3 Ways To Love Yourself So Hard That Your Anxiety & Stress Melt Away (For Good)

Self-love is more powerful than your anxiety.

By Pernilla Lillarose — Written on May 28, 2019

Photo: Unsplash

Learning To Love Yourself For How To Deal With Anxiety & Stress Management

Practicing self-love and working on learning to love yourself can show you how to deal with anxiety on a deep level.

Stress and anxiety are running rampant these days.

Not just because of what’s happening out there in the world – as if that’s not enough – it turns out that we all carry so much anxiety inside as well, which has been building up over the years without any calm in sight.

For some reason, I have a big passion and compassion for this subject, simply because I know that you can actively and powerfully calm your anxiety without outside substances, or even without the world needing to change first.

The outer world is quite another thing, and needs our prayers and elevated emotions to help raise its frequency.

If you wonder what I mean by that, I’ll get into that at the end of this article, and show you how our inner and outer worlds go hand-in-hand.

But first, how do you personally deal with your stress and anxiety?

Imagine running into a young child on the street, who’s terrified and needs help. What would you do?

If you are like most people, I imagine you’d approach the child and ask her what happened? You’d want to know what she needs and how you can help her calm down, right?

And what you probably would not do is tell her to stop being afraid, shame her for it, or get mad at her, right? Nor would you offer her a drink, a drug or a pill.

Those responses are the most natural ones we all have, when we see someone – especially a child – being scared and needing help.

Now, let’s turn back to you again. How do you deal with your anxiety? Do you respond in the same way as you would to the child? Even though you may not be a child anymore, you most likely experience anxiety and stress, which you don’t know how to deal with.

What if you were this child you just ran into? How would you treat yourself? Would you tell your younger self that you shouldn’t feel this way? Ignore her? Or take something to not feel this fear?

Most of us didn’t grow up learning that feeling our emotions was OK. They were something to be ashamed of and consequently we didn’t learn how to deal with them in a healthy and compassionate way.

We basically learned to ignore, suppress, resist and feel ashamed when we had these painful emotions, and today most of us carry that same attitude towards pain, anxiety, stress and sadness.

I hear this so often: ”I don’t know what to do with them!” and then suppression seems to be the best resource.

It’s crazy! Especially looking back at how I used to do that myself and how that kept me in a constant state of stress and anxiety. It took me years to find a way to soothe my nervous system and have a new relationship with myself that was loving and supportive. That sure helped my anxiety.

As if it’s not enough that you feel all this anxiety already, and then on top of that you treat yourself in such a way that it makes it all worse – not better.

Is it any wonder that most people reach out for substances and distractions to calm down their nervous system?

There is a better way – I promise you. When you learn this way, not only do you start feeling more inner peace and contentment right away, you also start changing your surroundings!

Imagine this: You start treating your anxiety just like you would this young child you ran into earlier.

Here’s how to deal with anxiety by learning to love yourself:

1. Understand why you’re so stressed and anxious

First you need to know what you are so stressed and anxious about – just like that child. Imagine you approaching your own anxiety in a gentle and safe way because you really want to know what this anxiety is so anxious about.

Try it! Take a breath and approach yourself like that now. Listen deeply, just like you would with that child. Maybe your inner child is too scared to even tell you at this point. If that were the case with the child on the street, how would you treat her then?

Take her hand? Hold her? Let her know it’s OK and that she’s not alone anymore? How about telling her that you have enough time for her and can just sit here with her and let her cry?Could you do that for yourself?

Hold the hand of your anxiety and let her know that it’s OK and that you are here for her. Then gently ask her: Honey, what happened? What are you so afraid of?

Wait. Listen. Wait. Wait and listen. This is the most important first step to dealing with anxiety.

2. Offer yourself kindness

You approach it with love and kindness – not with shame, judgment or medication.

Can you feel how the anxiety already calms down, just by your new approach?

Self Love is the most potent medicine on earth. It’s free, it’s abundant and never runs dry. You just need to open the faucet to get access to it, and this little exercise shows you how you do it.

Have you noticed that when someone approaches you with love and kindness that you automatically relax? It’s powerful, isn’t it? It’s always available - to everyone. We just need to open up to it and give that same love and kindness to ourselves over and over and over again.

3. Say ‘yes’ to yourself

We live in a world where we have been conditioned to say ‘no’ to ourselves, to our emotions, our differences, our pains, our anger, our sensitivities, our bigness, our expression etc., and we need to turn that tide.

I’m an advocate for women saying ‘yes’ to themselves and know that it takes practice to turn that tide. But it’s worth every step of that practice. You’ll never feel better than when you learn to say yes to all of you.

Self Love is a powerful way to practice that new skill of saying yes to yourself, no matter what happens. When you do, you’ll notice that a lot of the anxiety you feel, is because you have treated yourself like your own worst enemy and that is scary!!!

Imagine being judged, criticized, shamed, suppressed, called names, dishonored and resisted all the time, who wouldn’t feel stressed or anxious?

Imagine realizing how each time when you ignore your own needs, your gut feelings and inner yes to what you want, your gut clenches, your breath gets shallow and you hold yourself back. Would that realization change your behavior towards yourself?

Give it a try. Be open and kind to your anxiety, listen to it and learn from it. It works like magic every time and you don’t even need to use a magic wand. Self love is the magic and I for one am ready for more magic in this world.