Is Self Love Without The Love Of Others Possible??

Hello Lovely!

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts lately speaking to the idea that true self love/nervous system regulation is actually impossible without some form of external love/regulation being demonstrated for us first. That to try to learn to love yourself without being loved by another, to try to learn to regulate your own nervous system without being held, witnessed and supported by someone else is an exercise in futility.

While I totally understand this feeling, and have deep compassion for this - if you’re reading these things and feeling that this means there’s no hope for you because you don’t have anyone in your life who loves you that way, who can be there in your pain, who can help you regulate, if you can’t afford therapy and these messages are making you feel hopeless - I just want to share my own experience as an alternative narrative. This is again my personal experience, not a theory I have. I don’t believe myself to be special or different in any fundamental way to anyone else - and I want to share a bit of my story just to offer some hope to anyone out there who may be feeling really lost with these messages being shared. I hope this helps.

In my personal experience, if I hadn’t learned how to love and emotionally regulate myself on my own, I’m pretty sure I’d be dead or at least very, very sick right now.

My Experience With External Love:

Growing up, all the way up to when I decided I was going to learn to be there for myself in an unconditional way - love had always, always reinforced the idea that I was broken, shameful, lacking, too much.

Every relationship I’d ever had up to my starting my self love journey had been one of immediate abandonment or rejection, or one where I’d been loved temporarily only to be harshly rejected/abandoned/shamed when it was discovered that I wasn’t who the other person had wanted me to be.

This wasn’t just the world rejecting me - all of my primary relationships were built on a foundation of my being told over and over again that how I was, who I was, what I needed was too much stress, causing them pain, embarrassing, something I needed to fix or change before I would be worthy of their love. And we know now how deeply traumatizing this is for a child who is dependent upon others for provision to be constantly rejected from day one.

I was told over and over again that who I was was making their lives miserable. That what I needed was ruining any good thing that had pre-existed. I was never regulated by anyone in my big emotions - which were always very, very big - but rather I was either immediately told that my pain was hurting the person I was talking to, and I better find a way to fix myself before I was worthy of being seen again, or I was begrudgingly supported - only to be resented afterwards or told this was the last time that was going to happen and I better never, ever fall apart like that again.

Literally every part of my being was rejected on some level by those I depended upon. All authority figures found a way to be disappointed in me, embarrassed of me or outright enraged/hateful towards me. I was attacked, I was shamed, I was told that I was evil. So much of my pain was rooted in seeing the pain others were in, and seeing that I couldn’t help. And instead of being witnessed in this, I was told that everyone's pain WAS my fault, and that I had to stop being so weak, sad, depressed and sick and be better so that I could help more/be less of the reason why others were suffering.

I was shown multiple times that to trust that love was going to be there was an exercise in being dropped off a cliff.

I had one relationship with a grandparent that I had thought was unconditional - up until I hit puberty and started to grow out of being the ‘sweet little girl.’ That one love relationship that had always been there seemed to vanish in a moment, leaving me in a pit. Alone. Fully by myself. I realized then that I was fundamentally unlovable. The one example I had had to that point that I was good, had seen me and said ‘actually, no.’ And that was that.

Friends and acquaintances at best treated me like a charity project.

At worst I was the group punching bag.

Always there to be scapegoated onto.

I was everyone’s dear friend when they needed a compassionate ear, some advice, someone to see them in their pain - but when it came time to loving me, everyone ran. I was walked all over, left out, told I was just too weird, too emotional, too everything, not enough. I never thought to stand up for myself because a) I could only see that they were treating me the way they were because they were in pain and I felt it was my job to fix that pain for them, to take it, to understand, to always be there no matter how I was being treated because that’s what a good person does and b) I felt I deserved it. I was shitty. Not fun. Not interesting. Too emotional. Thought about things too much. Couldn’t relate. Couldn’t do what everyone else could because I was so sick. I was different and that was bad. I deserved to be treated like garbage. The closest relationships I had growing up were always with teachers - who I usually was a therapist for. My peers were never close friends.

