When a participant says she’s overwhelmed trying to feel everything in her body at once, Joe narrows the field dramatically. Don’t feel your whole body — find the single part that feels the worst, the visceral sensation, not the story. Then give that part the exact love you wanted from your mom and dad.
“I want you to love it exactly the way that you want love from your mom and dad. All the patience. Not needing it to change.”
This is the heart of how Joe teaches self-love: it’s not an affirmation or a phrase, it’s an action you direct toward the most painful part of yourself, modeled on the love you longed for as a child. When the participant claims she doesn’t know how to do it, Joe points out that she already did it without asking — proof that loving a feeling is more natural than the mind believes.
He also notices her resisting the full expression of sadness, covering her mouth as though it’s wrong to be fully sad. Loving the part in pain includes letting it be fully felt and fully expressed, with all the patience a good parent would offer and no demand that it change. Done this way, it lands as relief: “this really feels what I’ve been looking for my whole life.”
Related Concepts
- Self-love is somatic welcoming, not affirmation
- When love shows up, unloved parts surface to be loved
- Loving the part in pain makes you happy in the moment
- Enjoyment is the pace-keeper for how deep to feel
- Trying to feel your feelings is as much resistance as trying not to feel them
- Welcoming childhood hurt expands capacity to love