Does Self-Love Mean You Don’t Need Anyone?

If anyone needs to love you, it’s you. Self-love is vital because the one person we spend our entire lives with…is ourselves. We have a relationship with ourselves that dictates every other relationship we will have. Why? Our subconscious mind, which is responsible for ~95% of our thoughts, is wired to choose what is familiar. Without us even realizing it! And we are most familiar with who we spend the most time around: ourselves.

It all starts with us. How we see a situation is all up to our beliefs — which we are in control of. Our beliefs dictate our emotions, which impact our emotions, which impact our actions. And we pick people who reinforce how we feel about ourselves — which only further strengthens our beliefs and views.

With all that aside, you can begin to see the importance of self-love in creating loving relationships. If I don’t love myself, I will be turned off by people who do. I’ll think what is wrong with them? Are they crazy? BUT if I do love myself, I will be turned off by people who don’t love me. I’ll think um, what is this disrespect? Excuse me, I deserve better.

Self-love means the ability to love ourselves — especially unconditionally when we mess up or when something goes wrong. Self-love positively impacts self-esteem, which impacts self-confidence and overall well-being. But as conversations around self-love have gotten more popular over the last half-decade, some common myths and misconceptions about self-love have entered the discourse.

Here are three of those myths below — and why they are in fact, just myths:

1. Self-love means you don’t need anyone

Loving yourself is wonderful, but we don’t just learn how to love ourselves by ourselves. In order to love ourselves, we must also allow ourselves to be loved by others. Loving yourself by being your sole and only person in your life, could also be a sign of self-reliance and self-preservation, less so of self-love. Self-love can look like asking others for help because we realize we are humans, social creatures, and we do need other people and connections with others.

Self-love doesn’t mean closing yourself off from connections to others. That could be a sign of avoidance in relationships, something that is actually a sign of low self-esteem and unresolved relationship insecurity. Self-love also includes loving ourselves enough to be simultaneously dependent on others and on ourselves. Other people are vital for our happiness. The presence, support, help, and love of others can be essential for fulfillment in our life. By neglecting our essential human needs to connect, we put our health at risk.

As Esther Perel, a Belgian-American psychotherapist said:

Self-love is less about the ability to withstand loneliness or establish independence and more about awareness and acceptance of our incompleteness. It’s about letting others love us even when we feel unlovable because their version of us is often kinder than our own.

Esther Perel, Blog Post

2. Self-love is narcissistic

There is a fine line between self-love and narcissism, but no, they are not the same thing. Now, there can be self-love that makes you so focused on yourself and have a heightened sense of self-importance and grandiosity. This mirrors narcissism, which is an “excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance.” And I do agree that it can be detrimental to encourage those with self-love to love themselves so much that they have SO much love for themselves, and also have ZERO regard for other people.

But when I tell you to love your mom a lot, am I also saying that means you should love your Dad less? We realize love can be infinite, and we can love a lot of people. A healthy self-love mentality is one where you love and consider yourself in balance with how much you love and consider others.

Having healthy self-love does not mean you exclusively and only love just one person: yourself. It now means you love yourself AND ALSO others. Self-love and loving others are not mutually exclusive.

3. Self-love is selfish

This is a common belief — but also not exclusively true. Self-love, itself, does not have to be selfish. It could be, if you completely disregard what others need by only focusing on yourself. But again, there is a difference between making yourself a priority in your life, and making yourself the ONLY priority in your love. The act of self-love is not selfish, but the act of consistently ignoring others’ needs at the expense of your own, is. Those things are not the same. We can love ourselves and also love others. The balance of doing both is key.

People can only accept as much love from others as they feel for themselves. So when you begin to love yourself more, you are able to pour into others’ cups and accept others’ love from a place of greater fullness.

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Having a life full of love and self-love can bring more happiness and fulfillment to your everyday experience. Given much of our lives and relationships are affected by how we feel about ourselves, self-love is an incredibly powerful way to raise the quality of your life.

If you want to learn more about how to cherish yourself, or even some exercises on self-love, click here and here.

Sending you so much love!

❤

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Want to buy me a coffee? https://ko-fi.com/purposeistolove (I’d be very, very thankful!)

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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