There are people nobody speaks to carelessly. Picture someone who says careless things to others whenever the mood takes them. Put that person in the same mood in front of one of these people, and the careless words do not come out.
These are people who love themselves. Something about them protects them. Call it an aura, if that is the right word. It cannot be seen or touched, but it shows in how they behave. They notice disrespect, do not laugh it off, say so, and leave if it keeps happening. Because they will not go along with being treated carelessly, even someone who usually mistreats other people finds it hard to do it to them. Their love for themselves has become a boundary that other people can feel.
If people treat you carelessly, where should you look?
If loving yourself keeps careless treatment away, then being treated carelessly may be telling you something. Say that lately people seem to treat you as though you do not count. The first impulse is to work out what kind of people they are. Before you do that, look closer to home.
Do you love yourself? Or are you mistreating yourself, blaming and criticising yourself in a voice that never takes a day off? If you are, then when someone treats you badly you are likely to decide it is your own fault, and to find it hard to walk away. So the careless treatment goes on, and in the end people treat you just as badly as you treat yourself.
Two people who cannot love themselves find each other
People who do not love themselves are drawn to each other, and once together, they abuse each other easily. At the slightest bump between them, hurtful words fly out: a remark that belittles the other person, or one aimed at exactly the spot where it will hurt.
The hard part is that neither of them notices what they are doing. Each one wounds the other and does not realise it.
I’ll do this for you, so you do this for me
Being treated carelessly is not the only thing that hurts you. There is a second kind of hurt, harder to name because it looks like kindness. Someone is good to you, and you come away feeling worse. They did you a favour and meant it as one. Help is supposed to make you feel better. Instead you feel sour, and you cannot say what went wrong, because on the surface nothing did.
What went wrong is that the favour carried an unspoken contract: I’ll do this for you, so you do this for me. The giver never asks whether you accept the contract, but later expects something in return: obedience, gratitude, attention or sacrifice. You take the help, and with it a debt you never agreed to. That is why what looks like kindness feels like pressure and control.
Don’t do it for me, Mum. I won’t take it.
Children are the first to sense this hidden contract. Their mother does something for them and then keeps waiting for something back. So the children refuse to take anything at all. Don’t do it for me, Mum. I won’t take it.
The child is not being rude. The reason lies underneath, where the child cannot put it into words: if I take this, I will have to do something in return, and that feels like a burden. So the child refuses it.
Real love gives and wants nothing back
In real love, the giving is the end of it. You give, and you want nothing back from the person you gave to. But some people are good to you and still leave you feeling bad. They give, and then they wait for something back. That waiting is what turns a gift into control.
So the person receiving feels bad, and on top of that feels confused: They are being good to me. So why do I feel like this?
The giver believes it is real love
The receiver is not the only one who is confused. So is the giver. People who give like this do not know what real love is, and they believe that what they are doing is truly for your sake. That belief is mistaken. They do not mean you any harm.
Even so, the real message gets through. The giver never says ‘I’ll do this for you, so you do this for me’ out loud, yet you hear it all the same. That is why you cannot accept the help comfortably and simply be grateful.
People like this do not love themselves, and they seem to love only others instead. But look at what is really happening, and they are not loving the others either. What they give has the outward shape of love, with nothing inside it. That is why, however much of their love you take in, you never feel restored by it, and nothing in you is healed.
It is hard for anyone to keep being good to others while feeling bad inside. Once or twice, out of consideration, a person can manage it: ‘I feel bad, but I can still do this for you.’ But when that is how someone lives all the time, it is no longer consideration. It is a sickness. A person who is struggling inside can never truly welcome someone else or make room for them.
Someone controlled for years is not easily soothed
Someone who has received this kind of controlling help for years is not easily comforted. They carry many wounds, and the wounds are still raw. It takes a long time of having their feelings acknowledged, of being comforted, of having someone stay beside them.
During that long time, their feelings come out twisted. They make sarcastic, barbed remarks. They put other people in a bad mood. They even hurt the person who has been accepting and comforting them. This is not bad character finally showing itself. They feel bad, and this is what comes out of someone who feels bad.
It all begins and ends with self-love
The order runs like this. For you to be loved, you have to love yourself first. That love lets you express yourself as you are: say honestly what you feel, without attacking the other person. Then you can love another person in a healthy way, and then you can be loved.
Take a wife who wanted her husband’s love and did not get it. She can tell him honestly, ‘I wanted you to love me, and when you stayed away I was very sad.’ That is expressing herself as she is. Or she can say, ‘Call yourself a man? What kind of husband behaves like that?’ That is an attack, and of course it does not bring her the love she wants. Speaking like that is itself a way of mistreating herself.
It all begins and ends with self-love. Without self-love, a wound lingers; with it, you recover quickly. And when people keep treating you as though you do not count, that too comes from a lack of self-love. Everything comes back to that one thing.
So if you catch yourself doing this, being good to someone and then waiting for something back, do not stop at feeling sorry about what you did to them. What is missing is love for yourself. Self-love begins with doing two things again and again: sharing what is really going on inside you with other people, and saying honestly what you feel without attacking anyone.
Related
- Why Self-Love Feels Fake: You’ve Been Faking the Other Thing
- There Is Nobody There to Love Yet
- I Looked After Myself, and the Guilt Got There First
Written by Kim Hyung-keun — Director, Seoul Addiction Psychology Institute · Director, Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis · Object relations psychotherapist and supervisor, 26 years in practice and teaching. Counselling Board