Self-love
When we are born, we don’t have the ability to recognize our own feelings and thoughts. We develop self-concepts through the interactions we have with our caregivers and environment. Our caregivers play important and different roles in our lives, including teacher, playmate and attachment figure. From them, we gradually learn that we have a name. They teach us to recognize ourselves in the mirror and photographs, identify our body parts, say the word “I” and describe our emotions. Through the day-to-day interactions with our parents, we learn that we are nurtured, loved, that our emotions matter, or we learn that our needs do not matter, that we cannot trust and rely on others and that being hurt by others is normal. The quality of the attachment that a child develops with their parent is determined by the parent’s level of attunement to the child.
A dysfunctional paternal family system creates authoritarian family dynamics that don’t convey love and respect, but ongoing power struggles, emotional neglect and abuse, the perfect ground for pain. Within a closed paternalistic family, the family rules impose total loyalty to authoritarian parents. Generally, there are fathers who demand obedience from their wives and children, as men are recognized as being superior to women. In such families, children are trained to think that men are to be worshiped, that their needs are always more important and that women must put their needs aside to demonstrate love and devotion to their partners. If you were raised in this type of home environment, there is a high likelihood that you have developed an inflated sense of self-importance, or you stay in unhealthy relationships thinking that we don’t deserve better and that there is no hope for a better life.
Food deprivation experienced during childhood may result in eating more than we should because of worries that we may not have enough food in the future. Some of us may believe that food cannot be wasted, especially if we were scolded for not eating every dish off our plate during our childhood. Hearing parents worrying about not having enough money and/or sacrificing their health to acquire a better social position may cause their children to develop a scarcity mindset. They might think that health is less important than having financial wealth, and, later in their adult life, they may start to overwork thinking they don’t have enough money to provide for their children. Consequently, their children may start to believe that work is more important than spending quality time with them.
Through these dysfunctional beliefs that are passed on from generation to generation, our ancestors projected their problems onto us. The interactions we have with our caregivers program our mindset from a very young age, shaping our identity and destiny. Throughout our life, these mindsets deprive us of things that could bring joy, health and balance in our life. If we never question the beliefs we developed early in life, we carry these emotional burdens for the rest of our lives.
While some of us acknowledge that most of our issues are caused by the lack of self-love inherited from our ancestors, we may still avoid doing the work to reparent ourselves. Reparenting means learning to nurture our inner wounded child, giving this child what we did not have in the early years of our lives: safety, consistency, structure, nurturing, dignity, balance... In this process we need to leave behind beliefs that don’t serve us well, learn to manage our emotions in a healthy way, communicate assertively, love ourselves unconditionally and leave unhealthy relationships behind. It is important to think about your future with gratitude for all the learning experiences you've had from your past.
When we love ourselves, we make peace with our past and believe that we ARE ENOUGH. Whatever other people may say and do to hurt us no longer affects our self-esteem and confidence. When we love ourselves, we no longer stay in toxic relationships hoping for people to change, as you know that their growth is not our responsibility. By loving ourselves, we may inspire or influence others to love themselves too. When we think that we are enough, we no longer search for others to help us fulfill our own dreams and give us security. We nourish our own personal growth without seeking external validation. When we are enough, we live to fulfill our own dreams and not the dreams of our parents who saw us as extensions of themselves. We will continue to fall, but instead of feeling disappointed, we feel gratitude for our learnings, as we expand our knowledge and the perception of our limitations. When we love ourselves, we LOVE others without imposing our egos on them. This creates a ripple effect, bringing love from everything and everyone who is around you. Self - love brings forgiveness, kindness and helps you stay distant from anxiety, grudges, tension and unfulfillment.
