why is it so hard to love yourself?

a question we ask ourselves more times than we'd like to admit: why is it such a struggle to really love yourself?

the answer may be obvious, or it may be something you haven't stopped to think about.

in today's episode, i'll share 3 reasons why you can't seem to begin to choose to love yourself (plus one extra reason you may not have considered). 

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Transcript

Julia Salvia: 0:00

In today's episode, I'm going to be asking you a pretty obvious question. Or a pretty easy question? Or maybe this question is very difficult for you to answer. But it's one that you ask yourself all the time. Why is it so hard to love yourself? When I started on my own self love journey, this was a question that kept popping up in my life. Why don't I love myself enough? Why is it so difficult to love myself? Why is it so hard to love myself? And in this episode today, I'm going to tell you exactly why it's so difficult to love yourself. Hello and welcome back to the Self Love Archives podcast. I'm your host, Julia Salvia. Just a girl on the journey of loving herself more and here to show you how to love yourself more. So you can call me your big sister, your best friend, your self love guide, whatever fits. I'm here. And let's get into today's episode. Why can't you love yourself? Have you ever looked back on your camera roll at photos of yourself a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, and maybe you remember yourself so happy and you were 50 pounds less than you were now, and you're looking back at this photo of yourself and you're like, Oh my God, I wish I looked like that version of myself. But when you start to think about that version of yourself, that you're looking back at, you realize that that version of yourself, if you, if you brought yourself back in time to that version of yourself, that in that moment, you thought that, Oh, you needed to lose 10 more pounds to be In the best body ever or you needed to be with this certain person in order to have the best Relationship or you needed to change this about yourself to love yourself more you needed to have this do this be this if You look back at Who you were in that photo You come to realize that You You didn't love yourself in that photo, but now here you are in whatever chapter of life you're at now, in the present, looking back at this past version of you, saying, I wish I was her. I am guilty of this. I have done this way too many times to count. I'll go back to a photo that I never posted because I thought that, I looked fat, or that my eye was twitching weird, or that my hair wasn't pretty enough, or that my outfit was ugly. Whatever the reason, I'll look back at this photo and I'm like, I look good. And sometimes I'll catch myself saying, I wish I was this version of myself. I wish I still looked like her, because I was skinnier, I didn't have acne, I was happy. But if I'm giving that love to that past version of myself, doesn't my present, doesn't the present version of myself deserve that love too? In our life we go through chapters. Right? We have our past, we have the present, and then five minutes from now we'll be the future, and then we have the future beyond that. And our lives change. In so many different ways, people come in and out of our lives. The things that we like change, like, I definitely did not like a lot of different foods as a kid, and now I like them. Just to give a very small example. When I was a kid, I was self conscious about certain things about myself that I am surely not self conscious now, but maybe I'm self conscious about things now that I wasn't when I was 15, 10, 20, whatever, whatever age I was in the past. And maybe in the future I'll be self conscious about something else about myself, but I will learn to love something I had always been self conscious about.. So we go through all of these different changes and all of these different chapters of our life and each of those chapters of you deserve love, just the same the way that you are looking back at that photo of yourself from months ago, a year ago, five years ago, and giving that version of yourself love. The version of yourself now deserves that just as much as the past version of yourself deserves that. Just as much as this vision that you have for your future self deserves that. We get so caught up in who we are in the present and we overwhelm ourself with these expectations, and we drown ourself in the question of what don't we have, or what, what am I not yet? That we don't even give ourselves a chance to be grateful for all the things that we do have, all of the things that you are today in the present. And that clouds this self love that we should be giving to ourselves in the present. Because we're so worried about what we don't have, or who we wish we were, rather than being grateful for who we are right now. And this doesn't mean that You can't push yourself to be a better person or to be a better version of yourself. And this doesn't mean that you can't make changes or do different things or have certain things that you don't or do want to have. You can still do and be all of that. You could still push yourself to have all of that or be a different version of yourself. But the version of yourself now in the present deserves the same love that you would be giving to this version of yourself that you believe is the only version of yourself that deserves love. So why can't you love yourself? Let's say you know all of this. Self love, as I say, is a journey. It's not a destination. We are not going to get to this place of just loving