What are ways to like myself better?
December 14, 2019 5:38 PM Subscribe
Do you like yourself but maybe you didn't always? Do you have any advice for me? I strive to be like Marcel but it's hard sometimes. (I have started seeing a therapist.)
It helps to not have an opinion about myself either way — good or bad. Sometimes I can slip into ego and feel miserable about myself. Though once you’re aware that it’s ego you’re never stuck for long.
The whole “love yourself” movement is misguided in my opinion. There is no need.
You not “liking yourself” are thoughts and thoughts aren’t you. You can say you don’t like how the mind thinks. More useful is an awareness that you are not thoughts.
If you woke up tomorrow and loved yourself what would change? —- Your thoughts about yourself which is ego. The ego can say I love myself because xyz just as it can say I hate myself because xyz.
Sometimes we like to believe and identify with thoughts, even if they make us miserable because misery can be addictive. It can be seductive. We get something out of it — more time to be self-absorbed. More time to feel like victims. More time to blame circumstances.
Sometimes negative thought patterns can take up too much of our thinking and we don’t know how to let them go or pass by. Therapy can be helpful for this.
Instead of striving to like yourself have no opinion instead. Rather than loving yourself know that you’re already love as are all humans. Rather than needing to love yourself, love others.
Live your life. Do the practical things. Do the fun things. Do the creative things. Have a spiritual life if that’s your thing.
posted by loveandhappiness at 9:43 PM on December 14, 2019 [10 favorites]
The whole “love yourself” movement is misguided in my opinion. There is no need.
You not “liking yourself” are thoughts and thoughts aren’t you. You can say you don’t like how the mind thinks. More useful is an awareness that you are not thoughts.
If you woke up tomorrow and loved yourself what would change? —- Your thoughts about yourself which is ego. The ego can say I love myself because xyz just as it can say I hate myself because xyz.
Sometimes we like to believe and identify with thoughts, even if they make us miserable because misery can be addictive. It can be seductive. We get something out of it — more time to be self-absorbed. More time to feel like victims. More time to blame circumstances.
Sometimes negative thought patterns can take up too much of our thinking and we don’t know how to let them go or pass by. Therapy can be helpful for this.
Instead of striving to like yourself have no opinion instead. Rather than loving yourself know that you’re already love as are all humans. Rather than needing to love yourself, love others.
Live your life. Do the practical things. Do the fun things. Do the creative things. Have a spiritual life if that’s your thing.
posted by loveandhappiness at 9:43 PM on December 14, 2019 [10 favorites]
I’m a big big fan of DBT therapy. It’s a skills based therapy with group, and is divided into modules. There’s an individual component as well. One of the modules is mindfulness which isn’t as woo as a lot of folks make mindfulness out to be. It helps me to be present with what is actually happening and not what my embedded parental voices would have me believe.Another is emotion regulation, and since my thoughts about liking myself are tied up in my emotions this is also very helpf. If that’s a thing you want to add, I can suggest a place for group that I like that has multiple groups.
Outside of therapy suggestions that have been good for me:
volunteer - something low pressure, where it’s nearly impossible to be a disappointment. Clean up trash at a beach. Commit to a year of preparinf meals for a cooperative feeding programming. Walk dogs at a shelter. There is a whole website devoted to matching volunteers with tasks in your city (I can see it in your profile but won’t repeat it here. Feel free to message me if you want a volunteer buddy.) - I am helpful to others in ways that don’t endanger me
Send a friend a postcard, even if it’s a local friend - I am worthy of connection
Send yourself a postcard - I am connected to myself
Get fresh flowers for your home, even if it’s just a single stem in a very small jar - I deserve beautiful things
Keep a plant alive - (you may need to buy a few, take care of them all the same way that works for you, and keep the one(s) that live) - I take care of things
Floss every day - I am invested in my long term health
Moisturize skin and drink a glass of water every night before bed - being thirsty makes me more sad
Keep healthy snacks like nuts with me - being hungry doesn’t have to be an emergency and I get upset with myself when I forget to snack
Practice good sleep hygiene - not sleeping enough contributes to my feeling lots of unpleasant things
The biggest things I’m struggling with right now are poorly managed anxiety and attention deficit disorder. I am working on liking myself this way instead of waiting to like myself in some future where I am not anxious and/or develop better executive function. All the things above have helped me when I do them. I don’t remember to do them every day (ahhh, ADD!) but they do help.
