Healing the Heart and Mind: Transforming Self-Love for Those Recovering from CPTSD

When you're healing from complex trauma, it can feel like trying to run a race with a weight on your chest. It’s frustrating, exhausting, and often, despite your best efforts, you just can’t seem to get to the finish line. One of the toughest hurdles to overcome is learning to love yourself. It sounds simple, right? After all, who wouldn’t want to love themselves? But when you’ve lived with CPTSD (complex PTSD), the journey to self-love can feel like a distant dream. But it’s not impossible, and it’s one of the most powerful parts of your healing.

I’m Michelle, a somatic experiencing practitioner and the founder of the School of Transformation, a place where survivors of childhood trauma come together to heal. Through this work, I’ve witnessed firsthand how complex trauma affects our ability to love ourselves and why traditional self-care tips often feel like they don’t work. But today, I’m here to offer you not just an understanding of why this happens but also a roadmap to help you begin to reclaim the power of self-love.

Why Does Loving Yourself Feel So Hard?

When we grow up in environments where our emotional and physical needs were unmet, our nervous systems develop survival mechanisms. These survival programs, running in the background of our subconscious, affect everything from how we see ourselves to how we relate to others. For those of us with CPTSD, common subconscious beliefs might include, “I’m unlovable,” “I don’t deserve happiness,” or “It’s unsafe to feel joy.”

The sad reality is that, for many survivors of childhood trauma, happiness and self-love can feel like dangerous territory. When you were a child, maybe every time you felt joy, something bad happened—your happiness became a signal to your nervous system that danger was near. Now, as an adult, when you try to love yourself or do something that feels good for you, your body’s immediate response is discomfort, fear, or even shame. This is your body’s way of trying to protect you from the very thing that could heal you.

So, when you’re trying to practice self-love and you feel that resistance, it’s not because you’re doing it wrong. It’s simply because your body, conditioned by trauma, believes that loving yourself is unsafe.

Why Do Self-Care Tips Often Feel Like They Don’t Work?

This is the part where many people get stuck. You’ve read the books, you’ve seen the Instagram posts with empowering self-love tips, and you’ve tried your best to implement them. Yet, it still doesn’t feel like they’re working. That’s because self-love is not a one-size-fits-all concept, and when you have complex trauma, the typical self-care suggestions may not land where they’re needed most.

Think of it like this: just as everyone has a unique love language, everyone also has their own unique way of experiencing self-love. For some, it might be through quality time or acts of service; for others, it might be through words of affirmation or physical touch. The problem with generic self-care advice is that it’s often based on someone else’s idea of what feels good, not your own.

To begin building the foundation for your self-love, it’s crucial to define what self-love looks like through the lens of your own experience. What would you do if you truly loved yourself? What thoughts would you have? What feelings would you experience in your body? Taking the time to answer these questions is a key step toward discovering what self-love truly means for you.

How to Start Building the Capacity to Love Yourself

Now that you have some clarity on what self-love could look like for you, let’s talk about how to start doing it—even when your nervous system is screaming “no.” Remember, your subconscious mind is like a powerful computer, and it doesn’t just change overnight. This means that even when you consciously decide to do something loving for yourself, your body’s programming will resist because it’s trying to keep you safe in the old familiar patterns.

Here’s where the magic of somatic experiencing comes in. The first thing I always recommend is to start small. Just like going to the gym, you can’t lift a heavy weight without first building your strength with lighter weights. Begin with the least intimidating self-love action from your list—the one that feels the easiest or most comfortable—and visualize yourself doing it. Visualizing success in this way helps you gauge how your nervous system will react before you even take the action.

As you visualize, pay attention to the physical sensations in your body. Do you feel tightness or resistance? That’s the old trauma programming kicking in. And this is where the real work begins. It’s important to approach this resistance with compassion, not judgment. Remember, your nervous system isn’t “fighting you”; it’s simply trying to protect you based on old patterns.

When you notice resistance during visualization, rate your discomfort on a scale of 1 to 10. If the discomfort is manageable (say, a 2 or 3), then go ahead and try the action. But if the discomfort is too intense, that’s okay. Go back to your visualization and gently work through the resistance, just as you would stretch a muscle that’s tight and sore.

Over time, as you practice small acts of self-love and support yourself through discomfort, your nervous system begins to see that these loving actions are not dangerous. Slowly, the resistance begins to soften, and your ability to love yourself strengthens.

The Power of Compassionate Action and Celebration

Once you successfully complete an act of self-love, celebrate it! Our nervous systems are wired to focus on the negative, so when we do something loving, our body may not fully register the positive shift. That’s why it’s important to consciously create a moment of celebration, no matter how small it seems. This celebration sends a signal to your brain that you are doing something good for yourself.

This is where the magic happens. Just like going to the gym and lifting weights consistently, every small action you take in the direction of self-love builds new neural pathways in your brain. Over time, your subconscious programming starts to shift, and your nervous system learns that self-love is safe. Eventually, the belief that “I am worthy of love” becomes your new truth.

Why the School of Transformation is the Right Place for You

This journey of healing and self-love is not one you need to walk alone. The School of Transformation, founded by me, Michele Lee Nieves, is a sanctuary for those looking to do this deep inner work. Each week, I meet live with survivors of childhood trauma from all over the world, and together, we work through the challenges of CPTSD, supporting each other as we create the changes needed to heal.

If you're ready to take the next step in your healing journey, to learn how to love yourself in a way that feels safe and right for you, then the School of Transformation is the place for you. It's a community dedicated to helping you transform your nervous system and rewrite the subconscious beliefs that have held you back.

Remember, healing isn’t linear, and it’s not easy, but with compassion, consistency, and a supportive community, you can create lasting change. And it all begins with you—choosing to take that first step toward self-love, even when it feels hard.

Are you ready to join us?