I Never Had A Secure Attachment:

I went for decades with undiagnosed chronic health conditions and neuro-diversity because I had been told so many times that my pain, my weakness, my inability to be normal was a burden. My emotions were not only not supported, not only was I abandoned in my emotional dysregulation, I was blamed for it, I was told that it made those I depended upon for everything miserable. I was ruining lives. I had to get better, I had to learn to deal with my shit. I had to stop being sick, weak, sad, depressed, anxious. I was seen as evil, there to ruin everything good with my sickness and emotions. 

I learned that the only way to be included was to GIVE something.

I learned that the only way to be loved was to offer.

Was to learn what people wanted me to be and to be that all.the.time.

I learned that my pain, my emotions, the empathy that caused me to cry myself to sleep every night, my physical pain was shameful, weak and made everyone else uncomfortable and unhappy.

I had to learn to just be successful, be perfect, give more, do more, be better and simply never, ever need anything. When I would have my emotional meltdowns, I learned to do it in private. I learned to push through all physical pain - to the point of almost killing myself several times. There was no taking a break, resting, giving myself what I needed - I had to work to eat. There was no safety net. AND there were things I wanted to OFFER, things I wanted to DO - so I learned how to work, all the time, 24/7 no matter how sick, tired and broken I was.

All this is to say - by the time I started my self love journey, I had not ever experienced a secure attachment.

I’d never been emotionally regulated by someone outside of myself without them telling me how horrible I was or how disappointed they were in me afterwards.

I didn’t even know what emotional regulation was.

I didn’t have any reason to believe that I deserved unconditional love, especially in my pain - because I had been shown by every relationship in my life that these bad, hurting, acting out parts of me WERE bad. Were unacceptable. Were never to be shown and were meant to be fixed.

I had NO reason to believe that there was something fundamentally good about me.

I had a LOT of self destructive habits that I had been told were flaws I needed to fix because they were not only hurting me, they were hurting everyone around me - and they were my fault. I was told that my emotions were too erratic and I needed to become calm - and of course the more I tried to do that the more emotional I became.

I was told that my body was my fault and I had to heal on my own, in my shame, never letting my weakness inconvenience anyone else. Never resting when I needed to. Never not showing up for anyone else. Burning the candle at both ends was simply the baseline expectation.

There was no reason in the WORLD for me to start accepting any of the parts of myself that I did. That had been rejected by literally everyone I’d ever known. There was no reason for me to assume my emotions, self destructive habits, illnesses and differences in how I saw and processed the world were GOOD. There was no reasonable explanation for me to decide I was going to go into my emotions, hear what they were saying, see them as friends - as they had always been the reason everyone hated me.

But I Learned To Love Myself Anyway:

I learned to love myself, be my own safe place, regulate my own emotions to the point of having truly expanded perception - being able to follow a guidance system that made those closest to me think I had everything in life totally figured out - not knowing that I was just following step by step.

I learned what my self sabotaging behaviors were really doing for me on my own.

I learned what my emotions were telling me.

I figured this out inside myself, in contrast to everything everyone had ever told me I SHOULD do with these parts of myself. Not only was it never demonstrated to me that my emotions, self sabotage, coping mechanisms and parts of self everyone else had hated forever could be good - it had only been demonstrated to me that I SHOULD abandon, reject, feel shame about and work to fix these parts. I went rogue. I went inside and loved all the broken parts of me so deeply, and in ways that I’d literally been told NOT TO by most people in my life.

I chose to be on my own side knowing that in doing so, I was risking losing everyone and everything. There was no safety net. No one was coming for me. No one was going to sacrifice themselves for me. It was me or no one. I was either going to love myself as I was (since I couldn’t change me) and die doing so, or something about that love was going to help. Those were my only two options at that point.

