When ‘Self-Love’ Feels Like a Lie: Navigating the Void

“I said some nice things to myself in the mirror, but I just felt stupid.”

“I tried giving my inner child a hug, but I didn’t feel anything.”

“Self-care doesn’t sound enticing to me—I’m not even interested in it.”

Have you been down the self-affirmations path, only to throw your third self-help book at the wall? Are you tired of oscillating between wanting help and wanting to “heal thyself”? Maybe healing has felt like one big double bind: you go to therapy to get help, and the “help” says, “Be nice to yourself.” Which is it—let people in, or take care of things yourself?

If you’ve ever felt this way and you have a history of childhood trauma (physical, sexual, or emotional abuse), you might be struggling with what’s sometimes called “self-subjectivity” or “relational object permanence.” These are fancy phrases. I just call it a lack of internalization.

Internalization is that ability some people seem to have where they can carry a pleasant feeling inside. They may say things like, “I lost my loved one, but I can feel them with me in my heart.” For those who struggle with this, the good feeling that comes with a hug ends the moment the hug ends. When they think about a loved one, they feel longing instead of inner warmth.

When someone lacks the ability to internalize love and care, it often leads to poor self-regulation. Why is that? Because we learn how to regulate our emotions from our early caregivers. As children, our developing brains are wired to feel intense emotion but are still learning how to interpret and manage it. (A child’s prefrontal cortex—the part that helps regulate the emotional centers of the brain—is not yet fully developed.) Parents or caregivers do have this ability, so they step in to co-regulate and teach the child how to do it themselves. Over time, children mirror their caregivers’ emotional responses and eventually develop the ability to self-regulate.

In healthy families, caregivers help regulate by providing a felt sense of safety (protection, comforting when scared, meeting basic needs), a sense of value (words of affirmation, gentle touch, quality time), and empowerment (encouragement, appropriate discipline, autonomy). A child growing up in this kind of environment will eventually internalize those qualities. Without even realizing it, they carry the caregiver’s love within themselves. That love becomes “self-love,” accessible even when the caregiver is no longer around. As adults, they may find that recalling a loved one brings comfort, not pain.

But what if you didn’t grow up with that kind of environment? What if your caregiver was abusive, neglectful, emotionally immature, unstable, or overwhelmed by their own suffering? You may have missed out on learning these regulation skills because they simply weren’t passed on to you. This can lead to low self-esteem and, in chronic cases (such as growing up with a narcissistic caregiver or someone who suppressed your sense of self), severe self-distrust.

This means that not only do you struggle to self-soothe or feel worthy of it, but you may not even trust your own thoughts, feelings, or intuition. That makes learning to internalize good feelings from new relationships feel risky and confusing.

You can see how, without the skill of internalization, self-love becomes elusive. Our culture often treats self-love like it’s just a decision you can make—or something you can trick yourself into with affirmations. But real self-love is born out of safety and connection in our early years.

So… am I doomed?

Nope! There’s good news: you can learn how to internalize.

You don’t need to blame yourself for how hard it’s been—but you do have the capacity to carve a way forward. Here’s the kicker though: you need other people to do it.

If self-help books could fix it, they would’ve stopped writing them by now. You can’t just say “heck to the world,” go live off the grid, and expect all your symptoms to evaporate.

I know—it’s risky. Relationships are risky, and you’ve been hurt by them already. It’s true: no one will ever be able to fill the void in the way your caregivers should have. (That “void” is often the felt absence of internalized love, even if we don’t know to name it that.)

There is no perfect person who can stand in and give you unconditional love and meet all your needs. Healing from that fact takes grief work. But love and support from a network of safe people can get you to a place where that void no longer controls your ability to care for yourself.

In therapy, you can learn to trust again, set boundaries, and protect yourself from repeat harm. You can practice internalizing care by being truly seen and heard in the therapy space. Over time—whether with a therapist or a safe loved one—you may notice that thinking of them feels comforting instead of desperate or scary. Borrowing a phrase they said, or remembering a look they gave, starts to feel good. That is internalization. That is where self-love begins.

Your ability to receive care—instead of push it away—will eventually transform into the ability to self-soothe and actually feel better afterward. You’ll no longer need someone to be physically present in order to feel cared for or to combat that deep, chronic loneliness.

Sound daunting? Of course. It’s a slow process—but it’s worth it. I’ve seen many brave souls walk this path and thrive.

So, the most important takeaway is this:

You need others in order to not need others. There are relationships that bind—and there are relationships that set you free.