By: Joy Stephenson-Laws, JD, Founder and President

Self-love is often associated with treating ourselves to something enjoyable, such as a spa day or dinner at a favorite restaurant. When I was younger, that is largely how I understood it.

Over time, I came to see self-love differently. Enjoying ourselves can be part of caring for ourselves. The harder questions arise when life is difficult. How do we treat ourselves when we make a mistake? What do we do when someone hurts us? What do we do when it feels like everything is going wrong? Can we acknowledge our own role in a problem without attacking ourselves? Can we care for ourselves today while also thinking about what will serve us tomorrow?

What I Mean by Self-Love.

The research discussed in this article does not test self-love as one scientific construct. The studies examine self-compassion, which researchers define and measure more specifically.

I use self-love here as a broad term for treating ourselves with care and respect while taking responsibility for the choices and actions that belong to us. Self-compassion is one part of that larger idea.

Researchers have tested whether self-compassion can be taught. In a randomized trial of an eight-week Mindful Self-Compassion course, 54 adults signed up and were randomly assigned either to take the course or to wait for a later one; 51 were included in the analysis. Compared with the waiting group, people who took the course reported larger increases in self-compassion, mindfulness, compassion for others, and life satisfaction, and larger decreases in depression, anxiety, stress, and avoidance of difficult thoughts and feelings.

The trial has important limits. It was small, and it was run by the two people who created the course. The comparison group was a waitlist, so the study cannot separate what the course teaches from the effect of signing up for a course. All outcomes were self-reported. Most participants were women, White, held graduate degrees, were around fifty, and had meditated before. The authors note that it is unclear whether the course would work as well for men or for people with less education.

Caring about ourselves does not require excusing everything we do. We can treat ourselves with compassion and still admit a mistake, respect ourselves and still decide that our behavior needs to change, and recognize that someone else hurt us while deciding what choices remain available to us.

The Feel. Pause. Act.™ method gives us a way to practice caring for ourselves and taking responsibility at the same time.

FEEL.

Suppose we forget an important deadline at work or school. Our first thought might be:

“I can’t believe I did that. I am such an idiot.”

We may feel embarrassed, ashamed, angry, or afraid of what will happen next. FEEL asks us to identify what is happening before deciding what it says about us.

“I feel ashamed because I missed the deadline.”

The missed deadline is a fact. Calling ourselves an idiot is a judgment about who we are.

We can acknowledge:

“I missed the deadline, and I am disappointed in myself.”

without turning one mistake into:

“This proves something is wrong with me.”

PAUSE.

Now we ask:

“What happened? What belongs to me? What does not?”

If we never wrote the deadline down, or we knew the date and kept putting the work off, that part is ours. If someone gave us the wrong date, or the instructions were unclear, that part belongs to someone else. Sometimes both are true.

PAUSE asks us to examine what happened accurately enough to separate responsibility from self-attack. Research suggests that treating ourselves with compassion does not require giving up accountability.

In four experiments, researchers Juliana Breines and Serena Chen tested what happened when participants were encouraged to respond to personal weaknesses, mistakes, or failures with self-compassion. The experiments address a common concern about self-love: If I am too easy on myself, won’t I become complacent? The results showed the opposite.

In one experiment, participants recalled a recent time when they had done something they felt was wrong. Some then wrote themselves a paragraph of kindness and understanding about it; others wrote about their good qualities or about a hobby. Those who wrote with self-compassion reported greater motivation to make amends and to avoid repeating the behavior.

In another experiment, students took a vocabulary test built to be too hard for most of them, then saw the correct answers. Some read a short note saying that many students struggle with tests like this and not to be too hard on themselves. Those students spent more time studying for a second test than students who saw no note.

In every experiment, people given the self-compassion prompt scored higher on the self-improvement measures than people given no prompt or a pleasant distraction. Compared with people told to think about their good qualities, the difference was clear on three of five measures. Most participants were undergraduates; the fourth experiment recruited adults from across the United States online. The studies measured responses within a single session, and the authors say further research is needed to learn whether the effect lasts. Within that session, treating themselves with compassion and wanting to do better occurred together.

We can say to ourselves:

“I made a mistake, and I am responsible for my part. I do not have to attack myself for it.”

PAUSE also helps when responsibility belongs partly or entirely somewhere else.

If we believe a teacher graded us unfairly, taking ourselves seriously means reviewing the work, asking how the grade was calculated, listening to the answer, and deciding whether there is a basis to challenge it.

If a friend repeatedly speaks to us disrespectfully, the friend’s behavior is the friend’s responsibility. Ours is deciding what we will do with what we know.

Self-love requires enough respect for ourselves to see both what belongs to us and what does not.

ACT.

Once we understand what happened, we decide what we can do.

If we forgot the deadline, we can put future deadlines in the calendar as soon as we receive them.
If we do not understand something, we can ask for help.
If we hurt someone, we can apologize and decide what we will do differently.
If someone repeatedly ignores a limit we have communicated, we can decide what boundary we need.
If our health needs attention, we can make the appointment.

A useful question to ask ourselves is:

“What can I do now that will take care of me later?”

