7 Days of Self Love
Day 1: Acceptance
Acceptance is a state of being where we acknowledge and make peace with what is. This can be with how we are feeling in the moment, whether that feeling is pleasant or unpleasant. Or it can be with thoughts or actions, past or present, aligned or unaligned with who we consider ourselves to be.
I started with acceptance as I was considering the evolution of my views on Self Love from this time last year when I did a series titled the same. I have had a deepening appreciation of Self Love since then, such that it would be more accurate to call last year’s series 7 Days of Self Care; an important aspect of Self Love but not the crux of it.
I could erase all reference to last year’s series and pretend I always held my current viewpoint. But shifts in perspective and growth in understanding are part of the process of living and how we individually evolve.
In acceptance we own who we were, the things we did and believed that we might do or believe differently now. The elements of the past are the building blocks of the present, and foundational parts of the present Self. We own who we are in part by owning who we were.
From a place of acceptance, we can encounter where we fall short of our aspirations for our Self, or where we believe we could do better. Likewise, we acknowledge our successes, we appreciate our honest effort, and we value how we have grown. Honest self-reflection and introspection births acceptance as we can only accept what we first perceive. We cannot change the choices of the past but what we do have is the present moment and new choices we can make.
We are creatures of change and growth. Acceptance is the first point of change. Nothing can be achieved from a state of denial; in denial we keep ourselves stuck in old patterns and old hurts. Through the cultivation of acceptance, we Love the fullness of our Self, and appreciate the unfolding process of our life.
Acceptance is Self Love.
Acceptance doesn’t mean you agree with, condone, or give up. It simply means you stop fighting reality.
Dan Millman
Day 2: Guilt
You may be thinking, ‘madam this has taken a dark turn, what gives’. I’ll tell you what gives. It is easy to love the parts of our Self that we already feel positively about. But Self Love is also about loving the parts we have forgotten about, or suppressed, or rejected.
Guilt is an emotional state that occurs when we believe we have done something wrong. It is uncomfortable and consequently we often seek to avoid it. Like all emotional states, it is simply a messenger that tells us something important about our Self.
Guilt can be a healthy, in-the-moment reaction, when we act without integrity or without consideration for another. We all have our moments. It is natural and healthy to feel guilt when we act out of alignment with our deeply held principles. In-the-moment guilt brings a message of where you need to honour your Self by acting more in accordance with who are and aspire to be.
Another form of guilt represents early social conditioning, often identified by a ‘should’. Guilt here once worked to keep us safe in maintaining attachment to our parents or caregivers. It is tied to learned beliefs centred around our right to say ‘no’. ‘No’ is part of setting healthy boundaries.
Conditioned guilt shows where we need to forgive our Self for perceived wrongdoing, such as prioritising our needs over meeting others expectations. There is a crucial difference between doing something that is ‘wrong’ and doing something someone doesn’t like. Emotionally mature adults are capable of being disappointed. And another’s emotional maturity or lack thereof, is no one’s responsibility but their own.
It requires conscious practice and patience to unlearn patterns of misplaced guilt and establish healthy boundaries.When we sit with the discomfort of guilt we acknowledge the part of our Self that is speaking through that emotional medium. That part Loves us and wants us to properly honour our Self.
Guilt tells us how to better do Self Love.
There are two kinds of guilt. The kind that’s a burden and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it remind you of who you want to be.
Sabaa Tahir
Day 3: Shame
Shame is a state of being that we adopt when we believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with who we are. Shame arises when we learn and take on the belief that certain parts of our Self, certain expressions, are utterly unacceptable.
Shame is powerful. We may find even the word invokes an averse response. Shame is adopted when we face the most painful consequences for expressing our Self; humiliation and rejection.
Our survival depends on acceptance by those upon whom we depend to meet our physical and emotional needs during our vulnerable stages of development; our parents and other prominent caregivers.
Through harsh consequences, we learn that part of our Self is unacceptable and unloveable. In response, we put in place the strongest barrier we can to prevent experiencing that core threat to our survival again. Shame.
