For me, the topic is too multi-dimensional to boil down to a few paragraphs about having a kind inner voice and recognizing defense/survival mechanisms. The latter actually being more about hating others than myself in my experience.
I will add this to the thought stream on the topic however. Being ok with rejection, well more than that, accepting that rejection is a mechanism that guides me out of situations that aren’t right for me, or away from people who do not accept me for who I am is key to loving myself. The other path, to fear or avoid rejection is to prioritize destroying myself in the name of pleasing others, which is the opposite of self love.
Loving others involves accepting their variances from/conflicts with my important choices and being ok with that. Conversely, loving myself involves being ok with my important choices especially in the face of someone else rejecting me for said choices. IOW, accept me the way I am and the way I choose to grow, or kindly show yourself the door out of my life.
Again, this is an incomplete treatise on what self love is. I do however believe loving oneself is most important when it comes to dealing with others.
> Being ok with rejection, well more than that, accepting that rejection is a mechanism that guides me out of situations that aren’t right for me
I think this an important but incomplete statement. Rejection means that situation wasn't right for you but the question I have to ask myself every time is was it because I wasn't ready or good enough? If I get rejected from a job I really wanted, it would be easy to pat myself on the back and say "it wasn't a good fit" but the reality might be it wasn't a good fit because my skills weren't up to snuff. This is where having a kind inner voice helps. Don't avoid the reality that you need to improve but don't berate yourself.
If I may, I feel like this is sort of orthogonal to the point of GP’s comment, which I read as being concerned with rejection for the essence of who you are, rather than rejection for a technical role because you don’t have the right background.
You’re mostly correct, for me, it is mainly about who I am at my core. However, being rejected on technical grounds guides me either toward addressing the deficiency or something else I’m better suited to.
While I think it is important to be volitional in making my choices, sometimes singlemindedness in this regard can blind me to the gifts of things I did not choose. So sometimes self love manifests as making myself available to receive the unexpected, the thing I could not envision for myself that is actually much better for me.
But maybe you are a rude fellow who doesn't take appropriate care for his hygiene and is just generally a burden on everyone around you. There is no hard line between "who you really are" and things everyone ought to fix about themselves. And it is changing over time, at one point being obese was a thing everyone ought to fix but today it is socially acceptable, as the median American is obese.
> Rejection means that situation wasn't right for you but the question I have to ask myself every time is was it because I wasn't ready or good enough?
I have trouble loving myself. Like the author my life is mostly great, though I sometimes struggle with health issues but I would not wanna trade it for any other life. I love my friends and family and they love me back. However I would avoid conflict at almost all costs in order to please people even if it is too my own detriment. It meant saying yes to everything in my last relationship in fear of losing her and being alone again (which is very egotistical) and it meant only 3 weeks of vacation in the past 3 years because I didn't want to leave the client/teams hanging. In romantic relationships I am desperate for approval and expressions of love since I do not know how to love myself properly.
I am also afraid taking steps into that direction will take away my motivation for self-improvement. But most of all I have no idea how to actually learn to love myself. It's not like I haven't read a ton of advice on the topic, it's just that it didn't work yet. Maybe I should find someone professional to talk to. It's not crippling me and I am fine but I feel like my life would be better if I loved myself.
> I love my friends and family and they love me back. However I would avoid conflict at almost all costs in order to please people even if it is too my own detriment.
I've sat on this for a couple days trying to wrap some thoughts up. It's challenging, and I think what I've written below is pretty incomplete. But in any case...
I think these two statements are mutually contradictory, and I think that is an essential insight. (I, too, tend towards peace-making and people-pleasing at the wrong times.)
Love is a commitment that should produce sufficient safety to tell the truth to each other. It's hard to do that, and it's hard to test it. Love is ultimately concerned with the good of the other. This reflects around to you: if you are unable to be truthful with the beloved, you are not best for the beloved.
The well-worn bedrock of civilization--do unto others as you would have them do to you--seems like a good starting point for both loving yourself and your neighbor. It remains fraught with difficulty, though, because we often lack the will to do what is best for ourselves (or even the knowledge of what is best).
