Digital Only: Young Adults
The Battle for Loving Yourself
I felt like if I had to draw my biggest enemy, the sketch would be a self-portrait.
When I was in middle school, I filled my journal with doodles of myself battling the challenges I was facing. That tough essay? It became a hulking paper monster that stick-figure me could fight off with a sword. Final exams? They were a rickety bridge for me to cross with lava below and the promise of vacation on the other side.
Drawing helped me make my biggest middle-school enemies feel more manageable. But as a young adult, I’ve felt like if I had to draw my biggest enemy, the sketch would be a self-portrait.
My own mental battles feel like the toughest I’ve faced yet, and the self-love that would help me overcome them is in short supply. So where is the help for those of us who struggle to show ourselves compassion?
When Loving Yourself Doesn’t Come Naturally
Loving yourself doesn’t come naturally to some people, and I’m one of them. I struggle with perfectionism, and when I make mistakes, my inner voice can be ruthless. I know my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love me, but it’s still hard to feel that same love for myself.
And it’s not for lack of trying. Remembering my divine identity, focusing on my strengths, and prioritizing physical and mental well-being have been great ways to defend against negative thoughts about myself.
But there are still times I end up wallowing in self-disgust despite my best defenses.
There are still disheartening moments when I catch myself mounting yet another mental self-attack.
I once thought that if I practiced the gospel hard enough, my negative thoughts about my shortcomings would evaporate into rainbows and the blessings of self-compassion. But it turns out that to start loving myself, I needed to see the battle for self-love more clearly.
Defending against Satan’s Lies
A great enemy in this battle is Satan. He would love to see us as miserable as he is (see 2 Nephi 2:27). So he distracts us with false thoughts. When we aren’t seeing or thinking about a situation clearly, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of negative thinking about ourselves.
Fortunately, Heavenly Father has given us the Holy Ghost to help us pierce Satan’s haze of lies and break out of that negative thinking pattern. The Spirit testifies of all truth and speaks “of things as they really are” and “as they really will be” (Jacob 4:13).
President Russell M. Nelson has taught, “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.”1 That means we need to live as God has asked us to so the Spirit can be present.
When I’ve started believing Satan’s lies about me, the Spirit has helped me see things clearly. Sometimes He prompts other people to act or speak in ways that help me, like when my husband testifies of God’s love. If I’m listening, sometimes He speaks to me after I pray, helping me feel peace about my progress.
Regardless of how we feel and recognize the Spirit, God is always ready to send His Comforter, bearer of truth and defender against Satan’s lies. Sometimes we just need to muster the strength and patience to hear Him.
When the Battle Seems Hopeless
But there are times strength and patience might seem out of our reach. One such time put me flat on my back on my bedroom floor. It had been a rough day of mean mental comments and tears, and I was frustrated at my spiral of self-judgment. Self-love felt light-years away. I was sick of it, and all I could do was pour out my heart to Heavenly Father, begging for anything He could give me.
As I stared at the string lights on my ceiling, scripture stories flashed through my mind: Naaman the leper commanded to wash in the River Jordan, not once, but seven times to be healed (see 2 Kings 5:10–14); the Savior using first clay, then water when he healed the man born blind (see John 9:6–7); Christ teaching His disciples not to forgive seven times, but “until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22).
I wanted to heal from self-loathing right then. But thinking about those stories, I realized that healing can take time, repeated effort, and the Savior’s help. I felt like Christ was inviting me to repeatedly turn to Him with whatever energy I had. He was inviting me to discover the joy of daily repentance.2
Jesus Christ Fights at Your Side
The Lord is your strength as you fight to love yourself. Jesus Christ made repentance possible through His Atonement, and He will fight with you against the adversary for as long as it takes. If I doodled my battles with myself now, I would be sure to keep the Savior in the picture. After all, our battles are also His (see 1 Samuel 17:47).
He will “have compassion upon you” as you strive to overcome the world (Doctrine and Covenants 64:2). And it’s not just a little bit of compassion. He stands “being filled with compassion towards the children of men” (Mosiah 15:9, emphasis added). He will fill us with compassion for ourselves too as we turn to Him.
That night on my bedroom floor, I didn’t magically start loving myself all the time. But I did learn an important lesson: developing love for myself is a process, not a one-time event. Through that process, whenever I make a mistake or have hurtful feelings toward myself, I can lean on the Spirit and the Savior’s love for me. “As we humbly turn to Him, He will increase our capacity to change.”3 Because I have experienced this for myself, I have confidence that He doesn’t see my repeated efforts as failures—He sees them as repentance (see Mosiah 26:30).