Is Your Self-Love Conditional?
Treat yourself as well as a dog.
This instrumental is called “Conditional.” I made most of it back in March with some adjustments this weekend.
Unconditional love is easy to feel.
If you have a child or a pet, you almost certainly love them unconditionally.
Of course you do. They are innocent and in your care. They showed up in your life with no warning and became a part of your heart.
You may not appreciate everything they do, but no matter what happens, you will keep loving them and trying to keep them safe.
That kind of love is powerful and beautiful.
Do you feel it for yourself?
Love with limits.
I don’t think most of us are taught to love ourselves unconditionally.
This is usually not because the authority figures of our childhood are cruel or don’t want us to love ourselves.
It’s because the process of socialization tends to focus on constraining our child’s wonder and lack of focus.
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy
As we are taught that our childish perceptions of wonder and unconstrained reality are basically wrong, we also learn to distrust feelings of pure love for ourselves.
After all, if the essence of who we are as children – pure consciousness encountering everything anew and reacting to it without bias – is wrong and needs correcting, then surely the impulse to simply love whatever we see in ourselves is wrong as well.
This lesson follows us throughout our lives.
Whereas we may love some beings and people unconditionally, we treat ourselves very differently.
Conditional love in action.
What does it mean when you love yourself conditionally?
It means you must meet certain criteria to be worthy of love.
If you have done a good job fulfilling your responsibilities, you may love yourself a bit.
If the people you live and work with seem happy with you, then maybe you’ll allow yourself a little self-love.
Sometimes, perhaps, when it feels like no one is watching or expecting anything of you, there could be a silent burst of self-love.
When those conditions aren’t met, though, you can’t possibly love yourself.
It would be irresponsible.
Telling yourself that you deserve love even when people are unhappy with you or you haven’t lived up to expectations would only encourage laziness and bad habits.
So you withhold love from yourself, in an attempt to reaffirm what your socialization process taught you: be good, or else.
Treating yourself worse than a dog.
To understand how weird this is, it can be helpful to imagine your inner self as if it was a puppy.
If you had just taken possession of an adorable and slightly wild little dog, would you love it only when it was rolling around on the carpet whimpering in a cute manner?
Would you stop loving it when it peed on the same rug?
And then maybe start again a few hours later, when the memory of cleaning up the dirty spot was past and it was looking up at you again with its huge, shining puppy eyes?
The answer (unless you’re a psychopath) is no.
You will love the puppy when it does things you like.
You will love it when it does things that make a mess and drive you a little crazy.
You will understand that it is an innocent creature, acting out its nature, and that it has no way of controlling that nature or being “perfect” at all times.
This may be easier to see when the creature in question is a puppy, but it’s equally true of you, even if you haven’t been puppy aged in decades.
Unconditional love isn’t a free pass.
Some people think loving a human being who is not your child unconditionally – whether yourself or another adult – might be dangerous.
What if the person takes your unconditional love as an excuse to do horrible things?
“I just killed a man for no reason.”
“You shouldn’t have done that. But it’s okay, because I love you unconditionally.”
This is not what unconditional love means, for a child or an adult, or a puppy for that matter.
If you truly love someone, you will continue to love them even if they do something bad. But you won’t condone or encourage the bad behaviour.
By definition, you can’t, because you love them.
That means you want them to be safe, and cared for, and happy. Committing terrible acts makes them none of those things, and so you need to help them understand why they can’t behave that way.
If you love them unconditionally, you will keep right on loving them while disciplining them, explaining why their behaviour is unacceptable, or, in extreme circumstances, calling the authorities.
Gravitating toward the conditional.
If you learned early on that love is something given in exchange for “good” behaviour, and taken away when you are “bad,” you will likely treat yourself this way your whole life.
You will also find yourself drawn to people who treat you the same way.
It may not feel nice, but it does feel normal and like a precondition for “real” love.
After all, if someone loves you even when you mess up, it’s very confusing.
Do they just not care enough to withdraw affection and love from you to remind you that you screwed up?
Or are they just crazy? Why else would they keep loving you when you’re not worthy of it? Your childhood authority figures certainly didn’t.
You are worthy of love, no matter what.
And that’s the false story so many of us carry with us: that love is something you earn, or fail to earn.
It can be very hard for me to believe it, even as I write this, but we are all worthy of love, all the time.
You deserve to love yourself.
When you’re doing “well” and other people are impressed with you.
When you’re doing “badly” and you’ve made mistakes.
The soft, defenceless being at the heart of you is always worthy of love, not because of what it does or says or doesn’t do or doesn’t say, but simply because it exists.
Where you came from and where you are.
I said at the beginning of this piece that loving a child or a pet unconditionally is easy because they are innocent creatures that showed up in your life without warning and became a part of your heart.
You are the same thing.
You were born into the world and slowly became aware of your own existence.
Like any child, you arrived without an instruction manual or a singular purpose. You’re just here, now, in this body, with this heart and mind.
If you’ve lived as long as I have, you may look back over your life and see some moments of beauty and transcendence, and many more that make you shudder with embarrassment or shame.
But the reality is, you are still, at heart, a child, just like any child. You are an innocent creature, like a beloved pet.
You deserve love in all those moments of transcendence. You deserve love equally, and completely, in all those moments or failure and shame.
I will not suggest it’s easy to break the habits and beliefs of a lifetime and start loving yourself unconditionally. I’m struggling mightily.
But try to remember that there is a child in your heart who is hurting and scared. That child needs protection and care, whether (s)he is behaving or panicking or uncertain or confident.
That child is you. Can you love it without conditions?