Practicing Self-Love Around Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day as it is celebrated in modern culture is a chance to celebrate romantic love, yet it can also be a painful reminder if you’re currently single, have recently lost or ended a relationship with a romantic partner, or are processing relationship trauma. Even in a relatively healthy partnership, Valentine’s Day can be fraught with social pressures to demonstrate romantic commitment in certain ways like expensive gifts and romantic dates. It’s all too easy to feel disappointment, grief, or stress around Valentine’s Day, which is why practicing self-love and compassion are important. Here are a few therapy tips for honoring your authentic needs and values around Valentine’s Day.

What Do Your Feelings Tell You About Your Needs, Values, and Beliefs

First, let’s do a little check in: how are you feeling about the upcoming Valentine’s Day? Are you dreading it, excited about it? Annoyed by it? Stressed or anxious about it? Our feelings and expectations about holidays like Valentine’s Day are often signs of deeper issues that we need to address, from misguided beliefs to unmet needs.

For example, if you’re single and dreading the holiday, perhaps you’re struggling with what you believe your relationship status says about your worth (e.g., I’m alone because I’m unlovable). Or perhaps you’re in a relationship, but you’re feeling anxious about whether you can fulfill your partner’s expectations for a romantic evening (i.e., if I don’t come up with an extravagant gift, she’ll dump me) or the opposite (i.e., if he doesn’t make plans to celebrate with me, is it a sign that he doesn’t love me?) These fears are often signals of unmet needs or mismatched expectations about how you can express love and care for each other.

It’s important to take time to reflect on your feelings and expectations, and try to dig down to the thing beneath the thing—what are my feelings telling me about my beliefs, needs and values about this holiday?—and acknowledge those deeper issues with compassion, curiosity, and a commitment to honoring your needs.

Self-Love Practices for Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day, like any holiday, comes with its share of social pressures that may have more of a negative impact than a positive one. Whether you’re single or partnered, it’s important for your mental health to practice self-love. Your relationship to yourself is the most important one you have, after all. Here are a few self-love practices that can help you stay emotionally grounded around Valentine’s Day.

• Take time to love yourself with a little self-care. Be generous and kind to yourself, in whatever way you’re able - it could be taking a solo hike, scheduling a massage, or making time to do a creative activity that you don’t usually have time for. Whatever you choose, the goal is to nurture your mental and physical well-being.

• Practice gratitude and appreciation, both for the relationships that are meaningful to you (romantic or not) and for yourself. Although we often go through our days with a fleeting sense of gratitude in the moment, we can make space to practice gratitude intentionally; for example, you could write down a list of relationships in your life and the qualities within those relationships you’re grateful for. You can also practice gratitude for yourself by engaging in a loving kindness meditation, like this one from Tara Brach.

• Set healthy boundaries in your relationships. Now is a good time to take stock of your relationships (every kind) and check in with yourself about how you want to be treated, and how you want to treat others. If things between you and another person are feeling out of sorts, follow these steps for setting healthy boundaries.

• Ask for what you need from friends, partners, or family. Similar to setting healthy boundaries, being clear about your needs with your loved ones is a way to honor yourself and improve your relationship to others at the same time. For example, if you’re feeling grief this Valentine’s Day over a loss or a breakup, be honest about your feelings and ask for support.

• Build community connections. There are many types of love to celebrate, and there are many people who need love but are not romantically partnered. Modern western culture places much more emphasis on monogamous romantic partnerships than it used to, often at the expense of communal connections. Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to lend your time and attention to community activities that build loving connection in non-romantic ways, like volunteering your time at a senior living facility, shelter for the unhoused, or a hospital ward.

Mental Health Support Around Valentine’s Day

Self-love is the work of a lifetime. Everyone struggles to be kind to themselves and improve their mental health; it’s important to know that you’re not alone. Meeting with a therapist can help you connect with your emotions, clarify your needs, and revise the story you tell yourself about your life, your relationships, and your ability to connect with others.

At Empowered Connections Counseling in Chicago, our group of multidisciplinary therapists provide mental health support for individuals and relationships of diverse backgrounds and experiences: whether you’re single, healing from heartbreak or loss of a partner, recovering from intimate partner violence or betrayal, or you and your partner(s) are straight, LGBTQIA+, monogamous or polyamorous. We’re committed to helping you find the right therapist and strategy to strengthen your mental health, self-esteem, and relationship bonds. Book an appointment today to get started.

About ECC:

Empowered Connections Counseling is a practice of licensed therapists providing quality, multidisciplinary counseling for adults, children & teens, relationships, and families in Chicago and across Illinois. Whether by in-person session or via telehealth, we work with clients to find the therapist and treatment methods that best suit their needs. Connect meaningfully with your life by booking an appointment today.

What is Self-Care?

Self-care has become a buzzword on the internet and across social media platforms. Google’s formal definition states, “the practice of taking an active role in protecting one's well-being and happiness, in particular during periods of stress.” Self-care is vital during moments of stress. However, creating purposeful rituals is most helpful when they are established before those periods of stress. Have you ever heard the phrase, you can’t pour from an empty cup? Well, someone once told me, the truth is hidden behind the word cliché.

You might envision self-care to be a day at the nail salon with a mimosa in hand, a pizza night streaming your favorite show, or taking a lavish beach vacation. Can those things be considered enjoyable and a way to decompress? Absolutely. Self-care is so much more than that though. It is meant to be intentional, and supports your overall well-being in a variety of ways. I often discuss it with clients as multiple buckets that you continuously pour into. Read on for the five buckets of self-care that I have categorized.

Physical: Fuel the endorphins with a HIIT workout, yoga, or walks around the park. Then drop that into your physical self-care bucket! It is not just about routine exercise though. Physical self-care can include your annual doctor visits, the nutrition you feed your body, and a good night's rest.

Mental: Take a break from the day-to-day by gently exercising your mind. Schedule just 5 minutes of book time before bed. Pull out a 1,000 piece puzzle, or challenge yourself with a daily Wordle puzzle.

Emotional: Connecting with your emotional world is vital. Consider a check-in with reflective journaling. There are great journal prompts online to support this. Write a few on a sticky note, place them into a jar, and pull one out a few times a week. Now this might be a given, but therapy! Are you anxious about a presentation? Talk to your therapist, and build out a cope-ahead strategy. Therapy is an hour a week dedicated just for you.

Relational: Find ways to connect regularly with the ones you feel supported by. Set a reminder on your phone to call one person every Friday afternoon. Attend a community event like a block party with your partner. Pick out an organization or social cause, and find ways to support it. Find a conversation starter card deck, and pull them out during a family dinner. These are just a few ways you can deepen and expand your relationships.

Spiritual: For some it can be a religious practice like prayer, or readings. However, spirituality can also be defined by activities that help nurture your spirit. Things that help you connect to your physical self. A mindful walk around the park engaging your senses, or a meditative yoga flow. A visit to a forest preserve with no technology. Identify what will help you step away from that monkey mind, and connect within.

Additional Resources: A highly recommended TedTalk by Portia Jackson-Preston.

Portia Jackson-Preston Discusses the Missing Ingredient in Self-Care