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 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 wanna 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.
That’s what “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’m not gonna 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.
Giving as an Act of Self Love
What if I told you there was a medication that could give you purpose, meaning, self worth, and help create connections? The act of giving is the closest thing we have to that magic pill!
We like to believe that just giving itself is what helps us, but in reality it helps us through so many mechanisms. Giving gives us purpose and meaning by reminding us that our acts are noticed, appreciated, and matter to the world. It helps create connections by forming bonds with the people you help, and also with the other people that are giving with you, that probably share the same values.
It’s a way of connecting in the world in the best way possible, which is to make the world around us better than we found it. It also confirms self worth, by proving to ourselves that we have something to offer the world. It also reminds us that no matter how hurt or ill we are, we always have something we can give that other people don’t have.
Giving, Connection, and Shared Humanity
We see with our own eyes that we’re not alone in suffering, and that suffering is common to humanity in some way or another. As we get closer to people who need our help, we often begin to see bonds and similarities that we may not have seen before.
A middle class person can learn from someone in greater need, how easily they went from a secure place with a job and family, to nothing after a divorce and then a flood. I remember being humbled by a homeless guy I worked with who’d been a big time executive just years before. Those are all things we get back in the act of giving, and you can see that when all those are happening at the same time, you can’t help but feel better.
True Giving vs. Trade
Giving is not when we do something in exchange for something else. That’s called trade or barter. If you give so that you can deduct it from taxes, or so you can impress someone, that’s still a great choice and very kind, but it’s not the kind of giving I’m talking about.
The type of giving we’re talking about here is the act of giving some thing, or time, or expertise, or support… only for the purpose of giving. What is okay is if you’re giving to feel better. This gets into a philosophical debate around altruism which we won’t get into.
But I believe giving so that you can feel better about yourself is a wonderful effort. And studies do support that giving is one of the healthiest things we can do. People who give are always healthier than those who don’t.
Unfortunately so much of Western culture is about building wealth and protecting our own things, which can be just the opposite of what’s emotionally healthy. One of the greatest things you can give that really tests your willingness to give, is love. We can give love out to whoever we choose. And when we love someone truly, we don’t expect them to do anything back. We love because we just want to give our love to that person, it’s not conditional on whether or not they return a favor.
Giving Without Expectation
If you’re ever giving, and it feels like a chore, know that it only comes when you’re expecting something from it… maybe expecting that they’ll notice how nice we are, or hoping to impress a friend when you tell them about it.
A true act of giving can’t be a chore, because there’s no purpose to begin with! We may think we’re doing dishes for a partner just because we want to be nice and give. But how often do we get upset if we’re not told thanks, or they don’t do something nice in return, or accept an apology after we do the dishes?
If you get upset, what that shows is you weren’t really doing it just to give, but actually as a form of work in hopes of a return. That’s an expectation of trade, not giving. If it feels like a chore, ask yourself what you may secretly be hoping to get from it, and then you could try the giving again without that expectation, or try giving something else where you actually won’t want anything in return.
Giving is something you can do in small and quick ways. Don’t wait until you have a huge amount of free time or money to give away. Start thinking about tiny acts that you can do with just a minute of your time, and you’ll start to notice how easy it can be.
A Daily Practice of Giving and Self Love
Every day this week, think of one very small thing you are going to do to give: tell someone how special they are, show your love for someone, or how you appreciate them, or buy a cup of coffee for the person behind you, or make the bed or do the dishes or a chore you normally don’t do, or hold the door if you don’t normally.
These small, daily acts of giving are simple ways to practice self love in action. When we give without expectation, we strengthen our sense of purpose, connection, and self-worth, and those are essential parts of emotional health.
At Self Recovery, this same principle is at the core of the program: learning to care for yourself with honesty, compassion, and responsibility, one day at a time. And it starts with one small step today.
