Defining Self-Love

What do you think when you hear the term self-love? In today's episode, I explore a unique perspective on the importance of self-love and building a relationship with yourself on your journey with food.

Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you have. Tune in to discover how to start to love yourself and cultivate, nurture, and support your relationship with yourself – it will have a compound effect on every other relationship in your life.

Want to know why you struggle with food and what to do next? Start watching The Food Freedom Mini Series today. 

Transcript

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Welcome to Binge Breakthrough, a podcast designed to help you finally break through the barriers that keep you stuck, feeling out of control around food. I'm Master Certified Coach Jane Koker, and I want you to know that no matter how long you've been struggling or what you've tried, food freedom is possible. And I'm here to show you how. After years of therapy, eating sports treatments, restrictive diet, and reading all the books, I would still stop in the audience-confidence cycle of restricting thinking until I was able to see it all from a new perspective that changed everything. Each week I will share the strategies, tools, and mindset that allowed me to overcome my decades-long battle with binge eating. Your journey to body trust starts now. Let's dive in. Hello, trusted listener. Welcome to Binge Breakthrough. I consider you a trusted listener because I trust that you are listening to this podcast for a reason. I trust that you are going to hear something today that is insightful and impactful on your journey with food. So last week we talked about, last week was Valentine's Day, at least the day that it aired was Valentine's Day. And we talked about how binge eating, how your food and body image struggles impact your romantic relationships. So if you haven't listened to that, you'll definitely want to check that out, particularly if you are in a romantic relationship. But today, what I want to talk about is the most important relationship that you have, and that is your relationship with yourself. So we're going to talk about self-love today. And we're going to talk about it in a way that hopefully you have never heard of before. Now, we have all heard the term self-love. We have heard the term self-care. And I don't know about you, but when I hear the word self-love, when I hear the word self-care, I just uh I don't, I don't love either of these words. Now, I think it's for a lot of reasons. I think there has been so much of my life that I have been adamant that I do not love myself. And I also think for me, growing up, we never said I love you. It just was not, that was not said in our house. And so the words to say I love you is these are not words that I say lightly. Um and I think for a long time I really truly believe that I was not lovable. And so to to think of the word self-love, I love myself, it's still hard. It's still a hard word for me to um, and I do love myself, I really do, but I just think for me the word self-love doesn't always resonate. So I want to start by offering in offering you some different ways to think about self-love. We're gonna get into this is going to be an interactive experience today, in that I'm gonna ask you to think for yourself. I want to ask you to really not be doing 10 other things while you're listening to this episode. I want you to reflect for yourself on what the word self-love, or you may come up with another word. I'm gonna give you some additional suggestions. I'm also gonna share with you a lot of different people's definitions of self-love. And I'm gonna encourage you to come up with your own definition. So this might be one of those episodes that you listen to several times. And if you do, if you listen to this episode, if you really do the reflection, think about this for yourself, decide for yourself the relationship you want to have with yourself. This episode, this work can be some of the most powerful work that you do. So you can do anything you want. You can absolutely listen to this while you're doing 10 different other things and be like, oh wow, that was really good. And then next week you just might be like, oh yeah, that was good. I don't really remember what it was about, but I really liked it. Or you might listen multiple times. You might write out some things, or you might do something in between. Just open your mind to the possibility of how you want to take this information and apply it. Just listening is not gonna change. Listening to something, consuming something will never create change. You have to actually apply what you're hearing. So I want to encourage you to just think about how am I gonna apply what I'm hearing in this episode? Because I want you to know this episode is powerful. Okay, so self-love. Let's start with the word self-love. I some people love self-love, like I mentioned. Here's some other words I want to give you in case something else resonates with you more. Maybe self-respect, self-regard, self-kindness, self-warmth. As you listen to these words, if you're like, oh, you know, when I hear the word self-love, I'm just like, I don't know. I don't really, I don't buy it. I'm not there yet. Maybe someday, okay, great. Then that's not the word you want to focus on. But if you hear some of these other words and you're like, oh, yeah, I actually like that. The way that maybe that feels a little more grounded to me. So again, maybe self-respect, self-kindness, self-warmth, self-regard. You might come up with something entirely different. So just plant that as a seed as we go through this. All right, here is a question for you. If self-love is something that you do not feel like you experience for yourself, what do you suppose prevents you from loving yourself? Asked a different way. I could love myself if. So I want you to just answer this question for yourself in your