My Self Love Journey

I don’t know about anyone else, but my journey to learning to love myself has been long and hard.

I’ve always struggled with self love, and I’ve tried to create it and seek it in harmful ways, but now I think I may finally be on the right path with it all. Finally having a positive relationship with myself and building upon my own love for myself has had such a positive impact on my life overall. Don’t get me wrong it has not cured me of things like my anxiety or my depressive moods, but I am more accepting of those being part of who I am.

I don’t know where to say this journey started, as I had a lot of self hatred for a long, long time. Realistically this has been a journey from my teens to present day. Teenage Bronagh had no self esteem, was very depressed and was trying her best to navigate a world that just didn’t feel right. I’d love to go back and tell her it’s because shes neurodiverse and someday it will all make sense, but that would likely add to her feelings of being an outsider. To be fully honest, I also self harmed up until four years ago. Being free from it now makes me so proud, and I’d love to tell me even 6 years ago that I’d make it to 4 years without turning back to that way of coping, I know she’d be so proud.

So back to self love. I’ve always been plus sized, and bigger than the people around me weight wise (I’m short height wise!). This impacted my ability to build self love as I felt unworthy due to my size. I feel like this is quite common amongst plus sized teens while we navigate through acceptance of our bodies. I still have days were I wish I could just change my body, but I remember to tell myself this body has kept me alive, brought my twins into the world and has put up with everything I’ve done to harm it.

I found affirmations were my best tool for building self love. I love affirmations and try to practise them daily! I’ve included a couple of favourites within this post as well. I try to use these every day. I actually started doing them when I was in CBT nearly 5 years ago. We discussed what my goals for myself were, which was to love myself without conditions, and to accept who I am and live my life for me. We came up with quite a few affirmations, but the four within the post are the main ones I stick with.

I change them as I need to, like adding in ones relating to university during my time there, or pregnancy based ones during my pregnancy. That is how the affirmation relating to my children came about, it was changed from I am a good and worthy friend.

The other way I built up my own self love was through meditation. I used to hear people talking about how this helped and wondered how as it was just sitting. It really isn’t! I also use this in my spiritual practises. I started out using body scan meditations to allow myself to feel fully grounded before doing affirmations. Now I use numerous different kinds, from body scans to guided meditations. I really recommend taking up to half an hour for yourself to sit and meditate and allow yourself to be still in your safe place.

What do you use to build self love? Let me know in the comments below!