How to Love Yourself & Others the Right Way: From a Therapist

High self-esteem is related to success, healthy relationships, and overall life satisfaction. Low self-esteem can contribute to depression, anxiety, substance use & substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts. Learning how to love yourself can help you develop stronger self-esteem and a more positive outlook. To clarify, this does not mean being in love with yourself and not caring about others, but balancing loving yourself and who you are meant to be.

How to Start Loving Yourself

You can do many things to love yourself, such as understanding compassion. Compassion is when you extend sympathy and concern for the sufferings of others. Here is a list of ways to love yourself in a non-narcissistic way.

1. Show Self-Compassion

If you can’t extend compassion toward yourself, it will be challenging to extend it to others. If you are a people pleaser, you may easily extend compassion to others but not yourself. This can be related to unhealthy boundaries that are too firm or not strong enough.

Cutting yourself slack when you mess up is a great way to love yourself since we are all humans.

2. Set Boundaries

As stated in the book “Boundaries” by Dr. Cloud and Dr. Townsend, boundaries guide understanding where you end and another person begins. In a physical sense, this is clearer, but it may not be as apparent in a mental aspect.

Understanding boundaries is a way to communicate your needs and not feel guilty about them, but it also helps you be kind and respectful towards others. There is a saying, “you teach people how to treat you,” which is very accurate and is done in the way we set boundaries or lack thereof. This can be very important when you are dating to have a healthy marriage.

3. Use Positive Self Talk

This may sound cliche but what you tell yourself effects your perspective of yourself and the world. Using affirmations to describe yourself and give yourself credit for your effort rather than your accomplishments can help you be more confident and it is a great way to love yourself.

Start a small list of good things about you, I find it helpful to describe how God, a close friend or someone that cares about you would talk about you. Write this list down and tell yourself them on at least a weekly basis.

4. Meditate

Meditation can be a great start on your journey of figuring out how to love yourself. Mindfulness meditations, guided imagery, tapping and more can be really helpful for filling up your cup.

Guided meditation apps can help you understand how to get started meditating and it can help you learn about forgiveness, compassion, stress management and more.

5. Art

Find a form of art that is therapeutic for you it could be singing, drawing, coloring, painting, making ceramics or clay. Figuring out a form of creativity that helps you feel loved and focused on the moment can help you determine how to love yourself best.

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Figuring out why you hate yourself can be helpful in understanding how to forgive yourself. This is something we can discuss in my mental health coaching. Understanding misconceptions about forgiveness is an important part to understanding how to love yourself and forgive yourself. Self-hatred, negative self-talk and a lack of love and compassion for yourself can contribute greatly to depression.

Extend the love and compassion to yourself that you would hope others would to you if you were struggling.

How to Love Others

If you are a people pleaser you may feel like you love on others easily but not towards yourself. As mentioned above setting boundaries is an important aspect of loving yourself and others. Having self-compassion and compassion for others and extending empathy towards them.

Active listening is a great way to show others that you hear them, care about what they have to say and are trying to understand them.

In Summary

Self love does not mean narcissism or not caring about others. It is appreciating who you are, focusing on who you are meant to be, taking care of your basic needs and truly enjoying life.