What If You Don’t Have to Love Yourself First? (Ep #31 Relationship Series)

What if loving yourself isn’t where you have to start?

We hear a lot about self-love and self-care, but having a supportive relationship with yourself is about more than loving every part of who you are or taking a day off for a little self-care.

In this episode, we’re exploring what it actually means when I say you are the foundation of every relationship in your life and what that looks like in real life.

We’ll talk about the difference between self-love, self-care, and actually caring for yourself, including the choices that don’t always feel comfortable: setting boundaries, asking for help, listening to your body, allowing yourself to have needs, telling yourself the truth, and making decisions that support the life you want to create.

We’ll also explore why caring about yourself doesn’t mean other people stop mattering, what can happen when the people around you have benefited from you putting their needs before your own, and how the relationship you build with yourself can influence every other relationship in your life.

And maybe self-love isn’t something you have to achieve before you can begin.

Maybe self-trust, self-respect, and even self-love grow through the way you learn to listen to yourself, support yourself, and show up for yourself over time.

✨This week’s practice ✨
When something comes up, pause and ask yourself:

What would supporting myself look like here?

Not what would keep everyone else happy.
Not necessarily what would make you feel better immediately.

What would actually support you?

Transcript

The Foundation Behind Every Relationship

Shannon 0:54

You're listening to the Peer Possibilities podcast, and I am your host, Shannon. If you've been listening to me for a while, and especially through the relationship series, you know that I have a very, very strong belief that you are the foundation of every relationship in your life. And I realize that it's important that I dive a little bit deeper into why I believe that. Because what does that actually mean? What does it mean to have a relationship with yourself? And maybe even more importantly, what does it mean to have a relationship with yourself that actually supports you? Because when we start talking about our relationship with ourselves, it usually doesn't take very long before we end up in a conversation about self-love. Love yourself, accept yourself, learn to love every single part of yourself. And recently I was listening to a conversation where someone was questioning the whole idea of self-love. I don't remember his exact words, so I'm not gonna try to quote him. But essentially he was asking, what does it even mean to love yourself? And I totally understood what he was getting at. I do believe that self-love is important, but what does loving yourself actually mean? Does it mean that you wake up every morning thinking, oh my gosh, I am amazing and the most incredible person in the world? Does it mean that you love your body every single day? Does it mean that you love every decision you've ever made, every reaction you've ever had, every habit you have, every version of yourself that you've ever been? Because if

What Self-Love Really Means

Shannon 2:36

that's the standard, then I wonder if we've accidentally turned self-love into another destination that we're trying to get to that is out of reach. Once I finally love myself enough, then I'll be able to have the relationship that I want, then I'll set the boundary, then I will truly trust myself, then I'll go after what I want, then I'll stop worrying about what everybody else thinks, then I'll finally feel good enough. But what if you don't have to love yourself first? And before I get into that, I think that there's another distinction that's really important here. We've got self-love, self-care, and then there's actually caring for yourself and having a relationship with yourself that supports you. And I don't necessarily think those are all the same thing. When we hear self-care, sometimes we immediately think about doing something nice for ourselves: taking a day off, getting a massage, going for that manny petty, going to the spa, taking a bath, a weekend getaway. And believe me, I am absolutely not against any of those things. I love to do things that feel good, but you can get a massage and still repeatedly say yes when you want to say no. You can take a self-care