Sometimes the answer is rest and sometimes it is exercise. It may mean going home instead of staying out, or getting out of bed when we would rather stay there. It may mean making the medical appointment we have been avoiding, or admitting that we owe someone an apology.

Research has found a relationship between self-compassion and health-related behavior, although the evidence here is observational. In a study that pooled 15 of the researchers’ own survey samples of students and community adults, 3,252 people in all, those who scored higher on self-compassion reported practicing health-promoting behaviors somewhat more often. These included behaviors related to physical activity, eating, sleep, and stress management. The authors describe the association as small.

Because every sample was surveyed at a single point in time and relied on self-report, the study cannot establish that self-compassion caused healthier behavior. People who practice healthier behaviors may become more self-compassionate, self-compassion may influence behavior, other factors may influence both, or several processes may operate together.

Self-Love Is More Than Indulgence.

A spa day can be enjoyable. So can a good meal, a vacation, new clothes, or an afternoon doing nothing. Enjoyment has value. The question is whether every act that feels good in the moment deserves to be called self-love.

Buying something we cannot afford because we are distressed may make us feel better tonight but create another source of stress tomorrow. Avoiding a medical concern may spare us anxiety today while leaving the concern unresolved. Avoiding a difficult conversation may reduce discomfort for a few hours while allowing the underlying problem to continue.

Immediate comfort and long-term care can match, and they can conflict. Self-love asks us to care about the person who wants relief today and the person who will live with today’s decisions tomorrow.

Self-Love Does Not Require Superiority.

Caring about ourselves does not require believing that we are better, smarter, more important, or more deserving than another person. Self-respect can coexist with respect for other people. We can protect our time while recognizing that another person’s time matters too, disagree without humiliating someone, set a boundary without deciding that the other person is inferior, and recognize our own strengths without needing someone else to have fewer.

The self-compassion trial described earlier is consistent with this: compared with the waiting group, people who took the course reported larger increases in compassion for others as well as for themselves.

Self-Love and Relationships.

How we relate to ourselves may also be connected to how we behave in relationships.

One study examined 104 heterosexual couples. Each participant reported their own level of self-compassion, while their partner rated aspects of their relationship behavior. Partners of people with higher self-compassion described them as more caring and accepting, more willing to give the partner freedom, and less controlling, detached, domineering, or verbally aggressive.

The couples were young (average age 27), 82% White, recruited through newspaper ads, and mostly satisfied with their relationships. Partner ratings are reports; no one observed the couples. The study was observational. It shows an association between the way people relate to themselves and how their partners describe them, and it cannot show which came first.

For our own relationships, we can focus on what we can observe:

Does the relationship allow honesty?
Can each person say no?
Can either person disagree without intimidation or humiliation?
When someone causes harm, can that person acknowledge it and try to repair it?

Those questions can be answered from what we see and hear.

Self-Love and Responsibility Can Coexist.

Kindness toward ourselves and responsibility for what we do can operate together. We can acknowledge a mistake without turning it into a verdict about our worth, and we can forgive ourselves while repairing the harm we caused. Feel. Pause. Act.™ gives us a sequence for doing both.

FEEL. We identify what we are experiencing without treating the feeling as evidence of our worth.

PAUSE. We separate what happened from the conclusions we are drawing about ourselves, and we identify what belongs to us and what does not.

ACT. We act on the part that is ours.

Self-love gives us a way to decide how we will treat ourselves and what we will do next, including when other people and events are outside our control. Sometimes caring for ourselves means comfort, sometimes rest, and sometimes asking for help. And sometimes the most loving response to ourselves is the one that requires effort from us.

Joy Stephenson-Laws, JD, is the founding and managing partner of Stephenson, Acquisto & Colman, a healthcare litigation firm, and the founder and president of Proactive Health Labs, a national nonprofit focused on evidence-based health literacy. A healthcare attorney for more than forty years and a certified holistic wellness coach, she writes about how people can partner with their doctors without surrendering their own judgment.

Her books include Your Labs Are Fine. You're Not., Advice on Trial: The Beliefs You Inherited but Never Examined, From Chains to Wings: A Poetry Revolution for Healing,Secrets That Sparkle (and Secrets That Sting), and Minerals - The Forgotten Nutrient: Your Secret Weapon for Getting and Staying Healthy.

(This article is for general education and is not medical advice. It is meant to help you ask better questions, not to replace evaluation by a qualified clinician).

RESOURCES AND REFERENCES

Neff KD, Germer CK. A pilot study and randomized controlled trial of the Mindful Self-Compassion program. Journal of Clinical Psychology. 2013;69(1):28-44. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.21923
Breines JG, Chen S. Self-compassion increases self-improvement motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2012;38(9):1133-1143. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212445599
Neff KD, Beretvas SN. The role of self-compassion in romantic relationships. Self and Identity. 2013;12(1):78-98. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2011.639548
Sirois FM, Kitner R, Hirsch JK. Self-compassion, affect, and health-promoting behaviors. Health Psychology. 2015;34(6):661-669. https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000158

What Is Self-Love? More Than a Spa Day