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The Power of Self-Love

Why the relationship you have with yourself is the cornerstone of a happy, successful, and authentic life, and Six Steps you can take to cultivate self-love.

As Valentine's Day approaches, and we're flooded with romantic notions of the perfect love, many of us are wondering if we'll ever find it, and, for those of us with a partner, how to keep it alive. We are bombarded with idealized depictions of lonely people finally finding that certain someone who “completes them,” someone they “can't live without,” and that they will have “nothing to live for” should that miraculous individual ever leave them!

romance quotes

What a healthy romantic partnership is not

Film and television shows are rife with cautionary tales of dangerous, violent pathological liars, serial cheaters, and shady characters in toxic relationships—from The Soprano's Tony and his long-suffering wife, and Sex and the City's Carrie and Mr. Big, to Better Call Saul's Kim and Jimmy, who seem to bring out the worst in one another repeatedly. Mismatched and ill-fated romances like the terrified wife in hiding from her axe-wielding husband in The Shining to the miserable couple in Gone Girl abound.

Although less cinematically, all too often real-life love stories include needless suffering, due to a lack of self-esteem, mutual respect, and healthy boundary setting. The question is, how can we set the stage for finding and sustaining a healthy and loving partnership?

Setting the stage for a loving relationship

In order to truly love someone else, we must first love ourselves. I like to advise my patients that, especially where self-love is concerned, love is a verb. It is all about doing for ourselves what we often do for others. When we consistently tune into our feelings, pay attention to how we talk to ourselves, and prioritize our needs, we cultivate self-love and self-connection.

Self-love involves acting with compassion and caring, just as we would treat someone we love. Self-love involves setting, communicating, and reinforcing healthy boundaries around our finite resources of time and energy, prioritizing our goals and needs, processing negative emotions as they arise, and challenging our negative self-talk and self-defeating patterns of behavior.

The ripple effect of self-love

When we're kind and loving to ourselves, we move forth with greater self-awareness and self-confidence, and we create a ripple effect. The kindness we show to ourselves expands and embodies the message that we are present, confident, compassionate, authentic, kind, and worthy of and ready to love.

Six Steps to Self-Love

Make time to pause and reflect. Check in with yourself on tough days. Sit with and process your negative emotions.

Resist the urge to compare yourself to others. Self-comparison is a form of negative self-talk that can lead to lowered states of self-esteem and courage. Instead, when you see someone who you admire and has achieved what you wish for yourself, consider them an example of what you can achieve and grow into.

Engage in positive self-talk, and challenge negative thoughts and beliefs. Replace negative thoughts and self-limiting beliefs about who you are, with more accurate, adaptive, and supportive ones.

Set healthy boundaries. Healthy boundaries are essential to ensuring you have the time and energy to manage your life tasks, responsibilities, and self-care.

Go outside yourself for support. Seek out the resources you need when you are struggling and overwhelmed. Trusting yourself to find the supports you need deepens your resolve to be there for yourself stronger and deeper.

Take the time to get to know you and give yourself the affection, playfulness and care you seek from others. Find hobbies, activities, and interests that inspire you and bring you joy. Reinforce the values to always factor in joyful moments and experiences into the equation of your life.

About Dr. Monica Vermani, C. Psych.

One of Canada's highest-rated clinical psychologists, Dr. Monica Vermani provides a multi-faceted treatment approach in treating adolescents and adults suffering from trauma/abuse, mood, anxiety, substance addictions, and other related conditions and disorders, as well as family and couples therapy. She employs a dynamic range of techniques and evidence-based treatment modalities, including psychotherapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, (CBT), Mindfulness Meditation, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming (EMDR).

Dr. Vermani believes that good mental health doesn't just happen, that it deserves the same time, attention, understanding, and effort as our physical wellbeing. Dr. Vermani's latest book, A Deeper Wellness: Conquering Stress, Mood, Anxiety and Traumas, and its companion online A Deeper Wellness Life Lessons mental health program provide the tools to create a deep, authentic sense of wellness and wellbeing. Over the last several months, she has been featured on media outlets such as CTV News, Marie Claire, Well and Good, SmartBrief, Prevention, and Best Life, and publishes her own blog on Psychology Today: A Deeper Wellness.

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