The Self-Love Lie: Why Bubble Baths and Affirmations only Scratch the Surface

By Penny Louise

Self-love. The word is everywhere. Social media is filled with pastel-coloured quotes, scented candles, and reminders to “treat yourself.” You’re told that all it takes is a warm bath, a face mask, or repeating “I am enough” in the mirror every morning.

But let’s be real.

If self-love was that easy, everyone would be healed. No one would struggle with self-doubt, toxic patterns, or feeling unworthy of love.

Honestly, most of what we call “self-love” today is a distraction. It’s a comfortable illusion that keeps you avoiding the real work. Because deep, true self-love isn’t about pampering yourself—it’s about facing yourself.

It’s about doing the work that most people run from. And that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about.

Why Surface-Level Self-Love Isn’t Enough

Imagine someone who has spent years feeling unworthy of love. Maybe they had a parent who was emotionally unavailable. Maybe they were bullied, rejected, or made to feel like they were never “enough.”

Now imagine that person lighting a candle, putting on a face mask, and telling themselves “I am loved.”

Do they suddenly believe it? Do decades of pain and conditioning disappear in an instant? Of course not.

That’s because self-love isn’t just about feeling good—it’s about healing. And healing isn’t always comfortable.

True self-love isn’t about avoiding pain. It’s about going straight into it and the darker the dark the lighter the light. The more someone is able to go into their darkness and face their self-hatred the more they can come to real self love.

What Real Self-Love Looks Like (And Why It’s So Hard)

Real self-love is acceptance and action:

✔️ Facing your wounds instead of suppressing them and accepting they are there.

✔️ Not just setting boundaries but the process of finding them isn't a quick decision, it's about going into the origin of what you feel and finding them. 

✔️ Letting go of the need for validation because you realise that love doesn't need to come exclusively from the others.

✔️ Breaking toxic cycles by taking responsibility and going into honest self-awareness instead of repeating them because you mistake comfort for self-love.

✔️ Learning to hold discomfort and emotional pain instead of numbing yourself.

Real self-love isn’t always pretty. It’s not just journaling and meditating—it’s ugly crying, bringing out your shadows, and unlearning decades of conditioning.

Let’s go deeper into what self-love actually looks like.

1. Shadow Work: Confronting the Parts of Yourself You Don’t Like

Most people try to fix themselves by rejecting parts of who they are and honestly I have to stop myself from doing the same. They bury their pain, hide their insecurities, and pretend to be someone they’re not.

But self-love isn’t about erasing your flaws and pretending to be a "leveled-up" version of yourself. It’s about accepting every part of yourself, even the ones you’ve been taught to hate. Can you be ok with the idea that you may be the things you hate about yourself? Not all the time, but those elements may exist in you and that's ok?

Shadow work is the process of meeting these hidden parts of yourself—the anger, the fear, the shame—and integrating them with kindness and brutal honesty instead of denying them.

👉 Ask yourself:

• What parts of myself do I try to hide? That I don't want others to see.

• Where am I still seeking approval instead of being authentic?

• What emotions do I avoid because they make me uncomfortable?

Healing starts when you stop running from yourself to pretend to be something you are not.

2. Emotional Release: Letting Go of What’s Been Buried

Most people don’t heal because they don’t allow themselves to feel.

You can’t just “think” your way into self-love. You can’t intellectually tell yourself that you are worthy while still carrying decades of suppressed pain in your body.

This is why emotional release is crucial.

Crying. Shaking. Screaming into a pillow. Moving your body.

This isn’t weakness—it’s the body’s way of processing unhealed wounds. If you skip this step, no amount of positive thinking will change how you feel deep down. Please assume that to be healed means to not show any emotion or maybe not even need to. This is not at all true.

👉 Try this:

• The next time you feel a strong emotion, instead of suppressing it, sit with it.

• If you need to cry, let yourself cry fully.

• If you feel anger, punch a pillow (safely), shake your body, or scream into it.

Release it, don’t suppress it.

Self-love means making space for every emotion—not just the comfortable ones and showing the world how happy you are.

3. Inner Child Work: Healing the Root Wound

If you struggle with self-love, chances are there’s a younger version of you who never felt truly seen, loved, or valued. This is pretty normal, most people feel this way.

Inner child work is about reconnecting with that part of yourself, offering them the love and safety they never had and finding ways in the present and future to keep up that self-love by being in touch with that voices that tells you what it needs.

This is powerful because most of your self-sabotaging patterns come from wounds that were created in childhood.

👉 Try this:

• Close your eyes and imagine your younger self standing in front of you.

• What do they look like? What are they feeling?

• Now, tell them what they needed to hear but never did.

For example:"You don't need to be anything other than exactly who you are."

This work is life-changing because it rewires the way you see yourself from the inside out. If you don't, you may live a comfortable self-indulgent life but still find yourself acting in ways that stem from negative behaviour patterns such as self sabotage.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Self-Love

Self-love isn’t about constantly feeling happy. It's about loving every way that you express yourself and not denying yourself that need.

Self-love isn’t about being perfect. It's about being imperfect.

Self-love isn’t about looking in the mirror and forcing yourself to believe something you don’t feel. It's about accepting who you are and taking action to give yourself what you need.

Self-love is about doing the deep work that most people avoid.

It’s about being.

It’s about feeling.

Truth speak? Most people don’t want to do this work. They want the quick fix. The temporary relief. The illusion that they’re “healing” without actually changing anything.

But you’re not most people.

You wouldn’t have read this far if you were.

So here’s my challenge for you:

🌿 Stop chasing self-love that feels good and start choosing self-love that actually works.

Because the real magic? It happens when you stop numbing yourself and start meeting yourself.