You took your own share: some rest, some time for yourself, a no to something that went beyond your limit. You said out loud what you wanted, and you did not apologize before saying it. And then, almost at once, a feeling arrived, and it was not relief. It was guilt.
It got there fast, before you had any time to think. What the guilt does next is what I want to look at, because it is not dramatic and it is not loud. It only makes you hesitate the next time. You do not decide to stop looking after yourself. You just put off taking your share, and then put it off again, until in the end there is nothing left for you.
A word nobody wants said about them
I want to use a word we all dislike hearing. Selfish. Say it about someone and it lands as an accusation. Say it about yourself and something tightens.
I am using it on purpose, and I am using it to talk about love, which may seem the last place it belongs. But love is a large subject — loving yourself as well as loving others — and being selfish is one part of it.
Here is the claim I want to make at the start. When you can acknowledge the selfish side of yourself and accept it as natural, you become able, later on, to care for other people. And care that grows out of that acceptance does not empty you out. The problem was never that you give. The problem is giving that uses up everything you have and leaves nothing inside you. What decides which kind you end up with is the order: first you accept the selfish side of yourself, and only after that do you give.
Taking your share and feeling bad about it are two separate events
Don’t look only at the feeling; look at the order in which things happen. First comes an action: you took your share. Then, a moment later, comes the guilt, with a thought attached: Was I only thinking of myself? The two come together so reliably that you no longer notice they are two. They are two.
So let me say it plainly. You must be able to take your own share, and you must not treat the guilt as proof that you did something wrong. Taking your share meets a real need you have now. The guilt attaches itself to that action automatically, and it comes from somewhere older: a rule you learned earlier in life, that protecting yourself means hurting someone else.
Why keep the two apart? Because before long the guilt stops coming after the action and starts coming before it. The next time, you are no longer deciding whether to take your share. You hesitate before you even get that far.
Being selfish is the foundation
Selfishness, in the sense used here, is the capacity to protect your own life, needs, and limits. Care for other people has to be built on that capacity instead of replacing it.
The order is the same as when you build a house. You lay the foundation first and put the walls up on it. Here the foundation is looking after yourself: resting, eating, making time for yourself, refusing what goes beyond your limit. The walls are what you do for other people. Built in that order, your help is something you choose, not something guilt squeezes out of you.
Reverse the order and you get walls with no foundation under them. From outside it looks like a house, but the person who lives in it cannot hold out for long. The same happens when you give before you have looked after yourself. From outside it may look generous, but you are spending what you do not have. The result is exhaustion, resentment, and in the end pulling away from the very people you meant to love.
If you have ever helped somebody and afterward felt not fulfilled but empty inside, you probably took that as a sign that you do not care enough. It may not be that. It is closer to that house with walls and no foundation: you gave before you had looked after yourself, and the emptiness is what that feels like from the inside. For your generosity to be really yours, rather than paid for out of something you did not have, the foundation has to go in first.
The strength to hold on to what is yours
People often misunderstand what be selfish means. They hear it as look out only for yourself. That is not what it means. It means having the strength to hold on to what is yours.
I mean the strength to hold your ground when your share is being pushed aside.
Looking out only for yourself and holding on to what is yours look alike from the outside, and you mix them up yourself. That is why, even when you are only holding on to what is yours, it can feel to you like greed. But holding on to what is yours is not a milder form of greed. It is something different in kind: you are protecting what is already yours, not reaching for more.
The order runs outward from you
Looking after yourself and caring for others come in an order, and the order starts with you: first you, then other people. Love works the same way: it starts with loving yourself.
Someone who cannot love themselves cannot get love across to another person. Not will not — cannot. From outside, it may still look devoted, and the money, time, and work really are given. But when the giving comes from fear, obligation, or the need for approval, the person receiving it feels pressure, not love.
Love gets across only when the giver is sincere: giving freely, not out of fear, obligation, or a need for approval.
And it was never only about you
Now a correction, because all of the above can be read the wrong way. Loving yourself is not only about you. You and the people in your life are tied together: not separate things standing side by side, but one.
So self-love does not mean splitting yourself off and loving only that piece. It means loving the whole: you and the people in your life together, because you are already bound together.
Here is why the difference matters. Everything you can see is made of separate parts, and that is why things come apart in the end: they were in pieces to start with. The parts come together, hold a shape, and look like a single object, but that is all an object ever is. The same is true of people.
The one thing that does not split is love. Love takes everything in; it holds things together by including them, not by pushing them away. To love is to become one, and love does not create division. When you start to love, you accept what is there and take it all in. When you stop loving, the splitting begins: people draw apart, take sides, and then there is conflict.
So division, fear, pain, and conflict come from a choice: the choice not to love. But that is never how it feels. It does not feel chosen. It feels as though what makes your life hard is the situation around you and the people around you, and whether or not you love seems to have nothing to do with it.
If the world looks appalling to you, as if everyone is out only for themselves and the strong simply eat the weak, I am not going to argue that people do not behave that way. They do. But that behavior is what comes out of a lack of love. It is not what the world really is.
Where people are split apart, that is where the wars and the fights break out, and where the talking stops. The talking stops because you have already decided you know the other person completely, so you hear only what you already knew. Love is also this: listening hard for what someone is actually trying to say.
So taking your own share is not pushing anybody away. You and the people in your life are still bound together; it is only that, in the order of things, you come first.
Your own share, first
Love yourself first. Look after yourself first. Take your own share first. The reason is simple: it makes you happy, and it brings you joy.
So the next time guilt shows up before you have even taken your share, you do not have to read it as a signal to stop. Start where it all starts: acknowledge the selfish side of yourself and accept it as natural, without arguing with yourself about it. That selfish side, the part of you that looks after your own needs, is the foundation. The giving you build on it afterward is the kind that does not empty you out.
Related
- Living With Someone Who Has No Boundaries
- Why Taking Orders Feels Like an Insult
- What Did I Do to Deserve This? Punishments End. This Doesn’t.
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
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