 The concept of self-love has been around since the 50s. Today, self-love looks a little different. We've become familiar with self-love practices, like self-forgiveness and affirmations, but the question lingers. Do these practices truly fulfill our emotional needs? The concept of love in the modern world has a lot of contradictions. With technology, we've brought ourselves closer together than ever before. Yet, people are lonelier than ever. Sometimes, as we become separated from friends and family, we rely on ourselves to feel loved. But can self-love be enough? How love has changed? The friends and partners we end up with have always depended on the communities we are part of. This hasn't changed with technology, but the problems that we encounter are different. The game of love has changed. In some ways, we are forced to be contradictory. If we want to prove that we love ourselves, we might post a picture of ourselves on Instagram, which in turn, feeds us the external validation of others. This raises the question, if we love ourselves, why do we need external validation? Experimental psychologist Elizabeth Gallinari asked that same question. She found that the correlation between the likes we receive in our self-esteem is actually very minor. This is likely because the act of self-love and social media has little to do with self-validation, and more to do with the process of building strength and independence. In other words, self-love is a process. Loving yourself openly is just the part of the process and doesn't necessarily portray the end result of being fully content within yourself. If self-love is a never-ending, adapting process, it can't replace the love we need from others. The shape of love. Love can take many shapes. Ancient Greek philosophers broke it down into unconditional love, familial love, romantic love, guest love, platonic love, and self-love. Over time, this has been simplified and understood by psychologists as four types of love. Platonic love, erotic, or passionate love, familial love, and a love of mankind. You may notice that this list excludes self-love. Self-love cannot fulfill us like external love, making it difficult to categorize it in the same way. We need the benefits of platonic, familial, and romantic love such as validation, stress relief, and emotional support. Clearly, external love comes with a lot of benefits, but as those of us who do feel lonely or worry about being loved know, sometimes all we really need is a loving hug and that can come from many loved ones. Physical affection has been found to not only soothe us and make us happy, but it creates beneficial cognitive and neurobiological changes too. Giving us all of those benefits with one simple act. We can run a warm bath, treat ourselves with retail therapy or take ourselves on solo dates, but none of this can replace what real physical affection can do for us. Self-love or narcissism. Having a passion for yourself can be great. You need a passion for yourself if you want to believe that you can achieve all of your goals and be who you want to be. The scales can tip to the side of narcissism when your self-love depends in comparison. When your love comes from being more intelligent or more beautiful than others, it is more likely to be narcissism. This is another reason why self-love isn't enough. Self-love can come from narcissism or become narcissism if it is your only source of love. This is why it is so important to extend your love to others. To love and to be loved. Love is a transaction. In self-love, there is little to lose or gain. We need the love of others just as much as we need people to offer love too. When we love someone, we forego our own desires for their benefit. You might think this will be a distraction and you will be worse off by prioritizing about people. However romantic love, in particular, can increase our motivation and give us direction in life. Ironically, being loved can also improve our self-esteem more than self-love can. Unless you are intentionally cutting yourself off from people, we typically don't choose to go unloved. It's possible friends don't come easily to you or family has issues. But the reality is that there are ways to find love. To make new friends. To make a new family. Love just needs to be shared. If you feel like you have no one but yourself to love or be loved, you can start by making new friends, reconnecting with old ones or even getting a pet. Having love in your heart is a good thing no matter what. If we are going to look after ourselves, we need to share love with others. If this video taught you something new or gave you something to think about, leave a like and subscribe to Psych2Go for more videos like this. You've got this.