Self love and the inner critic
14th February has for centuries been associated with love. There are a number of martyrdom stories associated with various Saint Valentines, connected to February 14, including an account of the imprisonment of Saint Valentine of Rome for ministering to Christians persecuted under the Roman Empire in the third century. According to an early tradition, Saint Valentine restored sight to the blind daughter of his jailer. Numerous later additions to the legend have better related it to the theme of love.
Tradition maintains that Saint Valentine performed weddings for Christian soldiers who were forbidden to marry by the Roman emperor. An 18th-century embellishment to the legend claims he wrote the jailer’s daughter a letter signed “Your Valentine” as a farewell before his execution.
Valentine’s Day didn’t become associated with romance until the 14th century. The first recorded Valentine’s Day letter was written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans. The practice of exchanging love letters on Valentine’s Day continues today. It has developed to exchanging gifts, romantic dates, love overtures and quite a number of naming ceremonies in November (nine months later). People tend to express love to others much more than they love themselves. Have you considered loving yourself, doing something special for yourself?
The need for self-love cannot be overemphasised. It is a determinant factor in our day to day life. However, we cannot talk about self love without recognising the role our inner critic play. Self-love is the foundation of a happy, healthy, and fulfilling life. Self-love involves accepting and embracing our strengths, weaknesses, and uniqueness, treating ourself with kindness, understanding, and patience, understanding our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and nourishing our physical, emotional, and mental well-being.
Inner critic on the other hand, is that voice in our heads that can be both motivating and debilitating. The inner critic is the part of our psyche that judges, evaluates, and critiques our thoughts, feelings, and actions. It’s the internalised voice of our parents, partners, caregivers, and societal expectations, built over the years. While the inner critic can serve as a helpful guide, encouraging us to strive for excellence and improve ourselves, it can also be overly harsh and critical. This can lead to self-doubt and low self-esteem, anxiety and stress, fear of failure and perfectionism, procrastination and creative blocks, difficulty receiving feedback or criticism from others.
Permit me to say it is difficult in this clime, for women to give self love. Women concentrate more on giving love and caring for others, without thinking about themselves. Women get lost in their day to day activities, that the forget to give attention to themselves. They want to be perfect, satisfy the world. Listen more to people’s criticism about them which begins to manifest negativity or positively over the years.
Self love takes very importance place in our lives. The ability to recognise it will make us better people. Self-love makes us believe more on ourselves, increase our confidence and abilities. It improves mental health, by reducing anxiety, depression, and stress. It makes you believe in yourself. Attracting healthy, positive relationships, coping with challenges and setbacks, it gives greater happiness, helps you enjoy life and find joy in everyday moments when you have self love.
According to Lucille Ball, “Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” As Alison Rachel Stewart, will put it, “even if you don’t feel particularly powerful, think about how far you’ve come, how you’ve survived. You’re here, right now, alive and powerful beyond your knowledge. And be patient with yourself.”
She also shared that, “last year was a difficult one for me. I was really struggling with my mental health and was suffering from depression and anxiety. Looking around at other beautiful, successful women, I wondered: How do they do it? How do they manage to feel so good? I wanted to find out, and I wanted to share with other women who, like me, wanted to feel happy, wanted to feel well. Tapping into my creative energy, I set out to compile a resource anyone could use. I asked women I knew: What are your mantras and habits of self-care?”
She went ahead to give 13 recipes for self-love. Stop comparing yourself to others, don’t worry about others’ opinions, allow yourself to make mistakes, remember your value doesn’t lie in how your body looks, don’t be afraid to let go of toxic people, process your fears, Trust yourself to make good decisions for yourself, take every opportunity life presents or create your own, put yourself first, feel pain and joy as fully as you can, allow yourself to feel things fully (learn into pain, revel in your joy, and don’t put limitations on your feelings. Like fear, pain and joy are emotions that will help you understand yourself and ultimately realize that you are not your feelings), exercise boldness in public, see beauty in the simple things and be kind to yourself.
It can and will definitely take time to get used to these recipes but they are essential to one’s growth and development. Women are built with diverse talents that are untapped because they put others before themselves, they sacrifice for their partners and families, they take the last seat. On the long run, it makes them loss their inner beauty and ability to make a difference, ability to be better people, ability to write their names on the sands of time. Rather give room to inferiority complex and in their secret place, in the dead of the night, when the inner critic takes center stage and they listen to it, it makes them feel lesser. Thoughts like you are not smart enough, you are not fast enough, you are not strong enough, you are not good enough, takes over and begin to manifest.
Remember, your inner critic is not the ultimate authority on your worth or abilities. You need to acknowledge and manage its influence, by developing a more balanced and supportive relationship with yourself. Let go of self-criticism and release negative self-talk and self-judgment, accept you are vulnerable and allow yourself to be open and honest, forgive, heal all wounds, trauma and pains, get to understand yourself more and surround yourself with positive, supportive people. Take care of yourself, have fun, concentrate on yourself once a while. You do not owe anyone an apology. A refreshed you, is more productive than a tired you.
As they say, “the real difficulty in self love is combating the inner critic who goes against our own wishes by challenging our own beliefs. You know you are worthy of love, but the critic keeps reminding you of the past pain that you can’t let go of.” Let me end with Dr. Maya Angelou, “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” Happy Valentine’s Day celebration.
