.

And all that caring, all that attention on your wellbeing… what is that, if not a form of love?

Everything in you already loves you, desperately, desperately so. We don’t need to create self-love; we just need to notice it.

practicing the noticing

So the self-love is already there, at every single moment. You’re already experiencing it, in this moment.

Our practice is just to notice it, and send some appreciation its way. This can be as simple as naming what you feel: “Part of me is anxious, and part of me doesn’t want to be anxious. I see and appreciate them both.”

Ah, but again, that might feel inauthentic. Maybe you don’t want to appreciate either of those feelings. Or rather, a part of you doesn’t want to appreciate either of those feelings. See if you can locate that feeling, that part that says “I don’t want to appreciate any of this” and give that feeling a note of recognition and thanks. And if something is in the way of that… and so on.

It’s an endlessly recursive process. If something is in the way of you appreciating a particular sensation, you can direct your love towards the thing in the way. I have yet to have an experience with a client where that wasn’t something that they could feel a bit of warmth towards. And a bit of warmth is all we’re after, at the start.

Often, thinking “Thank you for being here” is enough. “Thank you for sharing” also works. You can still feel the feelings afterwards, still go into a spiral of self loathing and depression if you want; but at the start, just for a moment, recognize that those parts are trying to keep you safe.

They love you, they’ve loved you your whole life, and we want to thank them for their efforts.

As you do this over and over, as you recognize the love that is in your system, the love that is your system, we can start to feel that love more and more, unlocking more and more relaxation, which allows us to better serve ourselves and others.

We become a garden that uses love to grow more love and blossoms and blooms to spread that love across the world and that is what I mean when I talk about self-love.

With love & appreciation,

Scott

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P.S. for deeper reflection, I invite you to leave a comment below about your own practice/approach to loving yourself: what’s working, what isn’t?