mind. I could love myself if for some people it might be like, well, I could love myself if I would follow through on what I said I would do. I could love myself if I uh weighed less. I could love myself if I didn't feel so out of control with food. I could love myself if I whatever the case. So just notice for yourself, chances are an answer came to you pretty quickly. So just remember that. Just kind of note it. I could love myself if. Just know what your answer is. Now, when I was putting together this self-love, I actually started really getting curious about the topic of self-love as I was putting together the workshop that I did a couple of a few weeks ago called How to Stop Hating Yourself After Avenge. And we really dove into the topic of self-kindness and self-warmth. We also talked about self-love. Judith Guiton came in and she taught us about self-love in a lot of ways that was amazing. So I've been reflecting on this. And as I was preparing for that workshop, I asked, I'm in a group with a bunch of other amazing deep dive coaches through the Deep Dive Coach Institute. And I asked them, what does self-love mean? What is your definition of self-love? So here are some definitions that I received from other people. So I want you to just listen to these definitions and just see for yourself, do any of these definitions resonate with me? I'm going to ask you at the end, I'm not going to ask you, I'm going to invite you at the end to create your own definition of self-love. And you might call it self-respect or self-regard or self-warmth. You might not call it self-love, and that's okay. But as you listen to these definitions of self-love, I want you to just listen to what resonates with you. As you hear these definitions, when you hear them, what is like, oh yes, I want that for myself. Okay, here's some here are some definitions that I received from other people. Self-love means not looking to an outside source for validation or acceptance. It means having my own inner knowing that I am whole and don't need to be fixed. If I choose to make any changes, it's from a place of taking care of myself, not as punishment, because I'm not wrong. I love this so much because so many of us think that we're broken and we need to be fixed. So this definition is like I'm whole. I don't need to be fixed. I'm not looking any to anything outside of me. All right, here's another definition. For me, it's a practice of reflecting from a non-judgmental place about how I am part of creation and am essentially on the planet to appreciate and encourage myself and others, however imperfectly. Another person says, For me, self-love is me being the object of my love. Any part of me, symbolic or literal. It necessitates the actual feeling of love in my body and toward myself. Here's another person who says, For me, self-love is the act of loving all of me. The parts that are kind, respectful, thoughtful, and giving, and the parts that are greedy, scared, selfish, neurotic, and kind of a mess. The ultimate sign of self-love for me is loving myself, not despite my faults and struggles, but loving myself because of my faults and struggles. I love this definition because it really does acknowledge all of the parts of us. All of us are kind of a mess sometimes, right? But so often we only love the kind of accepted the parts that we deem acceptable. So here's somebody else who says, to me, it means I'm not wrong if I don't always like myself. Someone else says, to me, self-love is being the hero in my life, knowing that my soul is part of the light of the world. I think of self-love as incorporated into all of love: compassion, mercy, kindness, gentleness, joy, beauty, and a good kick in the bottom when needed. Understanding that judgment of myself often feels natural, and I can decide to give myself the attributes of love rather than fear and anger when I judge. Love is freedom to recreate my life at any moment when I'm gifted with new understanding. I love that part at the end. It's like recreating at any moment when I'm gifted with new understanding. Because so often when we do what we do, it's based on the understanding that we have at the time. But when we have new understanding, we do have the ability to recreate that. Here's another definition. For me, when I think of self-love, it's not only loving the shiny parts, but instead of hiding or feeling shame for the parts I used to be so critical, judgmental, and even brutally shameful about. Now I wrap those parts in self-love, which feels like a loving, trusted, gentle place to land, who wraps her arm around myself. Yes, that prickly, previously hidden side, and gently asks, What do you need, love? And give that to myself. Whenever I feel off, I take a few moments to check in and allow what is under the surface to speak up and really listen to what she needs. So I think self-love to me is truly compassion and empathy for all of me, no matter what. So powerful. I think about um when I think about that kind of wrapping, wrapping her arm around myself and saying, What do you need, love? It's like that when I was talking about um what happens when you flip your lid in the episode, uh, two episodes ago, in episode number 66. And like wrapping that amygdala in warmth and in kindness. Like that's what that survival part, when we are kind of freaking out, it's like that's what we need. All right, here's another definition. I woke up this morning thinking of what self-love really means to me. It came to me quite simply and clearly. It's a promise to stay connected to me, no matter what. It's simple, but it's true. Anytime I notice myself disconnecting from the deepest part of myself is when I start stepping away from loving myself. And I love this too, because it is it's disconnection. This is all about disconnection when we disconnect from ourselves. I talked a lot about disconnection in last week's episode. The disconnection. So often we use food to disconnect from ourselves. So then