Loving Yourself More
Veronica Porterfield, PA-C, MS, LN, MPAS
A while back, a client shared a marvelous epiphany in one of our conversations. After several weeks of working together, she had recognized that her weekend habits were undermining the progress she was making during the week – specifically, she noticed that her weekend drinking was where her food choices started to go south, two glasses of alcohol into the evening and into the next day. And this was her epiphany:
“I really love my Saturday evenings. For years, my husband and I have gotten together with friends, and we have a great time drinking and talking and snacking all evening. We’ve done this for years, and not only do I really look forward to it, I also can’t imagine doing Saturdays any differently. And I realize I’m choosing my Saturday evening socializing over my own goals – it’s more important to me in those moments to participate in the ritual and be part of the group than to make choices consistent with my goals.”
Can you relate to her experience? The details may differ, of course – maybe you have a weekly pizza night with a buddy or a happy hour habit with your co-workers or an unrelenting attraction to the cookies in the break room, or a dysfunctional relationship you can’t quit – whatever it is, are you engaging in a ritual or relationship that is undermining your well-being in some way and moving you in the opposite direction from where you really want to go?
I should clarify a few things at this point:
First, I’m not saying that pizza or cookies or alcohol or anything else is inherently bad. A weekly pizza night, a nightly glass of wine, dessert or a complicated relationship can be just fine . . . as long as you feel that it’s consistent with what you really value. In my client’s case, she started to ask herself if her drinking was improving the quality of her connection with her friends. Were those 5+ drinks moving her towards that priority? Was she was really enjoying her time with friends after the fourth or fifth drink, or could she drink less or drink something else and still participate?
Also, I realize that it’s totally possible to prioritize different things in different moments. Maybe at a certain moment in time, connection with others is more important than the specifics of the food or alcohol involved. That’s cool. But it’s also often the case that priorities aren’t mutually exclusive – most of the time when we’re focusing on one priority, we don’t have to throw our other values out the window completely. Life’s usually not that binary, although we can tell ourselves that it is. Based on habit or an unconscious desire to justify our behavior, we can set up an extreme dichotomy in our head: “Either I drink with my friends like I’ve always done, or I’ll be alone on a Saturday night / won’t be part of the group.” Or “Either I order and eat pizza with my family on Fridays or we’ll lose a family ritual / I won’t be able to connect with my kids.” Or “either I eat those cookies, or I’ll totally starve.” You get the idea. The truth is, it’s often possible to find a third way. (And if you’re not seeing a third way, ask yourself if there’s another unconscious priority lurking, like a desire to feel accepted, etc.)
Returning to my client, the epiphany she had was really a dawning understanding that she was participating in something that wasn’t honoring her – her body, her work towards healthier living during the week, or her goals. Although she didn’t use these words, she was loving her Saturday evening habit more than she was loving herself. And this is both common and really easy to do. It’s easy because we can fear change or loss. It’s easy because we have anxieties – the unknown, being marginalized, losing status, etc.
In dysfunctional relationships it’s easy for similar reasons, though they can manifest differently: maybe we’re afraid of what the other person will do if we start to change or maybe we’re afraid to set boundaries for fear of losing the other person altogether. And we focus on what we might lose, but rarely do we ask ourselves, “Who am I loving more here?” Of course, there are layers of complexity in relationships, like:
Is enabling dysfunctional behavior actually loving?
Isn’t sacrifice / unconditionality part of loving someone?
Isn’t it selfish to ‘love myself more?’
I don’t have definitive answers to these questions; all I can really say, based on my work with hundreds of people, is that if you’re consistently prioritizing someone else’s well-being over your own – and particularly at your own expense – it will come back to bite you. You may develop problematic coping strategies or physical manifestations of stress (illness, chronic disease, etc). And while there are moments of sacrifice even in healthy relationships, we are ultimately responsible for our own health and well-being, not anyone else’s. I guess the take-away here is to recognize that we’re likely paying a price in dysfunctional situations, and to decide consciously whether we’re willing to pay it.
So whether in our choices, behaviors, habits or relationships, we owe it to ourselves to ask, “by engaging / participating in this, am I moving in the direction I really want to go? Who am I loving more – myself or that other thing / person?” The answers may surprise us.
For more on self-care and loving yourself more, check out our blog Tending the Garden of the Mind!
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