Signs You Are Not Loving Yourself - Episode #63

The Peace & Prosperity Podcast is a bi-weekly conversation with Jason Phillips, LCSW, licensed therapist and confidence expert in Raleigh, NC, discussing all things related to self-love and self-confidence, and how we can improve ourselves personally and professionally.

Ever found yourself swayed by the opinions and decisions of others, even when they don’t align with your own values? In this episode of the Peace and Prosperity Podcast, I, Jason Phillips, share personal stories from my high school and college days to highlight the importance of self-love and empowerment. Learn how to recognize the red flags that suggest you might be neglecting your own desires and beliefs, and discover actionable advice on how to stand firm in your personal choices. We'll explore why assertiveness is a crucial manifestation of self-love, and how clear, confident communication can help ensure that others respect your boundaries and decisions.

High functioning anxiety is something many of us grapple with, often silently. In this episode, we tackle this all-too-common issue head-on, offering practical strategies to manage anxiety on your own and emphasizing when it's crucial to seek professional help. Don't miss our tips and insights on reducing anxiety’s grip on your life. Plus, remember to join our podcast community—like, share, subscribe, and let us know what topics you want us to cover next. Engage with us, send a DM, or leave a review. Let's continue this journey towards peace and prosperity together.

To stay connected with Jason and learn about coaching, connect with Jason on social media:

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jphillipsmsw/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/jphillipsmsw

Visit Jason's website for a consultation:

Website -https://www.jasonlphillips.com

To book Jason to speak to your team or organization:

https://peaceprosperitycoaching.hbportal.co/public/660d8068c9d2d600253b215b/1-Inquiry

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

All right, we are back for another episode of the Peace and Prosperity Podcast. Let's go ahead and get right into it. I'm your host, jason Phillips, licensed therapist, confidence expert, and today we're going to talk about the signs that you don't love yourself. As we get into this episode, you may think, well, is this for me, is this for a family member, is this for a friend or a loved one? Listen, this is for anybody who can benefit from loving themselves more. Now I will say that there are so many different layers to all of these signs and I'm going to do my best to break them down swiftly, but really in a way that you can digest it, and I'm for sure going to give you some things to do at the end If you find yourself feeling like oh okay, this is me. I know, jason, you hit on some things where I need to step it up in this area.

Speaker 1: 1:02

So the first sign that you are not loving yourself, or loving yourself to the fullest capacity that you want to or can, is that you find yourself being easily influenced, meaning you're just kind of going with whatever somebody says that you should do or that they're doing. You're doing it. Now you may think, well, what does this have to do with me? It has a lot to do with you and how you love yourself, because where are your values in these decisions? Just because this person says, hey, we're hanging out all night or we're staying out and doing this or we're moving, whatever decision they're making, that's their decision. You have to have your own decision. You have to have your own thought process behind it. Now, if your decision and their decision just happens to be in alignment, cool, great. But I don't want you making decisions just based off of what somebody else is doing. You can love yourself and pour into yourself on a level much greater than that. That aligns with what you actually want for your life. Now, depending on your age, you know your age group, your friend circle, your family influences and family ties. This can be challenging because you may want to continue certain traditions.

Speaker 1: 2:31

There may be some things that people are doing and you feel like, oh man, well, that's cool, but is that really for you? Like? I'm going to give you an example when I was this is kind of going way back, but, like when I was in high school there were friends of mine who were doing all type of things, but these weren't things that were in alignment with what I believed in. But because I was hanging with them, I was like, well, I don't know, maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't. You know, some friends were just maybe smoking, maybe a little bit more promiscuous, like all these, just different behaviors, and I found myself saying you know what, like no, I'm straight, like I love myself enough and care about myself enough to say that these aren't my decisions, those are your decisions and it's cool, but those are not the decisions that I want to make. And even just along the lines of those same type of behaviors, I found myself having to really stand up for myself or express the love that I have for myself in different situations. Like there was one time people always crack up at this, but I was in college, undergrad.

Speaker 1: 3:44

We were at a house party, one of those parties where you're in somebody's apartment, people playing cards, drinking, just mingling. I mean it was a good party. And I remember I walked past somebody and they asked hey, do you want to hit this blunt? And I'm like nah, I'm good, I don't smoke. And they were like and I'm like nah, you know, I'm good, I don't smoke. And they were like Jay, why You're not an athlete, so you don't really need your lungs, and they were dead serious. So I had to say you know what. I love myself enough not to be easily influenced by what y'all are doing. That's you. I respect you for it. Hey, you cool, do what you're going to do, but that's not going to be me. So make sure you're not somebody who's being easily influenced to do stuff. That's not what you want to do. But because you don't know or you're not standing up for yourself and respecting yourself, you just go in with the flow.

Speaker 1: 4:38

The second thing, or second way to tell if you don't love yourself, there's a lack of assertiveness, and what I mean by that is you're not able to assert yourself in different situations. Whether you're trying to say no, whether you're trying to speak up for yourself, you just you hem and haw about it. Or when you do kind of start to go there, you're like oh, people can hear when there's some ambiguity about what you're saying, or they're like you know what? I think if I push him a little bit more, he might, he might go ahead and flip. So be very assertive. You don't have to be aggressive. You don't have to come at somebody and have your foot on their neck, as they say, but I don't want you to be very passive either, because people can smell that Kind of like.

