What if you really loved yourself? The concept of loving yourself has lost its power to inspire us because it was overused in cheesy popular media. We are in an ironic time and loving yourself sounds sappy, and very 1980s.
Start talking about self-love and people will immediately make masturbation jokes.
It’s embarrassing to talk about self-approval. It sounds narcissistic.
Loving yourself is not self-indulgent. It doesn’t mean you stop loving and caring about others. It just means adding yourself to your inner circle of loved ones.
We are so hard on ourselves. That becomes immediately obvious to any LGBTQ affirming therapist. I believe we are experiencing an epidemic of self-hate. It can lead to mistreating our bodies, procrastinating on things that could benefit us, attracting people who belittle us, and plenty of anxiety and depression.