One of my biggest issues is putting others in front of my own needs. Also, putting myself in situations where I ask for others okays and thoughts rather then making my own decisions independently. I will also touch on getting out of toxic relationships with people.
This has been one of my biggest issues on self love. Having low self esteem, I tried finding it through other people and unhealthy relationships. When I was young, in grade school, I would put everything into what I thought was friendships to the point that it was annoying to those friends who pushed me away because of it. By middle school, I found a group of people who accepted me for me but were very unhealthy individuals. They were from extremely tumultuous households understand respect of others or appropriate emotional expressions, some did drugs, and so on. So I was not generally around unhealthy environments and people who weren't really in a good place to have healthy relationships. When I was in high school I chose to be more selective about my friendships but I certainly wasn't great at choosing people even then. I was getting into romantic relationships because I felt that was expected and behaved the way I thought I was supposed to and eventually got into an unhealthy marriage because of that.
This was one of the biggest unhealthy relationships I had been in to date. It was an emotional and verbal and bordered on physically abusive due to his bipolar disorder and the way he was raised. He unintentionally conditioned me to on egg shells and always ask for permission to do things which I haven't fully broken the habit of today. I also have a bad habit of apologizing and looking for others approval due to this relationship. My biggest self love experience through that whole situation is getting the strength up to divorce him. Which I finally did.
It has taken a lot of time to get to where I am today from that low point, but I still have a lot to work on still.
Currently, my biggest struggles are putting those I love and care about before me even when it isn't necessary or even when they call me out on it and tell me to stop it. It is a bit of a compulsive reaction for me. My happiness generally derives from making others happy, not myself.
I have a friend in my life currently who calls me on it when I do it more then anyone has and tries to nail in the fact that my needs are more important then anyone else. My friend tells me many positive things about myself that I either never hear or hear very rarely from those I care about and it has a major impact on how I view myself. It is kind of like relearning how to have healthy relationships and this friend is kind of steering the way. I am learning things about myself that I didn't know, or that I haven't dealt with and thought I had, and so on. It is interesting how one person coming into your life at the right time can flip it upside down and have such a large impact on it, in a positive way. Though some negative habits have popped up and my friend just figuratively shakes me and bats my head to get me out of those habits. Sometimes you need another person to give you a hand up but when it comes down to it, this is something I will eventually need to continue alone.
It is a never ending process.
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