Arielle D’Angelo Helps Queer Folks Practice Self-Love

‘Tis the season for showering one another with gifts, adoration, and love. It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of online shopping, balancing work obligations with friends and family time, and all the jovial distractions that encompass the end-of-the-year festivities. So, where does that leave us with time to care for ourselves?

Self-love coach Arielle D’Angelo has some ideas as to how we can keep our lives balanced with prioritizing our individual needs, why that needs to remain at the forefront of all of our interactions, and how loving ourselves can be the ultimate gift to humankind.

“I used to have no freaking idea what self-love meant,” D’Angelo admits. Part of her journey getting into the field of life coach was through her own exploration of loving and accepting herself. “I think that as LGBTQ people, we are so used to abandoning ourselves almost in the process of growing up and figuring out who we are. I know that that was something that was always kind of missing for me,” she says.

When D’Angelo was in college, she realized there was so much she had suppressed for so long, including her sexuality, emotions, and her mental health, and it all came to a boiling point. She finally needed to do something to get in touch with her authentic self.

“I really believe that being a self-love coach comes down to helping my clients get in touch with every aspect of their self and peel back the layers of their identity until we can get them to be (in) full harmony and integration with their entire selves,” she explains.

Growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, D’Angelo didn’t have a lot of queer people around her as an example of what it was like to live as a self-accepting, LGBTQ person. The idea of being an out, queer person made her feel different and was extremely isolating, so she created a box in that she lived her life in to be ‘normal.’

Related article: Permission to Love

“I just developed all of these limiting beliefs, all of these narratives in my head that, like, my parents wouldn’t be accepting, that the people in my life would abandon me,” she explains.

Ultimately, it was making D’Angelo physically ill to hold in her identity for so many years, and she got to this place where she knew she wanted to help people and made it her internal mission to help others overcome that same or similar obstacles.

Through her own, personal journey of self-discovery, D’Angelo attended a week-long retreat which was centered around The Hoffman Process where participants identify negative behaviors, moods, and ways of thinking that developed unconsciously and were conditioned in childhood. Through practicing principles of self-compassion and self-forgiveness, my means of expanding their ability to forgive others, folks are able to better arrive at a place of alignment of self-understanding. At this time, she was able to embrace and celebrate her LGBTQ identity and then wanted to carry that message of hope and strength to others who may be going through a similar struggle.

“Those seven days completely transformed my life,” she reveals. “It was the best thing to this day, other than coming out, that I’ve ever ever done for myself. I truly believe, like, had I not gone to that retreat and had I not gone through that process, I have no idea where I’d be today.”

Seeing her whole self as beautiful and worthy of love is now the foundation on which she builds her practice and work with her clients.

Rooting in a place much deeper than self-care, self-love grows from a place of truly knowing oneself far beyond what’s on the surface. Radical acceptance regardless of situations is what really resonates deepest within D’Angelo’s practice, and refusing to shove down feelings and emotions allow folks to genuinely express themselves. The only way to do that is to fully embrace all areas of our personalities, beliefs, and values which make us uniquely us and accepting our strengths and flaws just as they are.

For LGBTQ folks especially, working with a life or self-love coach like D’Angelo can offer a different outcome than the work with a therapist or counselor may yield.

“I have so many friends who are incredible therapists, but I think that it’s so important to have LGBTQIA representation in the mental health healer coaching sphere because having been through this, we’re able to shine so much more light on this experience and see it from a different perspective. We can help people who are actually in it, actually in the coming-out process, have a much smoother journey,” D’Angelo offers.

In relating to her queer clients and utilizing her own personal experiences to help them, her ultimate goal is to lead the way to them basking in their unique greatness and shining the light within to all those around them.

“We all just have so much light and magic inside of us, and we live so much of our lives not recognizing that, and shying away from what really makes us unique, special, and beautiful. You never know who you’re inspiring, what lives you’re changing,” she emphasizes.

She explains that by living authentically, that’s when we’re shining our brightest, and when we’re suppressing and repressing and abandoning ourselves, that’s when we’re dimming our light to please others. Radiating whole-heartedly, albeit at times radical, can truly be the intervention that we need in order to consciously connect with ourselves and with our community at large.

When we think about our inner light, what exactly does that mean though, and how does D’Angelo help folks tap into that part of their inner-most being?

“When I think about it, it’s the most genuine form of  love,  compassion, and authenticity when I say ‘light,'” she explains. “I always tell my clients, ‘Imagine yourself being wrapped in the warmest glowing light that is full of so much love and nurturing healing you feel fully safe to be yourself. It’s almost something that’s indescribable.”

Frequently, D’Angelo greets people who come into her program who do want to love themselves but are conflicted by other narratives stemming from religious upbringing or societal influence. It’s her work to get the ‘voice of their spirit’ to be the loudest, as she states it.

By exploring methods such as neuro-linguistic programming, Reiki,  emotional freedom, and hypnosis, D’Angelo is often a starting place or a conduit to the next step along the lifelong journey of self-acceptance. She understands that results are not going to happen overnight and encourages her clients to be compassionate and loving with themselves. However, with her coaching support and expertise, folks can get closer to their goal of rewiring their subconscious narratives from ones of self-destruction to self-love.

Related article: Empowering LGBTQ Students with Love, Curriculum, and Acceptance 

D’Angelo proposes that her signature, six-week, group coaching program will take folks from not feeling confident, not loving themselves, and not really accepting who they are to walking away seeing life through a different lens. Realizing ones worth, what they’re capable of, feeling connected to their entire self and being, and really being in a place where they’re ready to live life with so much more compassion and connection to themselves, is her promise.

“When you really go ahead and sit down with yourself, go deep, and look at all the things, like, take a look at all the shit, and if you can come back to loving yourself first, I just think that the world would be a different place. It makes it so much easier when our well is full to then go on to love other people.”

She continues, “Inside of all of us is an inner child who has needs, an inner child who has wounds, and really just wants to be seen and understood. And so, I think that’s something important to remember in all of our interactions, like when people are hating on people, they’re wounded, and that’s why they’re feeling the need to say this, but also just coming back to seeing everybody in their highest light. So, I really feel like that is all possible when you’re able to see that in yourself first.”

Photos by Jenny Jay: @justaskjenny