Shame is both our greatest tormentor and our fiercest protector. Shame wants us to be safe, to receive the love and nurturing that we need as developing beings. But what protected us as a small dependent child becomes debilitating in adulthood. Behind the shame exists the part of our Self that we rejected and that part still longs to be accepted and loved.
Shame is so painful that we tend to automatically turn away from it. Yet the only way to clear shame is to first feel it and its pain. Through engaging with shame we open the door to living beyond it. We can find those pieces that we rejected in order to survive, and love them back into being a part of our whole and integrated Self.
Shame is outdated Self Love.
Engaging and releasing shame-based beliefs is the deepest expression of Self Love in the now.
Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.
Brené Brown
Day 4: Grief
Grief is a process of emotional release when we experience loss. We live in a finite universe where all things meet their end sooner or later. Grief and loss are universal and unavoidable parts of the human condition.
Grief naturally arises when we engage with guilt and shame. In engaging with guilt and shame, we recognise the origins of underpinning beliefs that were imposed upon us. We grieve for the small person that we were, that had to believe such heavy things to ensure our wellbeing as best we could.
We also recognise the life that could have been had our conditions been different. Had our emotional needs been met, had we received the nurturing and acceptance we needed for our healthy development. We recognise the profound impact this has had, and the patterns of suffering we have lived because of those early adopted beliefs.
This is a loss and a deep one; a loss of possibilities, a loss of what could have been, a loss of who we might have been and the life we might have lived in different circumstances.
It is right and natural to grieve this loss. It is not about anyone else, it is not about holding any other accountable or apportioning blame; it is a natural process of release that we need to move through in order to heal our past pains and traumas.
The complexity of such a process should not be understated. Grief can also induce feelings of guilt and shame. Our expressions of grief may have been met with a shaming or rejecting response when we were young. Guilt, shame and grief are often experientially intertwined.
Grief is a deep process of cleansing ourselves from the inside out. It is a process of letting go of what has been painful to carry, and what no longer serves us. It frees us to embrace all that we are.
Grief is a process of returning to Self Love.
Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.
Earl Grollman
Day 5: Anger
Anger is an emotional state that signifies a transgression against our Self. Anger, like all emotions, is a sacred messenger telling us something important about our Self.
Anger can be a healthy, in-the-moment internal reaction signalling where a boundary has been infringed. We can heed our anger reaction and respond proportionately to affirm our boundary. Conscious anger is like a guard dog that growls in warning at an unwelcome intruder.
However, in our early years we may have experienced shaming for our honest expression of a ‘no’. Or our ‘no’ may have met an anger response from parents or caregivers. We may have had a volatile caregiver with unchecked displays of anger. This can teach us that anger is a threat to safety through fear of loss of connection to our caregivers, or directly through experiencing unsafe displays of anger. We internalise anger as unacceptable and threatening. We learn it is dangerous.
Resultant guilt and shame over our own anger turns it into a threat to our concept of Self. We learn to suppress our anger. Anger becomes stuck and stored deep within us, denied and unconscious.
Suppressed anger can be triggered by a perceived transgression, even something minor. Anger is simultaneously experienced as a threat to the Self. Without conscious awareness and accountability this dynamic can feed itself into a frenzy.
The interplay between guilt, shame and anger is complex. Out-of-control anger can reinforce shame over one’s own anger and its suppression; it can be legitimately destructive to Self and others. Yet it is denial and repression of anger that makes it destructive, that is not an inherent quality of anger itself.
There are healthy ways to engage suppressed anger. When we attend to our anger we can learn to hear the message of anger and understand its origins. The core message of anger is ‘this is not acceptable and I deserve better’. For anger to be healthy, we must first acknowledge it, and learn to respect it for what it is.
Anger is a voice of Self Love.
Your anger is the part of you that knows your mistreatment and abuse are unacceptable. Your anger knows you deserve to be treated well, and with kindness. Your anger is a part of you that loves you.
Lyndsey Gallant
Day 6: Compassion
Compassion is a state of being whereby we face suffering with kindness, sensitivity and support. It can be felt as a motivation to relieve suffering and draws us towards suffering with benevolent intent.
When big internal states like shame, guilt, grief and anger arise, the old patterns of belief and thinking that have kept them in place arise too. This can come through as unkind self talk that reinforce states of shame and guilt, and delegitimise expressions of anger and grief.
