I'm sure you've read this sentence many times: you have to love yourself first.
But what does that mean? Is it about offering you a hot chocolate when you are cold? Is it about giving you a new dress when you feel like it? Does it do what you want when you want it? Is it about putting on warm clothes when it's freezing outside?
Loving yourself means learning to treat yourself as a loving parent would treat their child.
When you are an adult, and I assume you are, you still have an inner child within you. These are your emotions. At this level you still react like a 3-4 year old child. Your emotions cannot age or mature. But you can become mature. You can learn to respect and manage them. You can learn to take care of that inner child.
When you are unaware of your inner child, you try to live in an adult world like a 4 year old boy or girl. You feel all alone, scared of the big, mean people out there, not knowing what to do, where to ask for help, how to protect yourself. It's a very difficult way to do it. You will always feel scared, fearful, doubtful, tired. It's hard trying to survive as a child in an adult world. You will feel angry and scared most of the time, and you will be lost.
Why is that? Because no one takes care of that Little Child in you.
Let's say your name is Charlotte. You are 42 years old. Inside you lives little Charlotte. She is four years old. When you are busy in the outside world taking care of others, business, getting around, doing a thousand things every day, little Charlotte will feel forgotten. When you are always running to help others, to make sure their needs are met, you will be exhausted every night and cry in your bed. Sometimes you will have temper tantrums. You will feel very angry for no reason (but there is still one, a big one!).
All of these big emotions are attempts by your inner child to get your attention.
Imagine that you have, in addition to your children, husband, colleagues, parents, friends, a four-year-old girl named Charlotte. No one ever notices her. No one takes care of her. Every time she tries to say something and get attention, you yell "Shut up!". You say “I have to take care of my parents, my job, my husband, my papers, my friends, my other children, my house… I don't have time for you!
How do you think she will feel? What do you think she will do? First, she will try to get your attention by showing strong emotions. She will cry a lot, she will scream and scream, maybe she gets aggressive from time to time. You think you are angry with the outside world, but it is your inner child who is angry with YOU! She is sad and angry because you don't care about her! You pretend it doesn't exist! Nothing is worse than acting like our inner child doesn't exist. It means trying to live as if WE don't exist.
The worst feeling in the world is being unfaithful to yourself. Nothing is worse than that!
How many times have we ignored how we felt, to please someone else. How many times have we told our Inner Child "Shut up, you're not important, the other is much more important than you, go away, I don't want to hear you, I don't want to not see you”? Horrible isn't it? And we do it every time we let the other's desire come before our own.
That little Charlotte inside, what's she going to do? She will give up after a while. After trying to show her emotions for a long time, she will give up. She'll get tired of it all and she'll say, "It's okay, she doesn't love me, she doesn't want to take care of me, I'm not worth it," and she'll be depressed.
Of course, you will think that you are depressed because of other people, because of your job, because of your children, because of your husband or your parents.
It's nobody's fault. But you must learn to take care of this Inner Child who suffers from your lack of attention towards her.
When, after getting depressed, things still don't change, there is still a weapon to get your attention: little Charlotte is going to get sick. Or she will have an accident. Perhaps in this way adult Charlotte will learn to finally pay attention to her Inner Child, who is as real (if not more) than a real child of flesh and blood.
You must learn to be a loving parent to yourself.What does that mean?
You must first develop an Inner Mother. If you were lucky and had a loving and caring mother, you can take her as an example. Otherwise, you have to invent, create this Inner Mother, which is your energy of feminine benevolence. Whenever you feel an emotion, your Inner Mother should ask your Inner Child, "What's going on, honey? Listen to what your inner child has to say. That you continue with the dialogue. The Inner Mother says, “Come here. Come into my arms, I love you as you are. I love you with what you feel.
By doing so, the heaviness of emotions will lessen roughly. That you say these words: "I understand". These words are very important, because most of the time we don't feel very "normal" to have the feelings we have and we try to ignore or suppress them, which makes them heavier. "I understand, my darling, come here in the arms of your mother, I love you."
Stay with those words and feelings for a moment, then ask, "What do you need?"
Whatever the Child's answer, you say: "We will ask your Father".
And here begins the task of your Inner Father, who is there to protect you and act for you in the outer world. You would never send a four-year-old to ask for a raise at work or resolve a dispute at school or with the neighbors, would you? So why are you trying? Send your Inner Father to take care of whatever you have to do in the outer world. Your Inner Father is your masculine energy, which allows you to make decisions, to act, to follow your inner guidance (which is within you Inner Child, also called Intuition) and to manifest your Child's desires in the world.
When your Child has a need, for example to call someone or to go somewhere to fix something, imagine that your Inner Child stays at home with his Mother who takes care of his feelings (“I understand that you are afraid…”) and that your Inner Father (another part of your being) is going there to act. Your Inner Father is that part of you that is able to handle stress, take action, organize conflict, and anything that has to do with the outside world. If this piece is missing because you didn't have a good model yourself when you were little, you will have to create and develop it.
Of course, your inner child, your mother and your father are all part of you. It's all you. It's just a model for understanding what's going on inside you and how you can learn to love yourself.
To love yourself is to listen to your Inner Child, to take his emotions seriously, to understand what he feels and to act in the desired direction. Loving yourself is having this dialogue with yourself every morning when you open your eyes, every evening when you go to bed, and every time you have an emotion.
To love yourself is to build a strong inner connection with yourself.
It's creating your own loving family, inside of you. You will never feel alone again. You are already three! Call it your Trinity. Wherever you go, you now go with your Inner Family. You're not alone. You are loved and you are protected. You listen to yourself and take care of this precious little child who has been waiting for so long to attract your attention and your love.
It is inner healing.
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