To love myself and yet I easily give my love and care to others without hesitation. BUT I can’t give that to myself, I have to force myself to be better and kinder with myself. I deserve all of this and more and I can’t for the life of me understand why. I have a kind heart and I don’t ever intentionally try to be malicious. I care about others a lot and despite all the bad I’ve been through I refuse to let it change me. And for some reason I treat myself so poorly like I’m undeserving of kindness, love and hope.
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Usually, from my experience in counseling (both in my own counseling and counseling others), when it’s hard to love yourself and you love others, there’s multiple sources. A likely one is that you have some unresolved guilt about your past that you need to conquer. This action, until it’s resolved is like a cancer cell. It’s permanently dividing without ever reaching completion. You need to forgive yourself and move on.
Another likely cause is childhood issues. People who have guardians who are critical of their performance as children usually grow up with feelings of inadequacy as a result. In this case it’s important to realize that the guardian is not qualified to make the assertion that your performance is unsatisfactory. And even if it was, it doesn’t mean that it can never be satisfactory. Really the only person you need to please with your actions is yourself. You can’t help others beyond your capacity to help yourself. It’s literally impossible. I’d argue that you can’t really ‘love’ others until you can adequately love yourself.
So what do I do at that point? Realize that we’re all maturing at different levels. Nobody is perfect in any one thing. You are progressing at the rate you’re supposed to. Give yourself a break. If you feel like you’re lacking in one area, put the effort in to improve. And once you’ve done that, be happy with where you are but keep working to be better.
I’m assuming that you love people and someone else loves you somewhere in your life. Not always to the level of our liking, but somebody’s trying.
Well, ask them why they love you. And take whatever reason they give you and run with it. Let that be your mantra. Whenever you feel like you can’t love yourself, remember those words. Write them down if you have to.
Every person is valuable. Every person, no matter where they are on the infinite scale of goodness is worthy of love. That includes you. And if you need a place to start, I’ll be the first to say that, I love you for sharing your problem. People will read your post in the years to come and feel so happy that someone relates to their struggle. I love you for that. For that good that you brought into our world.
Don’t give up. You can love yourself. And you will. But first, give yourself a chance to be loved by yourself. You’re good enough.
I know how you feel and in my humble opinion maybe you can try anonymous codependent group folks who like you and me give all to others and not ourselves. You.can google it.
I struggle with this too. It became clear to me when I imagined a simple scenario, if I take some of the problems I have or some of the mistakes I’ve made, and I instead imagine some “friend” sitting down next to me and telling me those very same things. I would be so sweet to them. I would so quickly see all the things that are still great about that person and I’d be able to tell them that in an instant. And I wouldn’t just be lying for a sake of being nice, I would sincerely mean it.
Sometimes I try to take that realization and try to be the better friend to myself. I try to tell myself good things and not be so mean to myself, but it never really lasts long. It would be easier to believe if the nice comments ever came from somebody else, but they never do.
I’m not sure how much I believe self love can really be learned later in life. It’s all about how you were raised. So much of our personality is programmed when we are young and then it kind of becomes permanent code. Our brains aren’t as accepting and flexible as they are when young. Like a computer where you only have a few years to program it but then after that you can never change it again. I know lots of people and self-help books make money off of the idea that change is possible at any age, but not usually.
@ alina_01 Not loving ourselves, low self esteem, and feeling of worthlessness are symptomatic and often as a result of depression rather than an intrinsic part of our character. Through depression we see ourselves from a biased/tainted perspective which only makes us feel worse, feeding back into the depression to further perpetuate the cycle.
I think cause and effect need to be identified for your outlook, where it stems from. Is it a result of past or present environment and memories/experiences within it resulting in a negative perspective or a specific event that triggered depression and your view is a product of that.
@ Specter While certain pathways in our brain can become ingrained and past negative memories are often recalled which can become our “go to” for similar future situations and can taint our perception, our brain is malleable and capable of change (think neuroplasticity and even neurogenesis).
You’re right that change is more predominant in early development, although I think we can adopt a different perspective, maybe change our environment (if that contributes) and examine maladaptive responses and their impact, we can still grow. Behaviour can be so flexible in different circumstances.