Have you considered that perhaps the message was just to accept yourself for who you are? Sometimes we can get hung up on not becoming the ideal version of ourselves we wish to be and that can cause us to feel like we are failing in some way, hence why you felt like it was a battering.

I don’t think you can force love or kindness, and maybe you were recognising that if you try to then it loses it’s genuineness and does become a mask because the motivation behind it isn’t coming from a place of love, but rather the ego that says I want to be a kind and loving person and then gets frustrated when they feel like they don’t meet the high standard that’s been set.

The first place to start being kind with is yourself, the rest will follow.