How to love yourself at your lowest
It’s very easy to love ourselves when we’re doing well.
When we’re succeeding in life, whatever that definition of success is for each of us, we not only feel good, we feel great.
We feel proud of our accomplishments and the results of those achievements and in turn, this pride feeds the love we have for ourselves. We marvel at what we’ve created, what we have and how good it all feels.
Which is why, when we lose that thing that holds up our self-worth so intensely, we are left broken when it’s gone. Like external scaffolding propping a building up, once it goes, we crumble.
So, how do we prevent this crumbling of our self-esteem when life gets tough and we lose the very things that support our sense of worthiness? How can we love ourselves at our lowest when we no longer have those things that have been feeding our self-esteem?
The answer is, we build the scaffolding from the inside and we treat ourselves with the love and compassion we so desperately need.
True self-esteem is an inside job and nothing external can even begin to try and hold our esteem up. Whether it’s a job, a relationship, money, fame, alcohol, drugs, attention, whatever it is that we feed ourselves with, none of them come close to holding us up compared to what we can create inside of us.
The external cords that connect to our self-esteem
Imagine a cord, linking your solar plexus, the chakra associated with self-esteem, with something that makes you feel good about yourself.
It could be praise from an authority figure, parent or boss. It could be job status, material and financial rewards. It could be sex, love or a relationship. It could be looking in the mirror and admiring yourself. It could be likes and follows on social media. It could be owning a house. It could really be anything.
All of these things are ways we validate our worthiness. Yet, these are all external forms of validation and recognition. If you were to take them all away, stripped down to nothing but your very self, would that love still be there?
This is an extreme example but in this life we do tend to lose things. More than anything, we go through cycles of losing jobs, relationships and money, which are some of the biggest things we tie our self-worth to. And, when they disappear they can often take our sense of self and our sense of worthiness with them.
These cords are the external scaffolding that support our sense of worthiness and value, which is why we feel such pain when they disappear.
If we feel useful in the work we do, what happens when the work dries up? If we feel loved in a relationship, what happens when the relationship ends? If we feel seen through social media, what happens when we no longer get that recognition?
What is your self-esteem tied to?
We all deserve to feel loved by others, receive praise and recognition for our work and to feel good about ourselves.
The line comes when we use it to fill something inside of us that we didn’t know was empty. Once you start feeding it, it becomes thirstier and thirstier, wanting more and more of what feels so good. It’s why we chase the high that external validation gives us.
Maybe it’s alcohol that gives us a sense of belonging, maybe it’s financial success that soothes our fragile sense of self-worth, maybe it’s that relationship that gives us the love we can’t give ourselves, maybe it’s social media that feeds our soul’s longing to be seen and heard.
I recently gave up Instagram because I realised it was a cord to feeling good about myself and feeling like I mattered. It was validating me in all the surface-level ways that I couldn’t connect with.
Losing that cord has been painful. I won’t sugar-coat how low I’ve been feeling this past week. I’ve felt disconnected, unimportant, invisible, irrelevant and pointless.
I cut another cord 3 years ago when I gave up alcohol which I used to smooth over the cracks in my self-worth. It helped me to gloss over what I didn’t like about myself and helped me to fit in. While both Instagram and alcohol have given me huge highs, the lows and detrimental effects to my self-esteem just weren’t worth it.
When we lose something that validates our worth we immediately want to find a replacement.
The thing is, when you cut a cord you need time to recalibrate. It’s like a gaping wound that needs time to heal. While it’s only temporary it can feel like you’ve been punched in your solar-plexus and it’s gasping for breath.
Letting go our need for approval
Another painful cord to our self-worth that we all need to willingly and lovingly cut is the one connecting us to our parents.
Whether we know it or not we all seek approval from our parents or caregivers. They are the rock from which we dare to swim out to the ocean, the ones who guide us home in the dark, the ones who carefully bring us up and out into the world. We have so much love for them but there comes a point where we need to gently pull the cord away.
All parents want the best for their children, yet we often forget that our children are their own soul that must follow their own path.
If we tie ourselves to our parents’ expectations and approval, we will never get very far. We are not meant to live a carbon copy life. As individual sparks of the universal consciousness experiencing itself, we are meant to continually expand.
Following your own path is the only path you can follow so gently letting go of the approval and validation we seek from our parents is a huge part of it.
Letting go of external validation doesn’t mean we can’t receive support and encouragement from those around us. Earth can be a harsh place and we need love and support from family and friends to help us though.
The test of loving ourselves at our lowest
When we lose something that helps us to love ourselves, our confidence goes into sharp decline.
It’s at this low point, when we feel raw, exposed and vulnerable, that we need to have gentle compassion for ourselves and the situation we’ve found ourselves in, even when it’s of our own doing.
True self-worth is loving ourselves at our worst as well as our best, yet this is one of the hardest things to do.
I find we can be our harshest critics when we’re down and it becomes very easy to judge and shame ourselves. This is merely a form of anger at the situation we’ve found ourselves in that we have no way to process. So, we lash out at ourselves, not realising we are doing more damage than good.
It’s so easy to be kind to ourselves when we’re high on life and everything feels good. It’s when the chips are down, when we have no one to blame for our circumstances but ourselves that we really know the capacity we hold to love ourselves. It’s the ultimate test.
There is a fine line between being a victim of life and taking responsibility for our circumstances. We never want to wallow in powerlessness but we are allowed to express those feelings, whether it’s grief, anger or fear. Don’t push them down and away, let them up to express themselves, then let them go.
That’s the key, not hiding our emotions but also not letting them dominate us, which they so easily do. It’s a fine line that we often fall on the wrong side of.
True validation and esteem comes from within
True self-worth comes from connecting to ourselves in times of challenge and hardship, and loving ourselves no matter what. When we’re at our lowest we need love and support from ourselves more than anyone and anything else.
This is the hardest thing to do. The last person we often want to be kind to when something goes wrong, is ourselves.
When things go wrong and we fall down a hole we tend to blame ourselves, but we’re always only doing our best. That’s all any of us are doing. When you love yourself at your lowest you are propping yourself up with that scaffolding from the inside that will last the test of time.
When you’re feeling low, watch how you speak to yourself. Are you judging, shaming and ridiculing yourself, or are you speaking to yourself with tenderness and love?
Remember, everything ripples outwards. When you show love for yourself at your lowest you will receive that same love back in ways you couldn’t imagine. So, go love yourself, not just at your best but at your lowest too.
And, the beautiful thing is, at our lowest there is only one way to go, and that is up. The only thing you need to do at this point is to accept yourself, comfort yourself and love yourself. It’s really that simple.
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