Do you have to love yourself?
There has been a recent global awareness of sorts that’s been giving me quite a bit to think about and is something I would love to write a little in-depth on: the concept of self-neutrality as opposed to overwhelming positivity.
You may have seen a few reels or TikToks of a trend that’s been gaining a lot of traction halfway through the year of users stating in the first half that they’re being negative towards themselves, followed by a screenshot of them as a child, stating that at that moment they are in fact talking to that version of themselves too.
After a talk I had with a friend, I realized I wasn’t the only one taken aback the first time I saw one of these videos — especially having been so desensitized to the insurmountable speed with which trends rise and fall, it’s easy to grow apathetic to them all. It’s a touching trend, to say the least. Something along the lines of “we’ve lost touch with who we used to be”, “would they be happy with who I am now?” and even, “was I really that bad?”
Often we mark these as fleeting pseudo-existentialist thoughts that pass through your mind before being overtaken by another thought of what to cook later tonight. But what if we indulge in that thought for a while? In this article, we’re going to look at the move from self-positivity to the more radical self-neutrality through the lens of the inner child, and how it may be used as a tool.
What is Self-Neutrality?
Self-positivity is simply the act of combatting negative self-talk and habits by approaching situations with a more optimistic and productive approach. Self-talk refers to the endless stream of thoughts that breeze through your mind every second. No matter whose voice you hear — could be your own, a close family member, or even a fictional character — we all have it in one way or another, for some people they materialize more like projections of images, like a cinema of ideas and ruminations. Whether these thoughts are positive, negative, or neutral is completely subjective to the individual. One thought that incites utter panic and anxiety in one person can fill someone else with excitement. Another person’s thoughts may be bred from constant overthinking due to lack of information while the other just takes things as they come. No two people think the same, therefore there cannot be any objective one-size-fits-all good or bad thought.
The formula is simple. If you have more thoughts that are good and productive for you as a person, you will be a more optimistic and happier person. If you allow the bad thoughts to take free reign, you're setting yourself up for a more pessimistic lifestyle.
But it’s really not that simple.
Self-positivity as a concept is brilliant and ultimately the ideal destination — how amazing it would be to actually remember and remind yourself of everything you’ve achieved, when you finally land that job, every compliment you’ve gotten, every time people laughed at your jokes — rather than that nagging voice that keeps you up at night remembering every small critique, or every time you felt abandoned or ignored. How often have you read articles or infographics that just tell you to think more positively, and eventually you’ll get so used to it that it’ll come naturally?
And again, how often have you felt so disappointed in yourself for still having that negative voice in your head that self-positivity actually becomes counter-productive to its intended purpose. We’ve all heard about toxic positivity when it comes to the workplace and how easily it can turn into emotional burnout — the same goes for self-positivity.
Thoughts that help you relate rather than isolate, create rather than mindlessly consume, and love yourself is the ideal end goal and self-positivity has been touted as the only avenue to that. Until recently, you couldn’t convince me otherwise either. When someone would come to me with an issue or a certain thought they’d rather not be having, after listening, my advice would always conclude with something along the lines of, “replace that thought with something positive until you believe it.” And I'd practice what I’d preached too, but lo-and-behold the thoughts keep coming.
Instead of the negative thoughts being replaced with more positive ones over time, I found myself in states of disassociation where the bad thoughts are having a war with the “good” thoughts I'm trying to brute-force into my skull.
All in all, the more popularized approach to self-positivity just doesn’t work for everyone — it’s not as easy as throwing glitter on the bad thoughts without expecting them to resurface again, probably angrier they were ignored the last time. Most times these thoughts need to be heard, observed, and acknowledged, and only then can you decide whether they should be ignored or acted upon. This state of mediation needs to take place, not in a positive head-space, but first in a neutral one. This is where self-neutrality fits.
For most of us, we’ve experienced beating ourselves up for as long as we can remember — first it was the fragmented low-buzzing hums of childhood then boom, suddenly you were never good enough. While doing some research on this topic, I realized some writers including myself had actually extrapolated this concept from the body-positivity community — one I wasn’t actively part of as something never really sat right with me about certain body parts having to be “beautiful” or “perfect” to be accepted. In this way, body-positivity and self-positivity can become toxic for individuals who can’t immediately make the jump to loving themselves, it becomes just another way to criticize themselves for not being able to meet that goal through force.
