One of the best ways I can define emotional health is that it’s an act of self love. Health is self love in action.
If you look at an arrogant person, they usually say they love themselves a lot, but that’s actually a front for the insecurity they have, and the void of self love they truly have inside. And if you look at a depressed person, they often don’t grab hold of life or move forward, because they don’t love themselves fully. Depressed people have low self worth and don’t feel deserving.
But when we can love ourselves fully, our behaviors stay on the healthiest course possible. When we fully accept and love ourselves, we care enough about ourselves to do well, eat well, exercise, learn, give, and everything that follows.
Self Love and Responding to Our Health
We can luck into health if we happen to be in an amazing environment to be emotionally healthy, and if we happen to not get injured or develop health issues. But usually luck with health only goes so far, and most of us only respond to challenges to our health when we can love ourselves.
If we don’t care for ourselves enough, then we don’t respond to our own needs and pains with help and kindness. We neglect ourselves and put other people’s health before our own.
If we love ourselves, we do care about our own health. That might mean going to the doctor, or a therapist, or reading this article like you are right now, or finding yourself, or asking friends for help.
Addiction, Emotional Pain, and Self Love
It’s so common in addiction to allow emotional pain to continue because you feel like you’re a bad person, or undeserving. And if you’ve dragged out your addiction, it also hurts other people which makes you feel even less deserving. Letting ourselves slowly go with poor health is a passive form of self harm, which is certainly not self love.
What Is Self Love?
True love is acceptance as one is. We usually think about this for other people, but here we’re talking about true love for yourself, a self love. If you love and accept yourself truly, you’ll shed away anything unhealthy, because the loving part of you won’t stand to let unhealthy things happen.
We all deserve peace, love and acceptance no matter what. Feel free to doubt your behavior or choices, but don’t doubt yourself in your existence or that you deserve peace. Treat yourself like you would want to treat a child. If a child does something wrong, you would want to recognize it to try to either discipline them or help them, but that doesn’t mean you stop loving them.
You might get very frustrated with the child, but you’d be silly to tell them you don’t love them anymore for it. A parent might even kick their own child out of the house if it comes to that, but that still doesn’t mean their love changes. In fact, when we love a child fully we actually see that we need to do the tough things, and follow through on discipline, or let them know when they’re out of line.
Tough Love
“Tough love” is where the toughness is coming out of love and wanting to help, not from a place of hate. We can do all this with ourselves. Love yourself while you also call out what’s wrong. Don’t wait until you’re done fixing everything wrong about you, in order to love yourself. That day will never come!
I’ve never met someone even remotely approaching perfection, which is only an imagined concept anyway. I would never wait until close people in my life are more perfect in order to love them. We also shouldn’t do this with ourselves either. Approach yourself with respect and kindness, and the unhealthy part of you will respond much more.
A Daily Practice of Self Love
Recovery is about showing up for yourself consistently, even when it feels challenging. When you practice self love, you choose your health and well-being in real, practical ways. I developed the Self Recovery program to help you turn those small, intentional choices into daily practices that support lasting change.
Right now, if you’re struggling with addiction, many of your choices happen on autopilot, and some of them may be harmful. Recovery means practicing new skills often enough that healthier responses start to feel natural. That takes focus, effort, and consistency. I can guide you and share the tools, but the change comes from the work you put in. When you commit to that process, improvement follows. That ability to change is what’s truly remarkable, not movie-style magic, but real human growth.
