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great Carolyn Hax moments

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lighter:
Hops:

The truth is....I'm concerned about how much "tradition" I'll find obviously wrong and unworthy in my life once I get more proficient with my spotlight.

It feels like so many things will fall away.  I'm afraid I'll feel regret and relief in equal measure when it happens.

Lighter

Hopalong:
A commenter in response to Hax's advice to someone who can't love herself, which advice was based on doing good for others as a way to boost self-love....I really like the commenter's T's idea and the commenter's wisdom more than Hax's this time.

LW, I don't know your story, but I was unloved as a child and blamed myself, deeply internalized that I was unloved because I was unloveable.  My therapist had me retrieve a photo of myself as a small child, 2 or 3, and put it as the primary screen on my phone.  Every time I took out my phone and saw that little girl I would think: she deserves happiness, she deserves love, she deserves protection.  Because she did deserve all those things.  Then I would remind myself that the little girl was me, that I still deserve those things.  It really helped to go through that ritual many times a day for months and months to internalize that I am no different from any other person, I deserve love and respect, that the fault was not mine but my parents.

Hope this helps.  Doing good deeds, as Hax suggests, is all well and good, but it reinforces that idea that you are not worthy unless you make yourself so.  We are all worthy of love, we don't have to earn that through good deeds.

Hopalong:
And more (commenters, same column--which really hit a lot of people):

LW, here's something that may help you. Hope so!

In an article I read, a beautiful, intelligent, kind celebrity said she had been brought up to think badly of herself, but is slowly turning that around into healthy self-esteem. To do so, every day she looks at herself in the mirror, right into her eyes, and says, "I love you and I approve of you." When she first started, the words felt false to her. But slowly, she has come to believe them.

I decided to try this myself. When I got to "I approve of you," I thought, no I don't. This startled me, because I've worked hard and relatively successfully to get my act together and I'm a pretty nice person: logically, I thought, I should approve of myself. But apparently I didn't. I grew up being criticized constantly. Apparently I still thought, no matter what I do, I don't deserve approval.

I repeated this experiment every day, saying the whole phrase a few times as I looked into my own eyes. In just a few days, I started to believe the words. Now, I'm convinced. I'm not talking about saying "I'm fantastic," or "I'm gorgeous." I haven't tried that, but based on the other comments here, that doesn't work. This is about an appropriate level of basic human self-esteem. I suppose if you're is really being a jerk and know it, this might not work, but if you're trying as best you can to be a good person, despite the occasional slipup, you deserve to love and approve of yourself, whether or not people in your past taught you that.

Give it a try every day for a few minutes. Good luck!
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I agree with this.  I am a fan of doing shadow work to find acceptance and love for the darker parts of ourselves that we reject.
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I have found a small trick that I got from tattooing. There have been pieces where it felt like the artist was just going over and over and over the exact same spot... but when I looked, I could see that she was really inking all over the place, and that what I was feeling was not the same as what was happening. So I use that to remind myself that my perceptions are not necessarily accurate. That way, I can practice distinguishing "IT SURE FEELS... " from "BUT I KNOW... "
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Hopalong:
Love this formula (have seen it before) from a commenter:

Happiness = Reality - Expectations

[True, if one has enough money not to worry. That's a big exception but all in all, even in economical stress, the formula still can help, kwim?]

Hopalong:
OMG...the clarity, the clarity! (Fan-girling away....)
And speaking of assertiveness....!

Dear Carolyn: I haven’t been handling the big reopening well at all so far. My in-laws planned no fewer than five gatherings in a week’s time as soon as everyone was vaccinated, and even pre-pandemic I found them to be overbearing and limited my time with them. I managed only two out of those five gatherings, politely declined the rest, and was met with a guilt-trippy, “What a shame, we haven’t seen you in over a year.”

My husband supports my need to pass, but I still feel bad. How do we set good boundaries these days when people are trying to make up for lost time?

— Still Isolating From In-Laws

Still Isolating From In-Laws: HAX: You mean, how do you do exactly what you already did?

You set the boundary. You held the boundary.

What you didn't do, or haven't learned to do yet, is feel utterly entitled to set and hold the boundary: to feel so certain that it's your place to decide how to allot your time — not [...] anyone else's — that you're impervious to guilt.

Guilt is a transaction. People can schedule all the guilt trips for you they please, but you're the one who chooses whether to go on them. You can also choose not to, always — not to feel guilt, not to agree you have anything to feel guilty about, not to change your approach under anyone else's pressure.

If you believe joining two gatherings of five is appropriate, then the only thing you need to do now is stand up for your own beliefs — against the pressure you’re putting on yourself.

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