ourselves. If someone were to ask me today, if I love myself, I would say yes. I've done so much healing, so much work, and I've decided to choose to love who I am. That my answer would be yes. But that doesn't deny the fact that I am still on that journey of self love. That there are things about myself that I maybe don't love as much as other parts of myself, but I love it because it is a part of myself. The most important part of that quote, Self love is a journey, not a destination. If we keep waiting to love ourselves when we get to a destination or get to a goal or Get to a certain weight or a certain career or a certain relationship I think we're going to be disappointed Because we're always going to be reaching for the next thing If we think that we need to have all of these different successes or reached goals, or we need to look a certain way in order to deserve love, then what parts of ourself are we neglecting that aren't going to ever receive love? Because, let's be honest. There is no such thing as perfection. We're never going to be perfect. We're never going to have it all. Everything is not going to be rainbows and butterflies. And if we think that that is the only version of ourself, this perfect version of ourselves. If we think that we can only love a perfect version of ourself. Then that's why you can't love yourself. You are not just this imaginary perfect version of yourself. You are not just your successes and your relationships and the way that you look. You are so much deeper and so much more than that. And if you can't love all of the pieces of yourself without that If you can only love this imaginary version of yourself, then it's going to be really tough to ever even get close to that version of yourself. If we don't appreciate the journey that we're on to learning more about ourselves and to being fully, irrevocably, 100 percent our truest self. Then we're never going to get to that place. We're never going to get to any sort of destination. We're never going to be able to answer the question, Do you love yourself? With a yes. What worries me sometimes is that there's so much out there about self love that it's almost becoming a trend, similar to the way that self care had become a trend. And when we're on social media and conversing with other people about these trends, usually we're only speaking about the positive side of these trends. So when it comes to self care, we're seeing people take off time that they need from work. We're seeing people do their 11 step skincare routine. We're seeing people spend more time outside. We're seeing all of these amazing self care rituals and routines added into these people's lives. And none of these are bad. bad whatsoever. All of these things are great. All of these things are lovely. But there's a point where we ask ourselves, I'm doing all of this self care, why isn't it working? It's not that the walk outside didn't help you feel a little bit better. after a rough day at work. And it's not that taking a day off from work didn't help you decompress and relax. And it's not that the 11 step skincare routine didn't help brighten and bring glow into your skin. It's that a lot of these things are potentially not being done on a consistent basis. It's that To add to your life, to bring you to that better future version of yourself. But the most important thing is that all of these things are just grazing the surface. I see this same thing when it comes to self love. And we see this same thing when it comes to self love on social media and kind of in the same way that self care was a trend. people talking about all of these flaws on their body and how much they love those things about themselves or how they are doing certain self care routines and rituals in order to love themselves and how they are becoming more of themselves by doing things that they love, going places that they love to do, love to go to, and What I think is being neglected in These trends is that we're not seeing the hard work and the deep work and the shadow work that goes on behind the scenes because most of the time a lot of people Might not be brave enough or might not see it relevant enough or might not be comfortable enough to share such a vulnerable thing about themselves. And that's totally okay. I think the point that I'm trying to get at is that we can't neglect that those things need to be happening too, that healing needs to be happening. I have three things. Three reasons why you can't love yourself. Number one. You surround yourself with people that don't genuinely love you and care about you for who you are. The people in your circle, the people in your family, the relationship that you're in, whomever you have a relationship with, You potentially surround yourself with people who do not love you and care about you. Genuinely you. Like the full, irrevocable, true version of yourself. People that don't respect you. People who don't treat you well. People that are using you, people that are cruel to you, people that are mean to you, people that are unkind to you. You surround yourself with people like that. And this may not be the case. Sit for a second and think about the people that you allow into your circle, the people that you allow into your life. Do they respect you? Do they care about you? And I don't mean just care about you in regards to your wellness. Do they genuinely care about your values and the things that you like and truly how you are and who you are as a person? A lot of parts of my self love journey when I could not answer this question with a yes. When my answer to do I love myself was absolutely no, I found myself