When someone says Happy Valentine’s Day do you feel happy or do you feel depressed?

Valentine’s Day is typically a time when couples or families will celebrate love towards each other. People will share in special dinners, giving gifts of chocolate and flowers or offering special foot massages to their partner. If Valentine’s Day is not an enjoyable holiday time for you to reflect on love… Why is that? Maybe you’re having relationship problems that prevent you from enjoying this fun day. I would encourage you to take the month of February to look at the relationships in your life and think about how you can improve in your relationships. We have relationship problems with our husbands, wives, children, parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, and our friends.

Often in my work, people want to be loved and they want to give love, however sometimes someone feels like they’re not worthy of receiving love. Low self-esteem and low self-worth negatively impacts the ability to give or receive love. Often we will sabotage our relationships to make sure that we are not in the position to give or receive love even though we may say we really want to be loved. Many people don’t feel like they are deserving of love because they believe that they are not good enough. Often someone significant in their life told them in one way or another that they were not good enough to be loved. It is sad that many adults and children are experiencing this level of low self-esteem and low self-worth. What we believe about ourselves will definitely impact our ability to give or receive love. Talking with a counselor or therapist about these core issues can begin to unfold the reasons why you may have negative feelings about yourself. Most people that I’ve experienced have the goal of wanting to have higher self-esteem and more self-worth. Sometimes having a supportive family and friends are not enough to help someone work through these issues. However, when someone is feeling stuck in this area is very helpful to sit down and spend some time talking with a therapist to begin to work on setting goals in how to gain more self-esteem and self-worth.

The people in life that feel most satisfied in their relationships are people that feel loved and accepted not only by their partner their family and their friends but they feel love and respect for themselves. When you know that you deserve love and you know you are entitled to be loved you can then truly have meaningful loving relationships that stem from an internal knowing and believe that you truly do deserve to be loved. This comes back to self esteem, self-worth and the belief that you are entitled and deserve to be loved and to give love. However, if your belief system comes from a dysfunctional place of being told that you weren’t good enough, or that you need to be more perfect, then that’s where low self-esteem and lack of self-worth will contribute to not being able to receive or give love in a way that is satisfying. As a Licensed Marriage Family Therapist it is always important to me that all of my clients experience acceptance and validate their worth as we create a therapeutic alliance together.

Here are some beautiful quotes from a variety of authors and speakers to read and enjoy.

If you or someone you know are experiencing problems in their relationships or feelings of low self-esteem or low self-worth, please contact me for a free consultation. Full 50 minute phone sessions are also available for anyone in California.