Healing thoughts: Self-Compassion - This Valentine Day, love your self, “the greatest love of all”!

Oh My God!!!….Valentines day is upon us. Like Christmas, It’s a special day when people demonstrate their love and receive love. For others, It can be the dreaded holiday to remind us just how lonely we feel. It triggers sadness, rejection, emptiness, and can make some feel very disconnected.

What if I told you, you are not alone. What if I told you, you can love yourself and all your warts!. When we love our warts, it makes it easier to love others warts as well..It’s called compassion. We all have this place within us Richard Schwartz calls “the self”. This “self” is real. It’s a place where one holds compassion and feels connected to ourselves and others. The self displays calm, clarity, courage, and confidence. It’s a place that holds our inner wisdom. If you take the time to listen to your inner voice, or “the self”, it can provide guidance and support.

An analogy and recent quote from Alcoholics Anonymous demonstrates the self perfectly. “I promise to watch for every opportunity to turn toward my self for guidance I know where this power is.: it resides within me, as clear as a mountain rook, hidden in the hills - it is the unsuspected Inner Resource”.

Why is self-love so important? You will make better choices for yourself. Without love for ourselves, we feel we don’t deserve, so we make choices from that place. If we don’t have self-compassion, we beat ourselves up like an abusive parent or partner. Having self-love and self-compassion, says, its’ OK. We are human. We are born to be real, not perfect! If we were to talk to ourselves like we talk to our friends, we would not feel alone, sad or rejected. We just might feel love! When we reject ourselves, we need others to make us feel loved. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ, we don’t need to go outside of ourselves to find the joy and peace that comes with loving. We had it all along! How healing is that?

So on this Valentines Day give yourself the gift of self-compassion and self-love. When you do, you have more compassion and love to give others. Remember you can’t give what you don’t have!

As Whitney Houston says, “Loving yourself, is truly the greatest love of all” and the greatest gift you can give your self!

Happy Valentines Day !

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Georgie Sloate, LMFT

The Family Therapy Center, LLC