Self-love is an act that you can practice to prioritize your mental health. Everyone is so unique, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Accepting who you are instead of wishing you were like someone else is the first step toward good self-esteem.

Comparing yourself to others only decreases your confidence. Conversely, feeling good about yourself improves your confidence. With good confidence, you’re more likely to try new things, visit new places, and make new friends. You become better able to cope with challenging times because you believe in yourself, no matter the circumstances. Overall, self-love leads to good mental health outcomes.

Exploring your unique strengths can help you celebrate yourself. For instance, perhaps you’re funny, kind, smart, and/or charismatic. Lean into your strengths and you’ll feel great about yourself. If you’re different from others around you, celebrate that! Don’t feel bad because you’re not “fitting in”. Being different is human, normal, and exciting.

Be proud of who you are, including your flaws. You can’t always be perfect. Being able to understand your flaws or weaknesses shows that you are self-aware. Knowing your flaws can help you lean on others to support you where you need it. For example, if you know you’re an awful cook, you can offer to do the cleaning if your partner cooks instead.

If you’d like to practice self-love, here is a 15-minute guided meditation by Goodful to help you out. You can also find a collection of meditations on our patient resource video page. Take a moment to listen, meditate, and care for yourself.

Accepting your whole self is a form of self-love. You stop putting yourself down for what you can’t do, and instead focus on your strengths. Additionally, you begin to feel neutrally about your flaws. When you’re neutral about your flaws, you’re better able to work on them if that’s what you want to do. If you’re too upset or negative about your flaws, this process may be emotionally difficult.

It’s common for people with chronic pain to view themselves poorly. You may feel that your body is betraying you; however, it’s hard to love yourself when you think this way. Practicing self-love and acceptance can help to take the blame off yourself.

If you’d like to change parts of yourself, that is okay if the changes are healthy and realistic. What would you like to change? How can you change this? Do you have realistic expectations about it or are you simply striving for perfection? In all honesty, self-love can be the solution to many things you want to change about yourself.

Practice

Below, you will find the worksheet for this lesson: the Self-Love Worksheet. This worksheet will help you reflect on ways you can show yourself more love regularly.

Reflect

Think about what you do to show yourself some love. Reflect on your relationship with yourself and how you can improve it. How do you think your chronic pain affects the love you have for yourself?

How can you practice self-love more effectively?

In the next lesson, you will learn about how caring for others can positively affect your mental health.