Struggling to Love Yourself? (Somatic Meditation to Heal Your Blocks to Self-Love)
Why We Struggle to Love Ourselves (Even When We Want To)
You want to love yourself.
You want to believe in your worth.
You want to live softness, self-compassion, and peace.
And still, something inside of you resists.
Something pulls away.
Something within just won't let you go there.
This isn’t wrong.
This isn’t bad.
This is a strange, but common part of being human.
We often find ourselves blocked from the very things we most long for.
Love.
Intimacy.
Joy.
Expansion.
Just when we move toward closeness, we withdraw.
Just when we begin to feel good, something inside contracts.
Just when we speak the words, “I want this,” we find ourselves sabotaging, avoiding, or disconnecting.
It’s one of the most confusing parts of the healing journey - when our deepest desires meet our deepest resistance.
And yet, there’s a reason for it. Several, actually.
We All Have Blocks To Self-Love
Current neuroscience tells us that over 95% of our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and motivations arise from the subconscious.
That means the part of you who wants to love yourself - the conscious, intentional, rational part - isn’t actually in charge of most of your experience.
So when your words say “yes” but your body says “no”…
When your mind longs for peace but your gut tightens in panic…
It’s not a sign of failure.
It’s a sign that other, deeper parts of your psyche are speaking.
Parts that don’t operate on logic, but on memory, emotion, and sensation.
Parts that are trying to protect you, or keep you safe, or simply keep things predictable enough to feel survivable.
Parts Work And Self-Love
Sometimes it’s protector parts - those inner guardians who try to manage your experience by keeping vulnerability at bay. They might show up as the inner critic, the numbing part, the high achiever, or the one who pulls away the moment connection begins to feel too real. These parts often learned that love and openness came with risk, and they’re trying to make sure you never feel that exposed again.
But it’s not only the protectors.
Sometimes it’s the wounded, vulnerable parts - the ones carrying deep pain from old experiences—who block love.
Because love now might remind them of what they didn’t get then.
Because letting in care might touch the aching place that still remembers being rejected, abandoned, misunderstood.
For those parts, receiving love might stir grief or fear instead of relief.
And sometimes, the resistance comes from inner parts that are simply afraid of change.
Not because they believe you’re unworthy, but because they’ve adapted to the way things are.
Even if the way things are is painful, it’s known.
And in the nervous system, the known often feels safer than the unknown.
So when you try to soften, or show up differently, or choose self-compassion over self-judgment, these parts may panic.
Not because they want to hurt you.
But because they’re unsure if change is safe.
They’re bracing against the unpredictable.
Somatic Healing and Self-Love
This is why healing has to be more than cognitive.
It’s not just about “knowing” your worth or repeating affirmations.
Because worthiness isn’t just an idea, it’s a felt experience.
And if the body doesn’t feel safe receiving love, no amount of insight can create the shift.
True change asks us to meet these parts where they live—in sensation, in breath, in posture, in nervous system patterning. It asks us to listen somatically, with presence and patience, to the ones who are scared, skeptical, or simply overwhelmed.
It asks us to build trust over time, not through force, but through felt safety.
Somatic Meditation To Heal Your Blocks to Self-Love
Sometimes healing requires more than intention - it requires a new experience inside the body. That’s exactly what this week’s somatic meditation is designed to offer.
In this guided practice, you’ll be gently led through a technique called Regenerating Images in Memory (RIM®). RIM is a powerful, body-centered approach to emotional healing that allows us to drop below the level of words and access the subconscious patterns that are shaping our resistance, our fear, and our protective responses.
Rather than analyzing or trying to “fix” what’s happening, this meditation helps you enter into relationship with the parts of you that hold the blocks. You might meet an inner protector, a younger version of yourself, or a part that simply feels overwhelmed by the idea of softening. Through somatic visualization, compassionate witnessing, and deep emotional attunement, these parts are given space to be seen - and often, that alone creates the beginning of a shift.
RIM is such a supportive tool here because it doesn’t require you to force anything. It honors your pace. It works with your system, not against it. And in my experience, it’s one of the gentlest and most effective ways to bring true emotional healing to the parts of us that are still holding on.
The Path to Self-Love is Not a Straight Line
If you’ve been struggling to love yourself, I hope you hear this clearly: you are not failing. You are meeting something deep and real within you that deserves care, not criticism.
Self-love isn’t something we force or perform. It’s something we grow into, over time, as the body learns that it’s safe to receive care, warmth, and kindness.
This episode and meditation are here to support that journey. To offer you a space to breathe, to listen inward, and to take one soft, courageous step closer to yourself.
You don’t have to do it perfectly. You don’t even have to feel ready.
You only have to begin.
Try the Somatic Meditation to Heal Your Blocks to Self-Love now!
Episode timing:
00:00 - Why we struggle to love ourselves
05:02 - Somatic Meditation To Heal Your Blocks To Self-Love (using Regenerating Images in Memory)
38:16 - Conclusion
Related meditations:
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How was that Somatic Meditation To Heal Your Blocks to Self-Love for you?
What feels different within you now? And what do you understand about self-love that you didn’t understand before?
Please let me know in the comments!
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Thanks so much for joining me today!
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Enjoy more like this: RIM® Exercises, Parts Work, Somatic Emotional Processing
About me
Hey, I’m Karena!
I’m a somatic emotional healing coach here to help you quickly identify and heal the subconscious blocks, old emotional wounds and self-sabotaging core beliefs that are holding you back!
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