Bolanle Ninalowo says self-love replaced people-pleasing and codependency after he saw attachment was not love

Nollywood actor Bolanle Ninalowo said on his social media page that learning to love himself has become one of the most fulfilling parts of his life, after years of people-pleasing and extreme codependency.

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Mr Ninalowo wrote that compliments about self-love now cheer him rather than sting.

He said a long habit of choosing others, over-giving and clinging had shown him, in healing, that he had not known how to value himself. What he once named love was, in many ways, attachment.

“When I hear, ‘This man, you too love yourself’. Omo, you have no idea how much it gladdens my heart oo!! As a matter of fact, it is now one of the most fulfilling parts of my existence. Loving and choosing others, people-pleasing, over-giving, and the extreme codependency I lived with for almost my entire adult life made me realise something during my healing journey. I didn’t know how to love or value myself. What I once called Love was, in many ways, simply attachment,” he said.

He then turned to family patterns. How a person is raised, he argued, can shape love, speech, parenting, boundaries and conflict.

Those patterns need not be handed on. Healing, in his account, is learning to pause, question what feels normal and choose another way.

“But no one talks about ending generational traumas! The way you were raised may have shaped how you love, communicate, parent, set boundaries, and respond to conflict. But you don’t have to pass every pattern down to the next generation. Healing means learning to pause, question what feels ‘normal,’ and choose a different way. You can be the person who breaks the cycle. Understand your trauma. Change your life. There is no shame in healing,” he added.

The post is a personal testimony, not a clinical paper. It does not name a therapist, a timeline or a specific relationship.

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What it does offer is a public actor refusing the old joke that self-love is vanity, and asking others to treat healing as work worth doing.