Self-love

Two small words that feel impossibly big when you’ve lived through the soul-wounding experience of incest. If you’ve ever looked in the mirror and felt like a stranger… or found yourself unable to receive the love you so freely give to others…

Please know:

You are not alone, and you are not broken.

For many incest survivors, the journey toward self-love feels more like a warzone than a walk in the park. And that’s not a character flaw, it’s the impact of trauma that was never your fault.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the reasons why self-love feels so far away for so many of us who’ve been hurt in such personal and devastating ways. 

Your Identity Was Shaped Inside the Pain

When abuse happens during your most formative years, it doesn’t just harm your body, it hijacks your identity. You may have learned to survive by shrinking, by people-pleasing, by disconnecting from your own needs just to stay safe. That makes it incredibly difficult later in life to even know who you are, let alone love yourself.

But I want you to hear this:

Who you are is not your trauma. You were always in there, waiting to be reclaimed.

You Carry Shame That Was Never Yours to Hold

Survivors often wrestle with overwhelming guilt and shame, feelings that don’t belong to us, but were passed down through the abusive act itself. You may have internalized the belief that you were complicit, or that something about you caused it to happen.

These are lies trauma tells us to keep us stuck. But truth has a louder voice when we choose to listen.

Your Boundaries Were Broken Before You Knew What Boundaries Were

When the people who were supposed to protect you became the ones who harmed you, it disrupts your natural ability to sense what’s safe. Emotional, physical, and energetic boundaries get shattered before you even learn how to set them.

Rebuilding self-love means slowly learning that you have a right to say no, to protect your space, and to honor your own body and emotions.

You Learned That Trust Equals Danger

After such betrayal, trusting yourself, your feelings, your needs, your choices, can feel terrifying. If love came with manipulation or abuse, then love might now feel like a threat.

You may reject kindness, sabotage connection, or deny yourself joy because it feels unsafe. But healing makes space for a new story, one where love and safety can coexist.

Your Inner Voice Might Still Speak in the Abuser’s Tone

So many survivors carry toxic beliefs like:

• “I’m damaged”
• “I’m too much”
• “I’m not enough.”

These thoughts aren’t the truth. They are echoes of what was done to you, not a reflection of who you are.

You are not broken. You are becoming.

You Had to Numb to Survive

When the pain was too big to process, you may have shut down emotionally, dissociated, or gone numb. Those survival skills protected you once, but they can also keep you from connecting deeply to yourself in the present.

Self-love can feel foreign when you’ve had to live in survival mode for so long.

Love Was Never Modeled in a Safe Way

If “love” was mixed with fear, secrecy, or control, it makes sense that the real thing feels unfamiliar. You may even feel like you don’t deserve love at all. But the truth is, you do. And love is not something you have to earn by being perfect. It’s something you’re worthy of, simply because you exist.

So where do we go from here?

Healing doesn’t mean pretending the pain never happened. It means learning to meet the pain with curiosity instead of judgment. It means offering yourself the compassion you never received. And yes, it means slowly, gently, reclaiming the love you were always worthy of.

You are not your trauma.

You are the one who survived it.

And you are allowed to love yourself, one breath, one truth, one moment at a time.