Accepting Love From Yourself
Understand self-compassion. Self-compassion is the extension of acceptance and empathy to yourself. Self-compassion is crucial to your ability to love others and accept their love. According to researchers, self-compassion involves three elements: Self-kindness. We’re sometimes taught that being accepting and understanding toward ourselves is selfish or narcissistic, but think about it: if a friend made a mistake, would you constantly remind them of how horrible they are, or would you try to be understanding of their error? Extend yourself the same kindness you would to others. Common humanity. It can be easy to believe you’re the only one capable of imperfections and guilt, but making errors and experiencing pain are part of what makes us human. Understanding that you’re not the only person to make mistakes or feel hurt can help you feel more connected to those around you. Mindfulness. Mindfulness has a lot in common with meditation: it’s the idea of recognizing and accepting an experience, without judgment, as you experience it. For example, if you frequently have the thought, “I’m so unattractive, nobody will love me,” a mindfulness approach might be something like, “I’m experiencing the feeling that I’m unattractive. This is just one of many feelings that I will have today.” Recognizing when you are having negative thoughts will help you move your thoughts elsewhere. EXPERT TIP Jin S. Kim, MA Jin S. Kim, MA Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist Jin Kim is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist based out of Los Angeles, California. Jin specializes in working with LGBTQ individuals, people of color, and those that may have challenges related to reconciling multiple and intersectional identities. Jin received his Masters in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University Los Angeles, with a specialization in LGBT-Affirming Psychology, in 2015. Jin S. Kim, MA Jin S. Kim, MA Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist Show yourself love through self-care. Loving yourself is a process that you can cultivate through words of self-affirmation as well as through specific actions. You can build a healthier relationship with yourself by increasing healthy behaviors and practices that facilitate self-care, such as exercising, being kind to yourself rather than critical, setting aside time for the things you enjoy, and seeing a therapist if you need to.
Understand some myths about self-compassion. We are often taught that accepting ourselves is self-indulgent or egocentric, or -- worse yet -- lazy. Instead, we are told that perfectionism and self-criticism are healthy and productive. In fact, they’re not; they are usually based in fear. Self-pity is different from self-compassion. Self-pity is the feeling of “poor me” that you may experience when things don’t go your way; for example, “My colleague got more of the credit for our project than I did. Nothing ever works out for me.” Self-pity focuses only on your problems and often creates feelings of inadequacy. A self-compassionate thought might be, “My colleague and I worked hard on that project, and I feel that I did a good job. I can’t control how others respond to our work.” Self-compassion isn’t laziness. Accepting yourself doesn’t mean that you don’t want to improve yourself. It just means that you won’t be cruel to yourself when you make mistakes. Practicing expressing love for yourself also helps you express it to others. Beating yourself up is not the same as accepting responsibility for your mistakes. A self-compassionate person can still own up to mistakes they make without feeling that he or she is a terrible person. Research has shown that self-compassionate people are actually more likely to attempt self-improvement.
Understand the difference between self-compassion and self-esteem. While these two sound similar, they have some crucial differences. Self-esteem is what you think and how you feel about yourself, and it’s important to being a healthy, happy person. However, it tends to be motivated by external validation: for example, you may feel attractive because someone compliments your looks. Self-compassion is about accepting yourself, flaws and all, and treating yourself with kindness and understanding. Psychology research has shown that self-esteem is not a reliable indicator of success or even capability. Sometimes, it’s the most confident people who know the least about a situation.
Reject shame. Shame is the source of a lot of pain, and we’re very good at producing it. Shame is the profound, enduring belief that somehow, we aren’t worthy: of love, of time, of attention. However, shame is often not related to anything that is actually wrong with ourselves or our actions; it’s an internal judgment. Try to be aware of your thoughts and feelings about yourself. Sometimes shame manifests itself as feeling that you don’t deserve love. Sometimes it presents itself as a fear that if we reveal our true selves, the other person will leave us. These feelings are common, but they are also very damaging. Try affirming to yourself that you do deserve love.
Practice self-acceptance. This doesn’t come naturally to most people, because we’re often trained to see criticizing ourselves as something positive (for example, it drives one to work harder, improve oneself, etc.). However, there are steps you can take to work on improving your ability to accept yourself. Point out your strengths to yourself. We’re used to making lists of failures, and humans tend to remember negative events and emotions more clearly than positive ones. Take some time each day to write down something positive about yourself. It doesn’t matter so much if you believe it at first. Make a habit of thinking about yourself in positive terms, and you’ll probably become less resistant to believing them. Depersonalize your failures. It can be easy to think “I’m a failure” if you haven’t succeeded at something, but that kind of totalizing thinking devalues you and promotes feelings of shame. Instead, try thinking something like, “I didn’t succeed at _____, but I did the best I could.” Remind yourself that you’re human. Perfectionism can have devastating consequences on the way we view ourselves. Try looking at yourself in the mirror and telling yourself: “I am a human being. Human beings are not perfect, and neither am I. That is okay.”
