Why Being Hard on Yourself Isn’t Helping You Heal: How to Love Yourself Through the Mess

Loving yourself when it's difficult is the most healing thing you can do. In this episode, I break down why so many people find it challenging to love themselves when they’re not making progress, feeling messy, or struggling to “get it right.” Difficulty loving yourself unconditionally isn’t a flaw. It’s the result of deep conditioning. Your earliest experiences with conditional love shaped your nervous system to equate love with conditionality, and this episode reveals how that belief quietly sabotages your healing, preventing both progress and enjoyment.

I also share my own experience of transitioning from conditional to unconditional self-love and how it completely transformed my healing. Through the lenses of neuroscience, attachment theory, and nervous system healing, we explore why trying to heal through fear, shame, and criticism only reinforces your wounds, and why love—real, consistent, unconditional love—is the most direct and powerful medicine.

You’ll also gain practical, moment-by-moment strategies to shift from self-criticism to self-compassion, from judgment to curiosity, and from desperation to presence. You deserve more love, and this episode explains why you don’t have to become someone else to be worthy of your own.

What We Explore ↓

• Why self-love feels difficult when you're not progressing
• How childhood conditioning created a blueprint for conditional love
• The physiological cost of self-criticism and shame
• How nervous system dysregulation makes healing harder
• The difference between fear-based and love-based healing
• Daily practices to build unconditional self-love
• How to stop self-abandoning and start self-reclaiming

Your Links and Offers ↓

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Catch up with Linda↓
@linda.villines
lindavillines.com