Another thing that helps is to try to talk about myself the way I talk about my close friends, and the way they talk about me. “She’s trying so hard and is getting so much better at x!’ ‘She only missed flossing one day last week, that’s a good streak!’ ‘That latest piece of artwork is really strong in the use of color and I’m always so excited to see why they’ll make next!’ (Related, I also work to replace self deprecating things with silly self aggrandizing things. ‘I’m always late!’ becomes ‘I am the queen of persevering to get where I’m going no matter how much I struggle to get there. Nobody handles a subway delay after a closet meltdown as graciously as I do’)
posted by bilabial at 10:53 PM on December 14, 2019 [13 favorites]
Outside of therapy suggestions that have been good for me:
volunteer - something low pressure, where it’s nearly impossible to be a disappointment. Clean up trash at a beach. Commit to a year of preparinf meals for a cooperative feeding programming. Walk dogs at a shelter. There is a whole website devoted to matching volunteers with tasks in your city (I can see it in your profile but won’t repeat it here. Feel free to message me if you want a volunteer buddy.) - I am helpful to others in ways that don’t endanger me
Send a friend a postcard, even if it’s a local friend - I am worthy of connection
Send yourself a postcard - I am connected to myself
Get fresh flowers for your home, even if it’s just a single stem in a very small jar - I deserve beautiful things
Keep a plant alive - (you may need to buy a few, take care of them all the same way that works for you, and keep the one(s) that live) - I take care of things
Floss every day - I am invested in my long term health
Moisturize skin and drink a glass of water every night before bed - being thirsty makes me more sad
Keep healthy snacks like nuts with me - being hungry doesn’t have to be an emergency and I get upset with myself when I forget to snack
Practice good sleep hygiene - not sleeping enough contributes to my feeling lots of unpleasant things
The biggest things I’m struggling with right now are poorly managed anxiety and attention deficit disorder. I am working on liking myself this way instead of waiting to like myself in some future where I am not anxious and/or develop better executive function. All the things above have helped me when I do them. I don’t remember to do them every day (ahhh, ADD!) but they do help.
Another thing that helps is to try to talk about myself the way I talk about my close friends, and the way they talk about me. “She’s trying so hard and is getting so much better at x!’ ‘She only missed flossing one day last week, that’s a good streak!’ ‘That latest piece of artwork is really strong in the use of color and I’m always so excited to see why they’ll make next!’ (Related, I also work to replace self deprecating things with silly self aggrandizing things. ‘I’m always late!’ becomes ‘I am the queen of persevering to get where I’m going no matter how much I struggle to get there. Nobody handles a subway delay after a closet meltdown as graciously as I do’)
posted by bilabial at 10:53 PM on December 14, 2019 [13 favorites]
For me, a big shift was that as a teacher, I learned about and adopted the 'no put downs' rule- even if kids are joking around with each other, I don't allow names such as 'stupid' 'idiot' etc etc.
So when I said to myself "you idiot" and then my reflex was to snap "no put downs" - I realised that I needed to apply this rule to myself too. Just in not calling myself these things, this helped.
posted by freethefeet at 2:26 AM on December 15, 2019 [4 favorites]
So when I said to myself "you idiot" and then my reflex was to snap "no put downs" - I realised that I needed to apply this rule to myself too. Just in not calling myself these things, this helped.
posted by freethefeet at 2:26 AM on December 15, 2019 [4 favorites]
The whole “love yourself” movement is misguided in my opinion. There is no need.
You not “liking yourself” are thoughts and thoughts aren’t you. You can say you don’t like how the mind thinks. More useful is an awareness that you are not thoughts.
Resoundingly seconded.
Just in not calling myself these things, this helped.
Exactly. Liking yourself is not a way you be, it's a bunch of things you do. And one of those things is pulling yourself up short as you start to launch into some bit of negative self-talk and remind yourself just what it is that's doing the talking and what it is that it's talking to.
Because it's not you that habitual self-dislike talk is expressing dislike for; it's itself. The "self" in self-talk is always the transient, discontinuous, temporary, created-on-demand activity that is the talk itself, not the real actual object-persistent you - the you that sticks around even when there's no talk of any kind going on at all. Once you've got that clear in your mind, the sting goes right out of it and you can get on with the lifelong project of trying to do things worth liking.
posted by flabdablet at 4:42 AM on December 15, 2019 [7 favorites]
You not “liking yourself” are thoughts and thoughts aren’t you. You can say you don’t like how the mind thinks. More useful is an awareness that you are not thoughts.
