By Books Writer Denise Turney

Self-love might be a new term. Loving yourself, on the other hand, is not new. There have long been people who are committed to loving themselves. To do this, people have walked away from abusive relationships, including romantic and working relationships. They have also communicated how best to treat them.

Connecting Inner and Outer Relationships

Leaving an abusive relationship might be one of the best ways to treat yourself like you know you matter. This is a lesson that I didn’t want to accept for years. Instead of accepting this fact, I believed in magic.

By believing in magic, I mean that I thought that if I prayed enough, hoped enough and wanted good change enough, a bad relationship would “suddenly” turn good. It never did happen. Not once.

Looking back, I’m glad that “magical thinking” didn’t work. In addition to learning that situations don’t change simply because I want them to, I learned that the way I allow someone to treat me is the way that I am indirectly choosing to treat myself.

When you look back over your relationships, do you spot patterns in how other people treat you? For instance, are most people impatient with you? Are you gifted with loving acceptance from others? Do you often find yourself dealing with people who are critical and judgmental toward you? Do people mirror your inner goodness back to you?

Mirrors of Love

Or do people usually reach out to you with kindness when they want to ask you for something? Should this be the case, you could start to think that you have to earn kindness. That’s when an unloving relationship can create a painful cycle.

The more others mistreat you, the more you think that you have to do something for others to treat you with love, the more you tell yourself that you’re not naturally worth loving, the more people mistreat oyou . . . On and on it can go.

Let it continue and don’t be surprised if you start to feel unhappy, drained and maybe even angry or depressed. If you’re ready to put the brakes on this mean cycle, consider (actually question) what you think about yourself.

A good start is to get naked. Stand in front of a long mirror fully unclothed. Look right at yourself and repeat, “I love you” several times. Pay attention to how you feel while you do this. For example, do you feel embarrassed, ashamed, angry, disappointed?

How’s Love Like a Circle?

Furthermore, do other people treat you the way that you feel while you repeat “I love you” to yourself while you stay unclothed in front of a long mirror? Can you see a link between what you feel about yourself and how others treat you?

It’s not always an easy lesson to learn. Yet, the way that others treat us, especially repeatedly, may reflect what we think about ourselves.

Try it. See what happens.

You could start by writing down 20 ways of thinking or behaving that you absolutely love about yourself. If this seems too hard, you could have inner “self-love” work to do.

Next, write down specific ways that you think demonstrate love. It could range from patience to gentleness to kind words to sharing. How often do you treat yourself and others like this? After all, love really is unbroken. It’s like a circle that’s full and complete.

When Good-Bye Is Best

Should you discover that people are generally unloving toward you, examine how you treat and think about yourself. Also, examine how you treat and think about others. It might help to ask people who know you well, people who care about you, to share their perceptions of you.

This way, you could be aware of blind “perception” spots that you may hold about yourself. Regardless, don’t accept abuse – not from yourself to others, yourself to yourself or from others to you.

Be willing to remove yourself from unloving relationships. Simply say “good-bye”.

Take action right away. Yet, there are choices. For instance, you could start taking actions to leave an abusive relationship in safe ways, alerting the right people of your plans. To offer yourself protections, you could document each of your actions and report any threats to authorities, creating a provable trail.

Plant Yourself in Loving Situations

Or, you could look for a new job, if that’s where the abuse is coming from, and start making plans to step into a new, healthy work environment. Whatever you choose to do, make a decision that puts you in situations where you are being loved.

As you make decisions that put you in position to receive love, you’ll start to feel more comfortable with being loved. Eventually, you could become so accustomed to being loved that you simply will be unable to allow someone to mistreat or abuse you repeatedly. Rather than to stay and “endure” mistreatment, you’ll excuse yourself from the situation.

This leads to so many benefits. For starters, it puts you in the place of teaching others how to treat you. Keep at it. People will start to treat you the way that you believe you deserve to be treated.

Whether you see it now or not, you really matter. It’s time to treat yourself like you know you matter.