Recently you may have noticed that I have been writing alot about Self-love.
So you may be wondering why the heck does Emma-Jane keep going on about Self-Love?
Well my friend it’s like this.
In the past year or so we have all been on anxiety mode. We are all suffering some forms of COVID ptsd. And as we know being on permenant anxiety and survival mode puts alot of pressure on our mental health.
And that leads to stress, overwhelm and burn out.
And where does burn out lead?
Well many places, however one of the most common is to self-doubt and insecurites. And when we feel that what do we do? We try harder, we overdeliver, over work, over parent and in turn that worsens our stress, burnout etc. And trust me, when that pattern gets repeated again and again it leads you to a dark place.
Now I am not saying Self-Love is the fix for all of this. Some down time and rest is definately neccisary.
However, the mental health benefits of developing a loving positive relationship with yourself are epic and life changing to boot.
That’s why practicing Self-love and dedicating time to cultivating a relationship with yourself is soo important this year more than ever before.
We need self-love to heal ourselves, to strengthen our mental health.
It really is that simple
“But the world is going back to normal why do I need to bother about my mental health now!”
A friend said to me last week. And on paper yes she is probably right. However, we humans are funny things. We often tend to cope with stresses like Covid by pushing everthing emotional down and get on with coping and surviving. Which basically represses our emotions. The more you repress how you feel, the greater the inner conflict will be.
In essence if you ignore your mental health healing now, at some point your brain will have had enough and it won’t be able to take anymore.
We all know that after a major disaster we need time to heal, break ups, divorce, Sunamis you name it. Covid is just the same. Everything you knew went topsy turvy, some of us have lost loved ones, jobs, homes. For the past 18 months nothing has been secure.
So if you are feeling emtionally wobbly right now and insecure. It’s ok. I wouldn’t expect you to get over a divorce in a day, Covid is just the same.
Back to self-love…..
Self-love is the foundation of self-worth and trust. We have had alot of changes in the past 18 months. What we need right now is something, someone we can rely on. Someone we can trust. And that my friend is where self-love practices can help as by practicing self-love you learn to trust yourself and become stronger once more.
Now I know that for some the concept of self-love creates images of tree-hugging hippies or cheesy self-help books. But, as many psychology studies show, self-love is key for mental health and keeping depression and anxiety at bay.
And I don’t know about you but that is something I need right now.
Practicing, strengthening your self-love will allow you to:
- Listen to yourself
- Move away from perfectionism
- Forgive yourself
- Accept yourself
- Trust yourself
It isn’t going to happen overnight. Self-love is an art form. It takes training just like anything else. I am investing the whole of this summer into a self-love healing journey. And honestly it’s the best gift I have ever given myself.
I know after all these months of lock down you cannot wait to get out, to travel, to see loved ones again. But I cannot stress this enough, that after this past 18 months it is SOOO important that you also invest in yourself and loving yourself this summer.
Your future you is grateful for it
needing inspiration to start your self-love journey?
check out my self-love workbook
I have been working on my self-love journey for a long time and I have gathered some of my favourite tools into this downloadable e-workbook so you can start to really begin to train your self-love muscles and fly!