Self-Care Versus Caring For Yourself

Shannon 3:58

day and spend the entire day feeling guilt and shame because you're not being productive or you're not there for everybody else. You can have a beautiful morning routine and still talk yourself out of something that you really want because somebody else might not approve. You can do all kinds of things that we label as self-care and still dismiss what your body is communicating, ignoring your needs, refusing to ask for help, or consistently making choices based on keeping everybody else comfortable. So, what if caring for yourself is something different? Maybe caring for yourself is having a conversation that you've been avoiding. It could be asking for help. Maybe it's saying no. Maybe it's allowing someone else to be disappointed. Maybe it's resting. Maybe it's taking action on something that you've been putting off because you know it's important to the life that you want to create for yourself. Maybe it's allowing yourself to receive, maybe it's telling yourself the truth. Many of these are super uncomfortable, but what if those are ways to care for yourself? It could be acknowledging that something isn't working anymore. Maybe it's allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable instead of immediately trying to make it go away. You allow yourself to feel through whatever it is that you're feeling. Maybe it's choosing what actually supports you and the life that you want to create. That's very different than doing something nice for yourself. That's a relationship. And it can be incredibly uncomfortable. So, what does a supportive relationship with yourself actually look like in real life? I think one way to really look at that and understand that is to think about what we want from healthy relationships with other people. We want to be listened to, we want our feelings to matter, we want to be able to tell the truth, we want our boundaries to be respected, we want to be allowed to have needs, we want to trust, we want to be able to make a mistake without having it held over our head for the rest of our lives to repair when something goes wrong. We want to feel like we matter in the relationship. Let's pause for a moment. What happens when you turn some of those healthy relationship, you could say requirements, or

Turning Healthy Relationship Needs Inward

Shannon 6:37

what happens for you if you take all of the beliefs that you have about a healthy relationship with other people and you turn some of that towards yourself? Do you listen to yourself? Do you care about how you feel? Do you respect your own boundaries? Do you allow yourself to have needs? Can you tell yourself the truth? Can you get radically honest with yourself? Do you trust yourself? Can you make a mistake without completely turning against yourself? Can you forgive yourself? Do you allow yourself to change your mind? Do you allow yourself to want what you want without guilt? Can you disappoint someone else without automatically deciding that you've done something wrong? Because all of that is your relationship with yourself. And this is where we get back to why I believe deep in my being that you are the foundation of every relationship in your life. You are the one person who is present for every single experience of your life. You're there for all of it. You're there when you fall in love. You're there when somebody hurts you. You're there when you have a decision to make. That's what I mean when I say you're the foundation. Your friendships include you, your intimate relationships include you, your relationship with your family, your relationship with money, with work, with your body, with joy, with uncertainty. Every single relationship we've explored throughout the series has one person in common. You. Not because everything revolves around you, but because you're present for all of it. There's another part to this that I feel is really important. When you start caring for yourself differently, sometimes other people don't particularly like it, especially if they have benefited from the way things were before. If you have always said yes and you start saying no, people may not like that. If you've always been available whenever somebody needs you and you start creating

Boundaries And Other People’s Discomfort

Shannon 11:26

space for yourself, somebody might feel a certain way about that. If you've always kept your opinion to yourself to avoid conflict, and then you start telling the truth about how you actually feel, it might make somebody uncomfortable. And that's where we start to second guess ourselves. We start to question ourselves. Am I being selfish? Am I only thinking about myself? Other people start to accuse you of being selfish and judging you. You start asking yourself, shouldn't I care about how this affects them? Yes, you can care. Again, having a supportive relationship with yourself doesn't mean screw everybody else and nobody else matters. But I feel like it's worth getting curious about when someone has a problem with you beginning to care about yourself, if you take a step back and you look at it from big picture, honestly. Was there a benefit that they were receiving when you didn't have a boundary? Was there a benefit for them when you always said yes? Was there a benefit when you didn't ask for what you needed? Did they benefit when you consistently prioritized their comfort over your own? And that doesn't automatically make the other person bad. They may simply be accustomed to that dynamic that the two of you always had, but their discomfort with something changing doesn't automatically mean that what you're doing is wrong, that what you're doing is selfish. Caring about yourself is not the same as only caring about yourself. There's a massive difference there. And sometimes caring for yourself means being willing to tolerate the fact that somebody else doesn't love the choice that you're making, that it might make them uncomfortable. Heck, it might even make you uncomfortable. But the last couple of weeks, we have spent time talking about not believing everything that we think. And I think that fits here too, but I don't want to spend a ton of time with it because we just spent a couple of weeks talking about it. But having a supportive relationship with yourself can be as simple as noticing an unsupportive thought and then deciding that you're not going to use it against yourself. The thought could be, I'm selfish for saying no. They're gonna judge me. Or you start shooting on yourself. I should be able to handle this, I shouldn't feel this way, I screwed this up. You notice it, and then what? That's where the relationship happens. Do I automatically believe it? Do I attack myself? Can I pause and get curious? Can I question whether it's actually true? What am I feeling? What do I need? What would

