Conditional love

I have a hard time accepting myself unconditionally, just for who I am. It is ironic, because it feels way easier accepting others for who they are, viewing their mistakes with lenience, cheering them up when they have self-doubts. I just cannot do it for myself, I need others to do it for me, or else my sense of self-worth drops to negative infinity, like I am only worth what I am worth to others.

My attempt at an explanation for this goes back to my childhood, in particular my relationships to my parents and my peer group. Neither of them (my reasoning goes) gave me the unconditional love that I needed to develop a healthy sense of self-worth that is independent of others and focuses just on who I really am. Of course you can’t expect that from a peer group, since you already should have that when you start getting peers, so they played more of a perpetuating factor. The very origin I assume lies with how my parents acted towards me, which certainly cannot be described as bad or evil – to this day I believe they only had the best intentions for our family – but which nevertheless was flawed. Most importantly, the love, attention, confirmation and appreciation that I received from them was always bound to specific conditions, things I had to do, even without them explicitly stating so.

There’s this anecdote my mother tells from time to time, that after my younger sisters were born (they are twins, and I am a middle child), whenever I witnessed her being stressed I would tell her to sit back, and I’d then play with my younger sisters and take care of them. I am only 2 years older than them, so I was at most at kindergarten age by then. She still thinks that that was due to my “empathetic nature”, but in truth (I assume) I did it to get her attention and appreciation, seeing that she liked when I did that and gave me the validation I was lacking. This is of course only my retrospective interpretation, since I don’t at all remember that story from my own perspective. For me to put this much effort simply into getting my mother’s attention though, I must’ve already been lacking and desiring it quite a lot. I.e. I did receive love, but bound to conditions and prerequisites that I had to fulfill.

Another issue of course was her focus on school work, and her constant explanation and pressuring that getting good grades was fundamental to a good life. I was good in school most of the time, and thus got validation when I got home and told her about it, but again it was bound to that specific condition of accomplishments and achievements in school. What I do remember is this sense of her voice in the back of my head getting angry with me for failing a test or getting bad grades: She never screamed or anything, but her way of showing me that I failed her expectations by denying me the validation that I was looking for still always felt devastating. In fact, it lasted all the way into my first year of university, at which point thankfully I started being able to distance myself from being affected by that.

A third aspect that I connect here has to do with their expectation of me being sociable, having friends, being respected; and the very contrary reality that I did not have any friends up until middle school, and only slowly started building something like a social circle during the last 2 years of high school, which sadly has almost entirely vanished by now. I was unable to talk about that with them – or anybody for that matter. I felt ashamed, like something wasn’t right with me, and I always had to hide it from them, had to smile when I came home even though I had a horrible day at school, even though I got bullied and rather wanted to lay in bed all day and cry. This anti-social me was always contrasted with my socially successful three siblings, all of which had many friends, went out to parties, vacations and what not, had boyfriends and girlfriends. My mom never said it out loud, but it was obvious that I was a huge disappointment to them in this regard. The more I was able to hide from them my real life, my emotions, my fears, my self, the less rejection I experienced, and hence again, I learned that to receive love and appreciation I had to deny my self and my needs, and strive to be as little of a nuisance to those around me rather than embracing who I am.

Real unconditional self-love and a healthy sense of self-worth start with receiving unconditional love and a projection of worth from a child’s parents. I never received that, or at least not to the extent that I should have. Their love was bound to conditions, and the worth they gave me, they didn’t really attribute to me, but to the person they wanted me to be.

I have quite the emotional distance to my parents now, they play no authoritative role in my life, but what they couldn’t prevent from happening during my childhood now continues to fester in my mind. It is not they whose love I desire, but other people’s love. I don’t feel validated by what attention they give me, but by the attention I get from anyone else more or less in my life. It is not their rejection I am afraid of, but everyone else’s. And over all hangs that sign that I am not worthy unless other people say so. Every aspect of my life is dominated by this simple fact.

I have only started to grasp the full extent of this about a year ago today, through difference activities, groups and therapies, and most of the progress I have made has been in understanding the problem; only little has happened in actually fixing it. One of the biggest consequences of this is the impact that a romantic relationship has on me. The attention and love I get from someone is like a drug, it gives me a constant emotional high even years at a time, it cures me of any suicidal tendencies and depression, it gives my world meaning. And on the other hand, a lack thereof throws me into the deepest abyss of self-doubts, self-hatred, desperation and hopelessness. I hate that I am so affected by this, it’s stupid and shouldn’t be like that, but I cannot just turn it off. I have been doing a lot to try to be happy on my own, even small things like cooking which I used to do only for others, or going to the movies alone. But in the end, it seems to me like no more than a drop of water on a hot stone. I want to strive to be happy on my own, but there are always times when I get sad that I am alone. And then, I don’t even know if a relationship at this moment would be the right thing to do if I would be back at this very spot after another breakup – even though a relationship would certainly solve all of the emotional misery I am going through right now. I don’t really know the right way, so all I really can do is look forward, and continue walking at my pace, however fast that is.