Hope for the Day, a mental health education non-profit I discovered on a webinar last month, recently posted these words on Instagram:
“Self love (noun):
1. A regard for one’s own well-being and happiness.
2. A state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth.”
@hopefortheday, on Instagram
What struck me about this two-part definition was how it suggested the need for balance. I found it conveyed a sense of moving between fundamental self-regard on the one hand, and on the other hand a self-love that is nurtured and developed. The word “appreciation”, in a different but perhaps not unrelated sense, describes something that grows in value over time.
The regard for one’s well-being in the first part of the definition might come from a deep and unconditional self-acceptance. Or it might derive simply from the self-preservation instinct: the drive to look after Number 1. The second part of the definition, somewhat more interesting to me, reminded me of a quote by Richard Rohr: “We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking”.
Both elements of the above reminded me of the definition of love put forward by M. Scott Peck, author of the classic The Road Less Travelled, as being the willingness to expend effort in order to further another’s, or one’s own, spiritual growth. I read elsewhere that self-confidence – for those of us not endowed with it from childhood at least – comes from making choices that we can be proud of.
Self-love, then, is active, not passive; it’s a deliberate choice.
The reason this is so important is because a lot of the time we don’t care for ourselves at all. A lot of the time it is so, so, so much easier not to love ourselves. On some days it’s just too damn exhausting to muster the effort to give oneself a pep talk. Of course, the “pep talk” can take various forms, and timing is important. Have you ever tried to do positive self-affirmations when you’re mid break-down and sitting in a heap on the floor?
In short, we quite reliably suck at self-love. In these moments, it can be difficult to navigate this sort of bind: Do I need to snap out of it, or do I need to give myself a break? I guess there needs to be something in between, particularly when we are at rock bottom and probably shouldn’t trust or be held accountable for what will come out of our minds or mouths, especially when it’s self-directed. We need to keep a watchful eye on the slippery slope from being (temporarily) unable to love ourselves, to beating ourselves up, to beating ourselves up for being so pathetic that all we can do is beat ourselves up.
For me, then, self-love is like a dance because we have to move between acceptance and growth; between pushing and pulling on one hand and holding and protecting on the other. As fully integrated beings, we need to ultimately attempt to see that these are somehow one and the same thing.
Is this a dance within oneself, with different aspects of oneself – perhaps an attempt to reconcile our inner contradictions? Or is it a dance between ourselves and the world? Where do we learn the steps?
Dancing with the world
One thing to consider is whether we have self-love by default, or whether it is something we have to learn. One might think we’re all born with the propensity for self-love, since we’re all born with egos. But I don’t think it is the case that we’re born loving or hating ourselves – rather, we’re born needing others, and we readily learn what their actions towards us say about how lovable we are. And then we spend the rest of our lives working with and fixing this.
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love, and be loved in return”
From the song Nature Boy, first recorded by Nat King Cole (and then in Moulin Rouge). I was tempted to insert “yourself” after “love”.
Dancing with ourselves
Central to this idea is acknowledging that our regard for ourselves is not static: it moves; it shifts and evolves. As implied earlier, we don’t necessarily feel great love or even respect for ourselves all day every day. Just as it is healthy to look after oneself, it’s also healthy not to be so proud of some of one’s actions; it’s also arguably adaptive to feel guilt (those who never feel remorse are likely to be sociopaths), though shame is a different story.
To add to this discussion, let’s dig a little deeper into how we make sense of self-love and the various alternatives.
Self-love, it should be noted, is different from self-care; the former is about regard and the latter is about the many practices we engage in routinely to feel better and sustain our wellbeing. I think it’s important to distinguish the two, because we might otherwise end up thinking that self-love as about making regular dates with our massage therapist.
Going deeper, I think the idea of self-love may be uncomfortable for some because it can be associated with self-indulgence; with letting oneself off the hook, if not letting oneself go. In short, self-love may be conflated with self-pity. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be able to recognise when we are self-victimising, but part of me thinks that sympathy has its place, both with others and also directed inward. Can “self-sympathy” not fit within the bounds of healthy self-regard? Sympathy, after all, consists in a sense of separation, and the ability to stand back from oneself can have its uses. I like to think we can have healthy self-love and still, from time to time, look at ourselves and think (gently) “You poor idiot.”
On a more serious note, what about self-compassion? There’s a quote by the author Karen Armstrong that goes: “Compassion asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstances whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else”. As an adaptation for self-compassion, I would attempt to describe it as looking within, seeing what causes us pain, and then refusing under any circumstances to keep inflicting that on ourselves – but also committing to forgive ourselves, again and again, for messing up and doing it anyway – and, finally, refusing to abandon ourselves under any circumstances.
That being said, we should also consider some other crucial advice for general happiness, which is basically not to take oneself too seriously. The 14th Dalai Lama teaches us that if we want to improve the wellbeing of the world, ourselves included, we should basically stop being so damned self-centred (not in so many words).
Incidentally, there is a story about how the Dalai Lama was bemused by the very notion of self-hatred – he couldn’t get his head around it. After all, we all have egos, and egos are known to be self-serving, so why would we hate ourselves? It seems like self-sabotage. My perspective on this – and it’s not exactly sunshine and rainbows – is that the reason we have self-hatred is perhaps the same reason we are so selfish: namely, that we don’t trust anybody.
Hear me out briefly: If you don’t trust anybody, it means that in your mind, anybody could hate you, hurt you, or abandon you. But what if you get there first? What if you could return fire with “Haha, beat you – I’ve already come up with the worst things about me.” Perhaps what scares us the most isn’t the prospect of being hated or rejected, but rather the possibility of being wrong about ourselves – thinking we’re OK, and then being blindsided. Hating yourself, then, is like a form of inoculation against the world’s hate – real or imagined. In short, we self-hate and we self-worship because we’re terrified – or, more stoically, because we’re vulnerable mammals driven to protect ourselves.
And so we dance.
Maybe here it’s useful to think not about self-love, with all its potential associations with molly-coddling or even ego-worship, but self-regard or self-worth. We need to get to a place where we can simultaneously see ourselves as worthy of nurturing, growth and, yes, an occasional kick up our own butt (“You’re worth it” without all the “and therefore you need this lipstick” baggage), while at the same time extend ourselves the utmost kindness, even pity (or the “self-sympathy” I described above). Because, as we know, we will invariably fail at loving ourselves.
In other words, we need to commit to respecting ourselves, but also commit to forgiving ourselves for disrespecting ourselves. We need to say to ourselves: “I see what you’re doing, and I know why you’re doing it. It’s because you’re frightened/flooded/hurt/hangry right now.” And then love and look after ourselves anyway.
I’ll finish with a quote from another Instagram account, that of author Glennon Doyle, which to me sums up the “daily dance” of self-love perfectly.
The post said:
“The secret is to not allow the fact that you can’t do everything keep you from doing something. Something, then rest. Something, then rest”.
And in the caption:
“A journalist once asked me, “With the onslaught of bad news and endless needs – how do you not quit?” I said: “Oh, I do quit! Quitting is my favorite. Every day I quit. Every single day.
I wake up and I care the most amount. And then – at some point – I put it all away and melt into my people and my couch and food and nothingness. And I care not at all. I forget it all. Then I go to sleep and wake up and begin again. Begin and quit every day! Only way to survive. Embrace quitting as a spiritual practice, loves.”
@glennondoyle, on Instagram
All & None of the Above 