Not Believing Every Unsupportive Thought

Shannon 14:02

supporting myself in this moment look like? That's a very different question than how do I make myself feel better? Because supporting yourself doesn't always mean choosing what feels best in the moment. Because sometimes the most supportive choice is so incredibly uncomfortable. Sometimes it's rest, sometimes it's action, sometimes it's asking for help, sometimes it's doing it yourself. It could be saying no. It could be saying yes to something that scares the shit out of you because you know, you know you want it. Sometimes it's walking away. Sometimes it's staying and having the difficult conversation. There's absolutely no universal answer here. That's why the relationship matters. You have to actually listen to yourself, listen to what you want, listen to how you feel, and also care about it. So maybe this is where self-love comes back into the conversation. What if self-love isn't where you have to start? What if you start by building a relationship with yourself that actually supports you? You listen to yourself, you care about how you feel, you tell yourself the truth, you allow yourself to have needs, you ask for help, you allow yourself to receive, you forgive yourself when you screw something up because seriously, we all do. I could go down the perfectionism path again, but nobody's perfect. We all screw things up, we all make mistakes. You make a decision and learn that you can trust yourself to handle what happens next. You set the boundary, you allow yourself to want something, you begin making choices that support the life that you actually want to live. And you do it again and again and again. And what happens to a relationship when somebody consistently shows you that they're there for you? The trust grows. What happens when somebody listens to you, when they care about your experience, when they forgive you, when they tell you the truth, when they don't abandon you the second things get uncomfortable, the relationship changes. So what if that's true here too? What if through having those experiences with yourself, you begin to trust yourself? Maybe you begin to respect yourself differently, you start to understand yourself differently. Maybe you start to feel more connected to yourself. And maybe somewhere along the way, you realize that you do love yourself. Not because you finally achieved this magical destination of self-love, but because you've spent all of this time building and cultivating a relationship with yourself that actually feels loving. So this week's practice is going to be one question: What would supporting myself look like here? Use it in real life. When you're exhausted, when somebody's asking you for something, when you're making a decision, when you've been avoiding something, when you're upset, when you're excited about something, and immediately start talking yourself out of it. When you need help, when you want something, when somebody disagrees with you, pause. Notice what's happening in your mind with your thoughts and notice what's happening in your body and reconnect with yourself. I tend to reconnect with myself by putting my hand on my heart and ask, what would supporting myself look like here? And then decide how you want to respond. Not what would keep everyone else happy, not necessarily what would make you feel better immediately. What would actually support

One Question To Practice This Week

Shannon 17:40

you? Right. We're gonna pull from the magic of what if card deck volume two, do a little shuffle here. So I get to look out my window while I'm recording. I kind of love it. And I'm in a different cozy chair. All right, today's card pull. What if I love knowing anything is possible? I do love knowing that anything is possible. We're the ones that put the limits on ourselves. When we can allow ourselves to be open, that anything is possible, just like cultivating a relationship with yourself and deepening that relationship with yourself. It is absolutely possible when you intend

Card Pull And A New Frame

Shannon 18:36

to do it. You create space for it, you notice, you pay attention, and deepening that relationship with yourself will be reflective in all of the relationships in your life. So maybe the question isn't, do I love myself enough? What if it's what kind of relationship am I building with myself? Because you're already in that relationship. You've been in that relationship your entire life. You're in it every single day, every moment of every day, with every decision you make, with every thought you have, with every action you take or don't take. You're present for every experience of your life. And every relationship in your life includes you. That's why you're the foundation. You don't have to wait until you love every single thing about yourself. You can start by caring for yourself. You can start by listening. You can start by treating yourself like your lived experience matters just as much as everyone else's. You can start by making choices that support the life that you want to live. And maybe self-love isn't the prerequisite for doing those things. What if self-love is something that grows because you're doing all of these things to reconnect with yourself and care for yourself? Have a beautiful, beautiful day and an amazing week. Much love.