Self-Love: You Cannot Love Who You Do Not Know

Before Self-Love, There Is Self-Knowing

by Carina Harvey

Last year, during the Valentine’s season, I hosted a workshop on self-love for a group of women here in Dubai and was also a panel member for a talk on the same topic for one of the big corporates in London. Despite them being very different audiences, both talks had one major theme in common: healing the painful and often destructive narratives we carry about ourselves.

We talked of past relationships, professional compromises, moments of silence where we wished we had spoken, and decisions that, in hindsight, felt misaligned. Each conversation led to a pattern of thought. We often all still quietly judge former versions of ourselves. Familiar questions circle in our heads. Why didn’t I speak up? Why did I shrink? Why did I not know better?

My guidance is always the same. Each choice you make has been made with the information, emotional capacity, and self-belief you had available to you at that time. Self-love, in that context, can begin with compassion. Not affirmations without meaning, instead, it’s about empathy and kindness.

Over the past year, however, my own understanding of self-love has evolved. Compassion is essential, but it is only the entry point. Forgiving who you were is powerful. Knowing exactly who you are is transformative.

We have started to speak frequently about self-love, particularly around Valentine’s Day. It has become a familiar phrase and intention as a part of today’s hectic lifestyle and culture. Yet rarely do we question where self-love comes from, or how it is built. Love requires understanding. Understanding requires knowledge. And knowledge requires honesty.

The unquestionable truth is that it is difficult to love someone you have never fully met.

If you’re of my generation, an 80’s babe like me, you will have spent much of your life highly regulated by external expectation. We grew up watching programmes that quietly taught us to be the dependable colleague, the supportive partner, the resilient yet fun friend, the ambitious professional. In shaping ourselves to fit environments, relationships, and opportunity, we can gradually lose sight of who we truly are.

The holy month of Ramadan offers a time for this depth of reflection. It is a period of restraint and heightened awareness, for introspection. It invites us to notice impulse before action, our reactions before response. In doing so, it creates space between stimulus and choice. Within that space lies identity. Who am I when I am not operating on autopilot? What do I value when the noise around me is minimised?

Over the past year, my exploration has moved beyond compassion and into something more stabilising: self-trust.

Compassion heals the past, and self-trust governs the present.

There is a difference between forgiving who you were and being certain of who you are. The first releases shame. The second anchors you in clarity. Self-trust is not loud and it is rarely dramatic. It is the quiet conviction that you can rely on yourself, your judgement and your intuition.

For many of us, that inner voice has been softened, even eradicated, over time. We are encouraged to be agreeable, collaborative, and adaptable. We learn to consider everyone else’s needs before our own. Gradually, our instinct and gut feels become secondary to approval, or simply maintaining what we perceive to be the peace.

Rebuilding self-trust requires awareness. It means noticing where you ignore yourself. It means distinguishing between fear and intuition. Fear often feels urgent and contracting. Intuition feels steady, even when the message is uncomfortable.

When you understand your identity more deeply, that distinction becomes clearer. You recognise your values. You become aware of the patterns that once kept you safe but no longer serve you. You begin to choose consciously rather than reactively.

Over time, something shifts. Your decisions come more easily, and applying your boundaries feels less confrontational. You stop negotiating with yourself, and you no longer need constant external reassurance that you are on the right path.

This is not arrogance... It is integration.

When you know yourself on a deeper level, you understand your strengths, you’re fully cognisant of any blind spots, and you can begin to accept that a continued life path of growth is inevitable.

You will continue to evolve, sometimes transition your identity with both awareness and kindness. Self-love then becomes less about rituals and more about relationships. A relationship built on honesty, reflection, and trust.

When you know yourself well, you stop asking the world who you should be. You begin to live from a place that feels authentic, aligned and connected. You are no longer in doubt of your worth or your direction, not because life is certain, but because you are.

And that is where self-love matures and really comes into its own.

Self-love is not about performance, and it’s certainly not about perfection.

Rather it is a deep connection to your own sense of self, to your spirit and to your soul.

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Carina Harvey is an Interior Designer, Personal Style & Identity Advisor. Find out more: carinaharvey.com