I heard a couple metaphors about this recently. If you don't love yourself, how can you expect to love others fully?
Like an oxygen mask in an airplane or an emergency surgeon getting ready. You have to put yourself first so you don't harm others. Put the oxygen mask on first before helping others. Check your own pulse before jumping into a life saving surgery.
How can you love yourself if you've never been loved to begin with? I mean it feels like a different language that you have to teach yourself from scratch.
This isn't even getting into people with chronic, treatment resistant depression. Some people will never be able to love themselves. Are they not allowed to seek relationships then?
Perhaps there are some who will never learn to love themselves but in general I think it can be learned. I don't think there actually is a hard and fast rule that people struggling to love themselves shouldn't seek relationships. Some of my own greatest progress in love toward myself has, as in the OP, come from learning from a romantic partner who actually did love me in ways I hardly imagined. But I do think that for relationships to be sustainable in the long-term, there has to be or develop an element of self-love. We can't ask our partners to love us, for us.
Love for myself is something I'm actively working on right now, as someone whose depression has also long defied resolution by conventional treatment.
It seems to me that the treatment-resistant depression, and the struggle to love myself, are the same thing.
You compared self-love to a language, and I think there's truth to that. But perhaps a better metaphor would be that of a neglected muscle or group of muscles.
As a human being, you are enculturated into at least one culture, but really a weave of many different cultural threads---things that have been propagating, in one form or another, for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Part of that cultural heritage is the judgement and self-hate---the keen sense of having failed to be what one ought to be.
But also part of that cultural heritage is immense love. That is part of you, but neglected---it is the unworked muscle.
I recently went to the gym for the first time in years. I hardly did any exercises, but I was sore for three days afterward. It was painful even---seemed like I might have fucked something up. But now, I'm stronger.
I think it's like this with love for ourselves. It is a muscle that can be strengthened. The way this is done will probably be somewhat individual to you, but I think there are patterns to it.
For me it has been very helpful to prioritize the development of this ability. Even to spend effort developing it is itself a sign of love for myself. Even if I fail---at least I'm trying. At least I'm spending time attempting to show myself that I matter.
In fact, the tendency to avoid being with myself---to distract myself from what's going on inside me any way I can---has sent a signal of fear rather than of love toward myself. I'm trying to do less of that---Hacker News will likely always have its place, of course!---and to have more time to be with me.
One of my great hangups has been the problem, basically, of evil. Like in the original post, the question has stuck with me: what if I'm a bad guy?
What if through my self-hate I don't reform myself and keep myself in line?
But the answer I'm coming to is that there is no part of myself that isn't deserving of love, simply for being here. The way I developed as a person was largely an accident of my environment and predispositions. If there are parts of me that are a bit misshapen, so to speak, it is only because they were not nourished as they ought to have been.
Is the answer to now continue the deprivation and the mistreatment? Or is it time to try something different?
When I treat myself with love, something within me responds with great joy that I've not felt in a long time. Something becomes _right_ that has long been wrong. Just saying "I love you" to myself is just a beginning---talk is cheap after all. But standing up for my needs, refusing to betray or abandon myself in the face of rejection from others, letting my self and my ideas come out---realizing that there is a headspace where I can feel not only not ashamed, but proud to be who I am---all of these things show a very deep part of me that it is loved, and I _feel_ that very clearly.
It has also been helpful for me to be part of a community focused on developing a different, more-loving relationship to our respective selves. For me that is part of a reading group dedicated to "The Loving Parent Guidebook", which is part of the literature of Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. Like all programs that one has its pros and cons and I'm not even advocating for it in particular, but the important thing for me has been to show up, learn from others, and practice things I never practiced before. (As a non-believer in a traditonal "Higher Power" I have had to forge my own path to an extent, but there are many like me.)
Anyway, the journey is only just beginning in a sense. I just wanted to share my perspective in case it's helpful. You're not alone in the struggle, though of course it's also particular to you.