Understand that vulnerability, weakness, and mistakes are part of the human experience. Sometimes, you will do something that you didn’t want to do. Perhaps you scored badly on a test, or hurt a friend’s feelings, or lost your temper with your boss. However, dwelling on those negative occurrences and shaming yourself about them keeps you from viewing them as learning experiences. Instead, accept that whatever happened happened, apologize for it if you can, and come up with a plan of what you will do differently in the future. Accepting your mistakes doesn’t mean pretending they didn’t happen. It doesn’t even mean not feeling bad that they happened. Taking responsibility for your actions acknowledges the mistakes, but focusing on what you can learn from them and how you can avoid them in the future transforms guilt into growth.
Accepting Love From Others
Understand where your hesitation to accept love comes from. People have many reasons for not being comfortable accepting love from others. For some, it’s just a trait of their personality that they’d like to change. For others, a history of abuse or trauma may have required that the person shut down to protect themselves, making trusting someone else enough to accept their love nearly impossible. Understanding why you are having trouble accepting love will help you overcome that difficulty. Some people are naturally more reserved than others. Don’t confuse emotional reserve with inability to accept or express love. If you have previously been in relationships that ended badly, or if you were in a relationship with someone who didn’t offer you the same love and trust that you offered them, it can be hard to think about accepting love again. It is natural for survivors of abuse to experience an inability to trust others. Trust is a difficult thing to re-learn, so take your time. Don’t feel guilty because you have trouble trusting people.
Become comfortable with vulnerability. In order to achieve intimacy in relationships, whether they are with friends or with romantic partners, you need to be comfortable being vulnerable with the other person. It can be terrifying to accept this possibility, but researchers emphasize that without vulnerability human connection cannot happen. For example, much of what drives a classic “fear of commitment” is the fear of being vulnerable and then being hurt. This often stems from a history of past experiences. You can practice accepting vulnerability incrementally. Start with small gestures -- greeting a coworker, saying hello to a neighbor -- and accept that they may not be returned and that this is okay. You just need to practice putting yourself forward.
Assess the level of vulnerability you are comfortable with. Especially if you haven’t had a lot of practice in accepting love from others, or if you’ve been hurt by loved ones in the past, you may need to take particular care in choosing what love you’re willing to accept and what level of vulnerability you are able to handle at this point in time. For example, accepting an offer to go out for coffee with a coworker may represent a fairly low level of vulnerability for some people, but a high level for others. Deciding to try healing a friendship that fell apart represents a very high level of vulnerability. You may need to start with small steps at first. That’s okay. You can build up to accepting greater levels of vulnerability as you become more comfortable with accepting love.
Give up the need to control. Being in a relationship with another person, whether it’s a colleague, a friend, or a romantic partner, means that you are connecting with unique person with feelings and thoughts of his or her own. You cannot, and should not, control other people’s actions and emotions, and trying to do so can end up hurting everyone in the relationship. Accepting that you can’t control the other person means accepting the possibility that they may hurt you, but it also means that you may find out how truly loving they can be when allowed to express themselves.
Find people who accept you as you are. Accepting yourself can be hard if the people you surround yourself with are constantly criticizing you or asking you to change. It will be much easier to accept love from friends and romantic partners who accept you for who you are, do not constantly criticize or shame you, and do not set conditions on their love for you. That said, however, a true friend will do their best to steer you away from destructive behavior. Be careful not to confuse "my friends love me just the way I am" with "my friends let me get away with anything".
Embrace your right to say “no.” While many studies show that individuals who are open to vulnerability and accepting love from others tend to be happier and healthier people, you are not required to accept love from everyone. Always remember that you can and should ask others to respect your boundaries. The other person should respect the boundaries you set. People who routinely ignore or reject your requests may not be genuinely interested in your feelings.
Learn to recognize when “love” is actually emotional abuse. Sometimes, individuals attempt to control other people by manipulating their feelings of love. There are many forms that emotional abuse can take, but learning to recognize these warning signs will help you determine when the offer of love is something that will enrich your life and when it’s an attempt to manipulate you. A common abusive tactic is to make love conditional based on something that you do. This can manifest as manipulations such as “If you really loved me you would….” or “I love you, but…” Another abusive tactic is to threaten the withdrawal of love to get a desired behavior; for example, “If you don’t do ____, I won’t love you anymore.” Abusers may also play on your own insecurities to convince you to obey them, such as telling you that “nobody will love you the way I do” or “nobody will want you if I leave you.” If you experience any of these in your relationship, consider seeking counseling or other assistance. Emotional abuse is not normal, and you don’t deserve it.
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