You can't protect yourself if you don't know the self. An animal care we have a saying that you need to learn species appropriate love. That means you need to know the species well enough to give it the kind of love that is for them not for you. Well the same is true for you in order to give yourself I love you need you have to learn about yourself first otherwise you're just going to repeat what other people told you to do whether it's appropriate or not for you