“Dear therapist in my pocket, please can you answer me something? How can I love myself?”

Have you ever asked that question, How do I love myself? Either out loud, or silently, right in the secret depths where only you go?

It’s a painful question, isn’t it? We only ask it when we’re in a place of despair or self-loathing. It’s not something we even think about unless the weight of unworthiness is pressing heavily on us.

This same message pinged up on my computer screen the other morning as I sat sipping my morning cuppa, thinking about where to start on the various writing tasks I had to do that day.

Its earnestness captured my full attention. It was a question I must have been asked more times than any other over the 30 or so years I’ve been a psychotherapist. And it’s a question I’ve asked myself in the past, too.

Like I said, that question always comes from the most awful place of pain and despair. It isn’t simply that the one asking the question wants a few tips and pointers; it’s way bigger and deeper than that. This person feels so unloveable, so unworthy of love, that they don’t know where to begin.

And over the years, my way of helping has changed. In recent times, as a psychotherapist who is now also a spiritually awakening woman, what I try to offer varies enormously depending on the client, and what they’re looking for. This particular message came from someone who, like me and like many of us, was on a spiritual journey. And so they were looking, at least partly, for a bigger answer.

I wanted to share my response with you, because we’ve all known this place. Every single one of us. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be human. And of course, being fully human is precisely why we chose to incarnate here in this time/space reality for a while.

We came to experience all the contrast that a divine being of light and love can experience when they allow themselves to undergo amnesia and temporarily forget who they really are. And so, feeling unloveable and unworthy is part of that. But we’re always on our path, and nothing is ever going wrong here. These are the feelings we came to experience—and to find our way through.

How else do we, the powerful creators and co-creators, find our way back to compassion and unconditional love, if not by willingly tasting what it is to experience the lack of them?

So what you’ll hear me say in this podcast is my way of answering this question, from my own current perspective of someone who is similarly finding her way back.

I hope it speaks to you, as its inherent message spoke to me a few years back as I began to remember who I really am. Who we all really are. And I hope that, whether you are in this place now, or have been there once as I have, it will reach out and trigger a deep remembering all over again.

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Relephant Read:

Dear Child of the Universe: An Open Letter to Anyone who has Forgotten how to Love Themselves.

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Author: Janny Juddly

Editor: Toby Israel

Photo: Bill Strain/Flickr

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