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Many people in therapy don’t always like it or agree when their therapist tells them (If they don’t, they should) that real self-love looks a lot like self-accountability. It’s not glamorous at all, it’s not Instagram worthy. It can be deeply unsettling and sometimes lonely. The “glamour” is just a way to avoid the pain of the work needed.

Accountability means choosing the uncomfortable over comfort. It’s saying “no”when your nervous system wants you to say “yes”. It’s recognising when you are blaming others, the world or some other external force for your emotional state. It’s admitting that the patterns you engage in were started by you and you are still participating in them. Above all, it is recognising that comfort rarely changes anything in the long term but responsibility always does. 

As a therapist, I have always seen the value of mixing therapy and coaching. Therapy is generally non-directive and much less so than coaching. Using coaching techniques as a therapist can help immensely. I firmly believe that bridging the gap between knowing (awareness) and doing (action), is an essential step to navigate and being more directive can do that.

I see this in therapy all the time. People are exhausted, tired of the same old conflicts, the same dysfunctional relationships and the internal battles that rage in their head. They are usually intelligent, mostly emotionally aware and very reflective. They can often succinctly identify their patterns, whether people pleasing, chasing that elusive partner, avoidance and the tolerating of behaviour they would usually tell their friends to walk away from. They know themselves from every angle.

Though this awareness is never the issue, the gap to action is. The gap is self-responsibility and the willingness too do what feels unfamiliar, unsettling or frightening and stay with that long enough to make action happen. Real self-love is not about avoiding yourself, that’s self-abandonment. Real self-love means turning towards the parts of you that want to hide, escape or postpone negotiating with your reality. It’s saying to those parts, “ That doesn’t work for me any longer, let’s try this”. 

Self -love looks like cancelling that date with the person who only contacts you when convenient for them. It’s about ending that one-sided relationship you’ve built resentment around, it’s about stopping yourself endlessly scrolling to escape, it’s about recognising your triggers and working with and through them. 

This kind of self-love is extremely uncomfortable because it demands honesty. It asks you to take a critical look at your life and it asks you to acknowledge where you have chosen short-term relief over long-term growth. It highlights where you have protected this lifestyle by enabling others and exposes clearly the ways avoidance has been justified as being “kind to myself”. This issues will still be there after that bubble bath or candle are long gone.

Self-love isn’t a thing that will drop out of the sky, it’s a decision you make and continue to make. You have to make that choice whether its easy, hard, you don’t feel motivated, you convince yourself you are too tired or overwhelmed. If you wait until you feel ready, you will spend your time circling the same emotional cycle.

If you really want your life to shift, stop asking yourself “What will make me feel better right now?”, that question keeps you small. It keeps you in the pattern of soothing symptoms. Instead, ask yourself, ”What will help me move towards the person I want to become?” At the end of the day, self-love is about self-respect and that comes through action, not moods. 

You start to trust yourself when you follow through on something and you start liking yourself when you exhibit behaviour in line with your values. You start healing when you stop expecting other people to take care of your emotional wellbeing and start taking responsibility for your reactions, choices, your patterns and your life. This starts something incredible when you start choosing accountability through action and not indulging in fantasy, when you choose long-term alignment with your values over short-term relief, when you choose responsibility over comfort and honesty over excuses. 

JOURNALLING QUESTIONS

1. Where in your life are you choosing comfort over growth right now? What is it costing you?
2. What difficult conversation have you been avoiding? What would taking responsibility look like?
3. In what situations do you tend to abandon yourself in the name of “keeping the peace”?
4. Which old patterns are you most aware of, but still not acting on? Why?
5. What part of you resists accountability? What fear does that part hold?
6. Who in your life benefits when you avoid your own power?
7. What’s one self-respecting action you could take today that would feel uncomfortable but necessary?
8. Think of a moment recently where you numbed yourself (scrolling, distractions, unhealthy coping). What were you avoiding?
9. What does forgiveness mean to you now—not as a soft escape, but as a firm commitment not to repeat the past?
10. What version of yourself would you become if you chose responsibility over relief for the next 30 days?

THERAPIST TAKEAWAY

When you strip away the clichés and the self-care aesthetics, self-love becomes a practice of integrity. You earn trust with yourself through consistent, uncomfortable action—by choosing accountability over avoidance, boundaries over appeasement, and long-term growth over short-term soothing. This is the work that quietly reshapes your life. When you begin to take responsibility not as self-blame but as self-leadership, everything moves: relationships stabilise, anxiety softens, patterns lose their grip, and self-respect grows. Real healing isn’t a feeling you wait for, it’s a behaviour you repeat. Every day.