Self-Love and Self-Care: What is it and Why is it Important?
Posted on March 30, 2018 by Claire Marie
This month has been an incredible month to learn about self-love and self-care. I spoke at the North Central Healing Touch Community Annual Gathering last month (March 2018) about this very topic because healers are notorious for neglecting themselves to put clients first. Helping others is amazing and necessary for life in community, but we can burn ourselves out by over extending our energy or completely dismissing ourselves all together. Self-love allows us to be kind to ourselves and get to know ourselves so we can stay healthy, loving and well adjusted.
What are the componence of Self-love?
Self-awareness
Self-worth
Non-judgement – which leads to …
Self-Acceptance
Self-awareness:
The author Sark gives a great technique in her book “Succulent Wild Women” about how to become aware. She talks about taking a flashlight into your deep, dark places and revealing them to yourself. All the little things we ignore or push aside because they are uncomfortable look at; we need to look at all of them. She gives permission to be uncomfortable and even grossed out by what we encounter, but by shining a light and looking deep into ourselves, most of the time, those deep, dark places aren’t so bad. If they are, by truly looking at them, changes can be made. Knowing the good and the bad and making peace with all of it, allows us to heal from some pretty nasty things. Once these aspects of ourselves are accepted, our lives become lighter, freer and more open.
We have to make contact with our own self to find where the root of our trauma/pain/shame comes from to allow the energy of said trauma to dissipate. As the built up energy leaves the body and the energy field we are able to accept ourselves more freely. This leads us to claiming our self-worth.
Self-worth:
We are important! You are important! I am important. We have to add ourselves into the collective. The more WE can add to the whole, the better the whole is.
When I’m talking about self-love and worth, I am not talking about conceit! I want to make that perfectly clear. There is a difference. Self-love and worth is truly knowing and accepting the self. That I/ you matter too. Our life and agenda is just as important as another’s. We know it is OK to make ourselves a priority. What do we want and need to make this life great for ourselves as well as others?
Conceit is thinking “I’m better than everyone else. My agenda is the only one that matters, and I will reach it at any cost, and it doesn’t matter who I have to step on or crush to get there.” This way of thinking can be extraordinarily destructive. Conceit promotes mistrust, isolation and discomfort, and it stifles our life energy. Not one of us can do it all ourselves, and trying will only cause solitude and disease. I am talking about living in community, and supporting ourselves as well as others around us.
Just like Sark, Deepak Chopra talks about making contact with your inner self. In his amazing article called 7 Steps to Loving Yourself Unconditionally, he talks about facing inner obstacles and resistance, and dealing with old wounds. He explains that this is how we truly heal ourselves. We have to know we are worth healing! One of the things I work on with clients is self- worth. As a healer, I can only offer the energy for the client to receive. The client has to be open to receiving it. Resistance is natural. We want to resist pain, anguish and negativity, but sometimes we have to work through it to get to the other side. We have to love ourselves enough to work through the pain. To believe in ourselves enough to know we are stronger than the anguish.
Non-judgement:
Here’s the hard part. Practicing non-judgment.
Unconditional love comes from non-judgement. If we take away judgement for ourselves as well as others, we can see where we are worth loving. We love our spouses and our friends despite their flaws and actually see their flaws as beautiful. We are able and willing to accept those flaws, why can’t we do that for ourselves?
You know what else, we start to release GUILT when we practice non-judgement!
I have a friend who was able to reclaim her life and self-worth by letting go of choices and actions taken by her daughter. Her daughter was, and still is, a drug addict living on the streets. This was making my friend miserable. She was consumed with guilt, shame and judgement. She was so sad, but after a lot of work on her part, she realized she can’t control her daughter’s journey. She let go of her being responsible for her daughter’s actions. She returned the guilt that continued to bombard her, and once this happened my friend started to live again. She could love her daughter more fully by creating her own boundaries that allowed her feel safe, heard and empowered.
I, personally, have to practice non-judgement every day. And make no mistake I have to practice! Sometimes it is really hard! Judgement is HUGE for me! I catch myself thinking destructive thoughts all the time and have to reroute my thoughts to more helpful and positive notions. Just like a meditation practice; as thoughts come into your mind, you acknowledge them and let them go. We have to do the same with judgement. Acknowledge judgement is there, let it go and reroute your thoughts WITHOUT JUDGEMENT! This is Self –acceptance.
