What it Means to Have a Good Relationship with Yourself
In the dating world, people say you have to learn to be alone between relationships before going back into a relationship. It is important to take time in between and figure your stuff out. For every relationship to thrive, you have to have a good relationship with yourself first. When I was younger, people gave me the well meaning advice that I had to learn to love myself first so that I'd stop looking to other people for validation. Good advice, but as a 20 something and younger, I had no idea what that meant.
The way you have a good relationship with yourself is similar to the way you have good relationships with other people. It starts with self awareness and self acceptance. A great relationship with yourself also involves all the relationship stuff like trust, boundaries, compassion, respect, generosity, vulnerability, and emotional intelligence. I had to learn most of this stuff the hard way. I had to go through bad friendships and a bad relationship to myself to learn this stuff, so I'm going to break it down for you.
Self awareness: Who are you? What do you like and dislike? What do you prefer? What makes you most comfortable or uncomfortable? What are your values? Best qualities, worst qualities? How do you react to things? How do you handle stress, conflict, setbacks, etc? What have you learned about yourself recently? Heritage/ethnicity? Personality tests, which are often not scientifically valid, can be useful in figuring some of this out. Writing in a journal and being mindful about this stuff can help too.
Self acceptance: What do you like about yourself? What is your shadow self? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your shadow self and how has it helped you? This goes into the category of compassion too. Part of self acceptance is being kind to yourself and showing yourself grace. Part of it is understanding how you're wired and seeing that as it is, rather than thinking it is wrong. An example is that I'm quiet, introspective, and deep with people. I'm just not the gregarious life of the party. When I was younger, I wished I was. Part of accepting myself was learning to appreciate that I have deeper connections to people because I'm quiet and introspective.
Compassion: In this case, self compassion means treating yourself with the same kindness you treat others. (If you're not kind to others, this is a good place to start). It means validating yourself, not shaming yourself, and knowing that you're doing the best you can in any given moment. If you want to dive deeper, I recommend heading over to selfcompassion.org and reading Kristen Neff's work. People, including you, respond better to carrots than sticks. Example: If you make a mistake like losing your wallet, know that you didn't do it on purpose and mistakes happen. (I may have done this last week).
Respect: A whole lot of these qualities are about self respect, but part of it is taking care of yourself. Respect your body by taking care of what you put into it. Respect your mind by feeding it good things. Have respect for yourself by how you talk to yourself, spend your time, your energy, and how you treat yourself. It also means keeping promises to yourself and sticking to your boundaries.
Trust: Similar to respect, keep promises to yourself, keep your boundaries, and act with integrity. We build trust with other people over time by observing their behavior and how they respond to things we present to them. In the same way, acting trustworthy helps us build that trust with ourselves. Part of trust with ourselves also comes from looking at past successes and taking risks to build our confidence in our ability to trust. It is easier to know you're going to land on your feet if you have some experiences to back that up.
Boundaries: Boundaries build trust. We usually think of boundaries with other people, but they start with yourself. You have to know what the rules of your game are before you can tell other people. Boundaries include with your time, energy, space, preferences, body, and mind. An example of a boundary with yourself: I know I do best with 8 hours of sleep, so I go to sleep at 10 pm. I shut off the tv, put down the book, phone, whatever, and keep that boundary so I can be at my best the next day.
Vulnerability: Brene Brown says vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. As a side note, I may be the only therapist in the world who doesn't love Brene Brown. I find her writing style hard to digest, but her research is valuable. Anyway, to be vulnerable with yourself, you have to be willing to learn about yourself, ask the hard questions, sit with difficult emotions, and take risks in life.
Emotional Intelligence: This means being able to notice, name, and cope with your emotions. There are other definitions of course. This is super important because our emotions communicate to us what we need from ourselves and others. People often mislabel their emotions, like I'm anxious about x, when they are actually angry. If you're angry, it may be because a line was crossed and this gives you the chance to course correct. If you're feeling lonely, maybe you need connection. If you're sad and heavy, you may need to get moving. A great place to start with this is to pay attention to your body and to look up a feelings wheel to get some vocabulary for it.
Humor: I think the above qualities are a good start, but if you want a really great relationship with yourself, a sense of humor and playfulness seems important to yourself. I.e. Don't take yourself too serious. Laugh at your mistakes. Learn from the mistakes too. Laugh at something funny and let yourself feel it. Be light with yourself and practice letting go of self consciousness, especially when you're alone.
There is probably more to add, but that is a good start. That is how you work toward a good relationship with yourself and eventually with others. As the cliche goes, you can't pour from an empty cup. You can't be there or with other people without showing up for yourself first.