Why it’s so hard to be nice to yourself

If you’re on a healing journey, you’ve probably heard the importance of being nice to yourself. But there’s a voice in your head that won’t let you give yourself the care and compassion you need to thrive.

When experts tell us to practice self-kindness, they often misunderstand how difficult that is. If you’ve grown up with unmet needs, how to be nice to yourself can feel elusive.

Telling yourself you’re worthy when you don’t believe it will not have the desired impact. Studies have proven that positive mantras only help those who already hold themselves in high regard.

So, self-kindness becomes something you have to do in spite of how you feel. You give yourself the care and attention you need even when you sense you don’t deserve it.

Why it’s hard to be nice to yourself

You don’t know how.

If self-kindness was never modeled to you, you will have no idea what it looks like. If you were only praised for your service or achievement, you will feel useless or guilty when applying self-care.

I’ve had clients who grew up in homes where they weren’t allowed to sit and read a book without being called lazy. So, you may apply that label to yourself when you’re not constantly doing.

Do you ever wonder why you fear laziness so much? Because it’s not the feeling you fear but the judgment that goes along with it.

Lazy to you means worthless because you experienced rejection and abandonment when you stopped producing. So, you attach meaning to the word that separates you from the world and evokes disproportionate guilt.

You fear it will hold you back.

Being nice to yourself feels like letting yourself off the hook. You fear if you relent on the constant internal attacks, you will become less effective at work and life.

But if that were true, why aren’t you where you want to be? If being mean to yourself helped you achieve your goals, you should have everything you want by now.

It’s a myth that self-flagellation motivates you to do better. Dr. Kristin Neff has proven through her research on self-compassion that being nice to yourself is more effective in moving you toward your goals.

The role of childhood trauma

You’ve internalized shame.

In childhood, you may have rarely received praise or encouragement. Instead of positive attention, you got negative noticing (contemptuous looks from caregivers).

This lack of love from those closest to you creates a sense of shame around who you are. You try to assuage that shame by achieving or doing for others rather than for yourself.

You feel unworthy of self-compassion and as a result being nice to yourself does not feel good. It feels uncomfortable and even scary because it goes against a lifetime of programming that said you had to prove your value.

Shame creates an external compass which makes you judge yourself according to what others think. You assume they will not accept you as you are because no one did when you were young.

As a child you learned that love was something you had to work to earn, yet no matter how hard you tried you never received it. But, your inner child protects you by holding out hope that if you keep trying you might win love from others.

You need to heal your inner child.

When we are raised without the care and attention we need, the inner child takes over and the adult does not get a chance to develop.

So even when you’re grown, you have an emotionally immature child at the wheel. This child never learned how to regulate emotions, deal with challenges, or navigate conflict effectively.

The child believes it keeps you safe by overgiving, people pleasing, trying to be perfect, and hiding your true gifts. That’s how it kept you safe in your family and it extrapolates that experience to the world at large.

The child needs to know that it is safe to allow you to run things before it will let go of control. This feels like life or death to them because in childhood you depended on your parents to provide for you.

So, being nice to yourself can feel like putting your life at risk. And, that’s why you avoid it and continue pushing yourself instead.

self-kindness feels bad

Being nice to yourself makes you feel guilty.

Most of the self-care literature fails to recognize just how bad being nice to yourself can feel. The guilt that accompanies self-care efforts kill the motivation to care for yourself this way.

Much like setting boundaries, acts of self-kindness will create discomfort at first. But, you can’t wait until you feel worthy to start being nice to yourself because that day may never come.

Instead, accept the guilt as part of the process and do it anyway. These acts of self-kindness will indicate to your subconscious mind that you have value and that’s how it becomes more comfortable.

You might have to start with something small like sitting with yourself for five minutes and doing nothing. This will feel excruciating because the traumatized brain makes you feel as though you don’t exist when your mind is unoccupied.

That’s why you interrupt peaceful moments with chaos or thoughts of worry or dread. Your mind needs to put you in a traumatized state in order to feel alive and present.

You can re-train your mind through meditation and constant acts of self-kindness no matter how uncomfortable they feel. Over time, you will experience peace instead of fretfulness from a quiet mind.

How to be nice to yourself

Use your senses to guide you. Make a list of things that bring you pleasure whether it’s a cozy fabric or a certain scent and incorporate those into your life.

Resist the urge to think it doesn’t matter. Small acts of self-care will help build your self-worth muscle. Do your best not to minimize them and take time every day to complete them.

Tune into yourself when you’re with others instead of self-abandoning. Due to your upbringing it’s natural to focus on what others want instead of yourself.

Pay attention to your breathing and slow it down. Give yourself a loving touch like a hand on your heart or stomach to signal you are there for yourself.

Instead of pushing away uncomfortable emotions or judging them, acknowledge them. You can say to yourself, “anxiety is here” or “I see you, anxiety” and that will help you accept the parts of yourself that are trying to protect you.

Thank your inner child for taking care of you but let her/him know s/he’s no longer in charge. You can prove this with evidence that you can care for yourself because you have a job and a place to live, etc.

The fear of rejection the inner child feared as life or death no longer poses the same threat. Even so, it’s possible you will experience these same fears when you start attending to your own needs.

But as an adult with access to resources, you will survive and even benefit from any abandonment. If someone leaves or refuses to accept you when you are being nice to yourself, you are better off without them.