Self-acceptance:
After almost 42 years I can say that I truly love myself. I love who I am and who I have become. Now do I like myself everyday?? Some days are easier than others, but I work at it. Every day, we have to work at it! We are part of a beautiful whole. The whole doesn’t work without its parts. Everything we are is important to the whole, even our hurt and uncomfortable parts, because it’s our actions of becoming better people that is beautiful.
I find that nature is an amazing teacher of acceptance. Nature can be weird and awkward; it can be destructive and perfect and nature doesn’t judge itself. It just IS! Here is a story that I love to share because it is so perfect to explain how I feel about myself.
One day I walked out of my house, and in the trees outside my door was the most unbelievable sound. It sounded like there was a bird sitting on my shoulder singing directly into my ear. I had to look around to find where the song was coming from. Up at the top of the trees was the tiniest purple finch, and he was singing his face off! Head thrown back, beak wide open, he was shaking the branches he was singing so loud. He didn’t have a care in the word. He was getting his job done, and he was doing it with flair! This little finch just was…he didn’t worry if someone was cranky about the loudest tweet in the world at 6 am! He just was being him, and he was glorious. That morning reinforced to me that I can truly be me and let go of what others think!
I can personally testify that self-love can heal. Each component listed above was an essential part of my own healing journey. I had to find out who was. I had to decide that I was worth healing, stop judging myself and accept myself for who I am.
Self-Care:
How do we take care of ourselves? The first thing we have to do for self-care is actually take time for ourselves. Choose something you like to do and set aside some time, a half hour even, to do it. We are all busy. I understand that, but we HAVE to carve out some time to decompress! We have to. What do you like to do; read, run, meditate, dance, sing? Go get a massage, or go to counseling and work through some things even if they are not big things!! You get to choose and decide.
There are some other things I’d like to present to you to think about as well. Things that may be outside the box for some of us. And I am going to ask you just to think about some of these ideas and see how they feel to you.
Choice VS Obligation.
What would your life look like if you no longer did things out of obligation? What would your relationships look like if you truly wanted to be with the people you were with, or were doing activities that you truly wanted to do? Remember…we were talking about self-worth and that we are worth adding ourselves into every dynamic. What would it be like making every moment of your life count? What would family functions look like if you actually wanted to be there! How many of you reading this have over extended yourselves at Christmas time because you didn’t want to let someone down? Or felt you had to show up for something because it was expected? What would your holiday look like if you extended the energy to be only where you wanted to be, or slowed down the time you had with others? You may miss some parties or gatherings, but overall your holiday may be better because it was not as stressful. Maybe don’t go to the family gathering where Uncle Phil makes you super uncomfortable and crabby. Call mom and dad and make dinner plans after the holidays. When you can be calm, present and available.
I am reinstating Choice! It’s a radical thought huh?
“I don’t have a choice” is something I hear a lot. Don’t give away your power! You have a choice!!!! YOU HAVE A CHOICE! And if you do CHOOSE to be somewhere, BE THERE! Be present! Take responsibility for your choice. Take back your power and pull yourself out of the quicksand or stagnation you may find yourself in. Stagnation perpetuates stagnation, maintaining choice will keep you taking action. I’m not saying that our choices will always be easy. Some of the choices we make are really, really hard.
What if we make the WRONG choice? Then we choose to make it right! If we are worth living well, being whole and happy and choose with this in mind, we really won’t go wrong. We have the awareness of what we need and want because we have done the work to live in self-love and self-worth.
Ask for help!!
I talked above about living in community. In community we look out for each other. This means if we need to, it is OK to ask for help from our community. We, especially women, think we need to do everything to prove we are capable. We end up over extending ourselves to prove something to others. This can come at a detriment to ourselves. We deplete our personal energy by not giving ourselves the gift of time. Where can we learn to let go, and receive? Receive help, receive love and cherish ourselves?
I would like to close this blog with the offer of a meditation I wrote called “Abandoning Self-doubt”. This meditation will help integrate Self-Love and awareness and now is the time to use this meditation for yourself, for the love of yourself from this time forward.