And I did it. In fact, I didn’t start experiencing secure attachments in my external relationships until AFTER I learned to be a secure attachment for myself. I taught the people in my life how to be emotional regulators for me after I learned to do it for myself - again before I formally learned what this even was. I can now regulate myself even when my emotional states are triggering people around me. 

Self Love IS Hard, AND It'a Possible:

My point here is this - is it infinitely EASIER to learn to love yourself and regulate when you have someone in your life helping you externally? YES. No doubt. Are there unique things we can learn in the experience of being loved and regulated by someone outside of ourselves that maybe we can’t get in self love? Most definitely. These are two different experiences and I don’t think we can substitute one for another. AND. I think it’s more than possible to learn to love and regulate yourself, to become your own safe place, to develop the capacity to feel safe, expansive, curious and creative even if no one outside of you can love or regulate you. Through only self love. I believe this because this has been my experience. And I don’t think I’m special.

Was it really HARD to develop this?

Yes.

Were there times when I desperately wished I had had someone outside of me helping me?

You bet.

Were there times when I wanted to give up because it felt like it was impossible without someone else and someone else wasn’t available?

Of course.

But again, at the end of the day, for me anyway, I had two choices - learn to do it myself, or die/live a very painful, destructive life.

If you’re feeling discouraged and alone, please know you aren’t. You can do this. You’re not alone in having to do it on your own. I wish it were the case that no one had to. I wish it were the case that we could all find someone to help us with this stuff - and maybe if enough of us learn to do this we WILL create a world where we’re all emotionally intelligent enough that no one has to learn self love in quite this lonely of a way. But the reality today is that for some of us, it’s us or nothing.

If that’s you, your love CAN be enough. It CAN be life saving and changing.

Don’t give up.

Keep showing up, little by little.

You will hit those walls.

It’s going to feel impossible some days.

There will be times and places where you don’t think it’s ever going to work.

And if you keep showing up, one day, you will see that it does. It is. You can. And it will build a muscle inside of you that will be a foundation that makes almost anything else you want to do in your life possible. 

I’m personally grateful I had to learn it fully on my own. Because now this means no matter what, no matter what the conditions, no matter who I’m around, no matter how deeply I’m shamed or abandoned - I have the strength to show up for me fully. To love myself. To support myself. To regulate myself. It’s a capacity that has been the reason I’ve been able to do all the things I’ve done with all my limitations. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but I’m happy with the results.

If you have someone who can love you - of course use that. If you have someone and something to support you - like books, lectures, teachers, therapists, guides - USE IT.

I also read books.

There just wasn’t really all that much material out on this stuff back when I was doing this.

Martha Beck was really helpful for me.

If you can use the imperfect love of others to piece together a quilt of love, do that. It’s not black and white.

The point is more just that developing it in yourself means no matter the external circumstances, you have a source.

Because the external circumstances are ALWAYS going to be shifting, changing and uncertain.

I don’t know that as humans we can ever be perfect for one another in love - and thus having that inner resources is key - it saves us from needing something to be perfect that can only ever be magically imperfect. The external world can never be fully safe or secure - and the more we’re secure inside, the more we can roll with that, glean what’s good from it, utilize what’s there and be ok with the rest. It’s not an all or nothing thing - in reality, both matter - but to say that you CAN’T be ok without another I think is short sighted and false. The external will never be in your control, but the INTERNAL - you have control over that. You can shape your inner world to be a safe place for yourself all the time.

You have that power. 

Again, it’s not one or the other. Both have their place. I just don’t feel it’s fair to say it’s impossible on your own. As in my experience, this isn’t true, and I’m so glad I never believed it was. I know I can’t speak for everyone, and perhaps there are cases where progress can’t be made alone - I don’t want to invalidate that. Only offer my observation.

I hope this helps offer an alternative perspective if you’re one who doesn't have someone outside of yourself. You can do it. It is possible.

You’re worth the effort.

<3