what does "loving yourself" mean to you?
 

The last few years have been hard on me, struggling with alcohol. I have found myself hating what I've seen staring back at me in the mirror and felt so low I just wanted to die. I haven't been able to find love for myself in so long. I see people use this term a lot when overcoming alcoholism. I'm on day 3 and I wanted to know what this means for you folks?

I " believe" it just means self respect and self care. Hopefully I was helpful. ;)

In the context of recovery, to stop using "hating oneself" as a reason to drink. To forgive yourself of your misdeeds and alcohol-fueled mishaps and that recovery really is a clean slate on which to write the new you.

Good advice for those that need it, but I don't recall A time I drank because I hated myself...many others reasons including not knowing why I did but as far as know know that don't apply to me.

For me it means taking care of myself both physically and mentally. Physical things like eating enough, grooming, sleeping enough, relaxing and reading. Just generally stopping rushing around and pausing for breath a little. Mental things like chilling out, lying still and thinking in a quiet room, talking with friends on a deep level sober. Nothing dramatic but the kind of things I seldom did well while drinking.

To love myself is simply to take care of myself and be good to myself

To respect myself and to make healthy life choices

For me, personally, this was the change in my attitude from not caring if I lived or died to embracing change in my life and trying to do the next right thing every moment.

I had convinced myself that I had nothing to live for and that I was a failure and a loser who's life meant nothing.... I even had the cliff I was going to jump off picked out! Now, my entire life has transformed into a journey I look forward to EVERY day!

I am going to visit that cliff this summer.... not to jump but to pray for God's will for me and how to carry that out.

Re: Hopeforlife,

"Drinking down the poison the way you were taught
Ever thought from here on in your life begins
And all you knew was wrong? - Steven Wilson"

I'm unsure what this means, Nobody had to teach me how to drink, I drank more then my share and then some on my own from the very beginning....anyway I'm unsure that chat is
for me.

Loving myself in sobriety means to stop hating my alcoholic self, to accept who I am without the alcohol, to love the person I am and who I can be, to finally accept the love of those around me and to enjoy their presence ,and to begin each day new and full of courage, hope and happiness.

For me, like for others here, this starts with taking care of myself all around: physically, emotionally, spiritually. I normally have a relatively good sense of this (not superb though in comparison with many other people), but when I drink, it all goes out of the window... so this has been an area for me to work on intensely in sobriety. Still kinda up and down, but I've made progress. So this is more or less about identifying and "fixing" the things that need practical attention.

Next level is being able to see where there is no need to change or fix things, either because it's not realistically possible, or because actually trying to forcefully fix some of these things could cause more damage than good. So this is about self-acceptance. Has never been easy for me because I tend to have an obsession about problem solving.

Now thinking of all this, the Serenity Prayer came to mind. Interesting, because I never associated these things before consciously, but I think it's a valid association, and one can say what I described above may form the realistic basis for any sort of "higher order" investigation and fulfillment spiritually and in the domains of self-actualization for me. I'm not one of those people who would survive well and especially flourish being a monk, for example, and this took me years to realize. One of my biggest problems up to this year of sobriety had been that I tried to target all this upside down: wanting to shoot for those "higher" needs as that seems more interesting to my mind, being the kind of person I am. But without the appropriate basis, Maslow's Pyramid of the Needs is nothing but a house of cards, for me at least. I just cannot live purely on intellectual and spiritual food, very minimalistically -- when I try, it makes everything a lot worse. This has been one of my profoundest lessons in my life so far, and I believe it's not true for everyone but I cannot deny it for me at this point. Accordingly, self love these days for me focuses on taking care of my more basic needs, the ones I most tend to neglect when in a bad place, and tend to substitute in all the wrong ways (with alcohol etc).

Thanks!

For me, it is both forgiving myself for past mistakes and also letting myself make good decisions that are consistent with my principles and vision.

Although I understand what you are saying here, not all of it ,in my case at least,is about what I did. Some can't be forgiven no matter how hard I try because it has to do with myself rather then what I did. Hopefully that makes sense to you.

It makes perfect sense. I should probably add "accept" and "let go" of personal traits and things done in the past. For those things that are a part of me, I can accept them, but refuse to nurture them anymore and instead nurture an opposite trait.

Hummm, what if you aren't the only person that has to accept them to be able to let it/ them go? Then what?

your avatar says it all.... That's where I am. I don't care if my family understands or my friends understand it's about being true to myself I've finally forgiven myself of my actions while drinking. Others need to as well or they won't be a part of my life. Obviously I'm relatively new but as time goes on if people constantly want to bring up my drinking past they won't be in my future.

I like this. When I drank I felt like a failure, towards the end. I didn't seem to have any reason to quit. Then in my optimistic moments I would blame the world for being uncaring of me.

Great thread! Only after quitting did I realize how much I didn't love and care for me. I definitely put myself last. I think loving yourself is respecting yourself enough to take care of yourself health-wise, allowing yourself to be happy, accept your success, respect yourself and create healthy boundaries and make plans and goals for your future, to name a few. Allowing yourself to build a comfortable and close relationship with yourself :). I couldn't do many of those things while drinking and certainly not well.

We become a different person when we decide to quit drinking and start caring for ourselves. We can't expect everyone to take the time to understand that. There are many people who I haven't seen in years that probably think I'm now like I was. Its okay though because we can't define ourselves based on what others think of us. That may have been true back then, but not now ;). Even if you see them and they choose to not take the time, or believe, that we have changed.. that's up to them. We have to let and go and move on or be shackled by the past. We quit drinking and now live unchained :)

Double post

For me, it means no more lies. To myself or anyone else. To force myself to take off the mask and be "Me".

Admittedly it's pretty painful and hard at first,especially acknowledging your past mistakes and choices.... but after a while it grows on you. You grow on you.

And you end up realizing you're a pretty good person.