5 Easy Ways To Screw Your Mental Health And Hate Yourself

/in /by

We’re constantly being told that self-esteem is important, and we need to love and care for ourselves. But what if we’re not interested in that? Here are five simple hacks to make your self-hate blossom and let it ruin your entire life. Read on.

 

Takeaway:

 

  • Whatever you need to do to solve your problems – do nothing!

  • Always put other people’s needs and wants first, and even when you finally find time for yourself – get distracted and forget about it.

  • Keep hustling and pushing so that you’ll never have the chance to take care of yourself, cause you’ll even be too tired to sleep.

  • Talk down to yourself, call yourself names, and give yourself insults that will trigger you right into an emotional flashback.
  • Hurt your own feelings, especially when you deserve recognition and acknowledgment. Even when you do the right thing and really make an effort – ignore it or reject it until you feel totally worthless.

The What and Why of this Article

 

This article is a subversive instruction for your toxic Inner Critic of what to do exactly to make you hate yourself more than ever before. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Disclaimer: If you’re in the middle of a toxic situation, this content might be triggering. In this case, you might prefer to leave reading this article for another time.

Ok, there are many things you can do. As my favorite author says, human imagination never flourished more than when it had to come up with ways to torture other people. So here is but a humble pick of the top 5 of my favorite ways in which I liked to make myself hate my guts. Maybe it will become helpful to you as well.

1 – Do Nothing

It always works. It’s a fool-proof method to hate your life and yourself just a little bit more. When a problem arises, and you feel uncomfortable, discontent, irritated, bored, or hurt – do nothing. It’s easy. You’re probably already doing it most of the time! Why am I guessing that? Because our culture champions over-agreeableness and conformity. We’re afraid to stand out and draw attention to ourselves by voicing our feelings and needs. It’s second nature to us because even psychology used to promote ignoring feelings, treating them as obstacles, and doing it ‘the logical and rational way’. 

Another reason why it’s so super easy and why it’s in our blood is because evolutionarily, we’re conditioned to fear and hate change. In our nomadic era, our survival depended on stability, on everyone playing their role in the tribe. If someone would change – it could affect the entire community.

So next time you realize you have a problem – don’t do anything about it. Just trust your instinct, you’ll know how. And even when you figure out what to do or make a plan and promise you’ll do it this time – don’t. Keep doing the same thing. And next time it becomes too much again, and you’ll make a new discovery about something else you could do – don’t do it either. Just keep coming up with these solutions and then sit on them. Resist taking action, it might take a little effort, but it’ll pay off. You’ll hate your guts for that.

2 – Over-Agreeableness and People-Pleasing

Do something for others against your own will. When you’re tired, exhausted, drained, depleted, sad or angry, and overwhelmed, do it anyway. Do it with a grudge and with a long face. Do it like you ‘have to’, or else they’ll think you’re ungrateful, rude, or narcissistic. Do it out of insecurity or fear of rejection or punishment. Do it for any other reason than you really want to, and you really feel like it. Do it when you’re sleep-deprived and hungry. Do it when you should rather go to the toilet. 

And do it, especially when you don’t even have time for yourself!

Why prioritizing others and not setting boundaries is making us hate ourselves? Because somewhere deep down, we know that it’s our responsibility to assert ourselves, but we don’t and blame it on others. Something inside you knows that that’s not how things work, and the right person to be angry with is, in that case, you.

So deny yourself any rights and make sacrifices against yourself every time you’d like to piss yourself off.

3 – Push It

When you’re pushing yourself to keep doing something, even to the point of burnout – don’t ever stop. Just think that everybody does that, compare your results to people who are the best, most experienced, and have done that decades longer than you. Tell yourself that what you’ve done doesn’t even look like anything yet. Forget to take breaks, go to sleep too late and get up early anyway. Go like this for weeks, months on end.

Forget to drink water, eat only junk food, don’t clean your place, get back to a messy bed. Don’t rest, just keep making to-do lists, and even when you’ve checked off everything, take another list, telling yourself either that you’re so much behind anyway or that if you don’t do this ahead of time, none of what you’ve done will matter anyway.

Keep telling yourself that all your effort doesn’t count, that you need to do more. Or that what you’ve done, even though it’s a lot, is by far not good enough. Imagine speaking to yourself like the most heartless, soulless person you’ve ever known when you do this. Think cool, distant contempt.

Never sit back and do nothing or daydream, and when you do, punish yourself by telling yourself something really nasty.

