It turns out the fastest way to heal and start caring for ourselves is to help and care about others
Some people have the misfortune to have been born to abusive
parents who belittled them and prevented them from developing a healthy
self-esteem. Others are born predisposed to view themselves in a negative light because of their physical appearance, a disability, or for no reason anyone, including themselves, knows. Research has consistently supported the notion that it's difficult to be happy without liking oneself. But how can one learn to like oneself when one doesn't?
What parts of ourselves do we dislike? People filled with self-loathing typically imagine they dislike every part of themselves, but this is rarely, if ever, true. More commonly, if asked what specific
parts of themselves they dislike, they're able to provide specific answers: their physical appearance, their inability to excel academically or at a job, or maybe their inability to accomplish their
dreams. Yet when presented, for example, a scenario in which they come upon a child trapped under a car at the scene of an accident, that they recoil in horror and would want urgently to do something to help rarely causes them to credit themselves for the humanity such a reaction indicates.
Why do self-loathers so readily overlook the good parts of themselves? The answer in most cases turns out to relate not to the fact that they
have negative qualities but to the disproportionate weight they lend them.
People who dislike themselves may acknowledge they have positive attributes but any emotional impact they have simply gets blotted out.
The source of self-loathing Which makes learning to like oneself no easy task. Many people, in fact, spend a lifetime in
therapy in pursuit of self-
love, struggling as if learning a new language as an adult rather than as a child.
Before such a change will occur, however, the essential cause of one's self-loathing needs to be apprehended. By this I don't mean the
historical cause. The circumstances that
initially lead people to dislike themselves do so by triggering a thought process of self-loathing that continues long after the circumstances that set it in motion have resolved, a thought process that continues to gain momentum the longer it remains unchallenged, much like a boulder picks up speed rolling down a mountain as long as nothing gets in its way. For example,
your parents may have failed to praise you or support your accomplishments in school when you were young—perhaps even largely ignored you—
which led you to conclude they didn't care about you, which then led you to conclude you're not worth caring about. It's this last idea, not the
memory of your parents ignoring you, that gathers the power within your life to make you loathe yourself if not checked by adult reasoning early on.
Once a narrative of worthlessness embeds itself in one's mind, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to disbelieve it, especially when one can find evidence that it represents a true account.But a narrative is just that:
a story we tell ourselves. It may very well contain elements of truth—that we
are unattractive, that we do fail a lot of the time, or that our parents didn't find us all that lovable—but to proceed from facts such as these to the conclusion that we're deserving only of our own derision constitutes a significant thought error.
The true source of self-esteem The problem is that we common mortals can hardly avoid deriving our self-esteem from the wrong source—even those of us whose self-esteem is healthy. We look to what in Nichiren
Buddhism is termed the "smaller self," the parts of ourselves that seem better than those of others and to which we become overly attached. In other words,
we ground our self-esteem in things about ourselves we perceive as unique: typically our looks, our skills, or our accomplishments.But we only need to experience the loss of any one of these supportive elements to recognize the danger of relying on them to create our self-esteem. Looks, as we all know, fade. Unwanted weight is often gained. Illness sometimes strikes, preventing us from running as fast, concentrating as hard, or thinking as clearly as we once did. Past accomplishments lose their ability to sustain us the farther into the past we have to look for them.
I'm not arguing that basing our self-esteem on our positive qualities is wrong.
But we should aim to base it on positive qualities that require no comparison to the qualities of others for us to value them. We must awaken to the essential goodness—to what in Nichiren Buddhism is termed our "larger self"—that lies within us all. If we want to fall in love with our lives—and by this I don't mean the "we" of our small-minded egos—
we must work diligently to manifest our larger selves in our daily lives. We must generate the
wisdom and compassion to care for others until we've turned ourselves, piece by piece, into the people we most want to be.
In other words, if we want to like ourselves we have to earn our own respect. Luckily, doing this doesn't require that we become people of extraordinary physical attractiveness or accomplishment.
It only requires we become people of extraordinary character—something
anyone can do.
A simple thought experiment supports this notion: think right now of your favorite person and ask yourself, what is it about them that attracts you the most? Odds are it isn't their physical appearance or their accomplishments but rather their magnanimous spirit; the way they treat others. This is the key quality that makes people likable,
even to themselves.
Treating others well, it turns out, is the fastest path to a healthy self-esteem.
If you dislike yourself, stop focusing on your negative qualities. We all have negative qualities. There's nothing special about your negativity, I promise you. Focus instead on caring for others. Because the more you care about others, I guarantee the more in turn you'll be able to care about yourself.
Comment: Negative qualities and the narratives attached to them are not the full measure of who we are and we do not need to define ourselves by what those narratives say. No matter how much the negative introject can make it seem like you are worthless or no good, it's important to remember to try and keep things in perspective. Part of the reason why being of service to others can be invaluable for self-worth and self-esteem is because taking an interest in the lives of others helps us to see that we aren't the center of the universe, and neither are our negative qualities.