How to Love Yourself When Your Brain Is a Jerk
We’re approaching Valentine’s Day, so of course, it’s time to talk about love. And I need to talk about self-love, but not the NSFW kind (BBMD is not that kind of thing), the kind that can quite easily skew cheesy and elicit eye-rolls (which, admittedly, BBMD can be that kind of thing). How to do it without getting cheesy? Starting with self-deprication, of course.
I’ve not been feeling very loving towards myself lately. What follows is not a humble brag, I swear; it’s an example of just how weird my headspace has gotten. I was in business class flying to Rome. The setting was as delightful as international travel can be. I had my lay-flat seat. The meal service was lovely. I had a book I was very excited to read. I was heading to a humanities-based conference that I had to apply to get into, and they really wanted me there. I can nerd out on science when I need to, but people in the humanities are my people. Ethics. Art. Literature. Philosophy. Feelings! Oh, so many feelings! I should have been feeling like I was living my best life.
But what was my brain doing? Picking me apart, pointing out my inadequacies in excruciating detail.
“Ugh, you’re not going to be able to keep up with these people,” it warned, “your non-clinical philosophy is super rusty.”
“You’re an uncultured American, a country mouse in the big city of all that is beautiful and consequential.”
“Your skin, weight, and sense of ‘style’ are not going to cut it with these Europeans.” But even my brain can’t be an asshole all the time, so it threw me a bone. “Your hair’s okay, they might let that pass. But it won’t save the entire package.” (Okay, it turns out that my brain can be an asshole 100% of the time.)
Self-love felt a really long way away on that flight. Even self-neutrality would have been preferable. So, I tried Trick #1: When My Brain is Being Awful to Me: I questioned my thoughts.
“Does it matter that my non-clinical philosophy is rusty? Because the conference is about death and dying through the lens of the liberal arts. Something tells me the finer points of Iamblichus won’t come up.”
“Yeah, maybe being an American will put you at a disadvantage. But they accepted your application pretty darn quickly, so the Powers That Be must see you have something to contribute.”
“Maybe your skin, weight, and clothes don’t matter. And even if they do, you’re kind. Being kind matters more.” (Trick #2 When My Brain is Being Awful to Me: When in doubt, channel Mr. Rodgers.)
Why do our brains try to take us down a notch (or twelve) when things are going objectively well? The “science” answer is evolution. Our brains are designed to constantly scan for threats to keep us alive. So if I’m feeling safe, secure, and (the horror!) happy, my brain’s designed to kick in with “Not so fast, Ms. Big For Her Britches, there’s a hippopotamus somewhere that’s going to stop you to death, and you better see him before he sees you.” For a “humanities” answer, let’s go to Buddhism (because there are a lot of “humanities” answers, so I’m just going to pick my current favorite). Buddhists teach that suffering is a fundamental part of being human. If you’ve ever heard some version of “Life is pain,” that’s a pithy way to explain the First Noble Truth of Buddhism: that to live is to experience pain. Even the best of human experience is unstable, and we suffer because we cling to what is good. Getting comfy in my business class seat comes with the thought that it’d be very, very sad if the plane crashed. Patting myself on the back for being good enough to be invited to this conference comes with a vision of international colleagues sniggering about me in languages I can’t understand. And their comments (that I can’t understand) are very clever and cutting, because the smartest people can be completely wicked in their take-downs. Some part of my mind clings to how amazing it feels to be me right now, but a bigger, louder part of my mind knows that it could all be gone in an instant and there’s not a thing I could do about it.
Which brings me to Trick #3: When My Brainis Being Awful to Me: Acknowledge that self-love is simply treating myself like someone I’m responsible for caring for. It’s not self-indulgence, self-esteem, or constant self-admiration.
Self-love is:
speaking to yourself with respect
protecting your time and energy
stopping the habit of earning your worth
making choices that reduce suffering instead of reinforcing it
holding yourself accountable without cruelty
Self-love is believing you are worthy of kindness even when you are not performing well. Or even more bluntly: self-love is refusing to abandon yourself.
That means refusing to abandon myself when (not “if,” certainly “when”) I make a misstep at the conference. That means doing my best to leverage what makes me unique among those I’m with. But it also means staying with myself when things are going well. “Yes, the plane might crash. But at this very moment, it isn’t.”
So, in this season of love, where can you show yourself the love that you show others, the people in your life you’re responsible for caring for? Is it in how you speak to yourself? Is it in how you give your time? Is it in acknowledging, “Yeah, maybe that could’ve gone better, but I know you’re a great person, and I love you no matter what?”
Now, I’m off to change into (what I think) is my most European outfit. (Black. It’s all black. È molto chic, no?)