“You Should Love Yourself More”
Ever hear this line?
For many people, the first response is a quiet eye roll—or an internal okay, but what does that even mean? There’s often an underlying annoyance that comes with it. While the sentiment sounds supportive, it can also feel vague, dismissive, or oddly shaming.
A client recently brought this up in session, and it stirred a flood of memories for me. I’ve heard this phrase at different points in my own life (almost always from my mother) and usually during periods of stress, uncertainty, or major change. What stands out to me isn’t the feeling of encouragement, but rather the feeling of being greatly misunderstood.
When someone is struggling—navigating grief, identity shifts, burnout, trauma, or long-standing patterns—“love yourself” can land like a bag of rocks rather than support it was meant to. It assumes self-love is something you can simply choose, rather than a skill that’s learned, practiced, and often rebuilt over time. If the phrase feels unhelpful, it may be because it ignores the history behind how we learn to relate to ourselves.
Most people don’t struggle because they don’t want to love themselves. They struggle because life experiences shaped self-criticism as a form of protection. Over-functioning, people-pleasing, or emotional numbing weren’t flaws—they were ways of coping.
Real self-love rarely starts with confidence or affirmations. It begins with small, practical shifts in how you relate to yourself day to day. This might include noticing your inner dialogue and softening harsh self-talk, setting boundaries that protect your time and energy, allowing rest without guilt, or responding to mistakes with curiosity instead of punishment. It can also mean grieving what you didn’t receive, asking for support, or making choices that align more closely with your values—even when those choices feel uncomfortable at first.
Sometimes self-love looks like setting boundaries.
Sometimes it looks like grieving what you didn’t receive.
Sometimes it looks like rest instead of pushing.
And sometimes it looks like staying with yourself when things feel uncomfortable.
Maybe the work isn’t about loving yourself more—but about learning to relate to yourself differently, with honesty and steadiness, one step at a time.
