Is Encouraging Self-Love Toxic?
The line between self-love and narcissism in our relationships.
I am a big fan of love. I love to see love, love to watch love, and I love how much more common it is for people to feel empowered online to love themselves. One of my favorite benefits of the mass array of information online is that it does help dispel ignorance. We have an entire generation of people getting more up-to-date information on self-care, childhood development, and the importance of self-love. We are becoming more emotionally intelligent.
So I was surprised when I saw this post online about the new wave of “insta-therapy.” This is referring to the numerous posts on social media about self-love and self-care that might actually be a detriment to the mental health community.
Here is it below:
What the post is getting at is that social media’s “insta-therapy” teaches people to focus so much on self-love to the detriment of thinking about others. This self-focus is then called healing and by making ourselves the number one priority of our life, we are encouraged to focus on our needs and not think about others.
This was shocking to me. Can encouraging self-love really be detrimental? And if so, how can this be avoided?
Can encouraging self-love de detrimental?
At face value, self-love is empowering us to love ourselves and who we are. Given you spend the most amount of time with yourself, self-love is incredible. You get to love the person you are always with! That’s amazing! Self-love allows you to unapologetically be considerate and caring to yourself. You listen to your needs and want the best for yourself.
This is healthy to me, especially since many people focus on people-pleasing and ignoring their own identity. Self-love reminds you of your worth, which boosts self-confidence and promotes well-being.
On the other hand, there can be self-love that makes you so focused on yourself and have a heightened sense of self-importance and grandiosity. This mirrors narcissism, which is an “excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance.”
Now what’s great about encouraging self-love online is:
- we encourage those with low self-esteem and low levels of self-love to now prioritize and take care of themselves,
- we encourage them to get off the autopilot of beating themselves up, and
- we have people wake up and realize they are worthy of love!
But I do agree that it can be detrimental to encourage those with low self-love to have SO much love for themselves and also have ZERO regard for other people.
In that particular case, what we are encouraging is for people to fall into narcissistic behaviors. Little care for others, and lots of care for yourself.
However, I also believe like most things, narcissism is a spectrum, and everyone falls along the spectrum somewhere.
Narcissism is the human experience of feeling important, needing admiration and attention, and wanting success and love. It’s normal and can even be a healthy personality trait, if it’s mild and occasional. It’s perfectly possible to feel or act a little narcissistic, even unpleasantly so, without having a disorder.
— From SANE, NPD Factsheets & Guides
When is self-love healthy?
A self-love healthy mentality is one where you love and consider yourself in balance with how much you love and consider others.
This theory is exemplified in the book, The Human Magnet Syndrome: Why We Love People Who Hurt Us. In this book, the author discusses how everyone falls somewhere on the scale between co-dependents and narcissists.
To understand more about the difference between the two, you can see the infographic below.
Codependent people overly give and narcissistic people overly take in relationships. Now in this book (which I enjoyed and recommend), the author explains how the ideal and healthiest point for someone to be is at point zero, where there is a balance of giving and taking in relationships.
Social media posts about self-love are great when it reaches codependent people who are used to people-pleasing and have minimal self-love and self-respect.
What is not great is when social media encourages codependent people to basically travel far along on the other side of the continuum over to the narcissism side of the scale. It is detrimental to encourage people to focus on their own needs and completely ignore others. We want to encourage people to have healthy self-love, in balance with their ability to love and care about others as well.
So is self-love itself dangerous? No. Because self-love and loving others are not mutually exclusive.
How can we balance self-love?
We can avoid unhealthy self-love by reminding people of the importance of empathy in addition to self-love. Encourage people to focus on having a balance of love for themselves and others. Healthy relationships have more balanced homeostasis in the energy we give and receive from others.
Example:
Let’s say your partner really wants to go on a date to a restaurant and they booked reservations, but you feel low on energy and feel too tired to leave the house (maybe you had a really long, stressful work day).
Three different types of answers could occur:
A: “Hey honey, I really would love to connect with you and thank you for booking the restaurant, but I am feeling tired tonight. Could we order in and watch a movie together? And then we could try to go out to eat there another day when we’re both in the mood. I can even book the restaurant for their next available spot!”
B: “I don’t feel like going to the restaurant because I’m tired and had a long day. So I’m going to stay in.”
C: “Okay, sure, yes we can go. No problem, let me get ready.”
C seems like an answer for someone who loves and considers others more than themselves, B seems like an answer for someone who considers themselves more than others, and A seems like a balanced answer that represents valuing your needs and desires and valuing your partner's needs and desires.
It can be difficult to have a complete balance of self and others’ orientation. But self-love can be positive when we also encourage people to balance self-love with having consideration for others and their needs.
The act of self-love is not selfish, but the act of consistently ignoring others’ needs at the expense of your own, is. Those two things are not the same. We can love ourselves and also love others. The balance of doing both is key.
So! What do you think about this scale? Let me know in the comments below! And share with any friends to start a dialogue about self-love!
❤,
N
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