Self-Compassion, Narcissism and Empathy

Greetings, readers.

It has been a long time since I blogged. Partly due to good old-fashioned laziness. But largely because this is called ‘Feeling Good’ and lately, I haven’t been. Nothing I've had on my mind lately seemed like it fit the general theme I’d set up in the initial post. Mostly because I had a really great thing with someone amazing and I let it dissolve due to indecision and inaction. I’ve been doing the regret dance quite a bit lately.

Regret, sure. And plenty of self-loathing. I’ve been careful in my life not to blame others for what happens to me. I’ve taken it all on as personal responsibility. Which is something I highly recommend. Responsibility is not a burden, but a grace that you grant yourself which puts you in the driver’s seat of your life.

Where I’ve been tripped up is that I’ve been conflating responsibility with blame. It is important to distinguish between those two ideas. Blaming myself created an image of myself as an enemy. Someone loathsome who kept messing up all the things I cared about. For most of my life I’ve spent a lot of time and energy on regular sessions of self-loathing. I’d been dissatisfied with how my life was shaping up, seen myself as the cause of it and focussing my sadness into hatred for the cause of my problems.

It’s understandable that we sometimes do this, but it is also extremely disabling for obvious reasons. When you see yourself as an enemy, you are always obstructed, your enemy and saboteur is there with you, every second of your life.

In this blog and in the way I speak in general I have been doggedly pursuing happiness, productivity, health, vitality, creativity and feeling good, damn it! The paradox is that all this striving has come from disatisfaction with who I currently am. I've been trying to be happy in spite of myself.

Self-love is the surest, most direct way to set in motion all of these things I've wanted. In realising this I am  getting to the real heart of the matter. 

I have titled this blog Self-Compassion because Self-Love can more easily be confused with Narcissism, which I also want to speak about.

Hyper-vigilance in controlling how one's image is presented is a symptom of narcissism.

I don’t think Narcissism and Self-Love are the same thing at all. I believe I’ve been very narcissistic in my life in that I’ve been obsessed with my own image and hyper-sensitive to criticism and rejection. From what I’ve read on theories of narcissism (yes, wikipedia, don’t be a snob, wikipedia is cool J ) it starts when someone feels they are flawed in a way that makes them fundamentally unacceptable to others. When a really large group of older kids at my primary school started bullying me when I started at primary and kept doing so until they left for high school, I was sure it was because there was something wrong with me. Since then I’ve tried to control how others view me, frightened that if I slipped up people would see the un-loveable truth of who I really was.

The truth of my unworthiness had been such a huge influence on my thought-process that almost everything I would see or do would confirm it. Hearing about the success of others would often hurt, because I was so self-focussed; someone who wasn’t me was doing well, this was more evidence that being me was a shitty idea!

Even positive things like the large number of friends I now have, would reinforce my self-loathing. I’ve worked hard in my life to hide pieces of myself and create a palatable identity to present to others, which meant that all my successes and new friends and social victories were just more proof that really, deep down, my true self was a terrible person and all my work to hide that self had been justified.

Narcissists can’t stand criticism, not because the truth of their awesomeness is so apparent, but because their self-hatred is so strong and immoveable that acceptance from others is all they feel they have. Narcissists are often perfectionists because they are unable to forgive themselves for failure, even unavoidable failure, like failing to be perfect. (At least, this is how I have experienced it. This is all based on my experience and reflection, not controlled psychological study.)

The point of looking at narcissism here is just to show that it is a very different thing to self-love, so we don’t have to feel as though we are narcissistic or vain when we practice self-love or self-compassion. On the contrary, loving and accepting yourself gives you the freedom to express yourself; which allows you to interact with the world and love and appreciate *others*.

This picture is here to break up the text into digestible chunks and give your eyes nice change of pace. It also reflects well my feelings on hot dogs.

             So, hopefully I have convinced you that self-love/self-compassion is a Good Thing. Any tips, then, on how to go about loving ourselves? I’m no expert but, hey, how about we all speak nicely to ourselves?

We all talk to ourselves in our heads all day, every day. Sometimes we say things like “Get out of bed you lazy asshole, go for a run right now, I guess you probably won’t because you’ve proven time and time again how slovenly and pathetic you can be!”

But is that how we’d speak to an innocent and cute, little kid we wanted to encourage to go running because we want the best for them? No way! We’d remind them nicely of how they wanted to keep their fitness up, and understand their tiredness and not-wanting-to, and reassure them that it’ll be fun once they get started, and that we’ll love them whether they go running or not. We might even be a little firm with them now and then, but we’d temper this Tough Love with plenty of kindness and softness, too.

My suggestion is that we forgive ourselves for all our mistakes. Everyone deserves to be loved and understood and forgiven. Even you. So, go ahead. Just saying to yourself “I forgive you for X” now and then could start to have a very real effect.

While we’re at it, let’s all stop arguing with people when they try to complement us, hey? You beautiful little winners.

Look up ‘The Benjamin Franklin Effect’ if you’re interested in fun little psychological insights. Basically, it is the idea that often it isn't that we do nice things for people we are fond of- rather we find ourselves fond of the people for whom we do nice things. So, do nice things for yourself, speak nicely to yourself, reassure and understand and be compassionate to yourself and that ought to give you a sense of Self-Love.

Being constantly accompanied by an ally, rather than an enemy is practical, logical and more pleasant. Even if the thing you want most in life is to be unselfish and to love others, being accompanied by an ally has got to be preferential to being obstructed by a negative self-view.

It’s just good policy.