Resoundingly seconded.
Just in not calling myself these things, this helped.
Exactly. Liking yourself is not a way you be, it's a bunch of things you do. And one of those things is pulling yourself up short as you start to launch into some bit of negative self-talk and remind yourself just what it is that's doing the talking and what it is that it's talking to.
Because it's not you that habitual self-dislike talk is expressing dislike for; it's itself. The "self" in self-talk is always the transient, discontinuous, temporary, created-on-demand activity that is the talk itself, not the real actual object-persistent you - the you that sticks around even when there's no talk of any kind going on at all. Once you've got that clear in your mind, the sting goes right out of it and you can get on with the lifelong project of trying to do things worth liking.
posted by flabdablet at 4:42 AM on December 15, 2019 [7 favorites]
I don't know how old are you, but if I may go a little bit contrarian here: If you don't like yourself invent another you.
posted by yoyo_nyc at 4:49 AM on December 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by yoyo_nyc at 4:49 AM on December 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
You can prove the it's-not-really-you thing easily, by the way. Just sit down and deliberately attempt to dislike your nose. Now ask the source of that dislike to prove to you that in fact it is your nose, rather than some ephemeral bit of internal brain behaviour, that's doing the disliking.
You will pretty quickly come to understand that that which is doing the disliking and that which it dislikes are not identical, and that that difference makes all the difference in the world.
posted by flabdablet at 4:51 AM on December 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
You will pretty quickly come to understand that that which is doing the disliking and that which it dislikes are not identical, and that that difference makes all the difference in the world.
posted by flabdablet at 4:51 AM on December 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
When I get into the mindset of self-dislike, or of thinking/fearing there is something very wrong and different about me, I tend to think I've always felt this way - until I examine that thought. I recall times when I felt quite good about myself. And then I can ask myself what the difference is between then and now.
For me, this tends to happen when I'm disengaged and isolated. The antidote is working on stuff I care about, and connecting with people I like/love.
posted by bunderful at 9:08 AM on December 15, 2019 [2 favorites]
For me, this tends to happen when I'm disengaged and isolated. The antidote is working on stuff I care about, and connecting with people I like/love.
posted by bunderful at 9:08 AM on December 15, 2019 [2 favorites]
I asked this question like seven years ago and I still go back and read through the answers occasionally. It's more focused on self esteem/ social confidence than explicitly liking yourself, and a lot of answers focus on the experience of being a woman in her early 20s, which you may not be, but you may find some of the answers helpful.
posted by geegollygosh at 12:57 PM on December 15, 2019
posted by geegollygosh at 12:57 PM on December 15, 2019
Also, this poem (sort of a poem, anyway) might be of interest.
posted by geegollygosh at 1:08 PM on December 15, 2019
posted by geegollygosh at 1:08 PM on December 15, 2019
Check out Kristin Neff's TED talk on self-compassion.
Her website self-compassion.org is really helpful. There are guided meditations to walk you through the process of offering compassion to yourself.
posted by tuesdayschild at 1:58 PM on December 15, 2019
Her website self-compassion.org is really helpful. There are guided meditations to walk you through the process of offering compassion to yourself.
posted by tuesdayschild at 1:58 PM on December 15, 2019
For me, meditation and, simply growing older have been helpful. Meditation helped me to become more aware of the negative self-thought spiral beginning and persisting. As other's have mentioned above, your thoughts are not the real you. They are simply that: thoughts. As soon as you get that crucial insight, it takes a lot of the power out of the negative thought pattern. You may find the thoughts return, repeatedly, simply due to mental habit. But over time, and with practice, the habit will subside. It truly is a *practice* though, like strengthening a muscle. It takes time to learn to notice when you are caught in a negative thought pattern. When you notice you are in that space, just be gentle with yourself. Just notice your mind producing the negative thoughts. Just watch the thoughts with as much curiosity and as little emotion and drama as you can manage. You don't even have to try to stop them. Just watch them and notice if they continue, if they slow down, if they change tone, if they seem stronger or less strong. Just watch your own negative thoughts as if you were an outside observer. That is taking the "you" out of your thoughts.
