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Why's it so hard to love myself?

Homeā†’Forumsā†’Love Book Forumsā†’Authenticity and Vulnerabilityā†’Why's it so hard to love myself?

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  • #119580
    Isabella
    Participant

    hi,
    So i recently started my spiritual journey to make my life a happier life. One of the main things holding me back from learning more about life love, and happiness is my own self love. I read and read about learning to love who i am, and to lose my ego, but nothing ever seems to stick. I meditate whenever i have the chance, or when i feel at my lowest. I clear my mind of all the negative thoughts i put in my head constantly. But why am i unable to move forth this? Why do i keep comparing myself to others, why do i bring myself down so much? How do i learn self love? Why am i not accepting myself? I just need help on understanding more about this and me..

    #119584
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Isabella:

    For a better future, one of self love (what you are seeking), one needs to understand the past. We were formed in the past, in our childhood (those Formative Years). To learn self love, you need to unlearn things you learned in childhood. It takes work and time.

    Would you like to share about your … Formative Years: is it there that you learned you are not acceptable, not lovable?

    anita

    #119612
    Peter
    Participant

    I have similar struggles with negative thoughts and measuring myself against what I imagine other peopleā€™s lives are.

    One of the questions I had to wrestle with as i attempted to work through this problem was the question of love itself and what it would look like to ā€˜loveā€™ myself. Like Joni Mitchell I discovered I didnā€™t know love at all – ā€œI’ve looked at love from both sides now from give and take, and still somehow itā€™s love’s illusions I recall I really don’t know love at allā€

    So essentially I was trying to learn to love myself when I didnā€™t have a clear picture or ideaā€¦ of this thing called love.
    (Today for me the word love contains qualities of meaning, purpose, accountability, discipline, spontaneity, authenticityā€¦ which might at first glance qualities that might appear to contradict but they donā€™t.)

    When you say you donā€™t love yourself what would loving yourself look like?

    I also noted your comment about losing your ego which was also part of the struggle.
    In in the west we tend to over identify with our ego ā€“ I am my ego, I am what I do, I am the roles I playā€¦ While the east negation of the ego has when practice unskillfully I think leads to the loss of sense of self and lethargy. The submission to caste and fate is a natural outcome to the loss of connection to our I and me.

    By negation of my ego I could find peace of mind and being (is this love?) but only as long as I removed myself from interaction with life as it was. I noted even Gautama had to leave his family. As I need food and shelter I didn’t see how this was going to work.

    It seems to me that what I call the ego was an import part of the whole of who I was and that my attempt to negate it was like cutting off an arm or a leg. Through mediation I understood my ‘I’, my sense of self was not my ego, I was not what I did for a living, I was not my thoughtsā€¦ I noticed however that it was my sense of I through which I set intention and was the part of me that was conscious. What is aware? I am. Limited though the I is, it is the part of the whole that experiences..

    I am not my consciousness yet it is though the I that the I become conscious.

    I began to think of my ego not as a CEO or captain but a kind of librarian that filtered information and experience, a communication channel that connected the unconscious, memory, filters… to the conscious and from that intention.

    Anyway maybe that doesnā€™t make any sense or matterā€¦. It just that I know that Iā€™m not alone that my unskillful desire to lose my ego left me feeling listless and disconnected from my experiences (defiantly not love)

    The shift from no longer trying to negate my ego but accept my sense of I as playing necessary role in my experience of becoming has help me let go of the negative thinking associated with the labels (usually based on comparison to others) I have applied to myself.

    I am not my ego, however my ego is a part of the whole that is me, my authentic self, and as such has value.
    The ego wasn’t something I had to lose but acknowledge… and well love

    #119630
    Isabella
    Participant

    Hi, Thank you for your input. It was nice hearing what you have to say. I really haven’t thought about my past and how it would affect who i am today. That’s a good awakening for me to hear that. I’m trying to think about what it would have been. Maybe my family, i have a lot going on with them the past four years. But i feel as if i have worked towards understanding everything with them, i basically only do myself and focus on my life. I feel comfortable with everything that has happened with my family and i don’t let that get to me anymore. I have worked on that a lot. Maybe a boy from my freshman year of high school. It was a bad relationship, very bad. And when i was young i understood nothing about high school boys. I feel as if he messed me up a lot by throwing all these negative thought in my head, but i never thought they would linger for years. I had assumed i had gotten out of it by now. I don’t think about him or anything so i assumed me feeling like shit from him had passed. Maybe not?

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Isabella.
    #119633
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Isabella:

    I think Not. If that relationship you had in high school was very emotional for you; if he told you things about yourself and you believed him, then those beliefs are in your memory- “facts” and emotions, all tangled. What are those “facts”- the things he told you about you?

    anita

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