happen to me? God must be punishing me. I'm the only one who's ever felt this way. I'm so down that no one could possibly comfort me. I hope they don't even try. I'm a wreck. Why is my life always so hard?
Self-pity is dishonoring yourself, looking down on the grand, whole, becoming-at-every-moment-more-capable-self that you are. Pitying yourself is a condescending emotion. Rather than looking at the wounds and disappointments of your life as worthy of grieving over, as worthy of your own—and of others'—compassion, as being of value in shaping your life and your character; you wallow in a view of yourself as a small, inept, and pitiful human being.
Narcissism
Now that I've told you all about me, let's talk about you—what do you think of me? What do you think of my new haircut? I can't believe he cut it so short. This wedding is nice, but my wedding was fantastic. We had the best caterer; you should have seen the flowers. Why doesn't he call? I can't believe he hasn't called. We had one of the best dates of my life. My daughter-in-law is a terrible mother to my grandson. If I'd raised my son like that she never would have married him.
Narcissism, to the untrained eye, can appear to be self-love, but actually it's very hollow. It is immediately tedious and ultimately exhausting to others. In fact, rather than gaining the kind of loving attention that could make you feel loved, narcissism engenders rejection and, in time, the walking away of friends and strangers, leaving the narcissist feeling abandoned rather than loved. Narcissism is smoke, a lot of hot air and mirrors, false advertising that leaves the real, beautiful person inside without a voice for her wants, fears, needs, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Narcissism is a second-rate trip, a second-rate knock-off of true self-love. It's produced, directed, and starred in by the unreal self.
It All Boils Down to Low Self-Esteem
If you recognize yourself in one or more of the above behaviors, you are probably suffering from low self-esteem. What this means is that deep down inside, you feel that you're not a very worthwhile person. Your opinion of yourself never manages to rise up to the greatness level. Monday through Sunday you don't think you're okay. Instead of sparkling, you're always grey—a wannabe or a has-been. You're not a player and you never will be. You're not part of the in-crowd. You just don't believe in yourself.
You may have your own additional, well-developed ways of not loving yourself. Unfortunately, many of us are world-class masters at the art. But whatever your method, each of these habits of low self-esteem is a symptom of something much deeper, something with roots in your childhood. And until you can look beneath the surface of your self-negating behaviors to see how you acquired them, it will be difficult for you to love yourself.
Whatever the form of your lack of self-love, you can begin to change it by understanding how you came to be so hard on yourself in the first place. Understanding is always the key to emotional healing.
THREE
How Did It Get to Be This Way?
Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.
—Michael Pritchard
Children always follow their parents' example. We treat ourselves emotionally the way our parents treat ourselves emotionally the way our parents treated us. If your parents treated you as if you were unworthy of their love—even if this was unintentional— you will feel unworthy of your own love. This will be true until you consciously take steps to change the way you feel about yourself.
We've heard a lot in recent years about “dysfunctional families,” as if the majority of families actually function, as if it's only the rare or uniquely troubled family that's dysfunctional; but the truth is, every family is dysfunctional to some degree. Mine was. Yours is too. It isn't, in some ultimate sense, anyone's fault. It's in the nature of being human that our parents will have human failings. None of us has been loved perfectly, or even well enough. That's just the way it is. And that's why, as part of growing into our beauty as human beings, we must take up the task of learning to love ourselves. Ultimately, it's an inside job. It means going to the depths of yourself and getting acquainted with the lovely soul who deserves your support, care, affection, forgiveness, and compassion.
All issues of self-love are related to our sense of our own value, which is created very early on. When we're little, we depend on our parents to make life safe for us. When they fail to do so in some big or little way, our unconscious sense is that we aren't worthy of their love. We're not able to say that they're inept or inadequate parents, that they have human limitations. We can't say to ourselves that maybe they're still suffering from what they experienced with their own parents. Instead we say, If they're not loving me the way I need to be loved, it must be my fault. I must be unlovable. As children, we always interpret the lack of love we experience as somehow being our fault.
That's why the child who's left waiting on the stairs for food can't say to herself, my parents are in a bind, they're overwhelmed by their circumstances. Instead she says, it would be better if I had never been born. The child who's one of ten children feels like he's always in the way; the child of the busy brilliant professor grows up feeling she isn't smart enough; the son of the angry alcoholic father feels that his father wouldn't drink if only he behaved himself; the boy whose mother gave up her career as a fashion model feels guilty because being pregnant with him ruined her figure; the girl whose mother is deaf feels unworthy because her mother can't hear her; the teenager in the ghetto feels like a burden because her father disappeared.
Self-Worth and Fear of Death
In some sense, feelings of unworthiness are tied to our very sense of survival. Psychologically, it works like this: If I'm a good and perfect child, my parents will love me. If they love me, they'll take care of me. If they take care of me, I'll survive and thrive and become all that I'm meant to be. On the other hand, if I'm not good enough, they won't love me, they won't take care of me, and I won't survive. I'll be so neglected, I'll die.
This is not an entirely irrational fear. When we're young, we are completely dependent on our adult caregivers for our very survival. Somewhere inside we know this. Quite naturally, we feel that we'd better measure up … or else.
In my case, for example, my infant fear was that because she was overwhelmed and overworked, my mother would forget to feed me, and I would starve to death. My friend Tom, the son of a raging alcoholic, was frequently beaten with any blunt object that was handy, and he legitimately felt that his life was in danger. And my friend Jane, who learned that her mother had tried to abort her, correctly sensed that at some point her mother had wished her dead.
Whether the danger is obvious, or merely implied, the bottom line of all this is that, psychologically, we believe we have to be lovable in order to survive. In this way, our sense of our own value is related to an unconscious fear of death. This is one of the reasons why, in adulthood, our own acts of not loving ourselves can feel so deeply violating. Each time we don't love ourselves, we are re-creating the unloved feeling we had as children. This make us feel once again as if our very lives are in danger. We're afraid we might treat ourselves so badly that we will die from the lack of our own self-love.
Your Life Theme
Everybody has a life theme, a significant psychological issue which they are working out in this life. Your life theme is created when a powerful emotional chord is struck in your childhood, and it is reinforced when similar events—events which carry the same emotional charge— reoccur
