Tainted Love: Using Shame and Unhappiness as a Motivator

In recent weeks, two different clients described hard situations to me in strikingly similar terms. It went something like this: "Well, I guess I just don't love myself enough to accomplish X, and so because of that I'm filled with self-loathing." 

Let that sink in for a moment. Essentially, what both of these people were saying was, “I don't LOVE myself enough, and so the penalty for that is to HATE myself.” 

In both cases, the X was a personal goal they had set for themselves, and their failure to achieve it triggered immense shame. Actually, let me rephrase that. It was not so much a goal they had set for themselves as a standard they were comparing themselves to. (As you may have guessed, in both cases, this was a body-image issue.)

And the pain they both felt at that lack of "love" was not just the absence of positive self-regard. It was out-and-out self-attack.

Talk about tainted love. What a vicious, insidious loop. It’s one of the by-products of using shame-based unhappiness as a motivator.

Mind you, neither of them had been inspired to make a valiant attempt. It’s not like they had waged a mighty campaign and just failed to take the hill. No, they were so overwhelmed by all the negative messaging that they were spewing at themselves, they were lucky even to be able to get out of bed, much less look in a mirror. Their initiative was sapped. They didn’t have the energy to do much of anything besides sit around hating themselves and assuming that everyone else was just as repulsed as they were. Their approach actually made them less likely to achieve their goal.

This super-conditional and high-stakes transaction doesn’t sound anything like love to me. It’s more like a trophy to be earned, in a bloody deathmatch against yourself. 

Imagine telling your child, “Sweetie, if you will achieve this goal, you will prove beyond doubt that you truly love me and I will be sooooo happy and sooooo proud of you. And if, for whatever reason, you fail, I WILL BE COMPLETELY DISGUSTED BY YOU.” 

Yet, it’s troubling how often a version of that very conversation happens between two people who supposedly share a bond of love, including parents and children. And while these clients threw the issue into stark relief for me, it's not at all an uncommon conversation for many of us to have with ourselves. (Yep, my hand's up, too.) Frequently, it's a pattern learned and repeated from generation to generation--one of those unquestioned assumptions about how stuff works: "This means that."

Be careful that what you’re calling love is not actually a wolf in a heap of loathing. 

Love is not a stick to beat yourself with. It’s the reason to do anything and everything, so let the loving precede the doing. Let it be the wind beneath your wings and not a sword dangling over your head.