"Love yourself"

[WorthlessTrash]

I am curious on people's views regarding this trope.

What does it mean to love yourself? What are the reasons to love yourself? Is it because you believe you're physically attractive? A nice person? Talented? Are there other reasons to love oneself? Conversely, despite being on SASU, do you love or dislike yourself? Is your dislike for yourself a reason you are here?

Sub topic: Do you believe in the trope "people cannot love you if you do not love yourself"? Why/why not?

 

[Angst Filled Fuck Up]

People bond and find "love" over all kinds of things, even commonly when there's a good deal of mutual dysfunction, so it's certainly possible to find companionship irrespective of how you view yourself.

However if you want something resembling a healthy relationship, there probably is something to the trope. I always think being with someone is a bit like drinking alcohol - if you start in a good place deep down, you'll probably have a fun time, but if you're not at peace, things will invariably get ugly.

I quite like who I am in terms of my nature/personality, but my illness makes me loathe myself and my limitations at the same time. It's kind of an odd duality I suppose.

 

[Oblivion Access]

Loving yourself is advantageous to you and the people around you (as long as you don't cross over into narcissistic self-obsession territory... Though grandiosity is often correlated with success given the way society is structured. Hope you rolled the dice for grandiose and not vulnerable narcissism, teehee ;) ). But people throw out the "love yourself" platitude without realising how much goes into having positive self-esteem, let alone what goes into recovering from a long held, deeply rooted self-loathing. There's usually all kinds of fucked up developmental trauma that goes into self-loathing, often shit the person themselves has no way of remembering. Throwing out "haha just love yourself bro" or "nobody can love you if you don't love yourself" at people is a joke.

 

[Marine]

I am curious on people's views regarding this trope.

What does it mean to love yourself? What are the reasons to love yourself? Is it because you believe you're physically attractive? A nice person? Talented? Are there other reasons to love oneself? Conversely, despite being on SASU, do you love or dislike yourself? Is your dislike for yourself a reason you are here?

Sub topic: Do you believe in the trope "people cannot love you if you do not love yourself"? Why/why not?

That trope = most toxic and criminal BS in existence. Doesn't make sense, renders all life impossible, especially for unfortunate people. Must be destroyed.

My take on it is that loving yourself is being authentic, being your best self and at peace both physically and psychologically, owning your insecurities and complexes and accepting all parts of yourself, caring for yourself, but it's never fully possible without belonging somewhere, aka being loved and accepted by other people at some point in your life. No real self love can stem from a void, or a violence born crater.

 

[Sakura94]

I actually think it means accepting your body.
It's cope, sort of.

 

[symphony]

To me, loving yourself means just recognizing that as a human being you have inherent value, greeting yourself with empathy and compassion. For me as an SS member, I see suicide as potentially a self-loving action. I do not deserve to suffer in life. No one does. Conversely, I actively deserve not to suffer. Suicide is a recognition of that and a refusal to tolerate it any longer.

But the whole "people can't love you until you love yourself first" thing is hot bullshit and at best a gross oversimplification of how humans work.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

Hate this boring cliche sentiment. Whether or not it's true, the phrase just gets used to dismiss all of peoples' problems when it's clear they have nothing else useful to offer in terms of being able to help someone. I have seen so many examples of people who found love from other humans without loving themselves because the sad reality is plenty of people don't truly love themselves but are still exceedingly good at pretending they do.

Maybe the real cliche should be to advise people to git gud at pretending to love themselves but for those of us who suck at lying and don't love ourselves we're shit outta luck unless we have external causes that would make people love us such as looks, money, talents, etc. Sure some of those can be fixed or controlled but not by everyone. People telling me this don't actually want to help, they just want to make the whining stop.

 

[Niko66]

The phrase is worthless the way it's used 99% of the time, to preserve the notion that the world is fair, that people who are well off earned it through their own goodness and to easily shift to blame to the victims cuz the thing is what the people throwing that around miss is that you need to receive love, to feel accepted and belonging to love yourself in the first place and likewise self hatred is born from shitty circumstances and from the rejection and devaluing from society and other people to yourself.

