Why your self-relationship is key to your health, happiness and everything

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Whatever is going on in your life, be it pain, fatigue, stress, anxiety, or any other life ‘stuff’, your self-relationship either helps or hinders those experiences. It’s something that many of us don’t know much about or even consider. In this blog you’ll learn about what a self-relationship is, why it is SO important, how to build a stronger connection with yourself and cultivate self-love.

Your self-relationship affects everything

Whether you embrace or avoid the focus on love this month, messages about Valentine’s Day are everywhere  and, therefore, likely to be affecting you whether you’re aware of it or not.

It’s vital that you know that the most important relationship you have is the one you have with yourself, in other words, your self-relationship. It’s the longest relationship you’ll ever be in, as it’s the only relationship that lasts from your first breath to your last. No one else is with you every breath of your way but you. So, let’s start with what a self-relationship is. 

What is a self-relationship?

Like any relationship, it’s about connection, and it’s about the quality of that connection. And if there’s one person that you’re connected to beyond any other connection or relationship that you have, it’s you. 

In the words of mindfulness expert, Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn “Wherever you go, there you are”. You can change relationships with others, jobs, even countries, but once the noise of that change has settled, you’ll find that it’s still you there in your new context. 

Your feelings are your guide

How you feel is your signalling system in terms of both the state of your self-relationship and how you are doing. Feelings, both emotions and sensations, are information. In basic terms, they let you know if you’re ok or not ok. 

Pain, fatigue, anxiety, and stress let you know that there’s something going on that’s unhelpful or even harmful to you and therefore needs caring for.  

Joy, happiness, love, and connection let you know that whatever is going on is helpful and nourishing to you, and you’re likely to need or want more of whatever it is. 

By the same token, your feelings about about yourself are your clue as to the state of your self-relationship. Are you on good terms with yourself? Do you struggle with yourself? Do you find yourself doing thoughts, feelings, or behaviours that are confusing or unhelpful to you? Here are the top three indicators that you’ve got a healthy self-relationship.

How you know you’ve got a healthy self-relationship

1. You treat your feelings as information. You don’t dismiss, avoid, or numb your feelings.  
2. You know how to support yourself either by containing or completing your feelings, depending on what’s most helpful in that moment. 
3. You trust what your feelings are telling you and know how to read and respond to your feelings 

Is it possible to have a good relationship with yourself?

The short answer is yes. The somewhat longer answer is that when your self-relationship is robust and sturdy, you’re able to respond with awareness rather than react unconsciously to what’s going on for you. You can access equanimity, resourcefulness, stamina and even the powerful ability to create conditions for joy and savour mundane magic.  

So how do you get to that point? The Greek philosopher Socrates famously said: “Know thyself”, and that’s the starting point. There’s no point focusing on your destination, where you’d like to be in the future, if you don’t know your point of departure, where you are now. 

Step 1: At this moment, how do you feel about yourself and your self-relationship? 

I encourage you to ask yourself this question with sincerity and curiosity, remember it’s more helpful to be curious than critical. It can be helpful to name these feelings using four descriptive words (or no less than three or more than five). 

This is about information gathering and establishing a good enough sense of your current reality because this will give you the clues that will help you feel better. If you struggle to find descriptive words, start with whether you feel good or bad about yourself or whether you like yourself or not. 

Keeping it real

It’s not about pretending your self-relationship is anything else than it currently is, so choose the words to describe how it feels now, not how you’d like it to be in the future. 

One person I worked with used the words ‘non-existent, neglectful, ignorant and sad’. Difficult as that insight was, it was rich in clues in terms of what then to do about it. Learning how to care for that insight with kindness and compassion was empowering for them. Having someone to help them navigate this experience was essential. It was like a lighthouse showing the way in stormy weather as they improved their self-relationship. Developing the skills to read their feelings meant that pain, fatigue, stress and anxiety became easier to respond to and deal with. 

How my self-relationship was and how it is now

For me, asking myself this question was a 1000 watt lightbulb moment. I realised that my self-relationship felt awful and confusing. Not only that, it also felt destructive and dismissive.  I was dismissing my emotions and sensations (like pain, fatigue, stress and anxiety) because I was confused by them and didn’t know how to read them or respond to them. This then made me feel awful because they got worse and worse because I’d do behaviours that were destructive and didn’t know how to care for the root causes of what was going on. Being ignorant about my self-relationship was unhelpful and even harmful to my physical, mental, and emotional/social health. 

Finding what we don’t like seeing

One of the most sobering insights was the realisation that there was this ignorance when it came to health and emotional literacy. I’d always perceived myself as intelligent and had the academic credentials to validate that self-perception, so discovering this ignorance affected me profoundly.  No wonder I was struggling with pain, fatigue, stress, and anxiety (at this time, I had ME/CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), Fibromyalgia and was suffering severely with Complex PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). I wasn’t able to read and understand the information that these feelings were conveying, let alone respond to them in helpful ways. I was ashamed to be so ignorant and angry that I hadn’t learnt this already. 

