- What is self love?
- How are love and self-love related?
- What does self-love mean for the relationship?
- How do I get self-love?
- How do you learn to love yourself?
- Self-love, love and couples therapy
- Relationships, relationships and couples therapy
- Attachment, abandonment and couples therapy
- Mirroring, affect regulation, mentalization and couple therapy
- Loneliness, self-sufficiency, isolation and couples therapy
Self-love, couples therapy and psychotherapy
It’s so easy to say!
We have heard it from children’s feet, but it is so difficult in practice.
Love yourself!
You have to love yourself before you can love others!
You can’t love your partner if you don’t love yourself!
Why is it so hard to love yourself?
Love yourself! No one can disagree with that motto, but it is easier said than done. It was also well-intentioned by those who said it. For many, however, it ends up being a self-absorbing curse in the form of ammunition for the inner critical parent in the form of negative self-talk – with protection from phrases such as ‘you are the smith of your own luck’, ‘it is your own responsibility’, ‘you just get your act together, grow up quickly and manage yourself’, ‘you just have to learn to love yourself a little more’, ‘you have to love yourself if you want to find love and a partner’.
Many thus end up with a degree of abandonment, self-blame, over-responsibility, self-sufficiency, isolation, self-abandonment, shame and grief. Themes that are also taken into the relationship, adult family, adult life and career. Either through the usual dynamics or by e.g. projecting the feelings, needs and problems onto the partner, family, friends, colleagues and boss. Not everyone immediately feels it themselves, but most know it anyway as a lack of authentic contact or a lack of closeness, intimacy and love in the relationship as well as an inappropriate dialogue and contact with themselves. Either because they feel that they are not really able to, to open up and to accept what they want deep down when it finally comes. Or because they think that the lover, partner, spouse, friend and colleague are not capable of it. In this way, self-love, as a theme, enters both coaching, psychotherapy, couple therapy, imago therapy and family therapy. For some, it also affects sexuality and sex life.
These are thus some of the general or underlying themes that Parterapi-parterapeut.dk in Copenhagen has worked with for many years and specialized in. Below you can read more about what, why and how. On the website for Parterapi-parterapeut.dk in Copenhagen, you can also read more about couple therapy, the concept of couple therapy, tests and various offers for psychotherapy.
Self-love, growing up and couples therapy
If you haven’t really seen the light in your parents’ eyes and if you haven’t really felt loved unconditionally in the way you needed it, then it’s very difficult to love yourself. In this way, self-love becomes an endless project with shame, abandonment and deep sorrow as a result.
It really doesn’t take that much for things to go wrong and for us to end up with a deep underlying longing, abandonment and sadness. Most of them had a good childhood and a good environment, but perhaps the parents could not really be present or they themselves had not received enough unconditional love – saw the light in their own parents’ eyes and learned to love themselves. In this way, it is difficult to pass it on to your own children, which you did not have yourself as a child. Many relationships and homes are thus in reality more or less dysfunctional. Not that it should be a reproach. Although we as partners and parents do our best, we may only get it right half the time (cf. the book What is parenthood). It is clear that it does not make our start in life easier if there were, for example, hypochondria, illness, psychological problems, over-involvement, neglect, abuse, abuse or alcohol problems in the relationship and the family. It is therefore not without reason that, for example, you make heartbreaking TV shows such as DR’s ‘Aldrig for sent’, about ordinary people’s problems around relationships, love and self-love. At the same time as it is known that approx. one in five Danes has lost contact with one or more family members.
Many with such a background find it difficult to love themselves and end up with abandonment and isolation, guilt and shame, self-loss and grief, over-involvement and co-dependence. Some also call it inner-child problems, antenna children and adult-child-of-alcoholics. Common is the feeling of abandonment and shame, as well as the fact that they find it difficult to love themselves or find it easier to love others than themselves – codependency, relationship dependency and relationship dependency. To get out of this dynamic and co-dependency, you need to get help from outside in the form of professional psychotherapy, couple therapy, imago therapy and/or family therapy. Because the problem and the dynamic is precisely the urge to repeat and the compulsion to repeat, which makes you unproven and constantly tend to look back to dysfunctional relationships or to look for others – for what you lacked and which they still cannot give you. Parterapi-parterapeut.dk in Copenhagen has over 10 years of expertise in addiction, co-dependency and adult-child-problems as well as 20 years of experience in relationship work.
Self-love is not the starting point but the result of couples therapy
We are born in connectedness,
we suffer in separation,
and we develop in mutuality
Schibbye
As humans, we are interdependent. Our true self incl. brain, body and emotions are regulated in interaction with our carers and other people – for example via affect regulation and mentalisation. We become, thrive and develop through contact and relationships. We are not biologically coded to be alone. We are attachment-based creatures who learn about secure attachment through appropriate movement in and out of healthy contact. Love and healing thus do not start in isolation and vacuum, but in contact, attachment, relationship, presence, interaction and mirroring. We cannot find and define ourselves in isolation. If we try, we will only isolate ourselves further and create an even bigger vacuum. It is not without reason that psychological problems such as stress, anxiety and depression are increasing in a society where, for example, doing, production and results are at the fore while being, relationships and process slide into the background. At the same time, there is a natural and increasing need for psychotherapy, couples therapy, imagotherapy and family therapy. Thus, it is not a shame to have a problem, it is a shame not to do something about it.
