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Writer's pictureDr. Karin Anderson Abrell

Get Along With Yourself


We spend so many years battling with the one person who sticks with us through thick and thin—ourselves.


Self-love is tricky. We talk about it a lot, but few of us truly practice it or even know actually how to.


I didn’t grow up with the notion of self-love. It wasn’t talked about in my home.


It didn’t have to be. My brothers and I learned our worth through the love that emanated from our parents.


This #love included #affection, of course. But it also included #discipline. Because parents’ expectations, consequences, and discipline are also demonstrations of love.


But many people didn’t have parents who could instill in them their inherent self worth.


So they battle within themselves. They don’t like themselves. They don’t respect themselves. They don’t feel worthy.


And then they look to others, hoping someone can make them feel okay.


Hoping someone will fill the void their parents neglected to fill.


But it never works.


Here’s the reality—if your parents didn’t do their job, if they failed to validate you and give you a sense of worth, no one else can do it for them.


No one. Except yourself.


I’ll go into this in more depth in subsequent posts because many of our relationship problems occur when we look to our partner to make up for shortcomings we experienced in childhood.


But that’s putting an unfair expectation on someone.


It’s up to you to feel okay about yourself—you, God, and perhaps a therapist or coach to get you started.


You got this!


And once you do, you’ll be freed up to enjoy your partner, as opposed to needing him/her to heal the emotional wounds from your childhood.


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Photo credit: Ravi Roshan, Unsplash

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