Speaker 1: 5:29

I know, when I was growing up, people could say to the dog Now, that's what they will say. A dog can sense if you're scared or if you're timid, and they'll attack you. All right, I don't know. Let me know if that's true or not. Where I'm going, though, is when you're having assertive conversations or when you're asserting yourself in different situations. I want you to make sure you have the right tone, you have the right verbiage like your sense, your presence. You have the right verbiage, like your sense, your presence. People respect you, and you know, hey, I really mean what I'm saying, because you love yourself enough to do so, because I know, sometimes we we go off and we don't speak up for ourselves. We got our heads down, we're saying, no, I'm good, or no, I'm straight, and we really aren't straight, but we don't know how to speak up for ourselves.

Speaker 1: 6:24

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Speaker 1: 7:18

All right, let's get back to the episode. The next sign that you don't love yourself is there's poor decision-making across the board. When I say that you are making decisions that just either don't make sense, so there's no purpose behind it, there's no reasoning behind it, or there is reasoning and you're making decisions that's going to put you in a very bad situation, meaning maybe you're in school, but you're staying up all night just because, just because you can, and you're not focused on your grades. Or you're staying up all night just because, just because you can and you're not focused on your grades. Or you're in a relationship, a committed relationship, but you're not being committed and that's. You may say well, it's my partner. No, no, hold on. Before we go start doing the blame thing, I want you to look at you. How are you showing up for this person? How are you showing up for your relationship? How are you showing up for yourself? These are not their decisions. These are decisions that you're making that impact you all as a couple or as a union. That poor decision-making will get you in a lot of trouble if you're not thinking it through and really being intentional about loving yourself and making sure the decisions that you're making are reflective of you and the love and respect you have for yourself. It goes deep. It goes really deep when it comes to decision making.

Speaker 1: 8:57

All right, the next sign that you don't love yourself is you talk down about yourself. There's all type of negative self-talk. When you are speaking about yourself or when you're speaking to yourself, you may say some things like. You may say some things like man, I'm always messing up. You hear that generalization. I'm always doing blank, blank, blank or I'll never get ahead. And when you say stuff like that, you won't. I guarantee you. When you make those type of statements, you won't get ahead Because you're beating yourself up and you're downing yourself, and that type of energy is going to let other people come into your life and down you too, or you won't even be able to stand up for yourself because you're going to be so used to you beating yourself up first.

Speaker 1: 9:52

Be mindful of how you talk to yourself. Be mindful how you want other people to treat you. So when you show up and you're introducing yourself, how are you standing? How are you posturing yourself? How are you describing who you are and what you do and what you're about?

Speaker 1: 10:11

People always say they hate well, not everybody, but I hear this a lot. I hate talking about myself, even if they're in a one-on-one session. Oh man, this on me. Yeah, this is for you, this is not for me, but people are not always comfortable saying who they are and talking about themselves. They got the hairs down and they're just not. They don't. Either you don't know yourself or the language that you're using to describe yourself is very, very poor, is very, very poor.

Speaker 1: 10:46

The last one I'm going to leave you with and this one I'm hearing a lot, a lot is you are putting everyone else first. So on this one, it's not saying that you don't love yourself, but what it is still saying is that you love everybody else more and you're thinking of everybody else, but you and how you can show up for them. So I want you to sit with those, because I know we got into it, y'all the boundaries, we didn't even get into that. But when you put everybody else first, there's a boundary problem. When you're talking down on yourself, there's a mindset problem. There's a self-love issue. There could be earlier attachment issues that we could get into. There's a mindset problem. There's a self-love issue. There could be earlier attachment issues that we could get into. There's a lot.

Speaker 1: 11:28

So the first thing I want you to do, if you can relate to any of these, acknowledge it. Say you know what? Hey, Jason, you got me, that's all me and I'm owning that. So now, once you acknowledge it, you got to take accountability and do something about it. So the action. So whether are you got to take accountability and do something about it? So the action. So whether are you going to start to journal? Are you going to start to get yourself into therapy? Are you going to set goals that are reflective of you loving yourself? Whatever it is that you're going to do, execute on it. You got to do it. All right, y'all. That is it.

Speaker 1: 12:02

We are wrapping up another episode of the Peace and Prosperity podcast. As always, be blessed Peace. Thank you all for listening to another episode of the Peace and Prosperity podcast. Again, if you are feeling like, hey, I'm experiencing high functioning anxiety, don't beat yourself up about it. It is OK. We all experience anxiety from time to time and I gave you a couple of things that you can do on your own, but don't hesitate to reach out to a professional to better manage what you're going through. To better manage what you're going through, okay, and lastly, make sure, if you have not like share, subscribe to the podcast and send this out to a friend. And if you want to hear certain episodes or have certain conversations, let me know. You can shoot me a DM or just leave a review and I will definitely follow up. All right, y'all Be blessed Peace.