How to Love Yourself Through Life’s Highs and Lows

What Does It Really Mean to Love Yourself?

Self-love is one of those phrases that gets thrown around so much that it’s lost its meaning. It’s not just bubble baths and positive affirmations, though those can be part of it. Real self-love is about how you treat yourself when things get hard, how you talk to yourself when you make mistakes, and whether you extend yourself the same compassion you’d offer to someone you care about.

Self-love means recognizing your inherent worth as a human being, separate from your achievements, productivity, appearance, or how others perceive you. It’s understanding that you’re deserving of kindness, care, and respect simply because you exist, not because you’ve earned it through performance or perfection.

This doesn’t mean you think you’re perfect or that you never need to grow or change. Self-love and self-awareness can coexist. You can recognize areas where you want to improve while still treating yourself with fundamental respect and compassion throughout that process.

The difference between self-love and self-indulgence or narcissism is that self-love includes accountability and responsibility alongside compassion. It’s saying “I made a mistake and I’m still worthy of kindness” rather than “I’m perfect and never do anything wrong” or “I’m terrible and don’t deserve anything good.”

​​Why Self-love Is Harder During the Lows

You Confuse Your Worth With Your Performance

Many of us learned that love and approval are conditional. You’re worthy when you achieve, when you meet expectations, when you make others proud. This creates a belief system where your value fluctuates based on external outcomes rather than being stable and inherent. When things go wrong, this system tells you that you’re worth less as a person.

Criticism Feels More Productive Than Compassion

There’s a belief that being hard on yourself will motivate you to do better. You think that if you’re nice to yourself when you’re struggling, you’ll become complacent or lazy. So you use shame, criticism, and harsh self-talk as motivational tools, believing this will drive improvement.

You Hold Yourself to Impossible Standards

You might extend understanding to others when they struggle, but you hold yourself to standards that no human could reasonably meet. Other people get to be human, make mistakes, and have bad days. But somehow you’re supposed to be beyond all that. When you inevitably fall short of these impossible standards, you interpret it as personal failure rather than recognizing that the standards were unrealistic.

Negative Self-talk Has Become Your Default

The voice in your head that criticizes, judges, and belittles you has been there so long it feels like truth rather than opinion. You don’t even notice how harsh you’re being because this internal dialogue is so automatic and familiar. The idea of speaking to yourself differently feels fake or unnatural.

You Believe You Don’t Deserve Love Until You “Fix” Yourself

There’s this idea that you’ll love yourself once you lose weight, once you’re more successful, once you fix your flaws, once you become the person you think you should be. Self-love gets perpetually delayed until you meet certain conditions. But those conditions keep moving, and you never quite arrive at the point where you’ve “earned” your own kindness.

The Cost of Conditional Self-love

When your self-love depends on circumstances, performance, or meeting specific standards, you pay a significant price in terms of mental health and overall well-being.

• Chronic anxiety and stress: When your worth feels unstable and dependent on outcomes you can’t fully control, you live in a constant state of anxiety about whether you’re “enough.” This creates chronic stress that affects both mental and physical health.
• Vulnerability to depression: Tying your self-worth to external factors makes you vulnerable to depression when things don’t go well. When your sense of self collapses with each setback, you’re constantly at risk of falling into hopelessness.
• Perfectionism and burnout: Conditional self-love fuels perfectionism. You push yourself relentlessly, never feel satisfied with your efforts, and burn out trying to meet standards that would earn you the right to be kind to yourself.
• Difficulty recovering from setbacks: When you can only love yourself during success, failures and struggles become devastating. Instead of bouncing back, you get stuck in shame and self-criticism that makes recovery much harder.
• Strained relationships: How you treat yourself affects how you relate to others. If you’re harsh with yourself, you might be overly critical of others or struggle to accept love and support because you don’t feel worthy of it.
• Inability to enjoy success: Even when things go well, you can’t fully enjoy it because you’re anxious about maintaining that success or worried it will be taken away. The good times are shadowed by fear of the inevitable lows.