And no matter what you do, always try too hard.

4 – Trash Talk To Yourself

Whenever you make a mistake or mess something up, call yourself names. Come up with your favorite one and use it on repeat.

Drasticize and catastrophize any fear and anxiety you may have. Tell yourself – ‘what if this doesn’t work? And then something even more terrible happens, and then you’ll be a laughing stock to everybody, they’ll shame you and ridicule you, you’ll lose your job, your relationship, your family and your house, and you’ll end up living under the bridge, and you’ll die dirty out of starvation, and nobody will remember you’. Do this routine every time you contemplate, i.e., not passing an exam, not delivering a project on time, getting late to work, or forgetting about groceries.

It’s easy to do. You’re probably very good at this already, although you might not have realized this skill. Just remember the last time you failed at something, and you gave yourself a hard time – that’s what you’re aiming at. Remember, when you keep practicing, you’ll master this craft, and it’ll do wonders to nixing your self-esteem.

5 – Hurt Your Own Feelings

It’s a variation of the above, only you’re ruining for yourself any success, accomplishment, or even effort at doing something.

Every time you do something good, let yourself know how little it’s worth anyway. Tell yourself that compared to X, it’s nothing. Or that Y won’t appreciate it anyway.

It works best when you actually do something nice for yourself.

For example, you might be in the shop and see a great but too expensive dress. Normally you wouldn’t do it, but say, you’ve managed to convince yourself that it would be at least a good fun to try it on, or that you can afford it if you do X, and getting something nice for yourself will boost your self-esteem, or that you’ll be investing in yourself. See how great you look in the mirror, and then just when you feel the best, and it’s time to make that final decision – let all your doubts, fears, and insecurities start sneaking in. Think that you’re not attractive anyway, that you’re too fat or too thin, and you’ll first have to lose/gain some weight, which you won’t be able to do anyway, and so on.

Or think how your friend, that beautiful, slim, and curvy one, would look better in it anyway, and that she looks better even in rugs, and think how pathetic your attempt at looking nice will be if you’d stand next to her. Picture it in your mind well. Remember to pay attention to the looks of other people.

Another example – when you receive a compliment, think that the person who said it: 

  • did it out of pity
  • doesn’t mean it, they’re just trying to be nice
  • wants something from you
  • that it was just a joke, with mean intent


Do anything it takes to deny and reject it. It works best if you can get to the point when you start thinking that everybody is a fake, you can’t trust anyone in this world anymore, and you have no friends.

Remember, the higher you get, the more painful the fall. It’ll work like a dream for ruining your self-worth!

Another tip is for when you’d like to do it subtly. That’s when it gets really insidious. Every time you do something wrong – notice it and let yourself know that you’ve seen it. You’ll feel that the judgment is justified cause you, in fact, did something wrong, so it will be the most difficult to reject and instead request understanding and compassion from yourself. 

You can, i.e., tell yourself that you made a mistake, and quietly, on the screen inside your mind, show yourself all the times in the past you also did it wrong. You don’t even have to say anything to yourself anymore, just keep previewing those memories. Zoom in on humiliation and shame, and give yourself an ‘inner judgemental look’ in total silence. And when you feel all alone, think to yourself – that’s why nobody likes me.

And to the contrary – when you do something right – try not to pay any attention at all. Think it’s nothing, or try to distract yourself by thinking about other things you must do but you haven’t even started yet.

Criticizing ourselves when we’re doing something right is what hurts us the most. It really gets to us and stays with us the longest. So do it whenever you can if you want to become a master nihilist and feel that life has no meaning and you don’t either. Results guaranteed!

Good luck!

These were my personally tried and tested top 5 ways to make yourself yet more miserable and resentful towards yourself and others. You might probably come up with even more ingenious ways yourself! Good news, if you’re struggling with CPTSD and have experienced narcissistic abuse, your Inner Critic is no doubt already a master of this game, so you likely need no encouragement or guidelines. But don’t worry, you can always feel worse, just keep on going.

The rule of thumb is trying to remember how your abuser used to hurt you, what exactly they did that made you feel gutted, disempowered, abandoned, or crazy – and do exactly that. The objective is to trigger an emotional flashback and send yourself straight back into your childhood, right when your original wound was created, and you felt at your most vulnerable. Just do it as often as you can, surprise yourself when you can top what you said to yourself before, and even when you feel like you’re not in the mood – try to at least sneak in a bit of smart-ass remark or a little sarcastic and cynical laugh.

