Do you love yourself enough to care about what you put into your body?How about enough to surround yourself with dynamic, innovative, encouraging people? Do you feel warmly about your abilities, ideas and initiatives?
Or have a deep desire to make sure you are well supported and able to show the world your wonderful, unique beauty, and a few people your deepest struggles?
Maybe you have a hard time loving yourself at all? You wonder why your life's so difficult, why you can't loose weight or quit smoking or find the relationship you want. Maybe it's become more intense, with thoughts of self-destruction taking root in your head.
If you find you don't love yourself at all, I understand. It's not your fault. It's something that has happened to you.
We are born able and willing to love everyone we meet deeply and freely, including ourselves. We arrive wondering where we belong, whom we belong to and where we get to love and be loved. The self-hate that can become common in our life afterwards is not something we were born with and is definitely something we can change.
Human beings have a profound and inherent capacity to feel. Unfortunately, the oppression against our mental health is a heavy one. It descends upon us in the first few days of our lives, hindering our physical and intellectual development, our healing abilities and making everything that we face thereafter harder.
When my son was born, I was repeatedly asked if he was a "good" child - "good" meaning he had stopped trying to show me his fear, grief, anger or pain. He was "good" if he didn't cry. In our society, crying is a "problem".
Most parents are delighted if their child doesn't cry after having a painful or frightening experience. Failing to realise this new human has learned it's safer to shut down than to express his or herself, the new parent gets to feel proud and validated about the behaviour of their child.
We are under so much pressure to show that our children are "good", we trade tips on how to keep them quiet: bounce them, rock them, sing to them, play with them, feed them, leave them a while and, eventually, they'll stop. Of course they will. We can't cry at the same time we're being shook, flung through the air or fed.
We are not born thinking it makes sense to cry on our own. As babies we quickly learn that people will do ridiculous things to us if we try to deal with our terrible hurts. And we have no ability to heal ourselves in isolation.
But crying, in fact, is a useful, purposeful thing that deserves to be encouraged and paid attention to.
In our world of numbness and confusion, we've come to believe if we stop someone from crying, we can end their hurt.
It seems logical, even loving, and yet it makes no sense.
Crying is an emotional response to having been hurt. The hurt is always already in the past. With crying, we have a natural ability to heal that hurt. But, this won't work well without love and support. When we interrupt someone's crying, we force them into confusion - the state that arises when you didn't get the chance to recover from a hurt. Quite literally, you get stuck in the moment.
We've all had a lifetime of this oppression against our mental health.
It has affected our physical and mental functioning, and outlook on the world. The more intense our experience of this has been, the more edgy, rigid, fearful or depressed we will become. Couple this with one or more traumas where we were victimised and overpowered, and you have a recipe for self-destruction and self-hate.
There are many more of us struggling with "nerves", "panic attacks", "depression" or feelings of suicide than are visible in society, and for very good reason. When we display publicly our deep feelings, we're met with intense worry and fear. Given that the hurt causing our struggle would have been terrifying in the first place, the last thing we need is more worry.
There is also the very real threat that someone might suggest we are broken and no longer able to be in charge of our own mind.
While it is okay to go numb, "function" and kill ourselves slowly with cigarettes or alcohol, talking about having feelings like suicide is not.
Yet, until we can talk about it and be listened to in turns with warmth and encouragement, we will never recover from these struggles.
The longer and more consistently we're shut down, the deeper our isolation and powerlessness will become. So, give yourself a break. Be pleased with yourself.
There are reasons for your struggles, and loving yourself makes sense.
- Shalini Sinha is an independent producer, counsellor and journalist. She is a counsellor on equality issues. She has lectured on Women's Studies in UCD and co-presents Mono, RTÉ's intercultural programme.