there was somebody else who was talking about that they didn't like the, they also did not like the term self-love. It just she's what she said was that self-respect feels stronger than self-love, was like her initial reaction to the question of what's your definition of self-love. So then she said, I've been really reflecting on why self-respect felt stronger than self-love to me. And she said that what she, what she came to realize was that you can love someone and still treat them badly, take them for granted, and or resent them at times. She says, I don't have to dig very deep to find things I don't like, and I'm okay with not liking, and even those I love best in the world. And then she says, that's probably true of people I respect too, but respect doesn't have the romanticized unconditional overlay of love. So I think where she's saying is like self-love is kind of like the terminology we hear, unconditional love. Just love yourself unconditionally, and kind of this romanticized term. So what I responded to her was I said, you know, I agree that romanticized unconditional love doesn't really resonate with me either. And what I see is that respect, self-respect holds a firm and grounded place for me in my body when I think about it. So for you, I really encourage you to come up with your own definition of self-love. And maybe you don't even want self-love for yourself. Maybe you want self-respect, self-resonance, self-kindness, self-warmth. Maybe it's something entirely different. Another thing I want to share, this was a very powerful takeaway from the uh workshop that we had. And Judith actually taught about this when she was teaching. Her segment was called Self-Love for Realsies. And if you know Judith Guiton, the title fit perfectly with Judith. But she she used, as she was talking about the different types of love and the different definitions of love, she shared with us a Bible verse that many of us have heard. It's 1 Corinthians verses four through seven. And I'm going to read this Bible verse to you, and I'm going to tell you on the other side why, what, what was in this Bible verse that was so impactful to uh one of my one of my group, my cultivate group members. So the Bible verse is this love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it does, it is not proud, it does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. So that's the Bible verse. But what afterwards, one of my cultivate group members, she we were sharing about the what we took away from the workshop. And she said, the biggest thing for me, she said, I this verse, she said, this is a verse that hangs in my house. And she said, I heard something there that of course I had heard before, but I had not ever thought about it with myself and applying it to myself. And it's this love keeps no record of wrongs. She was like, Oh my gosh, how often do I keep record of my own wrongs? So, what she's working on right now is not keeping record of her wrongs, specifically as it relates really to anything, but especially with food. When she thinks that she has eaten something or, you know, eaten food in a way that doesn't feel good to her, she's really working on that, like no record of wrongs. She was like, wow, that has been there. This verse literally is on the wall of my house. And I had not seen that for myself. So I wanted to share that with you too, in case that is powerful to you. So then, if we go back to the question that I asked at the beginning of the episode, what do you think prevents you from loving yourself? I could love myself if. So I asked this question too, within the group of uh people that we were having this conversation with. And one of the people responded, I think many of us have an implicit belief that we don't matter, that our love, concern, and respect should be aimed outward and not inward. And I thought this was so powerful because it is true. Many of us believe we don't matter. So if I don't matter, then all of my attention and my love and my concern and respect and kindness and gentleness, it should go outwards. But here's the problem. Here's what I have found for myself. Anytime that I am putting judgment and shame and negative thoughts on myself, I am practicing those, I am practicing those thoughts and those feelings. And I am then practicing doing them towards other people as well. If I'm practicing being judgmental and harsh towards myself, I am more naturally going to be harsh and judgmental towards other people as well. So I truly believe that the way that we reflect and think about ourselves is reflected in the way that we respond to others. And I think we can see that in all of our relationships. I know for me, every single one of my relationships has gotten so much better. The more my relationship with myself has improved, the more I have been able to have more respect and love for myself no matter what, I have been able to reciprocate that in everyone else that I come across. So I think as far as what prevents most of us from loving ourselves, it's often three different things. It can be worth, I'm flawed, I'm broken, I'm not good enough. It's kind of like an underlying thing. But I want you to know, at least what I believe for myself is that all humans are worthy, no matter what. Every single one of us, no matter what, all humans crave love and belonging. Babies are born fully lovable, fully lovable. What makes you any less worthy of love? We are lovable no matter what. We crave love and belonging. Why do we withhold that from ourselves, expecting us to be perfect in some way, or even expecting other people to be perfect in some way? None of us are ever going to be perfect. So it's like, why withhold that love and that belonging from ourselves? Self-love, other people think weight. Some people really think that weight is a factor of their worthiness, or I could love myself if I was at a different weight. And if that is you, what I want to ask you is if you think you would love yourself if