I once knew somebody who was excellent at deluding herself.

Her M.O. was to spend many thousands of dollars every year (money she certainly didn't have) on courses and personal development programs and fancy wellness retreats in Europe.

What was pretty genius was that it was easy to justify pulling out the credit card for these things because, on the surface, they all looked like really positive, empowering, self-loving investments. But she often came back without much to show for her investment, and would quickly jump into the next pricey course or event.

So … is that the most loving thing she could have done for herself? I'm obviously skeptical.

I could make the case that a better route would have been not to dig herself deeper into debt year by year in an attempt to find self-love and self-acceptance.

Maybe the tougher, but more compassionate, approach would have been to take a good hard look at how she was spending her money, and find a more cost-effective and less glamorous way of caring for herself. (A good therapist would likely have been covered by her insurance, after all).

In an ironic way, creating big financial problems for herself through "self-care" experiences was an unconscious form of self-loathing. I think she believed that if she'd forced herself to stay home or not invest in the 10th course that year, that would somehow equate to not loving herself.

You can see how sticky this is, which is why I wanted to dive in to it. Because self-loathing isn't always overtly mean, and tough love doesn't always look warm and fuzzy. They can masquerade as each other.

So, for those of you who know all too well what it feels like to beat yourself up (and don't want to keep doing that); BUT who also don't want to delude yourself or let yourself off the hook, I'm diving in to how to parse the difference between self-loathing and tough love in this week's brand-new blog.

TIRED OF BEATING YOURSELF UP?

It's super sad to admit, but undoubtedly true that EVERYONE has some form of self-loathing. Seriously. If you think you're alone in your feelings, it's only because other people have been keeping quiet about their own insecurities.

But just because it's normal doesn't mean it's necessary. The whole point of coaching is to help set you free of this type of crippling fear so that you can get clear on who you are and go after what you really want. And if you couldn't tell already, we're pretty excellent at tough love.

If that sounds like exactly what you need, then we should chat about 1-on-1 coaching!

Fill out the quick form on this page and we'll talk it out.

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