How to start loving the "embarrassing" and "shameful" parts of yourself
Exposing anecdotes, a talk on real self-love, and PLENTY of resources on how to foster it
A butterfly fluttered in my stomach the first time he asked me about my day.
I noticed that, and at the time thought nothing of it. But shortly after I went from that one potential companion back to zero, I went into retrospective mode around some of my feelings after learning we weren’t compatible.
Because they lingered longer than I wanted them to.
Longer than I was comfortable with. Over a guy I’d only talked to in person for about 30 minutes, and then later going on one date with (a good one, nonetheless)!
Since 2023, I’ve learned to witness my feelings. And I was… but didn’t like it!
Even while writing this, it feels silly to admit that I felt some type of fluttery way about being asked how my day was. And that it was very recent.
But I’m doing so because within the swirl of my reflections and research and sitting in silence, a seed has been planted and is starting to grow into a stem of clarity someone out there may need.
So if you’re someone who’s experienced shame and/or rejection around parts of you that’ve shown up but you didn’t want to associate with, you’re in the right place.
Let’s start with a vivid memory that’ll serve as a good example of what I mean.
So imagine, you’re someone who is single and in your early 20s. At the moment, you feel confident in who you are: you know you’d never grow your hair out, you love painting your nails, and you like your black platform creeper shoes.
But along comes a guy that’s kinda cute! And he seems to show interest in you. You both exchange numbers and begin texting:
Hey there! You looked cute today. :)
Awww, you’re making me blush! Thanks!
Do you think you’d ever grow your hair out? I bet it would look pretty!
An internal voice inside you caves and you’re ready to fly your finger across the keyboard to tell him you’d consider it.
But another part of you sees this self-betrayal and is flabbergasted that you compromised something you said you’d never change about yourself as soon as a guy you like likes you. You especially didn’t think it’d happen so quickly!
You thought there would at least be hesitation.
But you find yourself so willing to give into changing yourself to keep his interest, and you feel ashamed of yourself for doing so. But it really, really, felt like it couldn’t be helped.
Consciously, you KNEW not to do it. You wanted to perceive yourself as someone who sticks to her word and stands her ground.
But something within overshadowed that clear understanding and made responding in an appeasing way so much easier.
Have you ever gone through something like this? Gone to battle with two opposing parts of yourself? Recognized a part of yourself you were ashamed existed in you and simply tried to shove it away or distract yourself from it?
If you can relate to any of this, I’d like to introduce you to what loving yourself really entails.
Feeling the flutters of someone asking how my day was, then watching myself as I spent too much time wondering if we were going to remain friends after finding out we weren’t compatible made me curious enough to go in search of “healing” and answers for why I was reacting the way I was.
What I came across were a lot of answers I’d like to string into chronological and coherent sections for you. So this won’t necessarily read like a personal essay, but more like a guide to understanding your entire self and how to handle what comes up that you don’t like experiencing.
Let’s start with the root of most of our surprise reactions: the ego.
The Role of the Ego
Certainly, you’ve heard of egotistical people. You may have even heard of people trying to, “kill their egos.”
The ego tends to have a bad rap, but it’s necessary to understand and have a relationship with it in order to dive as deep as you’d like around this topic of cultivating better, more loving relationships with ourselves.
On an unconscious level, who you think you are, who you actually are, and who you want to be seen as is your concept of self. And the ego tries protecting you by using distractions and defense mechanisms to keep you or anyone else from seeing any sides of you you may refuse to witness or identify with.
This is where shadow work comes into play, but we’ll chat more about that in a little bit.
In my story earlier, the part of me willing to brush off my “nonnegotiables” to keep talking to a guy felt like a shameful one. From what I remember, the ease of me caving in surprised me. That wasn’t me.
I remember it feeling like a war against myself. Just like my first big breakup.
As always, I would turn to writing to try and offload the overflowing pain from that breakup. And one of the things I remember writing and thinking multiple times was, “I feel like I’m at war with myself. A part of me wants to stay, but the other part of me hates that I am and wants to have some ounce of dignity!”
When I talked to my mom years after that breakup, I couldn’t get her to understand that I physically COULDN’T let go of him. Back then I knew I needed to, and that I needed to get over him and move on. But it wasn’t as easy as just telling me to do it and I’d just flip a switch and do it.
I now understand I held on way longer than I should’ve because I refused to acknowledge or address the parts of me that wanted to stay and pretend like everything was okay. I wanted to throw those “weak” and “ugly” parts of myself into the shadows so I could believe I couldn’t possibly identify with them.
But just because you chuck a part of you into the shadows where you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it goes away.
Instead, it kept popping up over and over for a mentally tumultuous eight months of a breakup. I remember during the process saying how I hated myself for wanting to stay despite needing to leave.
