/finding-true-love-2/ to it. Cluster 1 supporting | Tier 1. Cornerstone link updated to Part 1.
Keeps Maureen’s originals: muscle testing finds “not enough love” at the core; “you are not your story”; born to love.
SELF-LOVE ISN’T A PERSONALITY TRAIT; IT’S A PRACTICE
We joke about it, brush it off, and quietly assume it’s for other people. Perhaps it’s the very thing we’ve been missing.
By Maureen Callister | Kinesiologist & Author, The Gift of Self-Worth
“Self-love” is one of those phrases that can make people shift slightly in their seats. It can sound like a slogan on a scented candle — lovely in theory, but rather harder to know what to do with in real life.
We laugh it off, or turn it into a joke at our own expense. We criticise our bodies, dismiss our achievements, apologise for our needs and tell ourselves we should be doing better. And often we don’t even notice we are doing it.
But the subconscious notices.
Every little put-down reinforces the story we may already have been carrying for years: I’m not quite good enough. There’s something wrong with me. Other people matter more than I do.
So I’d like to offer you a different way of thinking about self-love.
Self-love isn’t a personality trait you either have or you don’t. It isn’t something reserved for confident people who have somehow sorted themselves out.
It is a practice.
I believe that at the heart of being human is one of our deepest innate needs: to love and to be loved. Yet ironically, we first experience love through other imperfect human beings, so even the most loving childhood rarely teaches us completely unconditional love. Perhaps part of our human journey, then, is to stop searching endlessly outside ourselves for the love we are missing and, through compassion and self-acceptance, discover that love within ourselves.
And perhaps, even before self-love, there is somewhere gentler we need to begin.
With compassion and self-acceptance.
What I find at the core
Many of the people I see arrive feeling lost, dissatisfied or strangely disconnected from themselves. On the surface, their lives may look perfectly fine; they may have families who love them, they may have successful careers, good friends and much to be grateful for.
Yet somewhere underneath there is a persistent feeling that something is missing.
When I use kinesiology muscle testing to tap into what the body may be holding beneath conscious awareness, I so often find the same theme at the centre: a feeling that there isn’t enough love – not enough love in their life, not enough in their relationships, not enough within themselves.
And underneath that can sit an even more painful belief:
Perhaps I am the problem, perhaps I am not really lovable.
When we trace that belief back to its source, it begins to make sense; A small child doesn’t have the capacity to understand the complexity of the adults around them. They don’t know that Mum may have been overwhelmed, Dad may have been carrying wounds of his own, or their parents may simply not have had the emotional resources to provide the love, reassurance or security that child needed.
The child only knows what they experience.
And when love, attention or approval feels inconsistent, conditional or unavailable, the child rarely concludes, My parent is struggling.
They are far more likely to wonder:
What is wrong with me?
That question can quietly become the beginning of the not-good-enough story. And unless we recognise it, we can spend much of our adult lives unconsciously trying to prove that childhood conclusion wrong.
Compassion changes the question
This is why compassion is so important.
Without compassion, we can discover these patterns and simply find another reason to criticise ourselves, defend against the fear that it might be true.
Why am I still doing this? Why am I so needy? Why can’t I say no? Why do I care so much what people think? I should know better by now.
But judgement simply repeats the original wound.
Compassion allows us to ask a very different question:
What happened that made me learn to protect myself this way?
Suddenly, the behaviour makes sense.
Perhaps you became the good girl because approval made you feel safe. Perhaps you learned to look after everyone else because being needed felt like love. Perhaps you became fiercely independent because depending on someone once hurt too much. Perhaps you learned to achieve because success brought the recognition you were longing for.
What we judge as our flaws are often adaptations that once helped us belong, cope or feel safe.
That doesn’t mean we have to keep them forever.
It simply means we can stop punishing ourselves for having them.
And that is where healing begins.
Before self-love comes self-acceptance
We often talk about loving ourselves as though we should be able to leap directly from self-criticism to I love myself exactly as I am. For many people, that is too big a jump. Self-acceptance is a gentler place to begin.
It means allowing ourselves to be human, with all our so-called flaws and imperfections, our strengths and vulnerabilities, our wise decisions and the choices we wish we had made differently. Acceptance doesn’t mean that we never change. It means we stop making our worth conditional upon changing.
There is an enormous difference between saying, I need to fix myself before I can love myself, and saying, I accept who I am today, and because I care about myself, I am willing to grow.
One comes from rejection.
The other comes from love.
This is also where we can begin to reconnect with the younger parts of ourselves that never received what they needed.
Instead of continuing the criticism, we become the compassionate adult that child needed.
We can begin with understanding:
Of course you were frightened.
Of course you wanted to be loved.
Of course you tried to please them.
You were doing the best you knew how to do.
There was never anything wrong with you.
We cannot change what happened in childhood. But as adults, we can begin giving ourselves some of what our parents or caregivers, for whatever reason, were not able to give us.
Understanding. Reassurance. Protection. Encouragement. Acceptance.
And gradually love.
Why we look for love in the wrong place
When we don’t feel that love within ourselves, it is natural to search for it outside ourselves.
We look for it in a partner, in being needed, in approval, in our children, in achievement, or in the next relationship that we hope will finally make us feel whole.
I’ll be happy when…
It is such a human longing.
And external love does matter. We are relational beings. We need affection, friendship, intimacy, belonging and connection. Self-love was never intended to make us entirely self-sufficient.
The difficulty comes when another person’s love has to convince us of something we fundamentally don’t believe ourselves.
