Not loving yourself does not leave you where you are: it walks you into your own suffering. There is no middle ground. Either you love yourself, or you slide into what I call self-abuse. By self-abuse I do not only mean hurting yourself outright. I mean that, without realising it, you set up your life in ways that keep you hurting. A woman is drawn to a man who will turn out to hit her; when she chooses him, she does not call him violent, she calls him forceful, a real man. Or you say you are trying to get out of the pain, but you try only halfway, and when it fails you say, “See, it doesn’t work” — and you stay where it hurts. You may even feel you are protecting yourself, when in fact you are pushing yourself deeper into the pain. Which is why loving yourself is not optional. It is essential.
The suffering that comes from not loving yourself is everywhere in ordinary life; I could talk for a whole day and not run out of examples. It happens between husband and wife. It happens between parent and child. Without ever changing the way they think, people walk of their own accord into situations where they will get hurt. You can see it any day of the week without looking hard.
Not judging yourself, and respecting what you feel
So what does loving yourself actually involve? It starts with not judging yourself: not passing verdicts on yourself like That’s just how you are. In the end, it is verdicts like that, handed down by ourselves, that kill us. Judging yourself like this also changes how you hear other people. Someone says something to you, and you wonder, “Are they looking down on me? Why would they say that to me?” But what is really at work is the way you treat yourself: because you belittle yourself, you feel that others see you that way. When you value yourself, you notice when others value you too, and you can be glad of it.
Then: respecting your own feelings. Whatever you feel, you are allowed to feel it.
Meeting your own needs, as far as reality allows
Then one more thing. You meet your own needs as far as reality allows. If you need rest but cannot leave work, you may cancel one evening obligation, ask for help, or stop demanding a perfect dinner from yourself. You neither grant yourself everything you want nor pretend you want nothing. You identify the need and meet the part that can be met in the circumstances you actually have.
And who meets that need? Not somebody else. You do. You are not waiting for someone to come along who will finally notice what you need. You do it for yourself, here, in the life you actually have.
Putting yourself somewhere good for you
Self-love also means choosing places and paths that are good for you. It is not only a decision inside your head; you can see it in where you actually go. Joining a group where people meet to learn to love themselves, for instance, is already an act of self-love. If you treat yourself abusively, you do not go to places like that. You go instead to the places and situations where things can go wrong: where an accident could happen, where a fight could break out.
Self-love also means taking an interest in what I call the other you. What does that mean? Even in a healthy person, the mind is not one solid piece; it is divided into parts. This is not multiple personality disorder; nothing is wrong with you. It is simply why you can talk to yourself at all: “You’re scared right now, aren’t you? It’s all right.” One part of you is speaking, and another part is listening. Taking an interest in the other you means noticing the part of you that is scared or sad, and speaking to it like that.
You told your child to play alone, and your heart only got heavier
There is one situation in which people often cannot tell whether what they are doing is self-love or selfishness.
You are tired. Loving yourself, you think, ought to mean not letting yourself get this worn out. But your child keeps asking you to play. You may also have heard that not playing with a child is a form of abuse; I will come back to that. So you feel you must respond, and you have nothing left.
A mother once asked me about exactly this. The day before, she had said to her child, I can’t do it, I’m too tired. I’m getting angry. I’d like you to play on your own for now. She sent the child off to play and felt heavy at heart — and the heaviness did not lift. It grew. She had said no to look after herself, and still she kept asking, “Shouldn’t I have played anyway?” She knew that self-love is meant to come first and love for the child after it. But when she said no because she had nothing left, was that self-love, or was it selfish? Isn’t a mother supposed to play with her child at least some of the time, however tired she is? I told her that some of this genuinely is unclear. There are cases that sit right on the line.
“Mum is too tired today” means today, and only today
Broadly speaking, self-love comes first. Suppose you say, Mum is too tired today, so I can’t play with you. That sentence is about today, and only today.
The same goes for other things. If I am worn out today and say I can’t cook dinner tonight, then I don’t cook it, and that is allowed. No law says I have to be the one who cooks it. Once or twice, I can leave something undone. When I am this tired, nothing requires that it be done tonight, by me.
“I’m never playing with you again” is self-abuse
The sentence to watch out for is a different one. Because I am tired, because I have had enough, I say: I am never playing with you again. That one has to be taken seriously. It hurts the child, and it is also self-abuse. It takes a single tired day and turns it into a life sentence.
Saying it feels like protecting yourself. In fact it drops you into suffering. It is exactly what I described at the start: without realising it, you set up your life in a way that keeps you hurting. That mother’s heart grew heavier after saying no just once. “Never again” shuts your own child out for good, and you cannot be at ease living like that. Which brings the question back to where it started: what does it really mean to love yourself?
If not playing is abuse, how can one day without play be fine?
I do say it plainly: not playing with a child is abuse, even if nobody ever raises a hand. Play is something a child cannot do without, and a child left without it is being harmed, even before anything shows. Yet here I am saying that a day without play is survivable. It can sound as though I am taking that back.
The difference is one day versus a pattern. A parent who says, I cannot play today, but we will make time tomorrow, is naming a temporary limit. A parent who refuses again and again, never makes up for it, and leaves the child alone with the same unmet need creates a lasting condition: the child is turned away every time and never knows when the parent will be there again. That pattern is what I mean when I say that not playing is abuse. One exhausted day is not a verdict on your love; neglect that has become a way of life is what abuses the child.
Self-love comes first
How much weight you give to other people and how much to protecting yourself differs from case to case. But broadly, self-love comes first, because the more you love yourself, and the better you do it, the more you can give yourself to others and the more considerate you can be. Your capacity to give actually grows. When you love yourself, the love that reaches the other person is a healthy kind. Love from someone who cannot love themselves tends to come with strings attached: “I’ll do this for you, so you do that for me.” The person on the receiving end is being helped and yet, strangely, comes away feeling bad, because there is control in it.
Picture your capacity to give as a pocket. If loving yourself has put only about ten in it, then what you can give somebody else is ten — no more than that. If loving yourself has put a hundred in it, the pocket holds a hundred, and you can give that much in devotion and consideration. However much you have loved yourself is how much you have to give anyone else.
You get tired. Living wears people down. The day you said no because you had nothing left was that one day, and nothing more. So, to that mother’s question: saying no on a day like that is self-love, as long as you do not turn it into a life sentence.
Related
- Why Self-Love Feels Fake: You’ve Been Faking the Other Thing
- I Looked After Myself, and the Guilt Got There First
- You Never Say No and the Child Is More Anxious
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