5 Reasons Why Real Self-Love Will Feel Messy And Uncomfortable At Times

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Dec 13

Regardless of where you’re currently at on your self-love journey, today we want to remind you that the path to real self-love will be messy and uncomfortable at times, and that is okay.

Despite what social media makes us think nowadays, self love is so much more than just bubble baths, facemasks and posting cute selfies with #selflove and #nofilter. It’s a process that can require shedding years of emotional baggage, working through unresolved trauma we didn’t even know we had and learning how to establish an entirely new relationship with ourselves.

One of the things that we’ve found can make the entire process easier (aside from the fact that it’s incredibly rewarding and worthwhile in the long run) is being able to anticipate some of the discomfort you’ll face along the way. That’s why in today’s article, we want to share five reasons why your self-love journey might feel messy and uncomfortable before it will start feeling really good!

1. Becoming aware of all your current narratives about yourself can be uncomfortable to say the least.

For many of us, it is entirely normal to have gone our entire lives without ever feeling anything even close to self-love. Sometimes we aren’t even aware that we hate ourselves because we’ve never actually been around anyone who loves themselves in a way that could have taught us what that looks like.

In these cases, one of the first uncomfortable steps towards changing our self-paradigm is becoming aware of everything going on inside our head that isn’t the self-love that we want to be feeling. Once we’ve become aware of all the negative self-talk that can go on inside our mind, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of beating ourselves up about all the ways in which our mind is “flawed”. But the trick is to realize that beating ourselves up is just a continuation of the negative self-talk that we were examining in the first place!

So even though this stage feels uncomfortable and our ego really doesn’t like admitting that we’ve been doing something “wrong” - see what it would feel like if you just accepted yourself for who you are at this very moment. And then that can be your first step towards real self-love right there!

2. Replacing old and familiar narratives (even the negative ones) can feel like you’re killing a part of yourself that you don’t want to let go.

After we’ve become aware of the negative patterns and narratives that are keeping us from really loving ourselves deeply, it’s only logical that the next step would be learning how to let them go and replace them with positive ones instead. Seems pretty straight forward, right?

Well, this is where your mind can start playing tricks on you. Generally, our mind is wired to value what feels safe and familiar, even if that means holding on to something that’s negative. So when you’re embarking on a journey into the unknown to replace your current patterns with new ones, you’re more than likely going to feel a lot of resistance.

This can often be confusing because consciously we really want to change our behavior and so we understand why a part of ourselves would be fighting so hard to remain in a place that we no longer want to be in. You can think of this part of you as a little child that is afraid of the unknown and that likes to throw tantrums when it gets too scared. By doing so, it gets you to turn your attention back on the child and abandon the idea of change for a moment.

Something that can be incredibly useful in working through this is inner child work. The gist of inner child work is to imagine that a young child version of yourself actually still lives on inside of your subconscious and that by talking to that child and acting like a loving and protective parent toward it, you can make it feel calm and safe in the face of change. By acknowledging your inner child's fears and explaining to them what you are doing, you are basically trying to appease the part of your brain that is unconsciously self-sabotaging you to keep you “safe”.

3. You’ll still have to engage with some of the things that make you feel bad about yourself and that can feel challenging.

For a lot of us, our current sense of self-love can be overly dependent on external factors (such as other people’s opinions, thoughts and feelings about us). We might find that it only takes one negative comment or even a harmless misunderstanding to send us right down the spiral of feeling bad about ourselves.

In these cases, one of the things that is crucial to a healthy sense of self-love is learning how to deal with some of the external influences and focus on what we think of ourselves instead. However, we won’t always be able to control every situation or every external stimulus that might affect how we feel about ourselves. Some of them (such as that toxic partner or the social media influencers that make you feel bad about yourself) can easily be removed from your life but others will be much more difficult or even impossible to fully cut out.

Instead of looking at this continued exposure to things or people that make you feel bad as a problem, maybe try to see if it could be an opportunity to measure how much progress you're making. Sure, there will be days where that external stimulus will make you fall right back down the rabbit hole but each time that it does, you’ll have the opportunity to get back up, dust yourself off and try again. Practice makes perfect and self-love is no different!

4. Learning how to trust yourself can make you feel really vulnerable.

Loving yourself really isn’t that different from being in a committed relationship. When we’re in love with another person, we give them control over our heart and trust them not to hurt us. We expect them to show up when we need them and the idea that they might betray us or let us down can make us feel incredibly vulnerable.

The same can really be said for when we are learning how to love ourselves. If we’re used to having a negative relationship with ourselves then we might not have had very high expectations for ourselves before. But once we start on our self-love journey, it’s like we’re entering into a relationship with ourselves. We are expected to show up for ourselves, to treat ourselves with kindness and to learn how to be dependable no matter the circumstances.

Putting that kind of trust in ourselves can be very overwhelming and anxiety-producing for many of us. The good news is that we can build trust with ourselves the same way we build trust with anyone else. Be reliable in keeping promises to yourself. Start with small ones and work your way up over time. And most importantly, when you mess up remember to forgive yourself like you would forgive someone you love.

5. Sometimes - when your old programming clashes with your new programming - you’ll feel disoriented and confused.

As you progress on your new self-love journey, there will inevitably be moments that will feel like your old way of being and your new way of being are fighting inside your mind to see who can win the upper hand. In these moments, it can feel like you are being pulled in two completely different directions. This can be very disorienting and confusing because it feels like we rationally want to react a certain way that we know is good for us (our new way of thinking about ourselves) but at the same time our mind is trying really hard to get us to react in ways that come more natural to us (our old way of thinking about ourselves).

Especially in the beginning, this is a completely normal phenomenon. Just because you’ve managed to introduce newer, more positive patterns of self-talk and behavior into your life, doesn’t mean that the old ones will just disappear without a trace. Some insecurities will take a longer to fade away than others and some may even stay with you for the rest of your life.

Regardless of how long certain insecurities stay around, if you’re consistent and committed to your self-love, you’ll be able to learn how to make space for them without letting them affect you and your behavior anymore.