I think "love" here should be replaced by "being there for other people". I have felt romantic love for people in periods where I didn't love myself at all. The problem comes when love is not only about kissing and having sex, but also about sharing chores, taking care of the other after an accident, making compromises. I would agree that this love is hard to give when you don't love yourself.
> I heard a couple metaphors about this recently. If you don't love yourself, how can you expect to love others fully?
If the only kind of love that one know how to show is constant belittling and striking to the point of serious injury, and learning that this is both how you say I-Love-You and if you loved them back you would endure it silently, could you honestly say that you'd want to love yourself?
But it is different for the author. He learned to love himself after his girlfriend showed her love to who actually he is. So lots of people struggle to love themselves because they never experienced what does it mean being loved.
I don't agree in any way. In fact, it's normal to love others much more than you love yourself. This is easy to understand if you have parents or children.
Way more. I love my siblings more than I love myself. I love my friends more than I love myself. I'm not good at self love and self care, but it's a bit easier if I tell myself that I do it for them.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Is it children staying home because they love their parents more than themselves and want to be with them? Or because they know their parents want to be with them and thus they prioritize their happiness? Or something else entirely?
The last psychiatrist has written a lot about that. He calls it modern narcissism, and uses it to explain a lot of what we call depression today. There's also the Christian notion of acedia, the ancester of sloth, that is not just laziness, but a moral failure due to selfishness and being self centered, and thus not doing things for others.
I of course won't go around accusing eveyone that's depressed of selfishness or moral failure. But reading about this helped me understand a bit better why I feel so unhappy when I'm surrounded by so many good people.
Do you have any examples from that blog? I started reading, and while it is very interesting, there are a lot of articles, and I have trouble finding the ones implied in your comment.
I started reading articles randomly, but the most efficient way I found is to take the archives of "narcissism", and start from the oldest post. Here's a list of link of the most relevant according to me:
For me, it was an intentional MDMA session focused on shame that spontaneously cracked open my self love. The result is extraordinary - I really don’t care what people think about me because I no longer need validation and “love” from strangers. I’m now free to fully express myself without fear and love others without judgement.
I can't follow the author. Are they saying that this self talk is actually good for them, or bad? It sounds like he was really kind to themselves, yet the sueounsing text implies these were actually examples of "not loving oneself"
I can't grasp the meaning of "loving myself". For me, love is something the goes from me to others. It just doesn't make sense to love myself. What does that even mean?
This is one observation I had that I think relates to this question:
When people I love do things I don't like it might annoy or anger me, but I will still regard them with compassion and try to understand their motivation. This doesn't mean that I won't draw consequences but that my positive attitude towards and my understanding towards them goes beyond behaviors that I can understand on first glance.
With myself I often catch myself harshly judging me for doing or wanting things that are in conflict with how I think I am supposed to behave, even if there might be good reasons for my behavior deeper down.
In contrast to other people who I love I am not yet able to keep the positive attitude and a willingness to understand for myself. This makes it difficult to investigate my own behavior even though it probably benefits me on the long run.
That I do show this behavior towards people I love makes me think that "loving myself" should also contain this behavior towards myself. This is just one aspect that I think "loving myself" contains. There are possibly other aspects of love to others that are also applicable for myself.
"Loving myself" is certainly a feeling I have felt before and to me it feels quite similar as love for other people feels.
I will add this to the thought stream on the topic however. Being ok with rejection, well more than that, accepting that rejection is a mechanism that guides me out of situations that aren’t right for me, or away from people who do not accept me for who I am is key to loving myself. The other path, to fear or avoid rejection is to prioritize destroying myself in the name of pleasing others, which is the opposite of self love.
Loving others involves accepting their variances from/conflicts with my important choices and being ok with that. Conversely, loving myself involves being ok with my important choices especially in the face of someone else rejecting me for said choices. IOW, accept me the way I am and the way I choose to grow, or kindly show yourself the door out of my life.
Again, this is an incomplete treatise on what self love is. I do however believe loving oneself is most important when it comes to dealing with others.