8 Ways to Practice Self-love During Difficult Times

Learning to love yourself through the lows is a skill that requires practice and intention. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it won’t always feel natural at first.

1. Notice Your Self-talk

The first step is simply becoming aware of how you talk to yourself. Pay attention to the commentary running in your head, especially during difficult moments. Would you speak to a friend this way? Would you talk to a child this way? If the answer is no, you’re being too harsh.

You don’t have to change the self-talk immediately. Just notice it. Awareness creates the possibility for change.

2. Treat Yourself Like Someone You’re Responsible for Helping

This is a concept from psychologist Jordan Peterson. Instead of thinking about what you deserve or how you should be treated, think about what you would do for someone you care about and are responsible for taking care of.

If a friend was struggling, you’d encourage them to rest, eat well, and be gentle with themselves. Apply that same standard of care to yourself, not because you’ve earned it, but because you’re a human being who deserves basic care.

3. Separate Your Worth From Your Circumstances

Practice reminding yourself that your value as a person doesn’t change based on external circumstances. You have the same inherent worth whether you’re succeeding or struggling, whether you’re having a good day or a terrible one.

This isn’t about positive thinking or pretending everything is fine. It’s about recognizing that your fundamental worthiness is stable, even when your circumstances and feelings are not.

4. Allow Yourself to Be Imperfect

Perfectionism is the enemy of self-love. Give yourself permission to be a flawed, messy, complicated human being who makes mistakes, has bad days, and doesn’t always get it right. This isn’t lowering your standards. It’s acknowledging reality.

When you make a mistake, practice saying “I’m human, and humans make mistakes” instead of “I’m a failure who can’t do anything right.”

5. Take Care of Your Basic Needs

Self-love is demonstrated through action, not just thoughts. Taking care of your physical needs (sleep, nutrition, movement, rest) is an act of self-love, especially when you don’t feel like you deserve care.

These basics aren’t rewards you earn for good behavior. They’re fundamental requirements for functioning that you deserve regardless of your performance or circumstances.

6. Set Boundaries to Protect Your Well-being

Loving yourself means protecting yourself from situations, people, or demands that are harmful. This might mean saying no to requests, limiting time with draining people, or stepping back from commitments when you’re overwhelmed.

Boundaries aren’t selfish. They’re necessary for maintaining your mental health and capacity to function.

7. Celebrate Small Wins Without Conditions

You don’t have to wait for major achievements to acknowledge yourself. Getting out of bed when you’re depressed, asking for help when you’re struggling, or simply surviving a difficult day are all worthy of recognition.

This isn’t about lowering standards. It’s about recognizing that during hard times, what counts as an accomplishment changes, and that’s okay.

8. Seek Support Without Shame

Asking for help is an act of self-love, not a sign of weakness. Whether that’s reaching out to friends, joining a support group, or working with a therapist, recognizing when you need support and actually seeking it demonstrates that you value your well-being.

Self-love and Mental Health

Self-love and mental health are deeply interconnected. When you struggle with conditions like depression, anxiety, or trauma, self-love becomes both more difficult and more essential.

Depression often comes with intense self-criticism and feelings of worthlessness. The depression itself makes self-compassion harder to access, creating a vicious cycle where lack of self-love feeds depression and depression makes self-love feel impossible.

Anxiety can manifest as constant self-doubt and harsh internal standards. You might believe that being critical of yourself will prevent failure or protect you from disappointment, but this actually increases anxiety and makes it harder to take healthy risks or recover from setbacks.

Trauma frequently damages self-worth and creates deep-seated beliefs about not being deserving of love or care. Healing from trauma often requires learning to extend to yourself the compassion and safety that wasn’t provided when you needed it.

Working with a mental health provider can help you address the underlying conditions that make self-love difficult while also developing specific strategies for treating yourself with more compassion.