I’ve been considering giving you some affirmations for that, but the truth is, we’re all masters of this already. We just need to try harder. 

Redefining Love After Abuse – Coaching Exercise

/in /by

A simple step-by-step guide to belief-change work. This self-coaching process will help you develop a healthy and life-supporting definition of love. 

 

 

Takeaway:

Step 1: Recognize your current belief about love.

Step 2: Find out how it could have served your abuser rather than you.

Step 3: To understand why you had this belief, figure out what positive role did it play for you in the past (i.e., it might have helped you survive through the pain during abuse by rationalizing it)

Step 4: If you want to let go of this belief, you need to make sure you’re not harboring resentment towards yourself for having it. It is helpful to appreciate how it could have helped you cope with the past reality. To release it in a spirit of self-respect, it might help to request your own forgiveness. By validating and forgiving your past, you’re making space for something new in the future.

Step 5: To reinforce the process of letting go of the belief that doesn’t serve us anymore, we need to find evidence that it’s not true.

Step 6: To define healthy love, look into good quality resources you can trust, and check-in with your heart to reflect what could and should it mean in the world where people were not perfect but treated each other right.

Treat this process as a long-term project that you can revisit multiple times.

 

What and Why of this article

After coming out of a toxic and abusive relationship, regardless of whether it involved a romantic partner or a family member, we often experience confusion or even disbelief in the concept of real love.

If you would like to read more about why we might feel this way, you can take a look at this article.

 

How we define love is crucial not only for establishing a healthy relationship with others but also with ourselves. Therefore, it is also a foundation for defining self-love.

To find a general direction, you can use inspiration from various sources in books and online that discuss true love. I’ll try to create a little summary of it in the following article. 

However, keep in mind that while there is some fundamental truth about it, you, being a person with your characteristic and particular needs, will most likely add something more specific doing your recovery work.

 

This article focuses on just that. It walks you through a coaching exercise to create your personal, individual definition of it. It will help you recognize your old beliefs about love, find out their toxic components, and rebuild them to better serve you in creating a healthy life.

 

 

The Coaching Exercise

Ok, introduction over and done, let’s dive straight into it. You can do this in the form of reflection and meditation, but it is much better to write it down in your recovery journal so that you can pause and get back to it whenever you need it. It’s also great to return to it after some time has passed by to either remind yourself of it or update it.

 

Remember, what follows is a brave process. Set your intentions to brutally honest and courageous. You need to get real to heal.

 

Step 1

What are your current beliefs about love?

 

Not all of them might be toxic. But if you’re coming out of an abusive relationship that lasted for some time, parental or romantic, it’s most likely that some of your ideas about love might be right now less than healthy. 

 

Identify every one of them that would result in you putting up with someone who’s not good for you. Don’t censor yourself. Brainstorm and list these beliefs one by one.

 

Step 2

How could it serve your abuser rather than you?

 

How could it contribute to you staying in a toxic relationship longer than you should? The objective is to gain clarity of where precisely the limiting beliefs lead to, to understand their consequence. We can’t get rid of old unhealthy patterns if we don’t think they cost us too much. 

 

Reason 1: Some psychologists say that we tend to keep a blind eye on some lies we believe in if they don’t humiliate or embarrass us. If you want to get rid of it, take out those beliefs that might make you feel ashamed, bring them into the full sun, and let them stand there. Take a close look and notice all their inadequacies. You’re breaking the evil spell right now. You’re making the unconscious conscious, and that’s the first step in their deconstruction.

 

Reason 2: In all likelihood, we have in our lives a lot of people with similar beliefs, and they reinforce ours. We need a pretty strong reason if we want for ourselves anything else than another toxic, abusive, neglectful, and damaging relationship similar to their bad romance. To ensure it, we need to get crystal clear about how our negative beliefs about love might not make our lives easier but those of our perpetrators.

 

Reason 3: It took a lot of time to develop these beliefs, and we try to avoid the effort it would take to change our minds about them. It’s funny, though, because actually, it takes a lot of effort to uphold them – it’s not like reality will only confirm these beliefs to us. Now and then, we will be confronted with a different perspective, and it usually creates dramatic conflicts in us. It’s an enormous emotional strain to reaffirm to ourselves, i.e., that love is always a struggle when we hear of relationships of older people still being sweet or funny with each other. It’s pissing us off, especially if deep in our hearts we feel that love without drama should be possible. Each time, it takes a fight to destroy our dreams and hopes, which we thought were already killed by our abuser a long time ago. 