The journey home with psychotherapy, couples therapy and imagotherapy
Due to the nature of the problem, there is unfortunately no quick fix, 30 day psychotherapeutic / couples therapy program or 10 simple steps to self-love, love and the happy relationship, marriage and family. If no one has really loved you (and/or your partner), you basically haven’t learned to love yourself. In this way, most people have not been able to integrate and create a healthy balance between their inner child (true self), caring parents and critical parents – cf. the transactional analysis. It creates both a psychological imbalance and an unconstructive inner dialogue that both unfolds and can be cured in the relationship itself in psychotherapy, couple therapy, imago therapy and family therapy. You cannot do this alone, because we learn to connect with others before we connect with ourselves. Because how are we supposed to know that we are wonderful and loved – we only know that when, as children, we see the wonderful and the love in our parents’ eyes or when, as adults, we are at least seen, heard, taken seriously and recognized through psychotherapy, couple therapy, imago therapy or family therapy.
So it does not have to be only the parents who initiate this development support – or later healing. In principle, it can also be another carer – or a psychotherapist, couples therapist, imagotherapist or family therapist. In any case, it is difficult to teach yourself if you have never really experienced it and live in a vacuum, in conditional relationships or a dysfunctional relationship.
Love and self-love start in the relationship – a relationship without psychological or emotional counterclaims. Self-love is thus not the starting point, but the result of the process, the relationship and of having been loved – or of having been seen with wide and appreciative eyes by a psychotherapist, couples therapist, imagotherapist or family therapist.
We also cannot love ourselves and be in complete control of our emotions, before and in order for us to be in a relationship or couple – it is the other way around. So don’t hold back and don’t hold back from getting into a relationship. You find yourself, learn about, develop and change through looking into the eyes of another person whom you love and who loves you. The key to healing, health and well-being is contact, attachment, interaction and integration. So be open to love, to let love in and to be loved.
If you are ready and interested in better understanding this inner and shared dynamic, imagotherapy is a special form of psychotherapy and couple therapy, where you can participate alone or with your partner. Image therapy not only provides insight and self-insight. Image therapy is also healing at the same time as it helps you open up and come home to yourself and your true self – the journey home, as John Bradshaw also calls it.
Psychotherapy, couples therapy and other tips for love and self-love
At first, don’t immediately worry about over-involvement, co-dependency, relationship dependency or relationship dependency – we all need to be loved and to love. And as a psychotherapist specializing in couple therapy, I have never heard of anyone who has received too much love. So start by loving and letting love into you, the relationship and sexuality. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for recognition and support from your partner. You don’t have to be alone, hold back your feelings, or suppress your need for love. Instead, express your feelings and needs and let your partner take responsibility for setting his own limits.
No one is built for solitude and it goes much better with support and support. If you don’t currently have a partner and boyfriend, use the phone, the network and friends. Or ultimately nature or a pet. Pets have feelings too. They bond with people, just as we bond with them. Pets are therefore also an option, but not a substitute. If you don’t feel like you have any at all, visualize those you have loved and those who have loved you.
But if you are first starved of love and trapped in abandonment, self-sufficiency and isolation, then it is hard and not easy. Accept it and start small. Take one thing and one day at a time. Progress, not perfection! It can be really difficult. But try initially with a few kind or appreciative words to yourself or positive self-talk and affirmations. At least try to be less harsh and critical of yourself. Next, try a little acceptance, well-being and self-care. Allow yourself to make mistakes and allow yourself to listen to yourself and your needs. Do something nice for yourself, just once in a while. Maybe even allow yourself to indulge a little. Try, for example, silence, relaxation and meditation, so that you have greater contact with your inner self, your true self or inner child. In addition, seek additional support via psychotherapy, couples therapy, imagotherapy and family therapy.
By Parterapi-parterapeut.dk
In every crisis there is an opportunity and a learning.
Parterapi-parterapeut.dk in Copenhagen helps turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones.
Consultation in psychotherapy, imagotherapy and couple therapy
You can read more about effective concept in couple therapy.
Or book a consultation in couples therapy, image therapy or psychotherapy on tel. 61661900.
If you like this article/blog, you can share via Share below
or forward the link: blog.parterapi-parterapeut.dk/#post61.
If you are not subscribed to the blog about relationships and couple therapy, you can send an email:
www.parterapi-parterapeut.dk/please-call-me-once.html
Or RSS via the icon at the bottom of the column on the right.
Tips for the relationship and love
You can also follow along at: www.facebook.com/parterapi.parterapeut
Or at: www.twitter.com/Parterapeuten