If somewhere inside I believe I am unlovable, you can tell me you love me a hundred times and some part of me may still be waiting for you to change your mind.
So I may work very hard to keep your love.
I over-give. I accommodate. I silence my needs. I avoid conflict. I become who I think you need me to be.
And gradually, in trying not to lose you, I lose myself.
This is why another person’s love, however genuine, cannot permanently compensate for our own conviction that we are not worthy of receiving it.
Self-love gives external love somewhere safe to land.
Self-love is not always comfortable
This is where I think we sometimes misunderstand self-love.
It isn’t simply bubble baths, massages, positive affirmations and doing things that make us feel good. Those things can certainly be loving, but self-love goes much deeper.
Sometimes self-love means resting before you are exhausted.
Sometimes it means saying no and tolerating someone else’s disappointment.
Sometimes it means receiving help instead of proving you can manage everything yourself.
Sometimes it means leaving a situation that continually diminishes you.
Sometimes it means admitting that you were wrong, taking responsibility and making a different choice.
And sometimes it means telling yourself a truth you would rather avoid.
Love is not indulgence.
Love asks us to honour what is true.
For someone who learned that belonging depended upon pleasing others, this can initially feel very uncomfortable. Choosing yourself may feel selfish. Setting a boundary may produce guilt. Resting may make you anxious. Receiving may feel harder than giving.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you are doing something wrong.
It may simply mean you are doing something new.
You are beginning to stop abandoning yourself in order to remain acceptable to everybody else.
Self-love as a daily practice
This is why I call self-love a practice.
You don’t wake up one morning and suddenly feel completely devoted to yourself.
You build the relationship with yourself in exactly the way you would build any relationship that matters: through repeated acts of attention, honesty, kindness, respect and care.
You begin noticing how you speak to yourself.
You notice when you override your own needs.
You notice when you say yes while something inside you is saying no.
You notice when you dismiss a compliment, make yourself smaller, compare yourself to somebody else or immediately focus on what you could have done better.
And instead of judging yourself for doing it, you bring in compassion.
There I go again.
I understand why.
But I don’t have to keep doing this.
Then you choose differently.
That is the practice.
From self-acceptance to self-love and then personal power
Something important begins to happen as this relationship with yourself changes.
When you don’t feel worthy of love, so many of your choices become organised around other people.
Will they approve?
Will they be disappointed?
Will they still love me?
Will they think I’m selfish?
But as self-acceptance grows, and self-love begins to follow, the questions change.
What do I feel?
What do I need?
What is right for me?
What am I choosing?
That is not selfishness.
That is the beginning of an internal relationship with yourself.
And from there comes something even more precious: self-trust.
You begin to know that whatever happens, you will listen to yourself. You will care for yourself. You will not automatically abandon yourself to gain someone else’s approval.
That is where self-love begins to become personal power.
Not power over anyone else.
The quiet power of being able to stand strong within yourself and choose.
Restoring love from within
So how do we restore a love that may never have been properly established?
Not necessarily through affirmations alone. Telling yourself I love myself while every part of your body is quietly saying No, you don’t can sometimes make the distance between the words and the underlying belief feel even greater.
We need compassion for the part of us that doesn’t believe it yet.
In my kinesiology work, I explore where those early beliefs and emotional patterns may still be held within the body and subconscious. Rather than judging or overriding them, we work with them gently, helping the person understand why the pattern developed and supporting the system towards a different experience.
Sometimes what emerges is surprisingly simple.
The child who needed to hear I’m proud of you.
The teenager who needed someone to say You don’t have to be perfect.
The adult who still needs permission to hear You matter too.
This is at the heart of the Model of Compassion that runs throughout my work and my book, The Gift of Self-Worth.
Healing is not about going back and blaming our parents. Most parents gave what they were capable of giving from their own level of awareness and from the wounds and limitations they themselves carried.
It is about recognising what we needed, understanding what we learned in its absence, and choosing not to continue that absence within ourselves.
We become willing to give ourselves what could not be given then.
Perhaps this is what self-love really means
Self-love does not require you to adore every part of yourself.
It doesn’t mean you never doubt yourself, never make mistakes, never feel insecure or never need anybody else.
Perhaps it is something much simpler.
Self-love is the practice of no longer abandoning yourself.
It is choosing compassion instead of criticism.
Acceptance instead of rejection.
Understanding instead of judgement.
It is looking at the frightened, imperfect, sometimes confused human being that you are and deciding that this person deserves your love too.
Not when you have lost the weight.
Not when you have healed everything.
Not when everybody approves of you.
Not when you finally become the person you think you should have been.
Now.
Because underneath all those old stories and adaptations is the same precious individual who arrived in this world in the beginning; innocent, worthy and ready to love and be loved.
Perhaps the journey isn’t really about learning how to become lovable at all.
Perhaps it is about finally recognising that you always were.
When you do connect to that deep, unconditional love within — when you meet your true self and find it was lovable all along — there is no greater gift. The more love you hold for yourself, the more you can receive from others, and the more you have to give. It stops being a scarcity, and becomes a source.
If this speaks to something in you
My book, The Gift of Self-Worth: Rewriting Your ‘Not Good Enough’ Story, explores this journey much more deeply, how our earliest experiences shape the way we see ourselves, how the not-good-enough story follows us into adulthood, and how compassion can help us begin to rewrite it.
It is not about becoming a better version of yourself so that you can finally feel worthy.
It is about coming home to the worth that was there all along.
More in this series
Part of Why Do I Feel Not Good Enough?.