Can someone look into a mirror and not liking what he or she sees be capable of loving his neighbour?

In Matthew 7, Jesus presents the Golden Rule:

7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

We can do the second (loving our neighbor by "doing unto others") only if we exercise faith in doing the first: we must ask, seek, and knock. Then God will supply what we lack.

ask: The father for material needs, that we may have enough for our needs and to give to others in need.

9 “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ (Matthew 6:9-13)

seek: The Son, the Word of God, for intellectual needs, knowledge of skills that help us love our neighbor. His truth will set you free from crippling lies.

2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)

knock: On heaven's door, to obtain from the Holy Spirit (called by Jesus, the Comforter) your relational and emotional needs, like acceptance and inner healing. Then with the comfort you receive you will be able to comfort others.

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. (2 Corinthians 1:3-7)

Do you need to love yourself in order to love your neighbor?

Note that, Love for oneself is not necessarily a good thing.

2 Timothy 3:1-5 “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”

When Jesus told “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:39, KJV), he was speaking with a group of Pharisees and Sadducees and answered one of them who was a lawyer. (See the context in Matthew 22:34-40). On many occasions Jesus answered people with an answer tailored for the persons he spoke with. Although Jesus words have a more general value than just for those he spoke with, after all they were worthy of becoming part of the Bible, and were repeated several times (Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14), the context of the words and situation remain important.

The Pharisees and Sadducees were likely to be full of love for themselves, and self-indulgent (Matthew 23:25), but the love for others was lacking in them. The word Greek word “hos” (Strong nr. G5613), with which Jesus words were rendered in Matthew 22:39 and Mark 12:31 are generally translated with “as”, “like” or “in that manner”. The word is sometimes used to explain one concept with another easier to understand, or well known concept or illustration (Mark 4:26, Mark 14:48). Most people tend to love themselves, thus for most people Jesus words are a clear help to try to love others at least as much as they loves themselves.

There is however no law against loving others more than we love ourselves (Galatians 5:22-23). If the Pharisees would have listened Jesus, the not necessarily good love (Matthew 23:25) for themselves which the Pharisees had, could have been a starting point for a process to grow love for others, and by loving others, to developing true love for God, and in the end hopefully change the way they loved themselves.

But there are other starting points. People suffering from depression or emotional problems can feel void of love for themselves, and maybe even of love for others. Proverbs 14:13 “Even in laughter the heart may be in pain, And the end of joy may be grief” (NASB). Therefore it is important to understand why some one has no self love, or does not like what he/she sees in the mirror. If we make a mistake, it is good, that we feel bad about it, even if it is only after we got caught or reproved. Proverbs 3:12 “for whom Yahweh loves, he reproves; even as a father reproves the son in whom he delights.” (WEB)

It is also normal do be struggling with sins and feelings of guilt or remorse. Paul wrote about himself:

Romans 7: 24 ”Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? “ (NLT)

He also provided the answer in the next verse:

Romans 7:25 “Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.” (NLT)

And also in:

1 Timothy 1:15,16 This is a true saying, to be completely accepted and believed: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I am the worst of them, 16but God was merciful to me in order that Christ Jesus might show his full patience in dealing with me, the worst of sinners, as an example for all those who would later believe in him and receive eternal life. (GNT)

Love is however essential to know God:

1 John 4:8 “Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.“ (BSB)

1 John 4:20 “… For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And we have this commandment from Him: Whoever loves God must love his brother as well.” (BSB)

So love for others is essential to love and know God. Jesus words to love your neighbor “as” or “like” yourself, can be a help for many people since love for oneself is common. But there is no law against loving others more than you love yourself. To much love for oneself can even be dangerous. Paul's journey to love God (in the way God pleased it) did not start, from his love for him self, or his love for others, but it started from the love God showed to him. Growing love for God and others is a process.

I think the question that needs to be answered first is "what is love"?

In the world we have come to define love as a deep affection for something or someone. However, when we consider this, we tend to focus on love as a feeling and we forget that love is also a choice. If we focus on love as a feeling we are like the rising and falling of the waves of the ocean - somedays we feel like loving, other days we do not.

