If you’re suffering from frequent cold sore outbreaks, you may be beating yourself up about it. This can lead to you enduring additional stress, which, ironically, actually makes it even harder to prevent cold sores.
In this article, I’m going to teach you about the importance of developing and nurturing self-compassion for cold sore prevention.
Having compassion for yourself and your cold sore dilemma takes a giant weight off your shoulders, enhances your spiritual vibration, frees up natural energy, awareness, and creativity, and increases your chances of preventing cold sores.
Being Hard on Yourself Sucks
When I was used to get recurring cold sores every couple of months, I was pretty hard on myself, and this is a common mindset which is disempowering and counterproductive to preventing cold sores.
When we keep getting cold sores despite trying lots of things to prevent them, this can create inner-turmoil. If it gets really bad, this can even create massive psychological suffering.
I want to tell you something very important:
Being hard on yourself is not the way to be!
Too many people that get frequent cold sores have zero compassion for themselves, and this needs to change.
Developing Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is the extension of kindness, care, warmth, and understanding (instead of beratement and criticism) toward oneself when faced with shortcomings, inadequacies, or failures.
Self-compassion is the care and nurturing we offer ourselves when we make mistakes, embarrass ourselves, or come short of a goal we were hoping to achieve. It is the acknowledgment of our pain, and the rejection of the notion that we should just “tough it out.”
Having self-compassion means to honor and accept your own humanness and accept that in life, you will encounter a number of unfortunate circumstances, sometimes where you’re the one at fault. Self-compassion is having grace for oneself.
Self-Compassion For Cold Sore Prevention
Having self-compassion for your cold sores can really transform your life in numerous extraordinary ways.
Furthermore, it can help you to significantly increase your chances of preventing cold sores.
Here are 3 simple steps to help you start developing and nurturing self-compassion.
1) Acknowledge your pain. Notice when you’re hurting and allow yourself to mourn the fact that you are not perfect. Resist the temptation to pretend like nothing’s wrong or that your feelings don’t matter.
2) Adopt a new perspective. View the world through the lens of a best friend or caring individual. When you’re tempted to be self-critical or judgmental, try to speak to yourself as someone who cares about you would; consider what they might say to encourage you.
3) Practice. Being self-compassionate is not an innate quality, and it’s often learned in our family of origin. Depending on our childhood circumstances, this may or may not have been a skill that we learned from our parents. As adults, we can chose to practice this skill until one day it feels like second nature.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve been hard on yourself for continuing to get cold sores despite trying to prevent them, it’s time for a mindset shift. Eliminate self-criticism, and begin to develop self-compassion.
You’re in a difficult position, but life can be difficult. No one is perfect, and people go through challenges. Being hard on yourself is not what you deserve.
You deserve to have love and acceptance from others, and especially from yourself.
You are good enough, and you’re a beautiful soul.
So please, take my advice and start being compassionate with yourself, and do this in all areas of life, not just with cold sores. Be accepting, loving, and compassionate with yourself, and watch the miracles begin to unfold.
Stacey says
Hi,
My name is Stacey, I’m considering taking a supplement and vitamin pack for acne, wanted to know what vitamins and supplements to stay away from. Do you know? Thanks so much
Stacey
Matt says
I used to suffer from the worst acne! From 18-22 I had big cystic acne all over my face, chest, neck, shoulders, and upper back. It was gross! I cured my acne by taking 60 mg of zinc picolinate a day with food, 800 mg of chromium picolinate daily with food, 200 mg of selenium daily with food, as well as vitamin E, vitamin C, and more fiber in my diet. Haven’t had acne for over 16 years as a result. Try this out and it should get rid of your acne. If this doesn’t work, I would try cutting out dairy and processed sugar. I read a natural book on health remedies for issues like acne and more and that’s where I learned about the awesome benefits of chromium and zinc for acne. Look into it. Very helpful minerals!
I’ve heard you should stay away from supplements with iodine when you have acne.
Christopher says
Dear Matt,
To tell you the truth, initially I was sceptical when your website popped up in my search for “non medical treatments for oral herpes simplex”. The usual blog format most of the time makes me question the intent of it’s creator and the validity of the content.
(I even hesitated to write this comment, since I almost never comment, just lurk sites.)
The first post I clicked on was your summary of medicines and supplements – my first thought was “Oh boy, here we go again: the ‘cyclovirs’, lysine and all the usual suspects – another few wasted minutes of my herpes-ridden life…”
But the fact that you had personal experience with most of them and the way you meticulously summarized all them made me curious what your site may have in stock for me.
After about 10-15 minutes of reading, especially after stumbling on the lifestyle change themed posts I found that you approached this “plague” with a HOLISTIC viewpoint and I thought, “Finally someone, who doesn’t just advise me to put some ointment on my lips and shove some pills down my throat!”
There are points on which I already made a commitment a while ago: changing regular diet (read: eat all the junk you can get your hands on at given moment) for a plant based, trying to exersize regularly. There are others that I am working on to implement in my daily life, like changing my dominantly negative mindset and especially strenghtening self-compassion.
I feel that discovering your site will inspire me to try harder and to make valuable changes in my daily routines and reduce the recurrences of cold sores (and make my life otherwise more awesome).
Take care!
(Christopher)
Matt says
I’m glad you enjoyed some of the holistic aspects of this website, Christopher. ???? I agree that there are far too many blogs with articles on the exact same info regarding cold sores. So I’m happy to hear you found some good stuff on my site that will enable you to prevent cold sores better! Thanks for leaving this comment. I do really appreciate your feedback. Take care!