And as for why I love myself? I don't, I have hated myself for plenty of years now but I try to be kind to myself when my mental state allows me to as at the end of the day just because I am stuck in my body I try to minimize my suffering and that is not achieved through negativity but self compassion, understanding and actions that allign with those things.

And I was only able to find some of that so called self love when I understood that the reason I am suck a fuck up is largely due to the abuse, terrible parents, isolation from my neurodivergence, society's values to which I did not measure up to and other such circumstances I had growing up.

For instance, and sorry if this is uncalled for, but I can relate a bit to you which incites me to chime in and I read you saying elsewhere that you see no point in doing anything about your health or body, however I'd think that by mere fact that you are a decent person and have feelings nor did you ask to be born, you deserve better than the suffering you go through and hence it makes sense to seek ways to ease your suffering as long as you remain in this world which a better health might help with, but I know how empty it feels to hear any of this from anyone else so I don't presume to push you to do anything.

Lastly for how I believe self love relates to relationships with others I can confidently say you don't need to love yourself for others to love you, this can be seen all the time with people who are all kinds of fucked yet loved all the same, but self love is certainly good to have to build healthy relationships. Not that I have any of those lol! But I have ruined some relationships with people due to my insecurity and other such related issues so I can at least say what does not help.

 

[PreussenBlueJay]

Maybe eating something that looks tasty counts as self-love. Other than that I feel like I'm just here living and emotions don't much factor in. Dying sure would be easier if people couldn't love you without you loving you. You wouldn't need to worry about anyone missing you.

 

[onlyanimalsaregood]

I agree with everything that has been said. I don't think it's quite true that we've to love ourselves in order to be loved because if that were the case various relationships wouldn't exist.

The same goes for when they say "right person but wrong time". That's not how life works. But of course it's good to have self-love and it's easier from there to build healthy relationships.

Unfortunately for me it's quite complicated to have self-love and to maintain that self-love because I was abused in childhood and I think that self-love is fostered from there and by our parents. I think it will be one of those things that I'll always struggle with and will always have to deal with throughout my life, just like loneliness.

 

[empty sighs]

I am curious on people's views regarding this trope.

What does it mean to love yourself? What are the reasons to love yourself? Is it because you believe you're physically attractive? A nice person? Talented? Are there other reasons to love oneself? Conversely, despite being on SASU, do you love or dislike yourself? Is your dislike for yourself a reason you are here?

Sub topic: Do you believe in the trope "people cannot love you if you do not love yourself"? Why/why not?

I am not against the idea of self love, but I am embittered by it. I have a general self hatred and being told I need to love myself more feels like judgement I suppose. I don't believe other people can't love you if you hate yourself; but it makes it hard to love others if you don't love yourself; you'll eventually loose all your relationships if you truly hate yourself, because it is my belief you could never believe anyone would love you because you don't deserve it, deserve to be loved I mean.

 

[death137]

For me the statement "people cannot love you if you do not love yourself" is ridiculous.

Here is a good video regarding self love

 

[itsallgoodman]

I am curious on people's views regarding this trope.

What does it mean to love yourself? What are the reasons to love yourself? Is it because you believe you're physically attractive? A nice person? Talented? Are there other reasons to love oneself? Conversely, despite being on SASU, do you love or dislike yourself? Is your dislike for yourself a reason you are here?

Sub topic: Do you believe in the trope "people cannot love you if you do not love yourself"? Why/why not?