As far as the age thing goes, if you are young, you can look forward to the dawning realization as you get older that your individual "self" isn't all that, one way or the other. It's not worth bothering disliking yourself *or* particularly being in love with yourself. Self isn't where the action is. Life is where the action is . . . . .life out there, in the people you meet, the things you do, the things you experience, the things you learn, and yes, the heartaches and misery you suffer.
posted by WhenInGnome at 6:05 PM on December 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
As far as the age thing goes, if you are young, you can look forward to the dawning realization as you get older that your individual "self" isn't all that, one way or the other. It's not worth bothering disliking yourself *or* particularly being in love with yourself. Self isn't where the action is. Life is where the action is . . . . .life out there, in the people you meet, the things you do, the things you experience, the things you learn, and yes, the heartaches and misery you suffer.
posted by WhenInGnome at 6:05 PM on December 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
Yes, I used to not like myself quite a lot.
One day I had an epiphany, the kind that unfortunately is experiential and a bit difficult to explain to someone else online, but I will try, in case it helps you:
I met someone who really disliked me and nothing I did made any difference. I still don't know why she disliked me. But as I was crying about it someone asked me why I cared so much. "she dislikes you, so what?". And I suddenly realised I clung desperately to other people liking me as a substitute for liking myself.
I went for a long walk. And I finally, finally had an epiphany (you could say I'd been working on it for years in therapy, laying groundwork, but nothing ever stuck until that moments): liking myself was a choice I could just make. I didn't need to turn myself into someone else to be "worthy" of liking myself. I could literally, then and there, decide to like myself and just keep doing it. That was it. There was no special trick. I'd spent years wracking my brain how to be lovable to myself and it turned out all I needed to do was just decide to love myself. I am capable of loving people who aren't perfect, and... that could include myself!
I could literally stop, wrap my arms around myself, and consciously choose to fill myself with warm feelings.
And then any time a mean thought happened I could say, no, I love myself, you can't say mean things about me, just like I'd do for a friend. And any time I was upset that I screwed up I could say "ok, you can keep going, you can try again tomorrow" just like I'd say to a friend. And any time I was exhausted and angry and impossible I could say "alright, you need a nap, we'll come back to this later".
I'm not saying I don't still struggle with this. I do, a lot. I just can unstick myself a lot better now. (but when I'm very, very stuck I do sometimes need to talk to someone else to unstick me.)
Because I used to think that I had to keep beating myself up if I was going to improve, that if I didn't beat myself up I'd never become a better person, that I had to withhold love because that could serve as a carrot for motivating myself.
You want to know the saddest (or, alternately happiest) part? It turned out to be the exact opposite. It's ironic how much I was able to change once I was no longer desperate to change. how different, in good ways, I was freed to become once I was willing to accept myself as I was. I improve so much faster, so much better, I am a better, stronger human being in so many ways above and beyond the realm of self-love just by no longer beating myself up. I thought that giving myself slack would make me fall but instead it is the single most significant choice I made towards growing.
(Shocking twist! It turns out we humans just respond better to encouragement, and patience, and curiosity, then we do to relentless criticism. Including from ourselves.)
Anyway, that's how I did it. Just recognising that it was a choice, because I hadn't until that point. Realising I could refuse to hate myself in the same way I could refuse to smoke, and that I could choose to love myself in the same way I could choose to exercise. Not always the default choice, not always what came "naturally", but always a choice I could choose.
posted by Cozybee at 2:28 AM on December 17, 2019 [6 favorites]
One day I had an epiphany, the kind that unfortunately is experiential and a bit difficult to explain to someone else online, but I will try, in case it helps you:
I met someone who really disliked me and nothing I did made any difference. I still don't know why she disliked me. But as I was crying about it someone asked me why I cared so much. "she dislikes you, so what?". And I suddenly realised I clung desperately to other people liking me as a substitute for liking myself.
I went for a long walk. And I finally, finally had an epiphany (you could say I'd been working on it for years in therapy, laying groundwork, but nothing ever stuck until that moments): liking myself was a choice I could just make. I didn't need to turn myself into someone else to be "worthy" of liking myself. I could literally, then and there, decide to like myself and just keep doing it. That was it. There was no special trick. I'd spent years wracking my brain how to be lovable to myself and it turned out all I needed to do was just decide to love myself. I am capable of loving people who aren't perfect, and... that could include myself!
I could literally stop, wrap my arms around myself, and consciously choose to fill myself with warm feelings.
