We have looked before on the concept of self-love and I would like to take the time into look into this in more depth.
If you remember, we said that AGAPE love was an unconditional love and that we needed to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Let us look more closely at why we have so much difficulty in the area of loving and accepting ourselves. We will start by looking at two very basic questions.
1.)Why do we have so much difficulty loving ourselves without question?
2.)Why do we feel we need the approval of others to validate our worthiness?
These are big questions and the basis of our non-acceptance of ourselves. We were not born with a negative self image of ourselves, in fact, we were not even aware that we needed the approval of others. Acceptance of ourselves as individuals was a learning experience from those significant others who were around us. Some people were lucky and had a loving and encouraging environment, while others, sadly, grew up with condemnation and disapproval.
Because of disapproval that may have been experienced in our childhood years, many of us grew up with the generalization that Since they did not accept...