Episode 136: Learn to Love Yourself: 16 things I learned about Self-Love in Recovery, Part 1

If I had to boil down the 12 steps to recovery into one thing, I would say it all has to do with learning to love yourself. Now that I’ve grown to love myself, I can look back and see where I have put in that effort. That’s why episode 136 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about the first 8 of 16 things I learned about self-love in recovery! 

In this episode, I’m sharing the importance of self-love on the journey through recovery and actionable steps you can take right now to start the practice of loving yourself too. 

The 8 ways I go over in this episode include:

• Putting down the substance; the first step to loving yourself is to stop putting the poison in your body. 
• Stopping the self-criticism; I found when I stopped being so judgemental of myself, I also stopped being so judgemental of others too.
• Reparenting and Inner Child Work; this process, which happened organically for me, helped me love and trust myself again.
• Mirror Work; while I didn’t mean it at first, I truly mean it now when I look in the mirror and tell myself “I love you, Barb, just the way you are,”
• Taking care of your physical body; I make an effort every single day to take care of this vessel that I walk around in each day.
• Contacting my higher power; I do this multiple times a day consciously.
• Walking away from crazy; I used to walk towards crazy because it was familiar, but now it’s not and I make an effort to walk away from it whenever I notice it.
• Taking care of my physical environment; I make my bed every day so that there is no chaos in my sanctuary of a space.

This is part one, and only 8 of the 16 total things I learned from recovery about self-love. I don’t expect you to do all of these things, but I hope you found some to try and see what works best for you. So be sure to tune in to all the episodes to receive tons of practical tips on living a more whole life and to hear even more about the points outlined above.

What is Fragmented to Whole: Life Lessons from 12 Step Recovery?

This is the podcast “Fragmented to Whole: Life Lessons from 12 Step Recovery.” It will help people who want to heal to move from fragmented to whole.

Hi, I’m Barb! I share my experience, strength and hope from 12 step recovery in each episode. They’re all 20 minutes or less. Unlike most recovery podcasts where you hear a person’s whole story, in this one each episode is about a specific topic.

There are many life lessons from 12 step recovery that are applicable to those in and outside of recovery. This podcast brings some of those lessons to the airwaves, including such topics as learning acceptance, recognizing and overcoming victim mentality and establishing healthy boundaries.