How to Reflect Love to Yourself
Love is often a phenomenon where people focus on external expressions. However, when was the last time you felt lovingly towards yourself?
As sexual or intimate partner abuse survivors, we can be hyper-critical of ourselves for many reasons.
- Abusers may have programmed us with an inner dialogue of nasty words to keep us from understanding our own power or potential.
- It can also be due to a feeling that we brought this trauma onto ourselves through our thoughts, behaviors, or actions.
- If you were abused by multiple people or suffered multiple significant traumas in your life, especially during childhood, you may have developed limiting beliefs. This could include that you were the common denominator in all the painful events and thus unworthy of self-love or redemption.
Read on to discover a few exercises you can explore to help you rewrite your inner dialogue.
Self-care and self-love are essential to our physical, spiritual, and mental well-being.
- Consider on any given day how you speak about yourself either to others or most importantly towards yourself.
- Chances are you are far nicer to others in your life than you are to yourself.
- This looks at correcting this pattern and reintroducing you to your true best friend.
Exercise 1: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Mirrors are an easy, yet powerful way for us to examine our perspective. Can we truly see ourselves?
- This piece of polished glass strips away the façade of what we think we are and only reflects our true physical essence.
- If you are bold enough to look deep into your eyes, you can begin to process your true mental or even spiritual state.
- Seek to look beyond the initial characteristics you see and into the depth of you.
Strive to use the mirror to provide yourself with positive affirmations.
- You can actively state what you like or have been told about yourself.
- Beyond that, state those positive things you wish to claim about yourself, the qualities you want to see.
- A passive affirmation is to write down some of your favorite quotes or create a simple mantra on a Post-it note and adhere it to the mirror.
- For fun, you could write something on the mirror in lipstick or a glass-safe marker.
Going Deeper with Affirmations
- Find a time you can be alone with your mirror.
- Take a few breaths to center yourself then dig deeply inward to find the affirmations.
- Feel free to start small, perhaps compliment your choice of personal style that day.
- If you feel okay doing that, try to challenge yourself to something more abstract about your personality or characteristics.
- Maintain eye contact and tell yourself something to promote personal growth for you.
A profound healing step is to begin speaking words of love to yourself.
- These could be as simple as “It wasn’t your fault,” “You have value,” or “I love you.”
- Let yourself experience any and all feelings that come.
- End the time by sincerely thanking yourself for your bravery to face your authentic self, face-on.
Exercise 2: Healing Touch
Have you heard of “healing touch”? It is a reflexive technology to promote greater self-love and self-peace.
- Popularized in the early 1990’s, the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), it is commonly referred to as “tapping.”
- It is a way of stimulating by using acupressure with one’s fingertips on key energy meridians on the body (areas through which energy flows).
- This rewires limiting beliefs with more helpful words and behaviors.
Are you ready to try it?
- Begin by finding a peaceful space where you can be alone.
- Stand loosely, legs hip-width apart.
- First, do a scan of your body to see where you are holding any physical or mental tension.
- Being mindful and nonjudgmental, see if you can explore the root causes of these tense areas.
- After you complete the scan and identify the area to resolve, state an intention out loud about a particular area of your psyche you would like to adjust. For example, if you are finding yourself frustrated by something, state out loud “I feel frustrated.”
Open the link above for how to properly tap these energy meridians.
- After you are done tapping scan yourself again and see how you are feeling now.
- Repeat the tapping pattern, this time stating an intention of something you want to promote within yourself.
For example, you might tap stating “I am peaceful.”
Other Ways to Show Your Body Love
- If EFT does not feel right for you, consider giving yourself a hug striving to touch your opposing shoulder blades for a small massage.
- Then give yourself another hug reversing which arm is above the other.
- Feel free to sway or say anything that might come to you in the moment.
- Breathe deeply and notice on your exhale your body release tension.
- Do this three times.
- Afterward, thank yourself for this time and for embarking on this journey of self-love and appreciation.
Honor Yourself with Others
- Pay attention to how you speak about yourself to others or yourself.
- Try to replace a tendency to say “I’m sorry” if you bump into someone with “Excuse (Pardon) Me.”
- Actively work to uplift yourself whenever possible and strive to be your own best friend.
Send us feedback on how you are implementing ways to better show yourself love, via email or our social media channels.
- You are wonderfully made and bring boundless gifts into this empowering community.
- Together we can shine light onto the darkness and end the secrecy and shame surrounding surviving abuse.
Lifting you in love and light,
Tambry
Talk To Tambry
I am glad you have taken the time to engage with this blog. Sometimes it is helpful to process new insights that emerge. If you would appreciate brief time with a someone who understands, our Talk to Tambry offering is for you. For 30 minutes, you can receive support from Tambry who is a certified life coach, spiritual director and a survivor who has been on the journey as well. This is offered at a reduced rate of $50.
