When many of us were younger, we were told to treat others with love and respect, just like the way we wish to be treated by them. Confucius famously said, “Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done unto you.”
Unfortunately, today, many of us speak to ourselves in a way that is extremely hostile and derogatory, which many of us wouldn’t dare to use when speak to others for the reason of not wanting to hurt them. As much as it is commendable that we are respecting others, we need to ask ourselves why we allow ourselves to be hurt by all this self-critical dialogue.
Perhaps the reason why we’re so hard on ourselves is because we always feel that something is missing within us. We want to be loved and accepted by others, but something within us tells us that we aren’t deserving of that love.
Why we don’t love ourselves
The scars of a bad past experience or the way the media perceives things could really go a very long way in hurting others’ self-esteem. People may think that “it’s just words” or “it’s all in your head”, but what they fail to realise is that the scars are very real and it’s so much easier said than done to heal. Here are some negative effects of these experiences. Honestly, this downward spiral can start even if an experience may seem small.
We may compare ourselves to others and look at all the things they have and we don’t
Sometimes, this may come from a source such as our parents or teachers saying hurtful things, but on other occasions, it could cause us to look at ourselves in a negative light. Maybe someone’s parents said, “Why can’t you be as smart as your brother?” That may have seemed harmless on the surface, but the tongue can be a really dangerous weapon if we aren’t careful with the words that come out of our mouths.
From my personal experience, the scars of bullying never really healed even though I met better people because of the way I perceived myself. There was some name-calling, but the biggest part that traumatised me was when people would deliberately avoid me or try to do so at all costs. This caused me to develop the impression that I was a weird and creepy guy that others couldn’t care less about.
As a consequence, I started comparing my social life to others. In fact, when I said I wanted a good social life, my definition of that was to have more and better friends than others. Even though the people I met later on were better, I still never felt satisfied with my social life because I felt that everyone else had a closer group of friends than me. I’d be overwhelmed with envy when people were popular.
I would get miserable when others had a ton more attention on social media and felt that good things never came my way. I felt that I didn’t get birthday surprises because I wasn’t good enough. I felt that since secondary school days should be the best of our lives, while they were one of the worst for me, I had lost a huge opportunity in terms of friendships. I was really disappointed and felt really upset when others got things that meant a better social life than me, such as leadership opportunities and overseas trips with friends.
We overthink and assume the worst in people
This makes us be suspicious of everyone and feel that the whole world is against us.
The insecurities have stung for a long time. When I saw two blue ticks on a WhatsApp message that wasn’t replied after I’d asked a question, I would start to panic that the person was deliberately ignoring me or thought I wasn’t worth their time when most of the time, they didn’t mean to neglect me; they were probably busy with work or had accidentally forgotten to read the message. In fact, many of them would apologise for replying me late. Even though once that happened, all the insecurities would vanish in an instant, overthinking would cause me a lot of inner turmoil. I would actually laugh at myself once they replied and wonder, “Why did I even engage in all the negative self-talk, calling myself a boring and desperate person?”
We want to be perfect
Being badly hurt forces us to give ourselves pressure to be perfect and we don’t like the vulnerable part of us, so we don’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable at all, and think that a mistake is the end of the world.
For me, I felt that the ultimate antidote to all my inner turmoil would be to never be socially awkward and be a charming, funny and popular guy. As such, I started to feel that it was unacceptable for me to be blur or uncertain of what to do, and hence I acted like I knew what I had to do when I actually wasn’t too clear for the sake of not looking like I was blur. Even though a few friends jokingly teased me for having a slightly longer reaction time than others, I felt pretty embarrassed. Most of them had no malicious intent, but I felt that it was unacceptable for me to be like that, and considering how I viewed people with suspicion and got into the habit of overthinking, I started to worry that they were deliberately mocking me for their own sadistic pleasure.