In compassion, we can engage alternative self-talk that soothes and calms. We can think of it as the voice we needed to hear, spoken in the tone that we needed to hear it, when we were little people experiencing shame and guilt, humiliation and rejection. Little people without the capacity to process such painful internal experiences.
When we engage compassion, we offer the wounded parts of our Self grace.
As adults we have a capacity for understanding and being in complexity. We can simultaneously hold our old guilt and shame and anger and grief, while also holding acceptance and compassion for these states.
Denying uncomfortable feelings does not make them go away, it suppresses them into the subconscious. They become stuck instead of being transient messenger states that we move through.
Through compassion we can welcome these old uncomfortable states to emerge into the light of our conscious awareness. We can re-engage with the process of a suppressed state as transient, and piece by piece, finally let it go. It can no longer be part of our automatic system of belief, and of our Self concept.
This is the miracle of compassion.
Compassion is Self Love.
When we give ourselves compassion, we are opening our hearts in a way that can transform our lives.
Kristin Neff
Day 7: Courage
Courage is an attitude that allows us to face something we find frightening, difficult or painful. We can experience it as a strength or energy to persist despite uncomfortable or averse feelings.
Courage is needed on the journey of Self Love because facing guilt, shame, grief and anger is, simply put, hard. They are unpleasant states to enter, they are unpleasant to sit in and accept. There is no one else that can feel these things for us in order to heal them. It is we alone that can do this work.
We need courage to enter these states with a curiosity to learn their meaning and messages. We need courage to resist the desire to judge and condemn these states and our Self in experiencing them.
Courage is a quality of mind or spirit that allows us to be in a state of discomfort. Discomfort is the fuel for change. Often we only change a pattern when the discomfort of staying in it outweighs the discomfort of facing the painful state that maintains it.
Courage is the harnessing of our personal power to choose different outcomes. It is stepping outside of the known and into the unknown with faith and trust in our Self to navigate uncertain terrain. It is commitment to our highest ideals and to breaking patterns that may have been borne by our family line for generations.
With courage, we become a champion of our own light, entering into realms of darkness. Not darkness of evil or bad, but darkness of the unconscious. We need courage not just to explore our own internal darkness, but also to defy the norms of a highly repressed society in doing so. We bring the light of awareness to the hidden parts of the Self, parts that need the most acceptance, compassion, and tender care.
Courage makes us radiant. Through courage we become our own salvation.
Courage is Self Love.
You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.
William Faulkner
Reflection
This was quite the different perspective of Self Love to what I offered at the start of 2023; a more honest and complete picture. There were a couple of associated concepts that came up for me as I worked through this topic that I briefly reflect on below.
It hurts why do it
The purpose of engaging with these states is to undertake a process of unlearning all that takes us away from what we truly are. There is a natural state into which we were born, and that we then grew away from through the conditioning of our childhood and growth to maturity. It is a process of returning to wholeness.
Our material world, and I speak of what I know which is western society, is designed to keep our focus on the external. There is good reason to focus on the external, it is legitimately compelling. At the very least, we need money to survive, our systems are harsh and unforgiving of poverty or financial struggle.
Yet while we only focus on the ways we need to grow and succeed in the outer world, we remain distracted from our inner world. The most powerful growth we can ever do is within. The most powerful changes we make will come when we begin to reconnect to who we really are and naturally realign with our Self.
Another good reason is for our own spiritual sovereignty. Carrying unconscious uncomfortable and painful aspects makes us susceptible to manipulation. Our fears can be triggered, in which our higher mind and higher order cognitive functions are disabled, and in this unstable state we can fall under the influence of another.
Our shame around anger leaves us particularly vulnerable. When that shame is triggered we can shut down our anger and our boundary setting. When we suppress our boundaries we lose touch with the sense of who we are and our innate power. This is a key component of coercive control and narcissistic abuse, and any form of individual or collection oppression.
There is a reason anger is so maligned in our culture (western), particularly anger displayed by women and minorities. Healthy, sacred anger is a part of us that we must reclaim. As we recover our Self and return to Self Love, we become more stable, grounded, and impervious to abuse and manipulation.