Knowing my baseline in terms of the state of my self-relationship and my ignorance, I was then determined to change, to invest in this literacy and in myself. I realised that getting to know myself, I would be able to create the conditions for me to feel better, to truly feel well. Today, myself, and I have a great relationship and the four words I tend to use the most to describe my self-relationship are ‘sturdy, playful, steadfast and loving’.

Why are you bothering?

Now that you’ve got your four words to describe your current self-relationship, you’ve got your place of departure,  your baseline, you’ve got at least some of your clues. So what now?

Step 2: Start with your why bother? 

This is about clarifying why you’re bothering to make any changes at all. Why don’t you just continue as you are? We humans are wired to want to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Are you wanting to avoid feeling awful, e.g. pain, fatigue, stress or anxiety? Do you  want to move towards feelings of pleasure, e.g. joy, happiness, contentment or love? Why are you bothering to do something about your self-relationship?

Many people dismiss this question claiming it’s negative, standing in the way of achieving anything. I, however, feel that there is a difference between asking this question rhetorically and asking it from a place of curiosity. 

“It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it – and that’s what gets results”

After all, like the 80s pop song says, “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it – and that’s what gets results.” When we say “Why bother” as if it has an exclamation mark at the end, it’s rhetorical with no expectation of an answer. However, when we get genuinely curious about this question, it takes us to the very heart of the matter. What is it that you want less of in your life? What do you want more of? 

It can be helpful to do a thought experiment. Imagine yourself at the end of your life, would the current state of your self-relationship continued over the whole of your lifetime be what you’d like to see? If the answer is yes, that’s marvellous. Keep doing what you’re doing. If the answer is no, then why not?

How do you build a connection with yourself?

Now that you’ve got your ‘Why bother’, you’ve got something to remind you why you’re making this effort. You can remind yourself why you’re leaning into seeing and feeling what you’ve been struggling with. 

Assuming you’d like to improve your self-relationship or strengthen what you’ve already got, then what do you do? Well, like with any relationship, it needs understanding and care. You need to get curious about how you are showing up in your day, what thoughts, feelings (remember, feelings are both emotions and sensations) and behaviours are you doing? Remember that feelings are information a bit like indicators, they indicate how you are doing. That means they function a bit like indicators on a car dashboard. By learning to read your feelings dashboard, you become more skilled at reading and understanding yourself. 

Feelings are like indicators on a car’s dashboard

Each dashboard indicator shows you a particular feeling and whether it’s purring along nicely or whether there’s an issue. Let’s start with the indicators that we all share: Fuel, water, speed and rev-counter. 

Are you getting enough fuel? Is it good enough quality? What about water, are you getting enough water? These may sound like irrelevant factors but both are essential to you being able to function. 

Then there’s the speedometer, how fast are you talking, walking, chewing, typing etc.? Now this isn’t so much about slowing down as it is about whether your speed is appropriate to what you’re doing. If you were to put a number on your speed, what might it be? Are you doing 70 mph in an area where it’s more prudent to drive at 30 mph? Maybe you’re doing 5 mph an hour where you need to be doing at least 60 mph.

 

The rev-counter is about effort, how much effort are you applying? If you’re typing, are you hammering the keyboard? Are you gripping the cutlery? Are you white-knuckling the steering wheel? If you drive a car you’ll know that you can drive at 60 mph in third gear, but it’s a lot of effort and damages the gearbox. It’s best to hold the reins on the horse lightly, not too tight and not too loose. 

Observing these four indicators and learning what they are showing you about you is a great start. You’ll observe what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. 

Customised indicators

It can take a wee while to figure out the indicators that are more customised to what’s going on for you now. Think about what you’re struggling with? Sleep? A person? Symptom? Particular behaviour? One of my personal indicators is my laundry basket. When my laundry basket is full to the brim, I know that I need to check in with my practical self-care. In my experience, it’s helpful to identify about five indicators, give or take a couple. 

Observation and awareness

Everything starts with awareness, so our invitation to you is to start by observing the main four indicators and some of your personal indicators. 

Step 3: Make notes, talk about these indicators with people you trust. Invite them to offer their observations about you and your indicators if that feels helpful. Learn by paying attention. 

Like in every relationship, as you start to understand what makes you tick, what works and what doesn’t work, you’ll know what to care for. And like with every relationship, if it’s in a bad place, it’ll take some time to build trust and time to develop and strengthen. Self-love, like all love, needs care and tending to, to not be taken for granted. Don’t take yourself for granted. 

You’re not alone

It can be challenging to do this on our own, none of us can see the back of our own heads. Reach out to a trusted someone, either a loved one or a professional like a therapist.  Talking to others helps you put things into words, and it helps you hear your own experience. Being heard by someone you trust has power and provides clarity, healing, and comfort.  

These three steps may be the most important gift of self-care you’ll ever give and receive, from you to you. It’s the key to health, happiness and everything. 

Want to learn more about your self-relationship? Check out this blog: “Be your own Valentine: how self-love improves your relationship with yourself and others”