Why Can’t I Love Myself the Way I Love Others? + FREE Uncovering My Barriers Worksheet

Think about someone you really love—maybe it’s your partner, your mom, or your best friend. Take a moment to truly feel the love that you have for them—that deep “I’d do anything for you” kind of love.

Does your loved one have flaws? Of course!

Do they make mistakes? Yes, just like everyone else.

And do they drive you crazy sometimes? Heck, yeah!

But you still love them, right?

So here’s what you might be wondering: “Why can’t I love myself in that same way?”

If you feel silly or ridiculous asking yourself this question, don’t. Lots of people wonder why they don’t love themselves the way they love other people in their life. In fact, it’s a question my clients grapple with all the time.

That’s why I want to tackle it in this fourth and final post in my “Why can’t I” blog post series. Specifically, I want to dig deep and uncover the barriers that stand in your way of truly loving yourself unconditionally.

So if you’ve been wondering lately “Why can’t I love myself the way I love others?”, this post is for you!

Let’s dive in!

What Is Self-Love All About?

A lot of people struggle with practicing self-love. But as a concept, it’s pretty simple. When it comes down to it, self-love means loving yourself the way that you love someone in your life whom you really care about.

Now before we go any further, I want to clear up a misconception: Some people think that self-love is about being self-absorbed or self-centered. In other words, people believe that self-love means focusing only on yourself or thinking that you’re better than everyone else around you.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m not talking about people who are inconsiderate or thoughtless. I know that’s not the kind of person you are. Because if you were, you wouldn’t be reading this blog post!

Instead, when I talk about practicing self-love, I’m talking about caring for yourself the way that you care about the most important people in your life. This includes praising yourself for your successes, extending compassion toward yourself during tough times, and making time to nurture your relationship with yourself.

Now, you might be thinking, “I already have so many people in my life whom I really love. Isn’t that enough? Does it really matter whether I express love toward myself too?”

YES! It does matter.

Why?

Because if you don’t truly love yourself, it’s hard to love other people. Really knowing and understanding love starts with loving the most important person in your life: YOU. So if it really is important to you to love your partner, kids, sister, or friend, you’ve got to start right at home by loving yourself first.

The tricky thing is that many of us don’t love ourselves the way that we love people who really matter to us. We love our partner despite their flaws. We tell our friend how awesome she is even when she fails at something important. And we keep loving our mom even though she drives us crazy from time to time. But we don’t extend this same kind of unconditional love toward ourselves.

Why is that?

Because there are barriers standing in our way.

Here are the most common barriers that might be stopping you from loving yourself the way you love others:

You Never Learned About Self-Love

Just like you can’t ride a bike well if you’ve never done it before, you can’t love yourself fully if you’ve never done it before. And unfortunately, most of us aren’t taught about self-love while we’re growing up.

When you were a kid, you probably learned a lot about loving other people. Your parents probably encouraged you to be nice to your sibling. You probably watched TV shows that emphasized the importance of sharing. And at school, you may have made cards or homemade gifts for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

But now think about what you were taught about self-love—it was probably next to nothing, right? That’s why now as an adult, you might not know how to truly love yourself. You might not be your own best cheerleader when you apply for a promotion at work. You don’t write yourself love notes the way you do when you pack lunches for your kids. And you don’t make time to just be there for yourself when you’ve had a tough day.

It’s not your fault that you didn’t learn about self-love as a kid. After all, when you were young, you didn’t have much control over the kinds of lessons you learned at home, at school, and on TV.

But now that you’re an adult, you can change this. You have all the power you need to learn about self-love and make it one of your best habits.

You Think It’s Selfish to Love Yourself

It’s great to learn about and understand self-love. But I know all too well from working with my clients that even if you know what self-love is, you might still have a hard time practicing it.

Why?

Because you might think that it’s selfish to love yourself.

For example, you might think that it’s selfish to take time out for self-care when you could be spending time with your kids. Or you might believe that you should agree to attend your family’s reunion, even though you were looking forward to going on vacation with your partner that same weekend.

