104: 6 Pillars of the Self-Love System: How Practicing Self-Love Helps Us to Feel Enough for Loving Relationships

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Jun 12

In this episode I outline my Self-Love System and the 6 pillars for practicing self-love. By practicing the self-love system, you will learn how to love yourself one step at a time. Through self-love you will remember your worth, enoughness, and lovability, and feel confident attracting the love you are seeking. My intention is to assist you in remembering your own worth and helping you to feel confident in finding love.

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Poems 📝

Here is my poem, The Mask, which I read in this podcast episode

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Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction: 0:15
Poem: 2:21
Question: 3:43
6 Pillars of Self-Love: 9:01
Outro: 25:20

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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's getstarted.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:16]:
Hey, beautiful soul. My name is Amanda Durocher, and welcome to New View Advice. You're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. I don't believe I have all the answers you seek. I believe you have all the answers. You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. Today, we are going to continue our conversation from last week about self love, and I will be answering a listener question from someone who struggles to love themselves and feel enough to attract romantic partnership. So in this episode, I will be outlining my self love system, and these are 6 pillars for practicing self love.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:49]:
And by practicing the self love system, you'll learn how to love yourself one step at a time. I really believe that through self love, we remember our worth, our enoughness, and our lovability. My intention is to assist you in loving yourself and practicing self love. So I think life is a journey of love. I think we're here to love and be loved and experience love in human form. So, of course, it's a journey. And so today, I'm going to outline 6 pillars to assist you in practicing self love in your own life and helping you to embrace your enoughness and your worthiness because you deserve it, my friends. You are all such beautiful souls.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:28]:
I am just so grateful for everybody who listens, so thank you for being here. Before I jump into the episode, I'm gonna share a poem I wrote. I've been really leaning into poetry recently. It's just been feeling really good. And as I practice self love in my own life, I've been leaning into the things that feel good. And so I wanted to share this poem with you. And after this episode, if you wanna read the poem or read other poems, I've wrote about the healing journey. You can check those out at new view advice.com where I also will have more free resources for the healing journey.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:56]:
And I've also put together a list of self love affirmations that you can find on my website at newviewadvice.com/104 and these are to assist you in affirming the love you have for yourself. So with that we're gonna
Amanda Durocher [00:02:12]:
jump into a poem and then talking more about self love. I call this poem The Mask. I wear a mask throughout my day. It changes from place to place. Sometimes it's bright and cheery, and sometimes it's a vacant face. But no matter where I am, it covers my authentic expression, the one I'm too scared to share for fear of being rejected. For you see, I don't feel I'm enough for true authentic love, so I hide myself down under and peer out at Up Above. Where an imposter takes my place, the one who dons the mask, they are more like everyone else and they are ready for the attacks.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:51]:
For if someone questions them, they know they are not acting true, so the wound won't cut as deep as the one inside who's blue. For the one I've buried deep within craves climbing out to the sun, but she fears she's not enough and no one will find her fun. For long ago, when she was young, she learned she was unworthy, and now she's afraid to be herself and to embrace all her glory. But one day she hears a voice so quiet and so tender. It's the voice of her heart and it calls her to remember that she is a child of love, worthy of all she desires. She just has to take off the mask. That's all the heart requires. Though it feels real scary, she knows what she must do.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:30]:
She throws the mask to
Amanda Durocher [00:03:31]:
the ground and she hopes you will join her too. Thanks for letting me share that. Let's jump on in talking about self love.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:43]:
How do I start to feel worthy and good enough about myself to find love? I have always thought that I have never been good enough to attract a man, and I struggle with self love. What is your advice on this? Thank you so much for your question. Struggling to attract a romantic partner, you know, because of these beliefs you have about yourself. And I want you to know you're not alone. I know that I've struggled in my own romantic partnerships as well as friendships with these feelings of unworthiness and not feeling like I'm enough for love. And I know that many people struggle with this as well. I have spoken with so many people about how it can be really challenging to love ourselves. So I just wanna honor your question.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:29]:
Thank you for this question, and I think this is a great question that can help so many people. So thank you again for asking it. So I want to start this question off by just saying that you are most definitely enough to track demand and you are worthy of love. You are worthy of deep, beautiful, passionate love. We all are. It's just so often us who forget that. You know, I've been thinking a lot about love in my life recently. What is love? How do we embody love? How do we feel love? And I think always it starts with self.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:59]:
So I love your question because I think that in order for us to really feel that love from others, we do have to learn how to love ourselves. Now with that said, it doesn't mean we don't need love outside of us. Right? I don't think we can heal ourselves into perfection or anything like that. Life's a journey and it's messy. But I just have truthfully found time and time again that the more I love myself, the more I can let that love in from others. So it doesn't even mean it wasn't there. I just couldn't feel it because I was blocking it out because I was afraid of love or I didn't feel lovable or because of my own negative beliefs. I wasn't allowing that love in.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:34]:
Or sometimes when I learned to love myself deeper, I realized relationships weren't serving me. So that's one of the reasons that it's so important to practice that self love is because we realize the relationships that are serving us, the ones that aren't, but we also allow more love in when we love ourselves. I view it similar to that poem I read. When we don't love ourselves, so often we're going around the world with a mask on or with a shield up or with defenses. Right? And it's through learning to love who we truly are, our authentic selves, our special selves, our unique selves. Because each of us is a diamond, in my opinion. Each of us is super special. So anytime that I honor my own specialness here on the podcast, I want you to know that I see that in you too.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:16]:
I believe we are all special. So I believe we all are having a similar human experience, but we're also a unique diamond. And that's so cool. And it takes us seeing that specialness in ourselves and loving ourselves first in order to really attract that love that we're all worthy of. Right? You know, as I mentioned, I've been thinking so much about love. And love is so freaking beautiful when we let it in. But so many of us are keeping it out. I know myself included.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:44]:
I can't believe how many walls I had built up to love still at this point in my life. It's always humbling. The healing journey is so humbling. I'm sure I still have a ton of walls up. You know what I mean? It's not like I'm like, oh, and now I let love in freely. No. I'm just shocked recently as I've been feeling a lot of grief as I enter a new chapter of my life that I had a lot of walls up to love because I was so terrified of getting hurt, and I think that's true for so many of us. So that's my intro on love.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:16]:
But for your question, I really wanted to outline the 6 pillars of the self love system. This is a system I created when I used to work with groups. I used to offer support groups. I don't do that anymore, but I walked people through this self love system, and I have it in my healing from infidelity journal prompt workbook. If that's something you're healing from, you can find that on my website. But I wanted to outline this system because I believe that the more you practice self love, the more you'll really open up to that love you are seeking and you will attract somebody who mirrors that back to you. That's what I think partners do so often for us is they mirror us. They mirror the beliefs we have about ourselves and they mirror our inner wounding.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:56]:
So relationships are, I think, one of our greatest teachers. It doesn't mean every relationship's going to last forever, but it means that while we're in partnership or friendship or family relationships, we're often able to see our inner world through our interactions. So whenever you're triggered by somebody, it's often showing you something within your inner world. Same with whenever you feel loved, it's showing you a place where you allow love in in your life. And because of that, I really believe that these 6 pillars can really help you to let the love in. You know? That's what I've been practicing. I'm claiming 2024 as a summer of love.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:35]:
I hope you'll all join me. Let's just let the love in this summer. That's what I keep telling myself. I'm just gonna let the love in. And the more I do it, the more I am surprised by how much resistance comes up which is, again, such a humbling journey. But through working through the resistance, I allow more love in. So these are the 6 pillars we are gonna practice this summer for the summer of love. Summer 2024 everybody. Summer of love.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:00]:
Okay. So these are the 6 pillars of the self love system and they are 1, self care, 2, self awareness, 3, self communion, 4, self forgiveness. 5, self acceptance. 6, self compassion. And now I'm gonna talk about each of these individually. One is self care. As always, I talk about this a lot on the podcast, but self care is the foundation of the healing journey and is really a foundation of loving ourselves. Self care is an act of loving yourself. So many people put self care last on their list, but the more you begin to put self care first, the more you begin to care for yourself as a top priority, the more you will see that that benefits all areas of your life and that that is a really loving thing to do.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:50]:
When you care for yourself, you are showing yourself that you matter and that your needs matter and that you are worthy of your needs. That's a really radical act in a world where everybody's following what they quote unquote should be doing or are doing things for other people first or aren't listening to themselves. Self care is so important and it's so necessary in order for us to embody that love of self. I am all about self care and I still struggle with this stuff. I'm gonna be honest. I constantly have to remind myself to slow down because if I have resistance up, which I've mentioned resistance or trigger, I tend to move really fast or I tend to dive into work because I don't want to look at something. But self care for me so often is the act of slowing down. So it's the act of journaling, meditation, going for a walk in the middle of the day.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:46]:
It's allowing myself the space to allow feelings up is so often my form of self care. But self care for me is also reminding myself not to run at a 100 miles an hour. Right? I think that for me, I have to remind myself the importance of rest. That is so often my self care. I think that's probably important for a lot of you too, is to remember the importance of rest. And I also find, as I mentioned, that when we keep ourselves overly busy, like I said, we're often avoiding something. And through self care, which is so often an act of slowing down, we will begin to allow the messages of our hearts to come forward. And if you wanna learn more about self care, I have episode 50, what is self care and why it's important for the healing journey.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:26]:
And in there I could dive deeper into self care specifically. So pillar number 2 is self awareness and this often comes after self care. So like I said oftentimes we have to slow down in order to allow this awareness to come forward. So self awareness is essential for self love because it is the act of becoming aware of why we do the things we do and why we feel the way we feel. I really notice in my life that so many people are walking around on autopilot and don't know how they end up in the life they're in, and they're honestly not interested in reflecting. But if you're here listening to this podcast, then I think you're a curious person and likely are looking to get to know yourself better. And so we do this through self awareness, through bringing awareness to why we do the things we do. So here for your question, I invite you to pick one of these or journal about all these, but these are some questions specific to your situation and wanting to bring love into your life that I think could help you with this self awareness step.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:27]:
So if I were you, I would begin to reflect on, one, why do you feel like you are not good enough to find love? How does this belief make you feel? What emotions arise? Where do you feel it in your body? Does your chest get tight? Your stomach clench? Your throat close? Where do you feel this? And then sit with that area of your body. Another question I'd ask is when did you first believe you were not good enough? 3rd question is have you had past relationships with men? How did they end? How did you feel in those relationships? Four, what's your relationship like with your parents or primary caregivers? What men were present or noticeably unpresent throughout your childhood? So often the beliefs we're carrying started in childhood. So many people hate this answer, but it's true. I am floored by how many beliefs go back to childhood. Just today, I was really sitting with and crying about the belief of how in my childhood I was made to feel too much all the time. I'm too much. You're too much, Amanda.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:28]:
So I took on the belief I'm too much. And I was still playing this out in my life today. I had dimmed a desire of mine because I was afraid that what I really desired was too much. And I share this because that went back to childhood and it was through this self awareness step that I was able to see why I was playing out something in my life. The last question I'd reflect on is what is a belief about yourself that keeps you from allowing love in? So like I just mentioned, I had a belief that I was too much, and it was still playing out in my life, and it was keeping me from letting love in. And I had to look at that. And so these are just a few examples, but I think if you begin to be honest with yourself and reflect and answer these questions, you'll begin unraveling why you feel the way you feel. And that is one of the first steps to healing.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:15]:
And this leads us to pillar 3, self communion. Self communion to me is the practice of deep introspection and connection with yourself, and this includes your inner child. And so, this step to me is when we bring the awareness forward, often behind the awareness are all these feelings we've been avoiding. So with that example I gave, a feeling like I was too much, I started to cry. Because I saw how that is a pattern I've played out throughout my life, all the times I felt I was too much and how heartbreaking that is, that I told myself I didn't deserve certain things because others reflected back to me that I was too much. And so
Amanda Durocher [00:14:52]:
this self communion phase is when we really allow those feelings to come forward and we sit with the inner child or we find a way to feel our feelings. So for me so often this will be creativity. So that's a reason I've been leaning into poetry. That's a form of me moving feelings so often. I also will paint and do different art projects, but I find creativity, writing stories, can be a really helpful way to commune with yourself and allow those feelings forward. I also find for feeling your feelings, it's gonna be different for everybody. I think nature can allow us to just be with ourselves. Meditation.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:32]:
Oh, yeah. If you don't meditate, I invite you to begin meditating. I love great meditation on YouTube. They have, like, a 1000000 meditations. Okay. That's an exaggeration. They probably have, like, 200. But it's, like, a lot.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:42]:
And I've been really leaning into those because when I'm stressed, I usually find it helpful for somebody to guide me into meditation, but meditation is where we can really commune with ourselves and hear our heart. Also journaling is a great practice. Journaling helps us to move those feelings. So those are just a few practices, but this self communion phase to me is really about communing with your heart, communicating, being introspective, and allowing those feelings to come forward. And in the show notes at newviewadvice.com/104, I'll link an episode I did, I think episode 52, about anger if that's one of the feelings arising for you because I list some more practices in there for how you can healthily feel your anger. And before I jump to the next pillar, I also just wanna say, remember to be gentle with yourself, especially during this phase. Because when we're doing inner child work and we're feeling those feelings, it's really important to be kind to yourself. There's a reason we haven't felt a lot of the feelings we still carry from childhood.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:36]:
It's because they're painful. And so I just invite you to be kind to yourself. Be really gentle with yourself. When we are peeling back the layers that have covered our hearts from loving ourselves and the world, it's so important to be kind to yourself. I can't stress that enough. So this leads me to pillar 4, which is self forgiveness. And a reminder here that at New View Advice we believe forgiveness is the act of letting go. It is not an act of condoning it is consciously and willingly releasing yourself from feelings of resentment, anger, blame, shame, and self judgment.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:09]:
And this stage cannot be rushed, and it happens when we are ready. And why is it self forgiveness? It's self forgiveness because we often have to forgive ourselves for all the times we didn't love ourselves. It's not about packing on blame or shame, it's really about getting to a place where we understand why a situation, belief, or experience played out the way it did. And so often for me it's like, oh my god, I see it so clearly now. I am so sorry self. I am so sorry I forgot that I was always enough. I am so sorry I believed the lies of others and of the world. I am so sorry that I forgot to love myself.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:49]:
That's what really the self forgiveness feels like to me, is it so often feels like I'm coming out of denial, I'm taking off rose colored glasses, and I'm seeing a situation clearly, And that I had been blinded by self hatred or by self blame or by shame. Shame keeps us so buried. And shame can be felt and processed and really lifted because shame feels like a heavy blanket to me. It's lifted when we speak our truth, when we allow ourselves to see clearly, when we share somebody. Right? Shame so often lives in secrecy and self judgment. And so for you when you're practicing self forgiveness maybe you wanna share some of how you feel with a close friend or family member or a therapist. You know, find a professional to help you to free yourself of some of these limiting beliefs you have about yourself. Because sometimes for that self forgiveness stage to come, we have to share what we're feeling with somebody and have it mirrored back to us that those are lies.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:43]:
Right? That's why shame lives in secrecy is because so often we live with these shameful feelings that we think nobody will ever understand or we think are the worst thing about us. And it's really through that compassionate lens or somebody being like, hey. Me too. That we can be freed of that shame instantly. And I think that's such a beautiful part of relationship is that together we can really witness one another and heal. And that's so beautiful. So self forgiveness leads us to pillar 5 which is self acceptance. And self acceptance is when we accept what has happened and we choose to move forward.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:17]:
We are no longer chained to the past or anxious about the future. Acceptance is when we just accept who we are right now and we don't judge ourselves or judge this past belief or situation. We accept where we are. We accept ourselves. And we understand we don't have to be perfect, we never have to be perfect, and that right here, right now we're enough, we're worthy, and we accept ourselves. And we deserve to accept ourselves. The more I accept who I am, the freer I feel. And so self acceptance for me often comes after self forgiveness.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:49]:
Again, with these pillars there's no specific order I find that the order I'm outlining is the order that the process works for me but maybe for you it'll be different. But these 6 pillars I find are really helpful when leaning into self love. And another part of self acceptance is really accepting that life is a journey, not a destination. So it's accepting where you are right now and that it's okay even if it's challenging. Even if you're moving through a really hard time, it's okay. Even if you see something from the past you regret or you see how a belief about self has impacted you. Self acceptance is accepting that it's all going to be okay and that it's okay to stop criticizing yourself, judging yourself, and accept who you are.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:33]:
Cause you're a child of love. Child of God. Whatever you wanna say.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:37]:
I've been leaning into child of love recently. There's nothing wrong with you. And that's what I find. The more I accept myself, the more I really see that there was never anything wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with me. I'm just a human having a human experience and it's freaking messy. And my heart breaks. Other people's heart breaks.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:56]:
Emotions are messy. People are codependent, I accidentally still people please and all this stuff comes up, and it's okay. It's so easy for me to lean into self hatred and self criticism and, Amanda, you should be somewhere else. You should be beyond this. You should know better. And it's through slowing down that self care, bringing awareness to what's going on, sitting with the feelings, forgiving myself, and then accepting that I'm not perfect. It's okay wherever I am that I am then able to really let more love into my life. So that's self acceptance and then that leads to pillar 6 which is self compassion.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:33]:
And this pillar we really, I think, wanna include in all the pillars. But self compassion comes back to being kind to yourself. Right? So when you move through these pillars a lot of feelings will likely come up. A lot of hard emotions or a lot of difficult memories or truths can come up while leaning into self love and we wanna practice self compassion. This podcast, I didn't know when I started, but is so a podcast about self compassion. I believe self compassion is the key to healing. I believe self compassion is key to self love. And so it's by learning to be kind to yourself that all of this will become easier.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:13]:
Not easy, but easier. I say this in a lot of episodes, but my biggest regret throughout my life is constantly that I just wasn't kinder to myself along the way. I have been my own biggest critic. So often I feel like the person I'm battling is me. And it's through self compassion that I'm able to put those boxing gloves down, that I'm able to be with myself and my inner child in all the pain I have experienced and all the trauma. And it moves and it heals through that compassionate witness, through that self loving lens. And that love of self starts with you being kind to you. And so I have this as pillar 6 because when we move through the self love system we're gonna move through it again and again and again and so it's important to remind ourselves at the end that, again, wherever we are is okay and to be kind to ourselves, to remember we are human.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:05]:
That is a big part of self compassion is to recognize that we make mistakes. It's part of the human journey. Nobody gets out of life without making mistakes. It's just a part of life. Nobody gets out of life without difficult feelings. It's a part of life. And the more kind we are to ourselves, the easier things become.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:23]:
And the more we
Amanda Durocher [00:23:23]:
feel that love of self, And I really think that for you, you said you struggle with feeling unworthy and you you struggle with feeling like you're enough, so you likely are critical of yourself. And the more you insert that compassionate talk, like saying things like, it's okay. I made a mistake or today was hard. I'm gonna just give myself the night to just relax. My heart hurts today. I'm just gonna be with it. Those are all compassionate things you can say
Amanda Durocher [00:23:48]:
to yourself. Or maybe it's
Amanda Durocher [00:23:50]:
saying something like, I really didn't deserve the way I was treated in ex experience. Or, dang, I shouldn't have yelled at my partner. I see how I was triggered. I'm gonna be kind to myself through this. I didn't mean to be mean. I see that now. But I have to be kind to myself even though I did something I regret. So self compassion is really learning how to implement those kind words to yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:12]:
And I think that the self love affirmations I mentioned at the beginning of the episode can help with that self compassionate talk. If you don't know what loving words to say to yourself, check out this list I created. It's 25 affirmations where you can just begin telling yourself these things. And what I find with affirmations is so often when we first start saying them it sounds a little cheesy, a little phony. It's like I don't believe that, but it's through repetition. Right? It's a practice learning to affirm these things. And also they can show us triggers and where we're resistant. So if you come across an affirmation that you're like, I don't believe that, I invite you to dive deeper.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:45]:
Why? Why are you resistant to it? And maybe it's just that you don't like the way I phrased it and then I invite you to write your own or maybe there's a deeper belief there that that affirmation can help you to access within yourself. So those are the 6 pillars for self love and I really do believe that the more you practice these the more you will embody that love of self and the more you will bring, attract, and open yourself up to more loving relationships in your life. I hope something here was helpful. Thank you so much for this question. Thanks again for joining me for another episode of New View Advice. I hope you enjoyed this episode about self love and the self love system. If you haven't already, I invite you to check out my website after this episode for more free resources, including journal prompts, meditations, poems, those self love affirmations, and more. You can check that out at newviewadvice.com.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:37]:
Thanks again for joining me for another episode of New View Advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending you all my love. See you next time.