Today’s episode is the start of the How To Heal series here on the podcast. We’re starting with the foundation of it all - radical self love. A person who experiences self love and demonstrates self compassion has less depression, less anxiety, less stress, and less shame. Isn’t that what we all want?
You’ll Learn:
Radical self love is the foundation of healing. It is vital. It is a gift that you give to yourself. You are entitled to loving yourself and feeling good about yourself, and I want that for you so much.
------------------------------------------
This is such an important topic that I’ve had a lot of feelings come up as I get ready to share this with you - tenderness, insecurity, and impostor syndrome (just to name a few).
But the truth is, I’m not trying to solve all of the world’s emotional pain problems. I’m creating this series to share with you my own journey of healing from trauma, uncertainty, and difficult experiences and the things that have been fundamental to me on that journey.
Over the course of this series, I’ll help you to:
This isn’t about making a huge overhaul of your life. It’s about picking one or two patterns in your life that you want to get curious about and explore…and loving yourself all along the way.
Radical self love is the foundation of healing. It is vital. It is a gift that you give to yourself. You are entitled to loving yourself and feeling good about yourself, and I want that for you so much.
Repeat after me: I unconditionally love and accept all the parts of me, no matter how I think, feel, or act.
Write this statement down, put it somewhere you’ll see it often, and practice saying it to yourself throughout the week. Then, I challenge you to practice self love through connection and compassion (sound familiar?).
At your core - your essence, your soul, the divinity that lives within you - you are good. You are worthy of love. You are lovable, and you are good enough exactly as you are.
Think of a newborn baby. Think of how deserving it is of love and care. There are no expectations of the baby. It doesn't have to prove anything. It doesn't owe anybody anything. It's just this love being.
You have that same pure soul inside of you. There is an essence to you that is pure and loving and good. It is worthy of love. It is worthy of being cared for and treated kindly.
Unfortunately, we don’t always live in connection to our core self. We have subconscious thoughts and behaviors. Our environment influences how we think, feel, and act (e.g. parents, teachers, peers, religion, childhood experiences, etc.).
Sometimes we lose our connection to that core self, and we start using strategies that we think will either help us get better or help protect us. And these strategies aren’t always very loving to ourselves or others.
Our thoughts become ruled by our inner critic. Feelings come up that we don’t know what to do with - like anger, hurt, or resentment. We use strategies to soothe, protect, or punish ourselves.
You might recognize these as people pleasing, yelling at your kids, overthinking, drinking too much, overworking, buying new things,...
