Choosing to Love Yourself
“If you knew you were fully loved, if you knew that you were whole and worthy exactly as you are just for being you, your anxiety would disappear.” – Sheryl Paul
I want to start over by defining a couple of keywords for this session. Anxiety is when you worry about the future, typically something you have little to no control over. You actually reach into tomorrow and borrow trouble from it. Each day comes with its own worries, you don’t have to borrow from tomorrow. It is said that anxiety is often viewed as a fear based response to things you cannot control. One in five Americans suffer from some form of an anxiety disorder. Both biological and environmental factors can contribute to anxiety, and its close cousin, depression.
Depression is when you live in the past often fixated on things you cannot control or change for that matter. Depression is when our minds set up a video recorder and replays events over and over again. This action forces us to relive the hurt, trauma, pain, betrayal and everything else that comes along with life of the past over and over again. In order to be free from depression and anxiety, we have to learn to let go of the past and not worry about the future. Easier said than done, I know. We will discuss exactly how to do this later in this session.
It is now being said that there is an interdependent nature of high anxiety and low self-esteem. At the root of most anxious feelings is the fear of loss. If you have relationship anxiety, you might fear that your partner will leave you. If you have health anxiety, you might imagine that you have an incurable disease that will lead you to a certain death. If you have social anxiety, you might avoid gatherings of people because you’re afraid you’ll do or say the wrong thing. Or maybe your anxiety is the more run of the mill, mundane kind. You might be worried about the security of your job. Or you might think you won’t meet a deadline for school. Or maybe your anxiety is just like a dull throb, always in the back of your mind, with a source and a presence you can’t name.
I would argue that most of our anxiety comes from a fear that we are not loved or can be loved. That’s why I’d like to offer a solution. Anxiety is not something to be resisted, but rather, understood. When you acknowledge anxiety, you can diffuse it. When you call it out, it threatens you less. You must understand that love doesn’t come from an outside source, but from within yourself. You have to love yourself before you can be loved or worthy of love.
How would it feel if you knew that even if you failed, you would still be loved? You would feel safe. Anxiety cannot survive in a secure heart. If you have healthy self-esteem, you are not afraid to be vulnerable. You are not afraid to make mistakes. You feel an unconditional sense of acceptance – from yourself, from your loved ones, and from God. While anxiety is a normal condition, it does not flourish in the life of a person who is grounded in love.
You have to choose to love yourself and be okay with who God has called you to be. Choosing to love you is at the highest level of development for an individual. Learning to love yourself makes it a lot easier to find, obtain and accept love from others. People often struggle with love from God because they don’t see how He can love somebody who they themselves cannot love yet.
Self-esteem is a key ingredient for learning to love you. Keep in mind that your self-esteem is based on your belief system – which is a blend of the way you feel about yourself and the way you believe others see you. Your view of yourself influences your perception of what you can do, how you get along with others, and how you cope with problems. Your perception becomes your reality (real or not) it’s real to you.
If you’ve dealt with breakup and divorce, your self-esteem may be lowered for some time due to the situation. Learning to love yourself is an inner journey which involves examining your past from a fresh perspective. If you can’t believe you are good enough, how can you believe a new partner would choose you? Take the time to investigate any carry over from the past that might impact your current relationships. Make a commitment to get rid of self-sabotaging guilt and fear. You deserve to have your needs met and you are worthy of love.
We live in a world that is unsafe and unpredictable, full of ways to break your heart. Full of ways to make you not trust others and lose all self-esteem. The treatment for anxiety is not to convince you that the world is wonderful and that everything will be okay. The key to loving yourself is resiliency. Resilience is when something bad happens, you can endure it. When you believe in your own resilience, and when you know that you are fundamentally strong and worthy just because you’re you, just because you are who God called you to be, you stop viewing the world as volatile and precarious. Choosing to love yourself means you view yourself as a child of God, worthy of His love and worthy of your love.
Pathway to loving yourself
1. Don’t define love based off the world’s viewpoint. God so loved the world that He gave His Son for it. You are in the world and a part of it. If you are loved by God – you are lovable. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
2. Leave the past in the past. Letting go of the past is no easy task. You have to be willing to forgive, forget, let go and move toward acceptance. This is a conscious decision to let go or forget the past, releasing yourself from her grip. This is where you find peace and happiness.
3. Get to the root of self-esteem issues. Examine past and current relationships, pay attention to the self-defeating messages derived from them. Write a prescription to feel better about yourself. This may be in the form of words of affirmation or pampering. Do something nice for yourself every day because God loves you. As His child, we are commissioned to obey the 2nd greatest command to love … this means even ourselves.
4. Develop and reign in your self-reliance. Put together a vision board or write down what you want your relationship to look like. Make a point to reflect upon this image or written passage at least twice a day. Remind yourself that it’s healthy to accept love and give love. Sharing your vulnerabilities is a deeper level of love, trust, and intimacy.
5. Examine your belief and attitude about love. A healthy respect for commitment will enhance your ability to build love, trust, and intimacy. Like Christ we should be committed to loving ourselves all the way to the grave and beyond. This is not an easy task, so I want to share with you the 3 C’s. Check it, challenge it and change it! Ask yourself if your beliefs and thoughts are supported by evidence or not and change it.