Especially if you like to please the people in your life, you might be worried that it’s selfish to choose what you want or what matters to you if it conflicts with what someone else wants or seems to need. So even when there’s something you really want to do for yourself, you might decide not to because you’re worried that it’ll seem insensitive or even lead to rejection or conflict.

The problem is that if you keep pushing your own needs and desires to the back burner, you’ll only become increasingly resentful and unhappy. And if you’re unhappy and resentful, it won’t just affect your ability to love yourself. It’ll also limit the emotional energy you have to love the people who matter to you. (Not convinced? Check out the video I made about how people pleasing actually hurts you and your relationships in the long run.)

Now, many of my clients say things like, “Oh, but it genuinely makes me happy to take care of my family!”

I’m not saying that this can’t be true for you. But it’s important to understand if it actually is. So find a moment to sit with yourself, take a few deep breaths, and ask yourself these questions:

• How happy am I really within myself?
• How happy am I really with the things that I do for myself?
• Am I putting any of my needs or desires on the back burner? If so, how do I feel about it?

If routinely pouring your energy into taking care of others truly makes you happy and doesn’t conflict with your ability to fulfill your own desires, great! But if it doesn’t, know that it’s NOT selfish to love yourself by prioritizing your needs and making time for YOU.

You’re Unable to Accept Love from Yourself

It’s also possible that you struggle with self-love because you don’t think that you’re worthy of love.

For example, maybe you have a hard time loving yourself because you dislike the way your body looks and think you aren’t attractive enough. Or maybe you struggle to love yourself because you think you aren’t as smart or successful as you should be.

Your negative beliefs about your self-worth might be rooted in the negative comments that parents, other family members, or even peers made about you while you were growing up. Or they might stem from a more recent experience you had in adulthood.

We love the people we love because we see positive traits or qualities in them. So if you’re constantly putting yourself down in any way and for any reason, it’s going to be hard to truly love yourself.

You Believe That Love Comes Only from Others

Lastly, you might have a hard time loving yourself if you believe that love can come only from other people. That is, if you think that love comes only from your partner, from your family, or from your friends, you might not even consider loving yourself.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Being loved by other people is fantastic—it feels great and it lifts us up through the highs and lows of life.

But you don’t want to look for love only outside of yourself. Because when you do, you ignore what can be the strongest and most reliable source of love—YOU!

After all, the relationship that you have with yourself is the longest relationship that you’ll ever have. Whereas other people may enter or exit your life, you’ll always have yourself. And unlike in every other relationship, you have 100% control of the love that you can express toward yourself.

Why miss out on that? Why rely on other people to be your knight in shining armor when you can be your own?

Plus, remember what I said earlier: to truly give and receive love from others, you need to love yourself first. So if you’re only ever looking outward for love, you’ll hold yourself back from truly loving and being loved by others too.

Uncover Your Roadblocks to Self-Love

It feels easy—even natural—to love your partner, kids, and close friends.

So why is it so difficult to do the same for the most important person in your life—YOU?

It’s not because self-love is silly, impossibly difficult, or reserved only for celebrities who have tons of time and money on their hands.

Instead, as I’ve explained above, we often have trouble loving ourselves because we have mental roadblocks that get in the way of self-love.

Maybe we think that loving ourselves is selfish or unnecessary. Or maybe we never learned about self-love or why we’re worthy of it.

Whatever your barriers to self-love are, there’s no need to feel embarrassed about them. After all, most of us struggle with self-love at one point or another in our lives.

But it is important to know what your barriers are so that you can understand them and, ultimately, break through them.

To help you get started, I’ve created a FREE Uncovering My Barriers worksheet.

It’ll help you identify your barriers to self-love so that you can finally experience love from within.

And if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and master classes.

See you again soon!

Vera

P.S. Once you’ve identified why you’ve been struggling to love yourself, it’s time to learn how to practice self-love. Check out the video I made on love and self-love for some simple strategies that you can incorporate into your everyday life.

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