in really rough relationships. Not only in my friendships, but my romantic relationships and my relationships with my family. I wasn't setting good boundaries and I didn't respect myself or love myself enough to set the boundaries. To Leave the relationship or to stand up for myself and say, no, you can't treat me like that. The best question to always ask yourself, because I'm sure that there are people that you love and care about. The easiest way to decide if someone deserves to be in your circle, if someone truly does love and care about you, is to ask if the way that they are treating you, right? If you would be okay with someone treating your sister or your best friend or someone that you love, would you be okay? If they treated them like that. And that should tell you a lot. Number two. You push past parts of yourself. Or you swallow or hide away parts of yourself that you don't like or that you think other people don't like. Rather than leaning into your full irrevocable self. When you meet someone for the first time, and this is someone that you'd want to be in a romantic relationship with, or maybe it's someone that you could see yourself being friends with, what are the first couple of things that come to mind that you don't want to share with them? What are the things that come to your head that you say, Oh, I don't want them to find out about this? Or things that you don't want them to know about you right away. Or things that you hide from most people about yourself. Or things that you edit or change or lessen or exaggerate about yourself when you're around new people or when you're around the people that you know. Or when you're around certain people. Is there anything that you do or don't do or say or don't say that lessens or exaggerates or hides who you are? Now I'm not saying to spill the beans and tell everyone all of your deepest darkest secrets, but what I do want you to do is to reflect on the why. Why do you hide these certain parts of yourself? Why do you exaggerate certain parts of yourself? Why do you minimize certain parts of yourself? Why do you feel fear about sharing this part of you with someone? Why do you feel uncomfortable? Why does it feel vulnerable? What are these things about yourself that make you feel vulnerable, scared? What are the parts of you that make you feel shamed? There are darker parts of ourselves called our shadow self. And these are parts of us that are are truly and irrevocably just us. They are things that we feel people wouldn't like about us if they knew about them. Because they're dark, or they're secretive, or they're weird. These are the things about ourselves that we need to sit with and bring to the surface a lot more and ask the why. Ask why. Why do we feel shame? Why do we feel fear? Why do we feel uncomfortable? Why does this make us feel so naked and so vulnerable? And hopefully by asking why, we can get to the root of that fear, of that vulnerability, of that shame. And love that part of ourselves a little bit more. Number three, we touched on in the beginning of the episode, so this brings us full circle. You think, the reason why you can't love yourself is because you think that if you reach a goal or change something about yourself that you're going to all of a sudden love yourself. You're all of a sudden going to love who you are. If you've ever reached a goal Or set a goal for yourself and you've reached it. Did you feel like you loved yourself more? Probably, maybe, but did you feel like you fully irrevocably loved yourself? Probably not. Because if we hold ourselves to that high standard of if I just lost ten pounds, if I just had this job, or if I just dated this guy, If we hold ourselves to those high standards of this perfectionism We're, one, neglecting our shadow side, we're neglecting all of these things about ourself in the moment, in the present, right now, that deserve love. But we're also not taking the time to care and cherish the journey that it takes to reach that goal. There are so many things to consider when asking yourself, Do you love yourself? And there's so many things to consider when asking why you can't or why you struggle or why it's difficult to love yourself. The question I want to leave you with is, what are you not considering when it comes to loving yourself? What do you not want to love about yourself? What about you is so difficult to love or what about yourself do you believe is so difficult to love? Number four is you think that you are not able to be loved. You think that you are not good enough to deserve love. This is a truly, truly, truly deep rooted fear. vulnerability and belief Because We all are Deserving of love and yes, all of us are deserving of love The best question to start with the best place to start with would be asking yourself that question Why do you believe that you do not deserve love? And answer the question, then ask why. Answer that question, and then ask why again. Answer that question, and ask why again. And keep asking yourself why, until you can't answer the question anymore. I know you deserve love, and I know you know you deserve love. But I want you to truly and irrevocably feel that you deserve love. Because you do. We all do. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of The Self Love Archives. I appreciate you to the moon and back. I will see you guys same time next week, two weeks from now. Two weeks from now we're still on a bi weekly, so I'll see you guys not next week, but the week after. Same time, Sunday, 12 o'clock eastern time. Give yourself just a little bit more love this week. And until I see you next, I love you tons. Bye.