Host reflects on the difference between learning to love oneself and learning how to act from that love, sharing insights from therapy about old self-sabotaging habits and the ongoing practice of building new, compassionate behaviors.
Cadre: Today we talk about the difference between self love and loving self. She says she did not like herself or love herself for many years of her life. Now she has learned how to. But she still doesn't know how to act like she loves herself.
Hello, hello, Happy Wednesday. Hello Cadre crew. I have a little bit of a hoarse voice today, so please forgive any raspiness. It is a lovely, lovely Wednesday here in Seattle. We have a lot of sun, which I'm very grateful for because we had some pretty bad rain and clouds last few days. So I'm very happy to see some sunshine and, and I wanted to talk a little bit today, just a little bit today about the difference between self love and loving self. And this is something that I have recently realized in therapy that while I have learned how to.
I have learned to love myself, which has taken a long, long, long time. I really did not like myself or love myself for many years of my life. And I finally do. I really love myself. I think I'm pre. Pretty. I think I'm a pretty neat gal. But I had this realization because I, I felt like I kept, I was, I had my therapy session last week and I was saying like just sobbing and sobbing and telling her, like, I just feel like I keep, I keep self sabotaging or I keep doing things that I then regret or I'm disappointed in myself.
And I feel like I just, even though I know better, I don't do anything differently. And I had this realization that just because I love myself doesn't mean that I know how to act like I love myself. And I realized that of course I don't know how to act like I love myself because for all those years that I didn't love myself, all I knew was how to act like I hated myself. So the ways I behaved were in ways that were stemming from a place of not loving myself. And so I have spent all this time in therapy to learn to love myself and feel that and believe that and know that.
And I haven't yet really begun to solidify the habits that come from loving myself. And I think that realizing that gave me a lot of compassion for myself because I realized like, you know, it was, it's. It's not a one step process. Like I had to first learn to love myself before I could start to learn how to do that, before I could start to learn new behaviors and new ways of operating that stem from loving myself rather than stemming from not loving myself. And those are the patterns of behaviors that I'm so accustomed to because they've been there for so much longer.
They're. They're my go to. They're the natural thing that I do. So of course that's the, the sort of, the mode of operation that's natural for me. Even Though I love myself, so learning that discrepancy has given me so much self compassion to also say, like, this is going to be a practice. I'm going to get it wrong. I'm still a beginner. And so of course it's not going to be perfect. Which means I don't have to beat myself up for self sabotaging or for acting in ways that are not aligned with who I really want to be or what I really want to do.
Because I'm still learning how to do things differently. And it doesn't mean that there aren't times where I act like I love myself. Like, there are definitely, there are definitely ways in my life that I have learned to act like I love myself and those are becoming more habitual, much more over previous behaviors. And there are still other areas where I'm still acting like I don't love myself and it's not going to happen overnight. And so I think having that realization about the difference between self love and loving myself as an action versus a feeling has been really, really, really helpful.
And I'm still not getting it right. Like, there's. There are definitely ways that I am not acting like I love myself. And that doesn't mean that. That there's not possibility for those things to evolve and to change. So that's what I wanted to share with you all. It's been really helpful for me this week to sort of like notice that and like notice ways we're like, oh, this is a way that I'm acting that is actually not very loving towards myself. Like, how could I possibly, you know, do something differently, different next time and what would I do?
So just wanted to share that. I hope that was helpful for anyone who's watching or working on loving themselves. It was a big epiphany for me, so I wanted to share that with you all. Speak Wonder says, I love your mindfulness and presence. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm so glad that you're here. I always love when I get to see you on my live, so I'm just really grateful that you're here spending this time with me. Okay, team, I will see you same time, same place next week either with more therapy epiphanies or with other life things going on.
Either way, you're doing great. I love you, you're cared for, you matter. And I'm so glad you're here. I will see you next week, same time.
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