Self-Love Starts with Your Messiest Parts
Self-love is often linked to confidence, positive affirmations, or celebrating our strengths and it is a very important part of living a life that feels balanced and successful.
I truly believe that one of the most powerful, yet often overlooked, ways to practice self-love is sitting with the parts of yourself you’ve spent years trying to hide.
Instead of asking “Do you love myself?”, real self-love asks something much harder:
Can you love yourself even when you’re disappointed in yourself?
Can you stay connected to yourself when you’ve made a mistake?
Those questions changed everything for me.
Prefer to listen? This article is adapted from Episode 1 of I Buy Myself Flowers: “Buying Myself Flowers Was Never About the Flowers.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
The Day Self-Love Became Something Different
For years, I bought myself flowers every Sunday as a reminder that I didn’t need permission to celebrate or care for myself.
Then one day, after one of the hardest arguments I’d ever experienced in my relationship, I sat in my car overwhelmed with shame.
I wasn’t just upset about the argument. I was upset with myself. More precisely, the part of me that had surfaced. It was the angry, loud, mean, and messy part, which was completely unlike the version of myself I work so hard to be every day.
As I sat there replaying everything that had happened, I noticed something else.
I was bullying myself or actually that part of me that showed up and reinforced the belief that this part of me was somehow broken, too much, or unlovable. I felt defeated, but then something unexpected happened.
A quiet thought came to me:
“Go buy that part of yourself flowers.”
This was the moment that redefined what self love truly meant, because it reminded me that every part of me, even the messy part, was worthy of my love, care, and attention.
Ultimately, I realized buying myself flowers had never really been about the flowers.
Why Self-Love Means Loving Every Part of Yourself
Many of us have parts of ourselves we’ve decided aren’t acceptable.
Maybe it’s your anger or your sensitivity.
Maybe it’s your anxiety, your perfectionism, your need for rest, your ambition, your fear, or your grief.
Over time, we learn which parts of ourselves receive praise and which parts receive criticism.
And then, we begin editing ourselves to show the polished version to the world while locking away the pieces we believe will make us difficult to love.
The problem is that those hidden parts don’t disappear, they simply wait for an opportunity to be heard.
The more we shame them, the louder they become.
The goal is not to pretend that those parts don’t exist, but instead, learn to stay in relationship with them.
Where Our Beliefs About Being “Too Much” Come From
Very few of us are born believing we are unlovable.
Most of us come into this world with a natural instinct to express ourselves. We cry when we are sad and we laugh when something delights us. We reach for comfort when we need it and we speak, move, feel, desire, and react before we ever learn to question whether we are being too emotional, too loud, too sensitive, too needy, too joyful, or too much.
Those beliefs are learned.
They develop through experiences, relationships, expectations, criticism, rejection, and moments that teach us certain parts of ourselves are not welcome. Maybe we were told to calm down when we were excited, to stop crying when we were hurt, to be quiet when we had something to say, or to toughen up when we needed tenderness.
Over time, those moments become stories.
And eventually, those stories become beliefs.
We start to believe we are only lovable when we are easy to be around. We start to believe our emotions make us difficult, our needs make us burdensome, or our truth makes us unsafe to love. So we shrink. We edit, perform, and hide the parts of ourselves that once felt natural because somewhere along the way, we learned they might cost us connection.
If this is resonating with you, one of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is:
Is this belief 100% true?
Often, the answer is no.
And if the belief is not 100% true, then it may be time to stop organizing your life around it.
How to work through these beliefs
I have worked with successful, ambitious women who shrink every time they are in a meeting because they believe their voice will be perceived as too much. I have worked with compassionate leaders who are afraid to let their people see how deeply they care because they believe their tenderness will be mistaken for weakness. In both cases, the belief is costing them something professionally, personally, emotionally, and relationally.
This is why getting clear on the beliefs that are keeping you stuck matters so much.
Because the goal is not just to identify the belief. The deeper work is learning how to stop abandoning the parts of yourself that belief taught you to judge, shame, or hide.
Those parts were never the problem.
They were simply the parts of you that needed more care, attention, and love.
Self-Love Looks Like Curiosity Instead of Criticism
One of the biggest shifts in my own healing happened when I stopped asking:
“What’s wrong with me?”
And started asking:
“What does this part of me need?”
That single question transformed everything, because underneath anger there is often grief, fear, and a longing to feel loved, seen, or heard.
What most people don’t realize is that every part of us is trying to communicate something.
When we approach those parts with curiosity instead of judgment, we create the opportunity for healing instead of hiding.
A Self-Love Practice You Can Try This Week
If there’s a part of yourself you’ve labeled as difficult, embarrassing, or unworthy, try this simple exercise.
Set aside thirty uninterrupted minutes.
Grab your journal.
Write a letter to that part of yourself.
Not to fix it, or to lecture it, or to explain why it needs to change.
Simply tell it that it’s loved.
Tell it that you understand how hard it’s been carrying everything it’s carried.
Tell it that you’re ready to listen.
You may be surprised by what that part has been trying to tell you all along.
Self-Love Isn’t About Becoming Someone New
One of the greatest misconceptions about personal growth is that we’re trying to become someone completely different.
But healing isn’t about abandoning parts of yourself, it is much more than that.
It’s about reclaiming them and recognizing that every part of you deserves compassion, even the parts you’re still learning to understand or love.
Because when you stop fighting yourself, something remarkable happens.
You create room for repair and you begin to deepen your relationship with yourself.
And from that place, you’re able to show up with more grace, empathy, and authenticity in every other relationship in your life.
Reflection Questions
As you continue your self-love journey, spend a few moments reflecting on these questions:
- What part of yourself have you convinced yourself is difficult to love?
- Where did that belief come from?
- Is that belief completely true?
- What would it look like to offer that part of yourself compassion instead of criticism?
- How can you practice self-love by tending to that part this week?
Ready to begin your own Reclamation Season?
Subscribe to I Buy Myself Flowers wherever you listen to podcasts, and join me every Tuesday as we explore what it means to reclaim the parts of ourselves we’ve left behind.
Follow along on Instagram @allisontibbs and discover more resources to support your journey at allisontibbs.com.
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