The problem with 'loving yourself'

Many sources say that to heal from emotional pain of childhood one has to learn to love themselves. But there is a fundamental problem with that:

Even more, I can't love someone when I do not even know that they exist. No matter how many "I am awesome" mantras I will repeat in the front of the mirror, no matter how well I will treat myself and how many treats I will give myself, no matter how many good things people will say about me - if I am not connected to myself no amount of love can reach me. Unless I know that there is a person inside of me every positiveness directed towards me will feel superficial and pointless. That is the reason why none of the DBT methods solved this problem for me.

It is hard to know that one is disconnected from oneself. I wrote here how it spontaneously occured to me. I don't know if there is some universal psychoterapeutical method that allows people to connect with themselves, but I think that it must have a lot to do with feeling emotions. Not just thinking about them, not analysing them, but feeling them, and by "feeling them" I also mean realising that you feel them. Not escaping from them, not numbing them, not acting upon them, but facing them by feeling them fully. It's easier to learn to name and understand an emotion than actually feel it, and we too often stop after the first step. I think it's the unfelt accumulated emotions that obscure the view¹.

In this moment when the connection happens it feels like a sudden realisation that I have been walking in the fog and now the fog is dropping. It feels sobering. The world looks different, the people around are same yet different. The objects around seem sharper, the space around seems more spacey, the music sounds more present, it truly feels like having been drunk and getting sober. It's like waking up from a delusional dream. The complexity dissapears. The reality almost hits you in the face with the message "all that time it's been all that simple, you stupid".