Can't explain, your correct we need to be loved before we can use that and make it ours. I didn't learn to love myself by reading mantra's after all saying I love myself and feeling it are to different things. What I know for certain is that bit by bit I have internalised 'remembered' how I feel about myself through T's eyes amd dealings with me and gradually begin to take ownership of it, it becomes mine, T's genuine good feeling toward me is most times now mine. Takes a long time for this to happen as adults but it can be done.