 

The bottom line is – it’s a drama to live by these limiting beliefs, and it’s a drama to keep them alive at all costs. It’s much easier to live the truth, even if now it seems corny. Become a fan of cotton candy, why the hell not, at least life will be lighter.

 

Step 3

How did it serve you/help you in the past?

 

All our thoughts and beliefs have a positive intent behind them, even if it doesn’t look that way. Usually, it’s to keep us away from pain and danger, or if we can’t avoid it altogether, then to minimize it. They also try to make coping with something painful easier, even if it makes abuse make sense. If someone can’t escape it, they’ll try to learn to live with it.

 

So before letting go of our negative beliefs, it’s good to understand why we held on to them. The ability to recognize it and acknowledge it helps us let go of it fully and in a healthy way, without shame, guilt or resentment. It allows us to respect ourselves and keep our dignity. It helps us feel compassion for what it took for us to endure and survive our struggles when we didn’t know how to deal with them better.

 

We always do the best we can with the resources and knowledge available to us at the moment. Remembering this will not only help us avoid judging ourselves for past choices, but it will also give us hope for the future. As you’re learning new possibilities to respond and behave, you’ll have more tools at your disposal and options to choose from.

 

Step 4

Gratitude and forgiveness

 

Once we acknowledge our toxic beliefs’ role in our lives, we can thank them for serving us. Then, admitting that they can’t help us in any meaningful way anymore, we let them become a part of the past. Just like when Marie Kondo lets go of the items that no longer serve their purpose. She’s right in saying that sometimes the purpose of something is only to teach us what we don’t like or need.

 

A part of the letting-go process is also forgiveness. In this case, not forgiving the abuser, but ourselves. The behavior or belief we held might have been created by the necessity to cope with hurt, or it could have been inherited from our parents before we could make a conscious choice whether we wanted to accept it or not. Either way, it wasn’t our fault that we had them, but it’s our responsibility now to decide what to do about it.

 

That being said, since we were the ones, consciously or not, acting on those beliefs, we need our own forgiveness. And you know how it goes – to receive forgiveness, we need to take responsibility for what we did and apologize first. Yes, I mean we need to tell ourselves we’re sorry.

 

In your healing journal, you can write yourself a letter with an apology, but do it from a place of dignity and self-respect.

 

It can start like this: ‘I know that the beliefs that I held were formed without my conscious consent and that they served my survival. I know that I wasn’t the one who was doing the abuse to me, but as I’m growing in awareness and maturity right now, I can acknowledge the role some of these beliefs and choices played in my life. Admitting my part of the responsibility, at the same time, I realize my agency, which is an empowering act because as long as there is something in any given situation that is up to me – I have a say in it, and I am also in control. That means that I am freeing myself and no longer have to be a victim. That’s why I am in power to apologize to myself for holding on to the beliefs. I understand that although it was the abuser who inflicted the pain I have experienced, my beliefs and choices unconsciously resulted in me tolerating this situation for too long. If I can have the strength to take full responsibility for my own decisions and actions, I empower myself to be the only one in control of any of them in the future.

Dear past me, please, accept my apologies and compassion for what you have endured. I am deeply sorry for you. May these apologies be the evidence of our healing, growth, and development, and the proof that the future might and will be better than our past.’

 

Step 5

What is the evidence that your past beliefs are not accurate?

 

When you’ve managed to release the grip of your old beliefs, in this step, we will make them finally crumble down and prepare the foundation for the new ones simultaneously.

 

Look at your old beliefs and try to think of evidence that the opposite might be true. Take into consideration your own experience or someone you’ve heard of. What was it? Write it all down.

 

Step 6

Redefine love

 

You’ve already started it in the previous step. In this one, consult your heart and your deepest wisdom, asking yourself what real love is then? What is the opposite of abuse, and what is love for you? What does it mean? What are its characteristics? 

 

Here are some suggestions that could get you going – might it be perhaps caring, loving, warm, safe, secure, protecting, nurturing, supportive, encouraging? Might it have the ability to take oneself, others, and life lightly, perhaps have a sense of humor? What else?

 

If you hit a block at this point or find resistance because of what your mind could consider realistic and not, use the technique of suspension of disbelief – in a magical, perfect world if everything would be miraculously possible – what would ideal love look like? Write with your heart.

