What is the Self and what is love? The Self is first thought to be your individual personage. That individual self is made up of consciousness and unconsciousness which creates your personality. The Whole Self is the unification of conscious and unconscious. Self-love without understanding what the Self truly is only presents itself as a band-aid and coping mechanism.
Do you love your Ego or your Self? The ego is the center of consciousness, the Self is the center of your personality (Conscious, Unconscious, Ego). The modern Self-Love ideology is centered on the Ego but loving the Ego is dismissing that which is hidden. So until this deeper dive into what the self, that Self-Love we know is actually toxic.

Since we cannot love something we cannot perceive, nor investigate something we imagine we already know, the concept of Self-Love is severely misinterpreted. It’s okay to not love everything about yourself. It is difficult yet rewarding, to be honest with your reality to trigger actual change. You are who you are and that is enough. You are learning more about yourself every day and that is normal. Forcing love creates resentment that one day has to be resolved.
” coming-to-term with one’s own inner center (psychic nucleus) or Self – generally begins with a wounding of the personality”. Marie-Louise von Franz
What is more healing and understandable to the soul is the term Self-Care combined with Self-Awareness. Some are just beginning, deeply aware of the self, or under construction, taking care of yourself is always the best move. Being aware of your motives and feelings will bring positive change internally. Self-love without understanding what the Self truly is only presents itself as a band-aid and coping mechanism.
Love is giving, sacrifice, and unconditional. The Self is perfect, in harmony, and constantly giving to you. You cannot love the self because the self is perfect. We can learn to love like the Self through giving to others and being unconditional in our efforts.
We so often love with expectations and conditions as if that is true Love. Then we love our selves in that same fashion. This is destructive and it needs to be reexamined before it becomes dogma. This current ideology will lead to generations of people imagining they are loving themselves when in reality they are being selfish and isolating themselves.