The path to self-love is a difficult one. Many, if not all of us, have struggled with something within our lives that has caused us to feel unwanted, undesirable, or unworthy. These feelings can manifest themselves in anxious thoughts —“What if everybody here secretly hates me? What if this group of people I’m walking past is silently judging me? What if my best friends only pretend to like me out of pity?”. They could also show themselves in the form of subtle habits, like avoiding mirrors, making self-deprecating jokes, and many more ways to slight yourself we may, unfortunately, be familiar with.
Once you’ve developed these thought patterns or habits, they can be very difficult to break. This is especially understandable if you’ve gone through experiences in which those ideas are reinforced by external factors. Whatever we’ve been through, hopefully, we can all agree that self-love should be the goal and is possible for anyone. Simultaneously true, however, is that learning to love yourself can be incredibly difficult. It is not as easy as just following rules like “drink lots of water!” It can be hard to start employing better habits, especially if you’re dealing with mental health issues that affect your motivation. There’s a lot to overcome, so if you’re anywhere on this journey, take a moment to give yourself a pat on the back.
I decided to write this article because I wanted to discuss one of the less talked about aspects of the self-love journey: loneliness. It almost seems counterintuitive — how would a whole process about feeling more comfortable with yourself and your life lead to loneliness?
One good habit that I think is really important to develop is surrounding yourself with people who make you feel loved and appreciated. Unfortunately, this can also be one of the most difficult aspects. You spend time with people who make you feel loved and appreciated, but what about the people in your life who don’t?
The easy answer would be to obviously not spend time with them. To “cut them off,” or to maybe stand up for yourself and ask for better treatment. But it isn’t that simple, and I’m sure many people have experienced this conflict. Maybe the people they wish to cut off are family members, or otherwise part of very important relationships. Maybe they had a good connection for a long time, and it’s hard to give that sort of thing up. For me, what’s difficult is the idea of cutting people out and then feeling their absence weighs on me. Sometimes, the conflict is between spending time with people who make me question my self-worth, or spending more time alone.
If you do decide to end relationships with people who conflict with your sense of self-worth, you will feel their absence. You will notice you spend more time alone than you used to, and you will wonder if you made the right choice. You might find yourself wondering–“I’m spending my time all alone, so am I even worthy of this self-love I’m searching for?”
It will be hard. You’ll probably miss those relationships a lot, or at the very least miss having something to do with someone you care about. It’ll feel, like I said earlier, kind of counterintuitive — you’re on this whole self-love journey to make yourself feel better, but now this lack of social interaction feels worse. Some people do much better by themselves than others, but I think it’s safe to say that everybody gets lonely.
It’s taken me a long time to start learning this, and I still do struggle with it, but being lonely is okay. It’s part of this journey and I really wish more people discussed the parts of our lives that aren’t super social or fun. Social media, I think, makes it seem like we always need to be out and about having fun with as many friends as possible, but when it feels like the best thing for you to do is take some time to be by yourself, that’s perfectly okay. It doesn’t make you a loser or less worthy of connection with other people. The fact is, many people in your life will come and go. It’ll feel lonely at the points when people are going, but there’s always a chance for a new connection to form as well. It’s okay to be feeling that loneliness and everybody feels it at one point or another.
So, best of luck to you on your self-love journey. I hope this article may have provided some solace in terms of thinking about the less pretty aspects of mental health and normalized those emotions we don’t always like to talk about. Everybody deserves to be surrounded by people who love and support them, but everybody also deserves to love and support themselves. I encourage you to be kind to yourself today.