The Quantum Physics of Self-Love

By Caroline Giroux, MD

I don’t know about you, but for me the holiday season and various gatherings brought quite an eye-opening flavor on the human rapport sphere this year.

First of all, the Quebecois interpersonal style, often characterized by loud exuberance, warmth and entertaining gesticulation and sound effects (especially in my family), is usually a very much-needed validation recharge for me. In the U.S., my emotional overflow, while normalized in my beloved Canada, might be destabilizing for the most stoic. Being now suspended between two cultures, two emotional worlds, I have sufficient distance to acknowledge the challenges, and also, thankfully, the solutions to the often-difficult dynamics many families face.

For instance, what used to bother me while I was younger doesn’t (at least not so much) anymore. I don’t feel the need to be liked, understood or accepted by every single person in the room. I know many people do validate and support me, and I would encourage anyone to focus on those who do the same for you instead of wasting your time with others who don’t make a joint effort to move a relationship in a positive direction.

Being more self-aware and learning detachment might be key, but by seeing people around me still struggling with what used to make me preoccupied or reactive (such as a relative’s distasteful jokes or attempts to provoke), I came to another conclusion: in order to achieve self-love (and by that, I mean positive self-regard, through acceptance of the totality of one’s being, flaws and all), we need a certain amount of solitude to find and appreciate the good in us. And in order to fully see that good in us, to experience it fully, we have to start by sufficiently removing ourselves from the toxic people around us.

I’m talking about the unpleasant, obnoxious, vampirizing creatures who have this urge to kill the joy, to extinguish any positive emotion they see in others. Out of envy and out of sadism, they seek to destroy what they cannot have and derive pleasure in seeing others suffer. In a way, they use others as emotional processors; if others suffer while they — the vampires — are not coping with their own difficult emotions, then they have the illusion they are free from fear, anger or despair. It is called projective identification and I talked about this highly destructive dynamic in a former column on gaslighting.

This inability to own their unpleasant emotions is why they seek to control at all costs other people’s beliefs and emotions. It is their unhealthy way to cope with their unescapable vulnerability they equate with weakness. This comes from a place of fear, and fear is the opposite of love. So, love is the solution to transcend such toxicity.

I have extensive experience with such people and have heard countless stories from patients and loved ones struggling with them. I have lived through the damage of many instances of silent treatments, passive aggression, hostility, triangulation (vampires projecting their own conflict onto two people, making the pair fight who normally wouldn’t otherwise), and gaslighting. Once I removed myself long enough (and far away enough) from such narcissists, instead of wasting my empathy on them (because as empaths, we are wired to try to understand them, to give them the benefit of the doubt, and excessively internalize blame), I started investing in myself more. Instead of being in defense or damage control mode, I could access more of my energy and vitality and redirect them towards my growth instead of dumping it in the black hole of these insecure egos. My power has been progressively more dedicated to creating, recharging, dreaming, and nurturing relationships that are actually fulfilling rather than draining.

After 18 years as an ex-pat, going to my native country no more than once or twice a year (except for the years of the pandemic, when I couldn’t leave and I missed Canada even more) has made the need to revise energy allocation even more obvious. I notice even more those who are self-loving and who inspire me. At the same time, I feel less suffocated by others who are negative. This lessened contamination of my self-perception has created more silence and space to see myself as I truly am, therefore allowing me to befriend myself more.

At the end of 2024, I felt like I reached a threshold. I woke up on December 31st with a clear intent of loving myself more, because this is the only way I can truly love my children and everyone else I care the most about. This truth became really loud when I experienced a synchronicity: the book I had been reading the night before, Kilomètre Zero by Maud Ankaoua, explained why this is important in almost exactly the same way a friend just had done. It was the quantum physics of self-love.

While in Quebec I had spent a 24-hour “retreat” with two friends from high school (who also happen to have the same first name as me). We talked a lot, laughed, hugged, did some art, played a board game, and explored Yi King (or I Ching, the ancient book of Chinese wisdom). We also walked on a frozen lake (it was magical!). That was when one of them reminded me about the law of entanglement in quantum physics, according to which an intervention on one particle would affect another that was once bound to it, no matter the distance between them at that moment. A particle that was once bound to another can, even though they are now separated, still experience the impact from a force that is applied on the other. When two particles are entangled, their fates are linked, meaning that measuring the state of one particle instantly reveals the state of the other, regardless of the distance separating them. This inseparability is a little bit like the mother child-bond, or soul mates, or twins who seem to have an invisible force linking them forever because of their closeness in utero.

I see the human soul like that. Following that reasoning or law of nature, the better I treat myself (and by that, I mean enveloping myself with benevolence, kindness, compassion and acceptance, while not indulging in unnecessary luxury that depletes our planet or maintains social inequities), the more beneficial it will be for anyone I deeply care about, regardless of the distance. Similarly, as I vow to love myself even more, I also need to avoid self-neglect or negative thinking in the form of harsh self-criticism.

Looking for the recipe to ensure your most precious people’s ultimate welfare? Love yourself more!

To make this self-promise more official and effective, I shared that this was my intention with my cousin Gabriel, the epitome of love and self-love and one of my favorite people on the planet, on New Year’s Eve. Gabriel has a remarkable story of resilience and transformative survivorship that is worth an entire column of its own. He recently shared in a podcast that he greets himself with a “good morning, my love” every day!

As you become more intentional in treating yourself better and better each day, you will begin to notice how others you care about are still stuck in their own reactivity towards toxic people. Giving yourself distance, as difficult as it may be, allows you to appraise the situation in a more objective way. Reinvesting in myself during several episodes of solitude and countless meditation sessions has boosted my equanimity and resilience. I know the younger me would have reacted to someone’s unkind comment at Christmas. For the new me, it felt like water on a duck’s feathers!

As I care less about how others treat me, or whether others appreciate me, I can focus on what I have control over, which is the act of self-kindness. Filling my cup so I can give from the overflow, as my friend and fellow psychiatrist — and Canadian — Irina would say.

It is not perfect, but I am getting there. It is no longer a concept, but a felt experience. I no longer repeat positive mantras mechanically, I intentionally embody self-acceptance as I turn on all my senses so I achieve a higher vibrational frequency, which invites and attracts the good stuff in my life. I shifted from cognitive knowledge of this phenomenon to a deep understanding from the heart, and an unshakable belief of my inner goodness at the soul level.

By being an open-minded, non-judgmental observer of your experience, you develop more self-awareness and self-compassion. And subsequently, self-acceptance helps you become your biggest fan and best friend. After spending more and more time with oneself, we have the potential to deepen the attachment for oneself. By naming out loud the specific things that you find awesome and unique about you, you heal and repair yourself. Just like a well maintained earthquake or flood-proof house can buffer the damage from natural disasters, strengthening your foundation of resilience through daily acts of self-care and gentle living can be a protection against the unpleasant suffering inflicted by external attacks from mood spoilers or malevolent creatures.

Once you can progress from the concept of “love yourself” to a more felt or direct experience (during solitude, separation, distance or estrangement, because you become your own “by default” target of care), there is no going back. You might even feel lighter, because you now have wings on your back that can take you anywhere, towards any dream or serene land. And as you no longer let external attacks slow you down, you can go even further in your own journey. Then, like my cousin Gabriel, you become an inspiration for others, maybe even some of those grumpier folks, to do the same.