When Self Love Meets Mental Health: A Guide To Your Inner Healing
Introduction: Self Love Is Personal
Everyone can have their own form of self-love. Whether that be taking long walks, buying yourself your favorite cup of coffee, or seeking out a therapist who understands you, self-love is a personal journey that anyone can begin with simple steps. When you take the time to find your personal preference for how you show yourself love and care, you’ll begin to realize that there are so many positive things that can stem from properly caring for yourself from within. Allowing yourself the freedom to explore what self-love means to you could be the difference between waking up drained and stressed versus waking up feeling like you can conquer the day ahead.
What Does Self Love Mean To You?
Asking yourself what self-love looks like and means to you is a much more difficult task than it seems. Can you define what it means to show yourself love? Do you correlate self-love with goals or accomplishments? Defining self-love on a personal level can be tricky in many ways, but it’s important to look at your own view of self-love and discern whether it is you internally defining this or external factors influencing this. Defining what self-love looks like in your life is crucial to understanding the things you need and can give to yourself to feel cared for. It’s like learning a partner’s love language to connect and communicate with them better, but the partner was your inner voice all along. Learning and exploring how you can best show up for yourself through your actions and words can be the key to unlocking the potential for a more fulfilling and enriching life. Do you want to wake up in the morning and hear words of affirmation? Do you want to clean the dishes tonight so you wake up to a clean kitchen tomorrow morning? Do you want to buy new supplies for your favorite hobby so you can spend more time with yourself in your creative zone? These are all helpful questions to ask yourself as you explore and determine self-love!
How You Practice Self Love
When you identify what self-love means to you on a personal level, you can begin to put your ideas into practice. Below are some simple and effective tips that you can use to help put your self-love practice into everyday life:
Creating A Routine: Creating routine and consistency is a positive way of taking care of yourself, and you will find that implementing small things for yourself each day adds up and makes a difference. Start by making little rituals in your morning or night routine that make you feel like you are showing up for yourself, even through small actions.
Adding Time For Your Favorite Hobby: No one is saying that you have to drop all responsibilities and only focus on pleasure, but it’s important to ask yourself when was the last time you took time to focus on an activity that exists to ease your mind and make you happy? Start with just thirty minutes of allowing yourself to enjoy an activity without worrying about what you’re taking away from it.
Connecting To What Makes You Feel Seen: This can be as simple as giving yourself the space to be fully and completely who you are. Sometimes when we move through the world, we feel the need to mask some of our inner desires or needs because we don’t want others to see that vulnerability. By connecting to what makes you feel seen, you are taking off the mask you wear for the world and looking at who you are on the inside.
When Self Love Meets Mental Health
When we care for our hearts from the inside out, the changes spread through our bodies. The difference may not be noticeable the first, second, or third time that you practice your self-love, but when you take the time to get to know yourself a little better each day, you’ll soon find that waking up in the morning can shift from feeling dreary and stressed to being enlivened about what your day has to offer. When you consistently show up for yourself, you’ll find that your brain associates your self-love acts with rewards, leading to a higher production of dopamine (better known as the “happy hormone”) in your brain. Learning to love yourself doesn’t just affect the way that you see yourself, but also the way that your brain processes what love feels like and how it’s shown through actions and words.
Conclusion: No Really, Self Love Is The Best Love
Being present for yourself means trying to regularly put yourself first before the craziness of life and the stresses of living. When you learn how to effectively show yourself love, you learn how to create a world where this is prioritized as much as the other responsibilities in your life. Self-love is easy to gloss over as there are so many things in this world that require time, effort, and attention, but placing your self-love as a priority will help guide you through the times that seem exceedingly challenging or difficult. At Mind, Body & Soul Therapy we want to help you find the best way of connecting you to your self-love practices and rituals. Whether that be through finding a routine that works for you or allowing you the space and freedom to be who you are, our therapists will be there every step of the way.