Another common example would be why many people struggle with eating disorders. Even though many people think that this group is limited to just females or celebrities, the truth is that there are males and people who aren’t famous who struggle with it. Some women feel that they need to attain their ideal body image that models have, and hence they resort to starving themselves if they feel that they are too “fat”. Others could have been bullied for their physical appearance and they felt that they needed to look a certain way to be liked by others. A study by Duke Medicine and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine of 1,420 children revealed that children who were involved in bullying - be it the bully or the victim - were at a greater risk of getting eating disorders, and this was higher among children who were both aggressors and victims, as compared to those who were solely victims. This could possibly be attributed to the fact that aggressors could resort to bullying because they are insecure.
We worry too much about what others think of us
Caring about what others think of is important because it enables us to behave appropriately to the specific certain situation. Take the example of what one would wear to a job interview. He wouldn’t dress like he’s going to the beach because the interviewer will get the impression that he isn’t serious about the interview, and that could make him less likely to get the job.
However, there is a clear distinction between caring about what others think of us and caring too much about what they think. In contrast to being concerned for the sake of having proper social awareness, caring too much means that we want to present a different version of ourselves to others so as to be well-liked by them. In fact, some of the things I was upset about were more because I wanted to fit in and feel like I was the same as others and less so about wanting them genuinely from the bottom of my heart. Some of them included wanting to get T-shirts that were pretty popular among people of my age group but I didn't genuinely like or wanting to watch shows or play games that people liked but I had no genuine interest in. There were honestly times when I had to share a fun fact about myself and I found myself tongue-tied because I felt that I had to appear like a guy who was like others and I felt that there was nothing interesting about me.
Why a lack of self-love is so harmful
When we don’t love ourselves, we can’t love others
When we don’t love ourselves, it is very hard for us to rejoice in others’ success because we are unhappy on the inside. We will instead feel inferior because isn’t that what happens when we look at all the things that others have and we don’t? This was something that I really struggled with because I felt like I never had enough, and as such wasn’t able to be happy for people who were close to my heart.
Moreover, if we develop the belief that we are not deserving of love, we will be unable to freely receive love from others. We will downplay our own achievements and success instead of rejoicing in those things, and be quick to downplay others’ compliments. If we have a negative perception of ourselves, a compliment will contradict our view of ourselves and hence we will be more dismissive of it.
We will never feel like we are or have enough
This is largely a result of comparing ourselves to others and failing to see our own worth. We tend to measure our success by being better than others. In my case, it was about my social life. Even though I met better friends in my later school days, which was all that I had hoped for in the times of bullying, I still felt that something was lacking because I felt that I needed to have closer friends and people to do a lot of things with, be it travelling or going to the movies with. Seeing others have those things overwhelmed me with a huge sense of inadequacy even though I didn’t have such high levels or anxiety about going to school.
No matter how hard we try, there will still be someone who is better than us and this will lead to us having a huge inferiority complex. Moreover, Will Smith said, “Money and success don’t change people; they merely amplify what is already there.” In fact, even when things in our lives improve, we will yearn for even more and strive for perfection. As such, we will feel like we aren’t enough because there’s always that person who’s better than us.
We will be more vulnerable to anxiety and depression
Low self-esteem could put us at a greater risk of anxiety and depression because we will have a negative perception of ourselves and all the negative self-talk and unhealthy comparison will hurt us more than heal us. Even though being hard on ourselves may seem to prevent us from making mistakes, the truth is that the negative self-talk adds up and constantly ruminating over the bad encounters could trap us in a vicious cycle of feeling bad about ourselves.
Former football player Michael Carrick shared that his depression occurred after the 2009 Champions League Final when his team, Manchester United, lost to Barcelona, not so much because he gave the ball away in the build-up to Barcelona’s opening goal, but because he kept asking himself why he did it. That was different from feeling bad after a bad game, when he described that he’d be able to get over it after a few days, but this really hurt him and kept haunting him. In fact, he felt that winning the Champions League one year earlier did not matter and he couldn’t be happy at the World Cup the following year, when all he wanted was to be at home.
Conclusion
There are various reasons why we fail to love ourselves and various ways in which it hurts us. However, it’s not all a lost cause as there are ways to cultivate kindness and care towards ourselves. In Part 2, I will share a few ways that we can fall in love with ourselves again instead of beating ourselves up.
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