Practice Self-Love – The Best Advice From A Counselor

You might not notice it, but one factor that brings stress, anxiety, and depression to an overboard state is a lack of self-love. It disconnects you from giving your best to cope and overcome life challenges. It makes you lose confidence and self-awareness. It leads you to desperation, emotional instability, and mental pressure. But what exactly is self-love?

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Self-love is not just about taking a bath regularly, changing your hair, or buying yourself beautiful clothes. It is not about the attempt to redefine yourself based on what you perceived is changeable. Instead, self-love is the practice of appreciating yourself despite imperfections. It is the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual support you give yourself no matter what. Though it is not a fixed state of mind, its actions surely develop over time and guide you to maturity.

Establishing self-love is not an easy task and can be a long journey, especially when dealing with many emotional and mental struggles. Thus, you need to think about it as a vital step in personal development in counselling in improving your health and happiness in general. Here are a couple of suggestions that can assist you along the way with your self-love development.

Always Forgive Yourself

One thing that can often lead to severe emotional and mental stress is the habit of always being tough on yourself. There is a struggle deep within that you somehow push your limits to win a battle for perfection. There is too much self-deprecation that takes you away from seeing things from a positive perspective. With that state of mind, you end up overlooking the fact that you are a human that is still incapable of so many things. So instead of getting stuck with so much harshness and self-hate, learn to forgive yourself. Think about the mistakes you make as an opportunity to develop your skills. You can start the process by working on the following:

• Embracing negative emotions such as anger and frustrations
• Staying positive by telling yourself that you are still worthy of love and care
• Understanding the essence of sincere apology not only to others but to yourself as well

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Be Mindful Of Your Overall Wellness

Usually, the problem with unstable emotional and mental health comes from the overwhelming things you want to change or achieve in life. There is nothing wrong with that, actually. However, the danger can happen once you set goals that are not entirely what you want or do not involve even the slightest things that make you happy. If what you’re trying to accomplish is only the ones pushed to you by society, you need to have clarity. Thus, be mindful of what you genuinely want to achieve so that you can arm yourself with enough knowledge that you can use to move forward. To practice mindfulness, here are some of the things you can do to take some time to self-reflect.

• Meditating
• Keeping a journal
• Listening to soothing music
• Going for a walk outside
• Spending time with nature

Identify The Things That Make You Feel Better

Perhaps you already know what makes you happy. You understand the possible consequences and sacrifices you need to obtain whatever it is that you desire. But sometimes, even if you try harder, it would still feel that your efforts are not worthy enough. Apparently, you shouldn’t worry too much about that because that is normal. You have to be open about the fact that there are things that you cannot have. Therefore, you need to focus on those that can make you feel better and set aside the ones that can make you feel worse. This particular habit of knowing what you need is a form of self-awareness and self-love that contributes a lot to your emotional and mental well-being. For instance, you might build emotional resilience through music therapy or other practices.

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Setup A Healthy Boundary

There are quite a few things that can make you feel uncomfortable and some of those are behaviors that you are not willing to put up with. That is the primary reason why you need to set up boundaries. However, setting up that barrier is not intended to shut down and push people out of your life. Instead, remind yourself that it is a healthy strategy that helps you distinguish what acceptable and restricted behaviors are. Setting up a boundary allows you to protect yourself and filter out some toxic individuals that drain your energy. Here’s a way you can set out a healthy boundary.

• Figure out what you socially need and start building your restrictions from there — journaling in supporting mental health recovery is one great way to help you remember what you need.
• Identify your safety requirements so that you can avoid emotional, mental, and physical harm from people you don’t consider getting close with
• Focus more on understanding and accepting social uncertainties to get rid of fake and manipulating friends or anyone who takes advantage of your well-being.
• Build your self-esteem by surrounding yourself with good, influenced people.
• Surround yourself with supportive, loving, and caring people that boost your self-confidence and self-esteem.