My work is about developing unconditional love for ourselves, and that love then flowing towards others.
But have you ever thought about why people love themselves conditionally?
We grow up in a culture of conditional love.
In this old-fashioned culture, you might have experienced the following:
Loving responses when you:
Were happy and calm;
Said “yes;”
Did what you were asked or told;
Said, “please” and “thank you.”
You might have received quite different responses when you:
Were sad or frustrated or outraged or agitated;
Said “no;”
Didn’t do what you were asked or told;
Didn’t say “please” or “thank you;”
Asked for what you really wanted;
Acted from your painful feelings.
What often happens as a result of these experiences is that we come to believe that some parts of us are loveable and some parts aren’t.
We learn to repress, or dissociate from, and judge, certain feelings.
We learn to say “yes” to people even when we feel a “no,” and to judge ourselves when we don’t want to do something.
We might judge our needs, our desires, and what we really want. We might even lose connection with those things.
We might judge ourselves if we want to rest.
We might judge ourselves if we’re upset.
We might judge ourselves if we act in ways we don’t want to act towards others.
All these are ways we’ve learnt to love ourselves conditionally because of the conditional love that we received.
The wonderful thing is that we can change this.
We can learn to love ourselves unconditionally.
We can start to love ourselves when we feel sad or frustrated or outraged.
We can start to love ourselves when we need rest or support.
We can start to love ourselves when we don’t want to do something that’s asked of us.
We can start to love ourselves when we know what we want and ask for that.
We can start to love ourselves when we respond from our painful feelings.
We can do this in really SPECIFIC ways – and one of them is through our inner dialogue.
One simple way to see what you COULD say to yourself is connecting in with what you would say to a dear friend if they were experiencing what you are experiencing right now.
You could even try that out – how would you feel if you said that to yourself, instead?
If you want to learn more about changing your inner dialogue, through developing relationships with your Inner Loving Mother, Inner Loving Father, Inner Best Friend and Inner Beloved, I have an Inner Loving Presence Process Course which does exactly that.
I also have a free taster of the course, so you can see if it resonates with you!