Beware spiritual bypassing
The uncomfortable emotions we experience are key to understanding Self Love. You may note, if you follow such things, that there are proponents of Self Love and spiritual perspectives that speak of uncomfortable emotions as entirely bad and things to be rejected. That we should never feel angry is a common one. It is also common to encounter ideas of being positive and ‘high vibes’ at all times else we lower our energetic state.
This is a classic example of what has been called ‘spiritual bypassing’ (see www.verywellmind.com/what-is-spiritual-bypassing-5081640 for an overview). There are only two primary reasons a person takes this approach; a lack of understanding and respect for the human condition and natural process of life, or having the understanding and seeking to legitimise a denial state. Either way it is highly likely if we are stuck in a state of spiritual bypass we are unwilling to address our denial, or are blind to it. It may involve seeking to be viewed in a certain often superior way. In its darkest forms, this may extend to seeking dominance and control over the minds of others.
No one gets out of being human; guilt, shame, grief and anger are part of that. It is better to accept we are feeling bad and feel bad than to feel bad and deny it to ourself, or tell ourself it is wrong. This just drives it into the unconscious where it will have a perpetual hold until engaged with and released. In regards to ‘vibes’, that is the one surefire way to ensure our vibes remain persistently affected, at least at times. Spiritual bypassing, like all else, is not inherently negative. As a transient state it surely serves a purpose. When entrenched, however, like anything else it becomes an obstruction.
Fear and entanglement
When these aspects are unconscious and suppressed, the triggering of them induces a state of fear; the old fight flight freeze appease system. When this system is activated, the higher mind, the frontal cortex, goes dormant. Therefore the process of returning to Self Love entails learning emotional regulation and self soothing techniques, and gradually unlearning the automatic fear response.
As noted in Days 4 and 5, the difficult states explored here are intertwined. Understanding that they all relate yet are separate can help to diminish the fear and ease us into engagement. Self Love does not mean rushing headlong into our deepest shame. It is gentle, slow, and forgiving.
There is also a crucial link between anger and grief. Transgression of boundaries when we are young, sparking our sacred anger, is most commonly enacted by those responsible for our care and protection. In that sense it is a deep betrayal, and there can often be a grief that sits at the heart of anger. It can also work the other way around, in that when our fundamental needs are not met by our caregivers, we feel grief, the expression of which may have been rejected. Connecting with this grief will arouse a natural anger.
There are also schools of thought that link repressed anger with states of depression. Depression, rather than simply feeling sad, is characterised by low affect, or a lack of emotion. Repression of anger is at the heart of emotional repression. See the work of Gabor Mate for more on this (www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgaYwUbaQWs provides an introduction).
With all of these big uncomfortable states intertwined and cross-connected, it is no wonder that there arises fear with even acknowledging any one of them. Yet a positive lies in this intermingling. Work on one aspect and we work on all aspects to some degree.
Fear is healthy and necessary, and is ultimately there to keep us safe. It is, however, concerned with short term survival, the immediate context. It has no care for our long term wellbeing and fulfilment. It can become unhelpfully ingrained and an automatic reflex reinforcing suppression and avoidance of that which needs to be released.
Fear requires our kindness. It is in meeting this fear we need acceptance to be with what is, compassion to acknowledge its right to be present in the moment, and courage to move beyond it, to choose the direction of the unknown in support of our essential wellbeing.
With support of a therapist these benevolent states can be cultivated, and we can build trust and faith in our Self to face what lies within. Walking into the interior of who we are may feel daunting and even overwhelming, but it is ultimately a journey to liberation. A journey is not taken in one single leap, but step by deliberate step.
In 2024, may we choose to direct our steps towards Self Love.
I believe one of our souls’ major purposes is to know, love, and express our authentic selves. To live the life and be the person we were created to be. However, our true selves only emerge when it’s safe to do so. Self-condemnation, shame, and guilt send your true nature into hiding. It’s only in the safety of gentle curiosity, encouragement, and self-love that your soul can bloom as it was created to do.
Sue Thoele
Featured image credit: Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash
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