If you think that you need to deserve love, and you take someone`s criticism or inattention to heart, you will find that it difficult to succeed. Heavy experiences undermine self-confidence. Psychologist Aaron Carmine tells how to overcome these doubts.
If we do not love ourselves, it may seem that we need to "prove" our superiority to others in order to alleviate the internal pain. This is called hypercompensation. The problem is that it does not work.
It seems to us that we must always prove something to others until they understand that we are "good enough". The mistake in this case is that we take the accusations and criticism too seriously. Thus, as if we are trying to defend ourselves in an imaginary court, proving our innocence in an attempt to escape punishment.
For example, someone says to you: "You never listen to me" or "You always blame me for everything!". These "never" and "always" often do not correspond to our real experience. Often we begin to defend ourselves against these false accusations. In our defense, we present various proofs: "What does it mean - I never listen to you? You asked me to call the plumber, and I called. You can look in the bill for the phone. "
It is rarely, when such justifications are able to change the point of view of our interlocuttor, they usually do not influence anything. As a result, we feel that we lost our "case" in the "court", and we feel even worse than before.
In retaliation, we begin to blame others too. In fact, we are "good enough". Just not perfect. But to be perfect is not required, although no one directly tells us this. How can we judge which of people are "better" and which are "worse"? By what standards and criteria? Where do we take the "average person" as a reference for comparison?
Each of us from birth is valuable and worthy of love
Money and high status can make our life easier, but they do not make us "better" than other people. In fact, how (hard or easy) a person lives, does not say anything about his superiority or inferiority in comparison with others. The ability not to retreat in the face of difficulties and to go forward is and is courage and success, regardless of the final result.
You can not consider Bill Gates "better" than other people because of his wealth, just as you can not consider a person who lost his job and is sitting on the allowance, "worse" than others. Our value does not come down to how much we are loved and supported, and it does not depend on our talents and achievements. Each of us is valuable and worthy of love from birth. We will never become more or less valuable. We will never be better or worse than others.
It does not matter what status we achieve, how much money and power we receive, we will never become "better." Similarly, no matter how little we are valued and respected, we will never become "worse." Our successes and achievements do not make us more worthy of love, just as our defeats, losses and failures do not make us less worthy of it.
All of us are imperfect and make mistakes
We have always been, are and will be "good enough". If we accept our unconditional value and recognize that we are always worthy of love, we will not have to rely on the approval of others. Perfect people do not exist. To be human means to be imperfect, which in turn means that we make mistakes, which we regret later.