The Liberation of Self-Love

I don’t recall a time that I ever had any self-love or sense of self-worth. All of my worth came from relationships with other people. What did my family think of me? What did my friends think of me? What did my romantic partners think of me?

No opinion I had of myself was my own. I had no ability to look in the mirror and feel good about myself. There was always some outside voice – usually multiple – telling me the ways I wasn’t good enough or worthy of love. And those were the voices I listened to and that guided my behaviors through life.

It was especially true in romantic relationships. All I wanted was to feel wanted by someone. To feel chosen. To feel worthy of another person’s love. To feel like there was something special and good about me. I just wanted to be someone’s “person”.

And because I so desperately wanted to be loved and chosen, I put up with a lot of really bad treatment. Because, to me, having someone who treated me badly was better than not having someone at all. It didn’t matter how much the relationship hurt me. It didn’t matter how much I felt disrespected and how much I cried. The fact that they were there meant I was worth something. And if they were gone, it meant I wasn’t worth anything.

So, I clung to every person who showed an interest in being with me, regardless of how toxic that interest was. I fell for the love-bombing, the gaslighting, the manipulation, the infidelity, and the constant put-downs. I believed I deserved to be treated badly because I was never told differently. I clung to scraps of love and affection because that’s all I thought I deserved.

And then, slowly, that started to change. Therapy began opening my eyes to the mistreatment I’d put up with all of my life. Therapy taught me that love doesn’t hurt the way I’d been hurting. Therapy validated my feelings and showed me I was worthy of more.

It was a really long process, but I learned to love myself no matter what outside voices were saying. Therapy gave me the strength to say “no, that’s actually not a fair accusation of me and I won’t tolerate being put down like that.” Therapy taught me it’s okay to push back and stand up for myself. It taught me that it’s okay to not engage in disrespectful conversations and to quietly alter how I treat someone who can’t treat me right.

Most importantly, therapy gave me the confidence and self-love to know that I don’t need anyone else’s approval to feel good about myself. I could stand alone in a desert with no outside voices and feel amazing about myself. And I could also stand in a room surrounded by voices tearing me down and still feel amazing about myself.

Because I know my heart. I know my capabilities. I know who I am. I know my worth. And no outside voice is going to change the way I feel about myself. I have self-love and any other love I receive is simply a bonus. It does not validate how I feel about myself. And a lack of love and respect does not invalidate how I feel about myself.

I am liberated from the opinions of others because of how much I am now able to love myself. And no one will ever take that away again.