When I sense I am not loved, or not enough for someone or considered ridiculous or lazy or irresponsible or stupid or gross, whose perspective am I experiencing?
My own.
People-pleasing is conditional self-love. I will only love myself if everyone else loves me.
Codependency is conditional self-love: I will only love myself if some arbitrary other person is okay.
“Task-oholism” is conditional self-love: I will only love myself if some arbitrary set of tasks has been completed.
Ambition is conditional self-love: I will only love myself if I attain some arbitrary height in life.
Vainness is conditional self-love: I will only love myself if I appear some arbitrary way.
There is nothing in the way of me loving myself (or anyone else for that matter) that I don’t place there arbitrarily. I am completely free to love myself at every moment:
As I please people AND as they appear not to be pleased…
As I care for a particular person AND as that person appears to suffer…
As I get things done AND as things continue to appear unfinished.
At the top of the mountain AND at every other apparent point on the journey.
Every refusal to love myself is the result of a completely arbitrary condition I have placed on love.
It’s a learned behavior resulting from the mistaken belief that love is a resource earned by the meeting of standards, that love is either deserved or not deserved, that I am undeserving of love unless I DO SOMETHING RIGHT by a standard outside myself.
There is no such outside standard: every standard I experience is my own - even the ones I think I’ve received from my parents or peers or think I’ve read in the news or social media or the laws or holy books. If a standard is showing up in my life, it’s because I’ve adopted it.
I am the judge. I am the sole giver of love to, and withholder of love from, myself - innocently tying my judgment to something entirely made up.
It’s a completely understandable mistake given the culture in which I’ve grown up but it’s a complete misunderstanding, my own misunderstanding, and so one that is completely in my hands to clear up.
And when I do, I see that love is the default state of the universe, of which I am a boundless and inextricable feature. Love is what I AM - even as I attempt to withhold it from myself, which is impossible to do.
(…which is why it hurts so much to try).