Closed Eyes, Odilon Redon
In the work that I do, I am continually confronted with a huge and untreated issue endemic to our society; the inability to practice self-love. Not only is it rare to encounter a client who practices true self-love, it’s rare to find people who even have a language to conceptualize it. When I talk about loving oneself, the people that I treat often react with complete confusion, unable to really understand what I mean. I believe this is because our society is largely uninterested in teaching us how to love ourselves in favor of the productivity that may come from conditional self-love.
Narcissus, who froze transfixed by his own reflection in water, is the ultimate symbol of conditional self-love, and his namesake, narcissism.
Painting by John William Waterhouse
America tends to tell its citizens that it’s wrong, selfish, or even perverse to practice love for oneself. We are trained to fear being seen as “better” than other people or selfish, and as a result of this fear we retreat into taking up far less space than we need to. In place of true self-acceptance, we are encouraged to practice conditional self-love. Conditional self-love is something of a contradiction in terms, because it isn’t truly a form of love. It’s the belief or attitude that “if I achieve or produce X, then I will be worthy of love.” Rather than the emphasis being placed on who we are as human beings, it’s placed on what we can do or provide for others. To clarify, it’s not a bad thing to achieve one’s goals or be able to provide for others, but if your self-worth hinges on your success or failure in these endeavors, you create a moving target. This means that the prospect of accepting yourself as you are and truly loving yourself permanently stays in an imaginary future. Even if you achieve one of your goals or provide what you imagine you have to provide, the feeling of satisfaction doesn’t last for very long, and after it’s gone the goal has been pushed forward. Sure, I told myself I’d be good if I made $40,000 a year, but why am I not making $50,000? Or $100,00? I told myself everything would be worth it if I could marry this potential partner, but what if there’s a better option out there? If you expect yourself to perform at a ten on a scale of ten, then ten becomes your new average. And who wants to be average? What if you could do fifteen out of ten? Wouldn’t that prove even more how good you are? When we obsess with superficial aspects of who we are, like our appearance or wealth or performance, we begin to suspect that they somehow define or gauge our value as human beings. And because these elements are both superficial and subject to powers beyond our control, they will change. And when they do, our sense of self-worth fluctuates with them. We spend all our energy trying to inflate these superficial traits to a size where they’ll finally be big enough that we won’t ever feel worthless, yet the more we inflate them, the more worthless we feel.
Oddly enough, some of the people I treat don’t even see the reason why they should try and cultivate love for themselves. They may see self-love as a frivolous or “useless” practice. But the reason to practice it is simple; if you don’t love yourself, then there’s no reason to get better. If you didn’t care about your wellbeing in some way, you wouldn’t be in therapy. It’s just a matter of honoring that.
So, how do you go about loving yourself in a healthy way? The work can be done on many fronts, but it has to include some concept of healthy boundaries. If you can’t define who you are and what you want, then you can’t possibly accept yourself. If you find yourself swallowing your objections or silencing yourself when something someone does makes you uncomfortable, then you aren’t honoring your own wellbeing. Furthermore, if you can’t define what you want, need, and what you will and will not stand for, you effectively have no permanent boundaries. And without boundaries, we can’t even define who we are, let alone love it.
It is just as important to understand our limits, as well. This may sound pessimistic or self-deprecating to some people, but let’s look at the alternative. If someone doesn’t acknowledge that their abilities as a human being have concrete limits, then they begin to assume responsibility for things that human beings can’t possibly control. Someone without a clear understanding of their limits may feel responsible for the emotions of others, the needs of people around them, and the outcomes of their endeavors. Having the understanding to be able to surrender what you can’t control is a practice that can help us stop holding ourselves to impossible standards.
Mother, Joan Sorolla
Although it’s sometimes difficult to define, there are a few more methods that can help encourage self-love. Noticing the way we talk to ourselves and making an effort to encourage positive and compassionate self-talk is one such method. If an individual has trouble comprehending what this sounds like, I often ask them to imagine a child. Would you tell a child the same messages you tell yourself? It’s usually shocking for a person to even imagine themselves using pain or threats of worthlessness to motivate a child, while at the same time realizing they apply these methods to themselves. Keeping photographs of yourself as a child in a prominently displayed place can be a good reminder of your own intrinsic worth as a human being. When we think of the unconditional love of a parent for their child, we can see the stark contrast between it and the deprecating, and sometimes even hateful, way we relate to ourselves.
In my practice, I’ve seen messages like these produce real and lasting change. Self love is a skill, just like any other, and the more you practice it the better you’ll get at it. If you are someone who can relate to a state of conditional self-love or even self-hate, I hope you will consider engaging in therapy. As hard as it is to believe, it is something that can change.
Girls with Flowers on Their Heads - Gap Chul Lee