However, an offshoot of the movement caught my attention that was labeled as body-neutrality, a response to the layer of shame members of BoPo felt not being able to completely love their bodies. The very same society that covertly tells you to hate your body is the same one now telling you to love it? That’s a little too much all at once (this is where some even turn to destructive acts in an attempt to shut both parties up altogether.)
The same goes not just for your physical body, but how you perceive all of you. Radical body-neutrality states that you don’t have a disgusting body or a perfect one, you simply have a human body and self-neutrality simply extends that idealogy to the self.
IN THE SAME WAY THAT LOATHING YOUR BODY ISN’T LIKELY TO GET YOU CLOSER TO LOOKING THE WAY YOU WANT TO LOOK, BEING SELF-CRITICAL OF OTHER ASPECTS OF YOURSELF (YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS AND YOUR PERSONALITY) IS NOT LIKELY TO MOTIVATE YOU TO CHANGE INTO THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE.
— Melissa Weinberg, Open Lines Counseling
True to its nature, self-neutrality shouldn’t be seen as a cure-all for negative thoughts, self-talk, and anxiety — quite the opposite. It presents an opportunity to show gratitude towards your supercomputer of a brain, no matter what feelings the thoughts provoke. As a rudimentary comparison:
Toxic self-positivity: Wait, that thought is bad and I shouldn’t let it happen again. Everything is actually great in my life and that was just a moment of weakness. Yes, I’m human and I slip up sometimes but I can’t ever think like that again or I’m going to be miserable forever.
Self-neutrality: Crazy that my brain was able to process so much information to get to that thought. Though it doesn’t particularly make me happy, I can see how it got to that conclusion. I’m glad it’s the same brain that‘s allowed me to overcome all the situations I’ve had in the past, though. I’m gonna sit with it for a while until I realize there’s either a solution or if I’m merely overthinking.
Self-neutrality puts you in a place to treat your brain as something neither to fight against nor intrude, but as a human brain that has its wants, fears, and everything in-between — something that deserves impartial communication with no judgment and then choosing to act in the vein of self-love and respect.
The Inner Child
In brevity, inner child healing is one of the safest tools used by therapists and individuals alike to trigger overarching inner awakening. Inner awakening is just another way of learning to look at life with a more aware and mindful approach. My take on the inner child isn’t the picture of an entity trapped within us, helpless and hurting. I don’t picture the inner child as a younger version of myself stuck and static with the same ideas and development as if she were stuck at age 6–12.
My take on the inner child is largely influenced by time theory — in the Block Universe, the past, present, and future exist at the same time. Einstein spearheaded the block theory through the theory of relativity, and Dr. Bradford Skow fleshed out the block theory vector through which both believed that if one were to “look down” at the universe as if it were a piece of paper, you would see all points in time, as well as space, spread out across the universe.
Dr. Skow fully supports the theory. Rather than time passing through us and vanishing, never to be seen again, we should instead imagine ourselves as time travelers, traveling through infinite time and events. Us passing through those events doesn’t stop them from still existing. The past still exists and is existing simultaneously in different parts of space-time. The soon-to-be-past present will still exist, and so will the soon-to-be-present future. They exist now and will exist long after we leave them. Unless time travel finally becomes a reality, we just can’t access them anymore after they’ve left our “block” of the present time.
Time theory rambling aside, all this to say our inner child isn’t something that is a static ball of how we think we used to be, they still exist. Somewhere in time-space, that child still exists. Likewise, that means they never left us now. By that logic, to access the inner child all we need to do is be our natural selves. After all, that child only traveled through time to become who you are right now in this very moment.
The above explanation provides a possible alternate perspective to which you can begin to attempt tapping into the inner child: by realizing they’re here with you right now, has always been, and will always be.
Without creating a metaphorical split between you and the child, taking care of you now is taking care of every iteration of you there will ever be.
Self-Neutrality Through The Lens of the Child
As we have established, the ultimate goal of practicing self-neutrality is to begin to act in self-love more naturally as you ease yourself into viewing your thoughts as neither inherently evil nor good. Just neurons firing back and forth through your brain that can turn into actions just as easily as they could result in absolutely nothing.
When you immediately label most of them as inherently bad,
Sometimes the best thing for you to do is act on them in an attempt to solve, create, and soothe in the way that is healthiest for the child within.
Sometimes the best thing is to do absolutely nothing with those thoughts.
Observe them, and let them pass until you time-travel to a block of time where you can look back and say, “I’m glad I did absolutely nothing.”
