Learn To Love Yourself

I am certain that at some point you may have come across the term: love yourself!

But what does love yourself actually mean? 

Is it about getting yourself a hot chocolate when you are cold? 

Is it about getting yourself a new dress when you feel like it? 

Is it doing whatever you want when you want? 

Is it about putting on warm clothes when it’s freezing outside?

To love yourself means to learn to treat yourself like a loving parent would do with their child.

When you are an adult, and I assume you are, you still have an inner child inside you. These are your emotions. At that level you still react like a child of 3-4 years old. Your emotions can not get older or mature. 

But you can get mature. You can learn how to respect them and how to handle them. You can learn how to take care of this inner child.

When you are not aware of your inner child, you try to live in an adult world like a 4-year old boy or girl. You feel all alone, afraid of the big nasty world out there, not knowing what to do, where to ask for help or how to protect you. This is a very difficult way of going about things. You will always feel afraid, fearful, doubtful, tired etc. It is difficult to try to survive as a child in an adult world. You will feel angry, lost and afraid most of the time.

Why is that? you may ask…

Because nobody takes care of that little child inside you.

Let’s say your name is Lily and you are 40 years old. Inside you lives the little Lily who is 4 years old. When you are busy in the world out there, taking care of other people, taking care of business, taking care of getting around, taking care of doing many things each and every day, the little Lily will feel overlooked. 

When you find yourself always running to help others to make sure their needs are fulfilled, you will be exhausted every night and cry in your bed. Sometimes you will get temper tantrums (I am sure you have seen some children do this). You will feel very angry without any reason (but still there is one reason, a big reason!).

All these major emotions are attempts from your inner child to get your attention.

Take a moment to imagine that you have, apart from your children, husband, colleagues, parents, and friends, a little 4-year old girl named Lily. Nobody ever notices Lily. Nobody takes care of Lily. Whenever Lily tries to say something and get some attention, you shout at her “Shut up!”, you say “I have to take care of my parents, I have to take care of my work, I have to take care of my husband, I have to take care my paperwork, I have to take care of my friends, I have to take care of my other children, I have to take care of my house… I don’t have time for you, Lily!”

How do you think Lily will feel? What do you think Lily will do? First, she will try to get your attention by showing major emotions. She will cry a lot, she will scream and shout, maybe she will even get aggressive from time to time. 

You think you’re angry at the world out there, but it is your Inner Child that is angry with YOU! She’s sad and angry because you don’t care about her! You act as if she doesn’t exist! Nothing is worse than acting as if our inner child doesn’t exist. 

This means that you are trying to live as if you don’t exist…

The worst feeling in the world is not being loyal to yourself. Nothing is worse than this!

How many times did we ignore what we felt, to please someone else?

How many times did we say to our Inner Child “Shut up, you are not important, the other one is far more important than you are, go away, I don’t want to hear you, I don’t want to see you”? 

Awful isn’t it? And we do this every time we let the desire of the other before ours.

This little Lily inside, what will she do? She will give up after a while. After trying for a long time to show her emotions, she will give up. She will become very tired of all this and she will say :”It doesn’t matter, she doesn’t love me, she doesn’t want to take care of me, I’m not worth it”, and she will become depressed.

Of course, you will think you have become depressed because of others, because of your work, because of your children, because of your husband or parents but it’s no one’s fault.

You have to learn how to take care of your Inner Child which is suffering from your lack of attention to her.

When, after becoming depressed things still don’t change, there’s one weapon left to catch your attention : little Lily will get sick or she will have an accident. Maybe that way the adult Lily will learn to finally give her attention to her inner child, which is as real (if not more) as a real child of flesh and blood.

You need to learn how to be a loving parent for yourself.

So what does that mean?

First you need to develop an inner mother. 

If you were lucky and had a loving caring Mother, you can take your very own Mother as an example. Otherwise, you need to create this Inner Mother, which is your feminine caring energy. Every time you have an emotion, your Inner Mother should ask your Inner Child : “What wrong, my darling?” Listen to what your inner child has to say. Then you can go on with the dialogue. Inner Mother then says : “Come here, my darling. Come into my arms, I love you as you are. I love you with what you feel.”

By doing this, the heaviness of the emotions will pretty much fade away. Then you say these words : “I understand”. These words are very important, because most of the time we don’t feel very “normal” having the feelings we have and we try to ignore or suppress them, which makes them heavier. “I understand, my darling, come here into your Mother’s arms, I love you.”

Stay with these words and feelings for a while, and than ask yourself:” What do you need?”

Whatever the child answers, you say : “We will ask this from your Father”.

And here starts the task of your Inner Father, who is there to protect you and to act for you in the world out there. 

You would never send a 4-year old asking for a raise at work or to resolve a conflict at school or with the neighbours, now would you? So why do you try it? 

Send out your Inner Father to take care of whatever you have to do in the outside world. Your Inner Father is your male energy, which enables you to make decisions, to take action, to follow your inner guidance (which is located in your Inner Child, also called Intuition) and to manifest your Child’s desires in the world.

When your Child has a need, for instance, to call someone or to go somewhere to arrange something, imagine that your Inner Child stays at home with her Mother who takes care of her feelings (“I understand you’re afraid…”) and that your Inner Father (another part of your being) goes out there to act. Your Inner Father is that part of you which is able to handle stress, to take action, to arrange conflicts and all other things that has to do with the world out there. If that part is missing because you didn’t have a good role model when you were your little self, you will have to create and develop it.

Of course, your Inner Child, Mother and Father are all parts of you. It is all you! 

It is just a model to understand what is happening inside you and how you can learn to love yourself.

Loving yourself is listening to your Inner Child, taking her emotions seriously, understanding what she feels and taking action in the desired direction. Loving yourself is having this dialogue with yourself every morning when you open your eyes, every evening when you go to bed, and every time you have an emotion.

Loving yourself is building a strong inner connection with yourself.

It is creating your own loving family, inside you. You will never feel alone anymore. You are already three! Call it your Trinity. 

Wherever you go, from now on, you go with your Inner Family. Your are not alone! 

You are loved and you are protected. You listen to yourself and take care of that precious little Child that has been waiting for so long to get your attention and be loved.

This is called inner healing…

Love Youself!