And then any time a mean thought happened I could say, no, I love myself, you can't say mean things about me, just like I'd do for a friend. And any time I was upset that I screwed up I could say "ok, you can keep going, you can try again tomorrow" just like I'd say to a friend. And any time I was exhausted and angry and impossible I could say "alright, you need a nap, we'll come back to this later".
I'm not saying I don't still struggle with this. I do, a lot. I just can unstick myself a lot better now. (but when I'm very, very stuck I do sometimes need to talk to someone else to unstick me.)
Because I used to think that I had to keep beating myself up if I was going to improve, that if I didn't beat myself up I'd never become a better person, that I had to withhold love because that could serve as a carrot for motivating myself.
You want to know the saddest (or, alternately happiest) part? It turned out to be the exact opposite. It's ironic how much I was able to change once I was no longer desperate to change. how different, in good ways, I was freed to become once I was willing to accept myself as I was. I improve so much faster, so much better, I am a better, stronger human being in so many ways above and beyond the realm of self-love just by no longer beating myself up. I thought that giving myself slack would make me fall but instead it is the single most significant choice I made towards growing.
(Shocking twist! It turns out we humans just respond better to encouragement, and patience, and curiosity, then we do to relentless criticism. Including from ourselves.)
Anyway, that's how I did it. Just recognising that it was a choice, because I hadn't until that point. Realising I could refuse to hate myself in the same way I could refuse to smoke, and that I could choose to love myself in the same way I could choose to exercise. Not always the default choice, not always what came "naturally", but always a choice I could choose.
posted by Cozybee at 2:28 AM on December 17, 2019 [6 favorites]
Another, totally different way of saying what I just said:
There is nothing intrinsically right about the thought "I am a disgusting piece of garbage". I don't have to engage it or believe it any more than I need to believe "that person is such a disgusting asshole" or "ugh, because it's raining my day is ruined". Its just one narrative or way of looking at things and it happens to be a particularly not nice way, so I can choose something else.
Whereas before these thoughts were like a subconscious chatter I accepted unexamined, the same stream of perception as "the air is wet, the sky is blue". But there is a difference between observing thoughts and judgement thoughts. Observation is what we are experiencing as best as we can tell via our senses, it might be wrong if our senses are confused. But judgement is what we are experiencing as a result of the stories we tell ourselves, and those are literally just stories. We shouldn't treat a judgement like an observation.
posted by Cozybee at 2:40 AM on December 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
There is nothing intrinsically right about the thought "I am a disgusting piece of garbage". I don't have to engage it or believe it any more than I need to believe "that person is such a disgusting asshole" or "ugh, because it's raining my day is ruined". Its just one narrative or way of looking at things and it happens to be a particularly not nice way, so I can choose something else.
Whereas before these thoughts were like a subconscious chatter I accepted unexamined, the same stream of perception as "the air is wet, the sky is blue". But there is a difference between observing thoughts and judgement thoughts. Observation is what we are experiencing as best as we can tell via our senses, it might be wrong if our senses are confused. But judgement is what we are experiencing as a result of the stories we tell ourselves, and those are literally just stories. We shouldn't treat a judgement like an observation.
posted by Cozybee at 2:40 AM on December 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
I second reading “there is nothing wrong with you,” and other books that come from that school of thought.
Something that has been helpful for me at times when despite ingesting a lot of the ideas of material mentioned in this thread I still have strong feelings of self dislike, is to tell myself that I may not like myself but I am not going to base my sense of self worth on my opinion of myself, but rather on my actions and how self compassionate they are. So, even if I’m thinking that I’m a gross horrible person, I can add to my sense of self worth by treating that gross horrible person well and with compassion.
(apologies for any terrible punctuation or formatting. I’m in bed, and really sick so I am dictating this into my phone.)
posted by ocherdraco at 11:30 AM on December 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
Something that has been helpful for me at times when despite ingesting a lot of the ideas of material mentioned in this thread I still have strong feelings of self dislike, is to tell myself that I may not like myself but I am not going to base my sense of self worth on my opinion of myself, but rather on my actions and how self compassionate they are. So, even if I’m thinking that I’m a gross horrible person, I can add to my sense of self worth by treating that gross horrible person well and with compassion.
(apologies for any terrible punctuation or formatting. I’m in bed, and really sick so I am dictating this into my phone.)
posted by ocherdraco at 11:30 AM on December 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
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posted by thebots at 8:02 PM on December 14, 2019 [8 favorites]