Therefore, Love is two sided in the same manner as a coin. What does Jesus mean when He says, "Love your neighbour as yourself"? We need to consider whether Jesus speaking of love as a feeling or love as a choice. To me, Jesus is speaking of the other side of the coin, the choice to love and not the feeling of love for oneself. We love ourselves when we make choices that support ourselves as human beings. These are choices that help us survive and have life based on the morals and teachings of Christ.

Thus, choices that drive us to bring life to ourselves, should also be extended to bring life to others hence the term, "Love your neighbour as yourself" Therefore, we drive ourselves towards actions rooted in choices that would be suitable for others as Gods children, knowing that they are suitable for ourselves.

We as Christians, made the choice to understand the cross of Christ, and our feeling of love for God has grown out of our choice to seek. In the same manner, the choice to understand yourself will increase the love that you have for yourself. Thus, the two (feeling and choice) are intricately intertwined.

They say, the past is history, the future is a mystery and the present is a gift, that is why they call it the present. To me, this encourages us to forget the past and just focus forward to the future. However, what I have come to realise for myself is that the past is the greatest of all gifts, for only by understanding the past can we help in redefining the future. This is done by making the right choices today based on the wisdom of having learned from our mistakes yesterday. No choice that we have made in the past is a mistake, it is purely an opportunity for us to learn and gain wisdom. This gives us insight into why the Old Testament and New Testament are united together. Thus, the wisdom that we have gained from our own analysis of the past should also be imparted to others as the gift of "loving your neighbour as yourself"

Hope this helps in clarifying your question.

In order to love God and neighbour, we must first truly love ourself. This is not an option, but rather a necessity. If one hates oneself, how can on love God who he does not see or have true charity towards another person.

We can still love ourselves, while momentarily disliking ourselves due to our personal shortcomings or sins.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus replies: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Matt 22:35-40).

St. Thomas Aquinas affirms that in order to love God we must first love ourselves.

That the love of God and love of neighbor are profoundly connected is widely acknowledged and often preached. After all, did not the Apostle John declare that anyone who says that he loves God but hates his brother is a liar (1 John 4:20)? But where does the love of self come into this? Save for the word of Jesus, we might be tempted to leave it out altogether. We hardly need to be encouraged to greater personal aggrandizement. Yet here is our Lord exhorting us to love others in the same way that we love ourselves. That would seem to imply that the former rests upon the latter. Can that be right? Fr Herbert McCabe thinks that it is, and he appeals to no less an authority than St. Thomas Aquinas.

When we examine Jesus’ words closely, we find two commandments but three objects of love—God, neighbor, self. It is the third, McCabe claims, that is the key to the others. Self is where we start from:

I don’t mean that it is more important to love ourselves than to love God. I just mean that loving yourself is the way you love God. I mean that loving yourself is, in a way, more important than loving your neighbour because, without loving yourself, it is quite impossible to love your neighbour. Aquinas says, we should first love God, then ourselves, then our neighbour, then our bodily life (Summa Theologiae 2a2ae, 25, 12). (“Self-Love,” God, Christ and Us , p. 69)

McCabe suggests that to understand what it means to love God we should reflect on what it means to love ourselves—and to not love ourselves. We fail to love ourselves, asserts the Dominican theologian, when we base our lives on the false belief that we lack intrinsic dignity and worth:

The root of all sin is fear, a fear which is a disbelief in oneself, the fear that really, in oneself, one does not matter, does not really exist—the fear that if one really looked into the centre of oneself, there would be nothing there: the fear not just that one is playing a false part, wearing a disguise, but that one is nothing but the disguise. It is this fear that gives rise to the desperate attempt to put something there, to make something of ourselves, or the desperate fight to prevent others making nothing of us by taking away the masks. And so we make ourselves somebody through power over others and through possessions, which are a sort of power. Or we sink into some distracting pleasure so that we can forget the emptiness. And, of course, we hate those who threaten our self-flattering images. And all this is rooted in fear, because we cannot believe in ourselves, because we cannot believe that we matter just because we are ourselves. It is rooted in the fact that we cannot love ourselves. (p. 70) - To Love God We Must First Love Ourselves