This is where an inner child perspective comes into play.
The Inner Child Perspective
In case you haven’t heard about inner child work, it’s a concept where you treat yourself gently as if you were a child again. If things were missing in your life you didn’t receive from any of your caregivers, now is the time to be a parent to yourself.
In this instance, instead of constantly building up this hatred for myself because I just couldn’t “get over” a relationship that needed to end (hoping I’d be a dignified, independent, untouched force like I thought I “should” be), I should’ve been honest with what I was feeling. I should have talked to myself in a much kinder way and eliminated the stories I swirled around my head at the time that made things so much worse for me.
You wouldn’t (at least I hope not!) yell at a child about how stupid they are. How come they just couldn’t move away from something that hurt them or wasn’t good for them… So what makes you think doing it to yourself is proactive?
And I get it; it’s still something I struggle with a lot. It’s easy for people to say, “Would you say something like that to a friend?” Cause even if you wouldn’t, it somehow feels like it doesn’t apply to you.
You get to be your own worst critic, and sometimes it feels justified.
Learning to speak kinder to yourself as if you were a child is an intentional practice that takes a lot of work, but is such a great accompaniment to shadow work which is the last thing we’ll cover.
What Shadow Work Really Looks Like
You saw the bolded hints: the parts we don’t like to witness about ourselves get chucked into the shadows, never to be addressed and left to fester and return again and again.
When we do this, we never develop the capacity to hold these identities, feelings, and emotions. Which is a huge part of the growth process.
Being able to do that is what real self-love looks like.
“Love is at the root of understanding, understanding is at the root of love.” - Heidi Priebe
When we lovingly witness and attempt to understand all parts of ourselves, we can get through it. Because we held what hurt or negatively surprised us about ourselves to get through it, rather than around it or over it.
A crazy-amazing psychologist on YouTube named Heidi Priebe talks deeply about attachment theory, and relationships with others and yourself (seriously. EVERYONE needs to watch her videos). In one video (several, actually), she advises staying present in your emotions and the realities of what’s going on in the situation that have you so upset.
She explains how you can verbalize or journal about what hurts, why it really hurts… She tells you to name the feelings you’re feeling. Be specific. Be real. Whatever you talk about with what happened, make sure it’s reality. Something that could be seen or heard by a camera.
I swear I’m not doing any of her videos justice. I highly recommend going down the rabbit hole of her content (I made a list down below!).
I had so much to say, and kept switching the topic of this month’s essay last minute because I knew something was there I wanted to expand on with you, and I hope this was a start.
It took me so long to get to this point, so please feel free to comment if anything was an epiphany for you, or if you’d like me to expand on any of these points in the future.
It was a last-minute essay, but I hope it did help you.
What I learned in the process of this certainly helped me, and I can’t wait to revisit and utilize the tools to stay present with personally hurtful experiences.
For instance, the story I mentioned that happened most recently? I noticed before my research that I couldn’t hold the anxiety of whether or not we were still cool as just friends or if he was just gonna disappear. So a day later, I texted him a simple question. Just to have contact with him.
I’m not going to talk down on myself for caving. I just understand now what I could’ve done instead: sit with the discomfort, communicate to myself (or in a journal) what I was feeling and why. Explain what was truthfully happening, and name my emotions. One of Heidi’s videos talked about how we will sit with it and notice that we didn’t die!
Eventually, we can healthily move into self-regulation and self-soothing… I watched so many videos… So I’ll stop speaking here.
I just really wanted you to have these concepts and resources, especially during a month themed around love.
Marathon-Worthy Videos to Watch if You’re Wanting to Learn More
Listed below are all the videos I watched in whole or in part while I was formulating the conclusions I had for this post (as well as for eager incorporation into my own life). Enjoy!
What helps build a more healthy attachment if you’re anxiously attached
This video explains the exact phenomenon of conforming to another person to keep them around like in my story at the beginning of this piece
Stop ruminating on past relationships and learn how to move on
What it means when crushes become obsessive (limerence) (This was a game-changer reflection for me)
Obsessive crushes (limerence) and toxic shame (how to break the cycle)
5 signs you’re self-regulating through obsessive crushes (limerence)
A video from another person who goes deep into obsessive crushes (limerence) and has journal prompts toward the end!
Emotional permanency for abandonment issues (from a different young woman!)
There’s also a We’re Not Really Strangers “card game” with 150 cards on self-love I’m eyeing
And someone made a free quizlet card deck with 50 self-love prompts from the game; I’m unsure if it’s inspired or rips from some of the cards
Thank you again so much for being here, and I hope to see you soon.
Warmly,
Cierra M
I might know a thing or two about Shadow work. Very good to hear you're benefiting from it. I suspect it's going to become even more essential in the near future for people.