 

You can also get inspiration from good quality sources in psychology, philosophy, religious and spiritual traditions, literature, and poetry.

 

Patience, take it slow

 

The important thing is to take it easy. If you like, you can try and complete it within a day, but in case this feels overwhelming or intimidating – don’t worry, you are supposed to take it slow.

 

Developing your old beliefs took a lot of time too, so changing them might be a process of discovering deeper and deeper layers and different aspects of them. It will also require trying them on for size, seeing how comfortable they fit, adjusting, or getting rid of what doesn’t work. You’ve got to practice them over time to realize that they’re valid and get a confirmation that they do serve you in life to develop trust in them.

 

The truth that I found is that real love grows and expands over time. And just as our knowledge and understanding of the person we love gets deeper – whether it’s someone else or ourselves – our love for them gets deeper as well. That means that once you start this process, the more time you invest in it, the more good you have to look forward to.

How To Start Developing Self-Love?

/in /by

When we endure narcissistic abuse, our sense of self-love erodes. It’s a paradox, but healing not only requires self-love to occur but at the same time helps us restore this inborn ability. Here is an introduction to how to start this process.

 

Takeaway

 

  • Experiencing abuse and neglect for a prolonged time often develops a belief that we are not worthy of love, including our own. When we act on this belief by ignoring our needs and feelings, criticizing and punishing ourselves, we reinforce these beliefs. This means that we have an internal abuser in us, but also their victim. To recover healthy self-love, we need to heal and restore the inner bond between these different parts of our Self.

  • You can treat it as an internal couple’s therapy, where the different parts of your psyche need to learn to communicate with each other in a way that fosters understanding, validation, trust, and compassion. This way, you might realize that you can rely on yourself.

  • You don’t need to feel good about yourself to start treating yourself better. But taking positive, caring action towards yourself will, over time, earn you your own trust, gratitude, and eventually love.

 

What and Why of this article

 

In a previous article, I have talked about why we might feel aversion and disbelief in the concept of self-love after the trauma of narcissistic abuse and how to undo it. In another one, I tried to briefly define what self-love is and what it is not in an approachable way for the survivors.

 

Now I will let you know how to start developing and reclaiming it.

 

 

In me: myself and I

 

Previously, we established that self-love is a healthy love directed towards oneself, an act of treating ourselves lovingly, and it’s also our responsibility. But suppose we don’t take it. Instead, we neglect, overcriticize, and diminish ourselves by saying – inside our heads and to others – what a loser we are. But that so called looser in us, being the recipient of all that hatred and cruelty – hates us back too. And rightfully so. Because we hate people who treat us with disrespect, and that includes us too.

Inside you there is a part of you that might be saying these nasty things to yourself, but there is also a part of you who is receiving all that crap. You’re ending up hurting your own feelings.

 

‘Be careful what you say to yourself – cause you’re listening’

 

So if you want to develop some self-love, you’ve got to earn it with yourself. It would help if you treated yourself like you wanted others to treat you.

 

Do you want others to treat you like you matter? Then show yourself some respect. Do you want honesty from people? Don’t lie to yourself either. Do you want understanding? Learn to understand yourself. Do you want support, encouragement, and cheering up? Same. Name all the things that make you feel bad when others do them to you, figure out what is the opposite and ask yourself – ‘how can I give myself, in the privacy of my own mind, a little bit more of that?’

 

This way, you create reasons for self-appreciation, a beginning foundation of a loving bond with yourself, where feelings of gratitude and warmth stop being difficult, unrealistic, and a mystery.

 

Love is not just a romantic, passionate infatuation but a lasting bond based on deep care between people, and so, in essence, is self-love. It is unconditional positive regard towards oneself rooted in factual self-helpfulness. Our culture advises to use the ‘magic words’ – ‘please, thank you, you’re welcome, I’m sorry, it’s ok’. Watch how your perception of yourself changes over time when you start using these words in your own inner dialogue.

 

Love, like trust, may need time to develop

 

Can you start practicing treating yourself with more love without feeling it? Does it still count? 

 

Of course, it does! It’s like this: if someone used to mistreat you, but they did therapy, now they’re committed to treating you better, and they do, you can see their remorse and growing self-awareness, and their newfound respect towards you – will you feel burning love towards them straight away? No. It takes time to develop trust in someone after getting hurt. You want to see if they are still going to treat you the same good way when they’re cranky, when they’re tired, day in and day out, week after week after week. It takes some sense of safety to forgive, and that takes time. What it also definitely takes is a conversation about it. 

