Self-Love: The Way to True Love Begins With What Hurts

From Treating Yourself to Meeting Yourself

For more than a decade, I understood self-love mostly as giving myself something enjoyable.

Take that vacation. Go on that trip. Buy yourself an ice cream after a difficult day. Spend the weekend playing your favorite video game because you deserve the break.

There is nothing wrong with any of that. Pleasure, rest, and play can be genuine ways of caring for ourselves.

But I began noticing that they did not always reach the parts of me that were hurting.

I could give myself an enjoyable weekend and still return to the same fears, reactions, and patterns. I could offer myself comfort without understanding what I was trying to comfort. The treat changed the moment, but it did not necessarily change my relationship with myself.

Over time, I began discovering another form of self-love.

It was not only about giving myself what felt good.

It was also about learning to remain present with what did not.

What I Had Been Missing About Self-Love

This shift did not come from rejecting comfort or enjoyment. It developed through my encounters with mindfulness and Buddhist teachings on love.

Years ago, the teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh introduced me to love as a practice rather than only a feeling. More recently, I attended a retreat at the European Institute of Applied Buddhism in Germany, led by Thầy Pháp An. The theme was Teachings on Love.

Within the Plum Village tradition, love includes the willingness to be present, to understand suffering, and to respond with compassion. That practice does not begin only with how we treat other people. It also includes how we meet ourselves.

I began realizing that I could not offer myself only pleasant experiences and call that complete love.

If I ignored the parts of me carrying fear, shame, loneliness, anger, or grief, I was still abandoning something within myself, even while believing I was practicing self-care.

The question became more demanding:

Was I willing to love the parts of myself that were not easy to love?

Loving the Parts of Ourselves We Learned to Avoid

I began sitting more honestly with my pain and the patterns of suffering within me.

I did not always try to solve them. Sometimes I simply noticed what was there: the fear beneath a reaction, the shame behind a silence, the younger part of me still waiting to feel safe, or the old story repeating itself inside a new situation.

I tried to bring light to those places by giving them attention and meeting them with care.

That does not mean approving of every reaction or allowing every pattern to continue. Compassion and honesty can exist together. I can understand why a part of me learned to protect itself while also recognizing that its way of protecting me may no longer be helping.

This form of self-love can be uncomfortable.

It asks me to remain present when distraction would be easier. It asks me to listen without immediately judging, fixing, or turning away. It asks me to stop treating my pain as something shameful that must be hidden before I can be worthy of love.

The more honestly I meet those parts of myself, the less energy I need to spend concealing them from the world.

I can become vulnerable without feeling weak.

I can become more authentic because I am no longer demanding that I appear untouched.

Learning to Care for the Inner Child

In Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child, Thích Nhất Hạnh writes about the wounded child who remains present within the adult we have become.

For me, this was not an abstract idea.

Sometimes an old fear, a strong reaction, or a painful belief carries the voice of a younger part of me. A part that once felt frightened, rejected, unseen, or alone.

I do not need to force a memory or immediately understand everything. I can pause, breathe, and acknowledge what is present.

I can say to that younger part of myself:

I know you are there. I am here with you.

Caring for the inner child does not mean remaining trapped in the past. It means no longer asking a younger version of ourselves to carry that pain alone.

The adult I am today can offer some of the presence, protection, and understanding that may once have been missing.

Self-love then becomes an act of companionship.

I learn not to abandon myself when something hurts.

Ice Cream Can Still Be Self-Love

None of this means that buying myself ice cream, taking a holiday, or spending a quiet evening playing video games cannot be acts of self-love.

Sometimes ice cream is exactly what I need.

Pleasure, rest, and play matter. They can nourish us, offer relief, and remind us that life is not only about examining our pain.

The difference, for me, lies in what I am asking the experience to do.

Am I enjoying something because it brings me genuine pleasure?

Or am I using it as the only way to avoid what is asking for my attention?

Self-love does not require me to choose between comfort and awareness. I can enjoy what feels good while also remaining curious about what hurts.

The ice cream can stay.

But I no longer need to use it to numb my pain.

Loving Others Without Abandoning Ourselves

As I learn to remain present with my own pain, the way I love other people also begins to change.

I can enter a relationship wanting to share love rather than asking someone else to rescue me from the parts of myself I have avoided.

I can notice when my desire for connection is asking me to become smaller, silence what I feel, ignore my boundaries, or betray what I know to be true.

Self-love gives my boundaries roots rather than walls.

It allows me to say yes more honestly and no without believing that love will disappear. It helps me leave what repeatedly diminishes me while remaining open to relationships in which I can be fully present.

We still need one another. We still long for closeness, care, reassurance, and belonging.

But true love does not require self-abandonment.

When I stop leaving myself behind in order to be loved, the love I offer can become more honest, generous, and free.

Exploring Self-Love Through Coaching

Self-love can become more than an idea when we begin noticing how we treat ourselves in difficult moments.

Coaching can offer a structured space to explore where you may be abandoning your needs, silencing what you feel, or looking to others to confirm your worth. It can help you understand the patterns influencing your choices and relationships, while experimenting with responses that reflect your values and boundaries more honestly.

If you would like to explore this in your own life, learn more about one-to-one coaching for personal and professional challenges.

Sources and Background

Thích Nhất Hạnh, Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child
Plum Village, Looking Deeply: Healing the Inner Child
Thích Nhất Hạnh, True Love and the Four Noble Truths

About the Author

Ashraf Monzer is a coach, mindfulness practitioner, and the founder of A Mindful Spot. He is trained in Co-Active Coaching and draws on years of mindfulness practice, lived experience, and more than 13 years working in international business environments. He writes about relationships, work, repeating patterns, difficult decisions, and personal change.

One-to-one online coaching

Ready to talk about what’s on your mind?

Get in touch

Coaching offers a structured space for reflection, personal development, and exploring choices or patterns. It is not psychotherapy or medical care and does not diagnose or treat mental health conditions.