I believe it means that one should treat themselves as they would another person they love, not completely different simply because it's against themselves. Like a reverse golden rule, "Do unto yourself as you would unto others". This thinking reflects a lack of self love in myself because I would definitely not say what I've said to myself to anyone else in my situation, nor would I condemn them to death even though I have done so to myself.
As for the reasons to love yourself, all I can really say is that you'll be with yourself to the end; almost like a marriage with yourself that you can't divorce, and as such loving yourself will make life just a little bit less difficult than it needs be for the duration of it.
As for how one may go about loving oneself, to those who desire such, I think it comes down to simply accepting that which is, not exaggerating your flaws or strengths, and remembering to mindful of when you're not treating yourself the way you desire to.(unless you desire to not love yourself, in which case don't accept yourself for anything, constantly label yourself as worthless and terrible for every flaw, as invaluable and amazing for every strength, always be beating yourself up and nitpicking every minor flaw you can find, and most importantly, have no self respect for yourself and let yourself do things you know aren't helping you and you would hate to see one you love do so to themself.)
When it comes to needing to love yourself to be loved, I both disagree and agree with the idea. On one hand, I think most people who love themselves learned to simply by example of those in their environment showing them how to. Or, they have no need to love themselves as those people can provide love with consistency and stability. On the other hand, it can be very difficult to allow another to love you if you don't think they should love you and you may take actions to push away those who do. Almost like you may not love yourself if someone else doesn't prove to you that you're loveable, but you'll never allow another to show you love because of the idea that you're unloveable.

 

[Hirokami]

Well, I interpret self love as being kind to one's self regardless of one's traits. And, of course, being kind to one's self is subjective. Ctb could be considered "kind" in a sense where one feels like they don't deserve to suffer anymore.

Of course, I'm not really a fan of the term itself as it seems misleading. "Self care" and "self respect" seem more on brand.

As for the trope, I think that's crock. I have family and friends who say they love me, even though I don't feel the same away about myself. People can love anyone, regardless of how the other person might feel about themselves. If the question is, "should people love those who don't love themselves?" then that's more complicated to answer. In general, it depends on how that self-hate manifests.

I also find the inverse to be just as poor: not being able to love anyone until you love yourself. Both tropes seem to imply that people who struggle with self esteem are not deserving of love.

 

[Arrow]

What does it mean to love yourself? What are the reasons to love yourself? Is it because you believe you're physically attractive? A nice person? Talented? Are there other reasons to love oneself? Conversely, despite being on SASU, do you love or dislike yourself? Is your dislike for yourself a reason you are here?

i think generally it means you are satisfied with who you are, want what's best for yourself, have a respectful view of yourself, etc.

generally, i don't believe you "need a reason" to love yourself. you being who you are is pretty much the only reason you'd need because it is in your interest to love yourself, no justification beyond that is required.

i don't dislike myself at all, really. i just don't see myself as compatible in the world such that i will be able to lead a life i actually want to live.

Do you believe in the trope "people cannot love you if you do not love yourself"? Why/why not?

no because there isn't really any way to know who does and doesn't love themselves and people love each other all the time. this trope seems rather random/nonsensical.

 

[Al Cappella]

Personally, I can't stand the term. New age bullshit, imo. Of course I'm biased—most days I can barely stand myself.

 

[stupidrat]

To me, loving myself would be going beyond accepting who I am and genuinely appreciating the positive aspects of my personality and my physical appearance. Definitely not at that point yet and maybe I never will be but I'm working on it. I think loving oneself doesn't necessarily have to be about loving a certain thing like physical appearance or specific personality traits, I think it's an all-encapsulating thing that has no criteria.

 

[Feeding Pigeons]

What does it mean to love yourself? What are the reasons to love yourself? Is it because you believe you're physically attractive? A nice person? Talented?

Wrong, all of those are incorrect. Those are not the reasons I love my friends and family, I love them because besides their flaws and mistakes, I appreciate who they are, the things they say, the experiences I have with them.

Here's the catch: every moment of my life where I shared a laugh? Two people were involved, one of them being myself. Every time I did something good or bad to someone else, two people were involved, one of them being myself.

Just like divorced parents should not bad mouth one another because their child is half of each of them? You should not hate or bad mouth, even internally, yourself because you are at least one half of any good moment you helped create. No matter how small or insignificant it may seem.

Its hard to love yourself, very hard. Therefore, you should at least try your best to be fair to yourself, if nothing else.