at a different weight, if you have been at a different weight, have you loved yourself there? What I find with so many people who truly just hold on to this belief. If I weighed something different, I could love myself. Most people really can reflect back on times when their body was a different size and can see, you know what, I didn't love myself then either. Maybe they had different feelings about themselves. Maybe it was easier for them to shop or easier for them to do certain things, but they didn't love themselves either. So you want to beware of hindsight bias. So for me, I've my weight personally has probably swung 50 pounds from my absolute lowest to my absolute, not even it has it has been at least 50 pounds from my absolute lowest to my absolute highest, which I know many people have had a bigger weight range than that. And other people have had a smaller weight range. But for me, my range is about 50, 55 pounds probably. Even at my smallest, which was I was a very underweight at the time, which I couldn't even see. But even then, I still thought it wasn't good enough. I still had a lot of judgment and internal criticism. So we have to be careful of the bias, the Hindsight bias. We think, oh yeah, when I was when I was thinner or when I was whatever size, I loved myself. Really get curious. Did you really? I didn't. And maybe you did, but be be really open to is that really true? For most people, it's not. The last category that I see that prevents a lot of people from loving themselves is well-being. So they think, well, I could love myself if I were healthy, if I was in less pain, if I had more energy. So they kind of almost sometimes people kind of um equate weight and well-being sometimes together. Well, if I lost weight, then I would feel better. I would, you know, my knees wouldn't hurt as much, or I would have more energy. So sometimes they kind of combine the two. But again, your worth, your love is not conditioned on anything. Self-love is not conditioned on what we have or we haven't done, how much we weigh, or the status of our health. A definition that I like of self-love is this self-love is having your own back no matter what. It's watching out for your own best interests, no matter what you do, what you weigh, or how physically or emotionally healthy you are. That is another definition of self-love. Self-love is not, we hear a lot, like self-love is, oh, it's it's bubble bass, it's getting a massage. It's like sometimes we kind of conflate the idea of self-love and self-care. But that's not really the case. It's not self-love isn't what happens when we're calm and collected. Self-love is what happens and how we respond to ourselves in our not calm and our not collected moments when we respond in ways that we would rather not. How do we respond to ourselves there? Self-love, what keeps most of us from true self-love, from practicing self-love or self-respect, self-regard, self-kindness, whatever you want to call it, what keeps most of us from it is literally a lack of knowledge. We might have um, we might have just have a harsh internal critic. We learned it elsewhere. Or that internal critic might be trying to protect us in some way. Or we may have just decided a long, long time ago that we don't matter. We may have received messages that we don't matter. We may have created conclusions that we don't matter, that we're not worthy, that we're not lovable. We may have been dismissed. There are a lot of reasons why we have the underlying beliefs about ourselves that we do. But this is a skill. It can be learned, it can be practiced, it can be developed. It is literally a decision. So if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I like, I don't know that I really practice that. You can. If you want to cultivate more self-love, more self-kindness, more self-respect, it is a choice. So my invitation to you is do you want to choose that for yourself? If the answer is yes, quite honestly, I can't even understand. I mean, I can understand, but I can't imagine anyone who at the their core would not want this for themselves. If you want this for yourself, my invitation to you is to craft your own definition. What does it mean to me? Write it down. Put it somewhere that you can see it. And then you will have so many opportunities to practice developing this skill. The best time I can think about is when you show up in ways you don't want to with food. Let's say you binge, let's say you eat a lot of food, let's say you do something you didn't want to do. This is when you practice self-kindness, self-respect, self-love. This is when you can practice it. So for you, decide is this something I want for myself? Why? If so, why? Know your reason. If you don't want it for yourself, know your reason and like your reason. Is this something I want for myself? Why or why not? If yes, what is my definition? What is my definition of self-love? You might go back and listen to previous other definitions and then just think about, huh? Okay, I like this part. Oh no, I like this part. You can look at the transcript and see, pull out different pieces of the definition for yourself. Write it down, commit to it, share it with a loved one. You know what? I'm gonna work on this. Would you like to help? How, you know, let's work on this together. Maybe invite someone else to create their own definition. You can share how you're practicing working on self-love. And if you want to share with me what your definition of self-love is, I would love to hear it. You can email it to me at hello at janepilger.com. That's what I have for you this week. I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to Binge Breakthrough. You can find the show notes and any resources mentioned at binge breakthrough.com. If you like this episode, subscribe to have future episodes delivered to you each Wednesday. And remember, your five star rating and review will help others discover these life-changing content. See you next week.