To be kind to others you must be kind to yourself first

Logically, this seems counter intuitive. But, never the less it is true.

It's sort of like if you want to be a doctor you don't just practice on your family when you are 12. You learn the ways of a doctor by going to medical school and getting your M.D. and maybe a specialization.

So, learning to be kind to others you learn by being kind to yourself first. This is the path that doesn't make sense to many people. But, in reality it is the only way to relatively permanent kindness towards others.

Only when you learn to be kind to yourself do you learn to undo that harm others have done to you along the way by being cruel to you. They might not have even realized just how much they harmed you. It might just have been how they were taught to treat other people at home.

So, overcoming the damage done to you, you learn to parent yourself like you are both your parent and a little child at the same time.

So, instead of punishing yourself because of how others treated you, you begin to parent yourself by saying to yourself, "You are a good person. You deserve kindness. And I will be kind to you, self.

Then when it's time to be kind to others you will have enough peace in your core to actually BE kind to them in addition to yourself. You will have this peace from the habit of being kind enough to yourself to take good care of yourself, so you can take good care of others too when the time comes.