{"id":4410,"date":"2013-05-15T16:59:32","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T21:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sarahoverthemoon\/?p=4410"},"modified":"2013-05-15T16:59:32","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T21:59:32","slug":"can-you-love-others-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sarahoverthemoon\/2013\/05\/can-you-love-others-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you love others if you can’t love yourself?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Trigger Warning for discussions of depression and suicide<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today on Twitter, someone that I follow tweeted a familiar phrase. You\u2019ve probably heard it before too.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can you love others if you can\u2019t love yourself?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Image by Allie Brosh (click for link)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/em>I hear this line frequently. Often it\u2019s from smart people, from people that I admire. From people who really, really think that they\u2019ve got a good idea going here. But here\u2019s the thing . . .<\/p>\n

It\u2019s bullshit.<\/p>\n

Not only is it bullshit, but it\u2019s harmful. I\u2019m guessing the people who say this line don\u2019t mean for it to be. Like I said, many of the people who I\u2019ve heard repeat this line are people I usually appreciate. I\u2019m guessing they have good intentions, but I\u2019m going to push back anyway.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

First of all, the idea that you cannot love others if you don\u2019t love yourself isn\u2019t true. I mean, sure, it can help, but I believe that love is often something we learn through community and through relationship. As we receive love, we learn that we are lovable. As we love others, we learn to love ourselves. This learning is happening from all sorts of angles and the idea that learning to love most always be a strict progression of self-love to love of others is just not the case.<\/p>\n

When I joined a feminist group, and began to love the women that I met in that group, I was able to face some of the misogyny that I\u2019d internalized throughout my life and love myself. When I dated an ex-boyfriend who had severe acne, and fell in love with him, I was able to look in the mirror at my own blotchy face in the mirror and embrace it with love.<\/p>\n

Sure, I can name many examples where loving myself helped me love others as well. But the idea that learning to love is something that can only happen in one direction?<\/p>\n

Yup, bullshit.<\/p>\n

When I think about the contexts in which I usually hear \u201cHow can you love others unless you love yourself,\u201d<\/em> what was once just bullshit actually becomes seriously harmful bullshit.<\/p>\n

I heard it when I was struggling with depression\u2013an illness that prevented me from being able to love myself. I already felt like a robot incapable of most human emotions, and here people were telling me that I could not even love. Hearing this phrase made me feel like a monster. It made me feel like my inability to love myself was born out of some strange form of selfishness. It made me feel like I didn\u2019t deserve the friends I had or the partner I was with. I remember feeling severe shame and guilt for even being involved in a romantic relationship when I wasn\u2019t \u201chealthy\u201d enough to be in one.<\/p>\n

This phrase told me that my illness made me an inherently unloving person.<\/p>\n

This idea that I was incapable of loving added to the thoughts that were already crushing me, telling me that my friends and family would be better off without me there. This idea that I was incapable of loving haunted me until I tried to rid the world of my horrible, unloving presence in a suicide attempt nearly two years ago.<\/p>\n

This \u201cHow can you love others if you can\u2019t love yourself?\u201d<\/em><\/em>\u00a0phrase was just one of many lies that led to my suicide attempt, but it was a pervasive one. It was a lie that told me even the few positive emotions and actions that I was able to scrounge up were illegitimate. It was a lie that warped my brain into thinking the only act of love I could ever hope to show the world would be the act of getting out of the way.<\/p>\n

It was a lie, though. I know that. I loved, and I learned to love better, and I continue to love and learn to love, even though I still struggle with (less severe) depression.<\/p>\n

Depression may sometimes make it difficult to love with all of the fullness and energy that a perfectly healthy person can spare. Some days I barely have the energy to shower, which makes it hard for me to show acts of love that require me to get out of bed. But I don\u2019t have to be healed from depression before I\u2019m allowed to love. I can love others even on days when I hate myself. Sometimes, that\u2019s what keeps me going.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no rule against loving. Let\u2019s put away these hurtful, pithy phrases that tell us otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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