 

Your interaction with yourself works based on the same rules because, as already mentioned, inside you, there is you who is giving you the treatment and you who is this treatment receiving. Does it mean you have to start talking to yourself as if you had an imaginary friend? It would certainly be great if you started talking to yourself as a friend anyway. That would be a good start.

 

Name it to claim it

 

If we want it to really stick, we need to clearly define the objective – what would self-love mean to you? When you manage to figure out and formulate what would it be to you, it will be much easier to start practicing it. However, in order to develop a healthy, working definition of self-love for ourselves, we need to do a little bit of ‘know thyself’ so that we can identify our old beliefs that are not serving us no more, and update them, so that now they’ll be able to help us make our lives easier.

 

There is a full coaching exercise for that and an explanation of the process in a separate article.

 

Theory in practice

 

So how practically does it look like to practice self-love?

 

First of all, by understanding that it is a practice, an ongoing process, not a goal that once we achieve, it’s finished and done. Life will constantly push us off the track, not because it’s mean, but because something is continuously happening, we always cross our paths with the paths of others, and randomness is a rule. Sometimes we’re high, and sometimes we’re low. Life and other people won’t always meet our expectations, so we need to remind ourselves to get back to that self-love in the face of frustrations and setbacks. We have to keep re-establishing the balance because we don’t live in a vacuum. And balance every day will look different.

 

Learning to listen to ourselves will help us determine when we need to encourage and push ourselves and when we need to slow down, replenish, and preserve. When you’re stressed by life, chances are you need to slow down and get to safety, to stop feeling threatened and overwhelmed. And when we feel stagnated and stuck in the same rotten routine, we need encouragement to challenge ourselves, step outside that comfort zone, take a risk and try something new. And when it gets too scary, or if we get hurt, then get back to our safe cave again, and heal our wounds in peace and isolation until we’re ready to take on the world again.

 

This is how it looks like to take responsibility for keeping yourself safe and well-nourished and at the right time to encourage yourself to grow. And this is how we practice empowering ourselves to do things for the highest good of ourselves and others. That’s what we do when we wish ourselves well.

 

Stepping up and showing up for ourselves

 

To practice self-love also means the ability to acknowledge our imperfection and admit to a mistake, but not in a self-defeating way. By punishing ourselves, we only make ourselves feel smaller. It might make us avoid that mistake once or twice, but it won’t make us avoid it altogether in the future because nobody’s perfect. It will only teach us to look down on ourselves and feel oppressed. That way, we only have more of that to look forward to. It’s much more effective to treat ourselves with dignity and self-respect, acknowledge that we’re no different from the rest, and failure will be a part of our lives from time to time. It is better to see the full context of the situation and check what we can learn to improve and grow. Even more importantly, we need to remember how we overcame similar things in the past. Reassurance, validation, and appreciation of oneself are potent personal development tools. The ability to empower yourself is the best indicator of future success.

 

So when will you start noticing a change?

 

Do you have to wait until you feel that self-love or believe that you have it? No, just ACT AS IF you loved yourself. It is about behavior anyway. No feelings will do anything if that’s not there.

 

You are the only one in your entire life who will always be with you. It will help you beyond measure if you’ve invested in developing a healthy, supportive and reliable relationship with yourself. Imagine what you could do, who you could become, how you could change your life and others’ if you knew you would always have your back, you would never give up on yourself, you’ll always be there for you, supporting yourself through struggles and championing your accomplishments. Think what it would be like to always have a nice word for yourself and count on your own kindness. How trusting, peaceful and confident, you could feel in life knowing you will always do your best to find a way out of any circumstances. To see it over time that you can always pick yourself up. Imagine where you could get if you knew you can keep going because you have help all the way.

 

Life is built mainly from small things, and we rarely make significant steps at a time, so keep things in perspective and give yourself credit when it’s due. Keep making these baby steps. It beats going around in circles, staying stuck in one place, or worse – going backward. Every step means progress, be fair with yourself and notice that. You’ll thank yourself for it. That’s gratitude towards the self, and it’s a part of self-love.

 

 

Self-love affirmation

 

I am open to the idea that by taking proper effort over enough time I can learn how to slowly develop a little bit of self-love.

 

 

 

When inward tenderness
Finds the secret hurt,
Pain itself will crack the rock
And, Ah! Let the soul emerge.

– Rumi