Toxic Side of Postmodern Self Love
5 side-effects of today's self-love!
The self-love movement is raging on the internet. Most of our beloved social media influencers practice and promote it daily. They suggest us to practice positive affirmations every morning, to take care of oneself, to do things one wants to, and not the things that others want or expect from us.
On a surface level, self-love sounds like a gold-plated magic wand wrapped in diamonds—that can solve all your problems and make you happy forever.
I don’t know about you but I definitely felt something similar in my teenage. After reading ‘The Secret’ and ‘The Power of Subconscious Mind’ I felt like a superhuman. I used to sleep with the latter beside my pillow.
Mark Manson, author of ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’, about The Secret:
The Secret is full of misplaced clichés, silly quotes, and superstitious drivel. It’s a playbook for entitlement and self-absorption and I think that anybody who reads it and implements its advice in any serious way will likely make themselves worse off in the long run.
Self-love, in someway, tries to convey this idea that you are sufficient in yourself, tells you to put forth your desires and choices before others’ and asks you to love yourself as you are. It may sound perfect, but again, like anything else in this world, it has some limitations.
I don’t condemn the idea of self-love as a whole but I neither support it completely. Also, disregarding self-love doesn’t make me a promoter of self-hatred. If you disagree with anything that follows in this essay, let’s resolve it in the comment section and not in refute.
Let’s go. 5 side-effects of the modern-day self-love.
1. Prevents the Cultivation of Meaningful Relations
Modern-day self-love gives uneven importance to self, it’s all about you and your problems; your choices and happiness. It disregards the sentiment of the pleasure that one experiences during the act of giving. Sacrifices have no place in it.
What I have learned, from the limited experience I have in life, is that meaningful relations are built on the foundation of sacrifices and understanding. Both of these things (sacrifices and understanding) want you to put forth others’ feelings and emotions into consideration before yours.
I mean, come on! You cannot create a deep bond with someone while being a self-centered prick.
2. Limits your growth
Would you improve at something if you don’t even acknowledge the fact that there is a need for improvement? I bet you would not. Awareness is the first step to improve anything about yourself.
Real character growth happens when John is being miserable, chaotic, and nihilistic yet he still tries to realize his potential to set things straight instead of feeling good about it. It’s not about him being all positive and satisfied with his pitiful life, standing in front of the mirror every morning affirming things that he ain’t.
Self-criticism, in my opinion, is much more crucial for one’s growth than self-love. You cannot fix a broken pot by pretending it isn’t.
Read more about the benefits of Self-criticism, click here.
3. Makes You Entitled
“I deserve to be loved”— is one of the most favorite phrases of modern-day self-love practitioners.
This string of words is screaming how entitled it wants you to be. Trying to convince you that no matter how intolerable you are as a person, you still deserve to be loved.
No, you don’t deserve anything in your life, you earn it. Entitlement is just a mirage of expectations that we fabricate to prevent us from putting the real efforts to achieve something.
Here’s what Marcia Sirota, a self-love promoter and a famous blogger wrote in one of her article about self-love:
….Your relationships are better because you won't tolerate disrespect and because you feel entitled to being well-treated. At work, self-love makes you strive to do your best and makes you feel entitled to good pay and promotions.
4. Makes You Narcissistic
Self-love, in theory, is nowhere near to narcissism, but the extreme practitioners and believers of self-love are prone to display narcissistic behavioral traits.
Here’s what Kristy Lee Hochenberger of Psychology Today has to say about a narcissistic person:
A narcissist is an individual who has an inflated sense of self worth, extreme self-love and a constant need of recognition and admiration.
Narcissism is a major side-effect of self-love. The worse part is that people might easily confuse their narcissistic behavior with self-love— a mental disorder is mistaken as a positive feeling— even though it is harming them and the people around them.
5. Makes you Controlling
A very close cousin of self-love is self-esteem. The definition of self-love overlaps a lot with that of self-esteem, which is:
The termself-esteemis used to describe a person's overall sense of self-worth or personal value. In other words, how much you appreciate and like yourself.
There is a very famous misconception about bullying, which is, that bullies have very low self-esteem due to which they try to pull others down which in turn raises their self-esteem relatively. Unfortunately, it’s not true.
Dan Olweus is one of the most influential psychologists of this time. For approximately 40 years, Dan Olweus has been involved in research and intervention work in the area of bully/victim problems among school children and youth.
In his research, Dan concluded that, contrary to the popular belief, bullies have very high self-esteem.
Their mean behavior toward others keeps their self-esteem high because it takes their own and others' attention away from the parts of themselves about which they are ashamed.
Further Readings:
Read more about the negative side of positive affirmations. You will realize how Rhonda Bryne is making a fool of you.
Research conducted by the psychologists of New York University on how positive positive visualization translates into poor achievement. Read here.
Detailed criticism of The Secret by Mark Manson. The Staggering Bullshit of “The Secret”.
Jordan Peterson on Self Esteem.
A real-life experience about the toxicity of postmodern self-love.
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"“I deserve to be loved”— is one of the most favorite phrases of modern-day self-love practitioners.
This string of words is screaming how entitled it wants you to be. Trying to convince you that no matter how intolerable you are as a person, you still deserve to be loved.
No, you don’t deserve anything in your life, you earn it"
i disagree with this somewhat. i think the statement, "You deserve to be loved" is not incorrect, but the way in which it is implemented in Self Help culture leads to the the conclusion that "I deserve to be loved, therefore, i do not need to change" Everyone deserves to be loved, regardless of what kind of person they are, but that does not mean they are a good person. The phrase "You deserve to be loved" is fine and correct, you should not earn it, you deserve it. but that does not negate the fact that if you are an insufferable prick, you need to be a better person.