16 Things People Don’t Realize You’re Doing Because You Haven’t Mastered Loving Yourself Quite Yet

1. Loving yourself based on a set of conditions you have to meet

You set conditional requirements for yourself and only feel like you love yourself when you meet those standards. Most of the time, you don’t deem yourself as acceptable or worthy of being loved if you haven’t proven it to yourself yet.

2. Thinking that rejection means you’re inherently unworthy and never deserving of anything better

You associate rejection with your inherent unworthiness to attain certain things that seem to come so easily to others. You view yourself as inferior and blame yourself for any end result you haven’t attained yet.

3. Mentally preparing yourself for things that could go wrong because you believe you’re a bad luck magnet

You believe that more bad things happen to you when you make decisions because you still haven’t forgiven yourself for past failures. You think that your tendency to make a wrong decision will repeat itself in the future, so you anticipate failure just to “prepare” yourself for it, even when it’s not actually helping you prepare at all.

4. Assigning a greater value to other people’s opinions of you than your own view of yourself

You feel like everything people think of you is worth more than what you see yourself as because you believe that if you ever think anything positively about yourself, you’re narcissistic and vain (which isn’t true).

5. Suppressing feelings of jealousy

While you do genuinely feel happy whenever people achieve their goals, you also have to suppress feelings of jealousy because you haven’t quite mastered the art of staying in your own lane and being happy with where you are going, since you feel ashamed that you haven’t reached where they’re at.

6. Having a stiff and utterly boring persona that you show to people because you’re afraid that the real you won’t be accepted

You’re still not interacting with people authentically, and you force yourself to maintain a very stiff public face because you fear that if you show your true self, people will think you’re unprofessional and immature. You say what you think people want to hear, nod politely, and don’t speak of anything you’re passionate about.

7. Feeling guilty whenever you decide to spend money on something nonessential for yourself

You believe that spending money on yourself makes you selfish and materialistic, so you go through prolonged periods of self-deprivation, and you constantly deny that it’s driving you insane.

8. Not opening up even to your closest friends and family members

You don’t open up to people who are closest to you or share your most suppressed thoughts and feelings because you feel like you’re being a burden if you can’t resolve those issues yourself first.

9. Irrationally worrying about how you’re perceived and all the hypothetical ways you could be judged

Other people’s thoughts of how you’re not good enough are always in your head, so much that you actually believe you have to earn their love in order to be worthy of loving yourself.

10. Having a burning desire to escape from yourself

You’ve become a master of maladaptive daydreaming, and you’re spending more time in a fantasy world you’ve created than in the real world. Also, whenever you’re faced with a problem, especially one that involves confrontation with others, you do all you can to avoid it, which makes you notorious for running away from difficulties and conflicts.

11. Generally feeling disengaged from your own life

You find it difficult to be engaged with the present moment, since you feel like your life is not worth being excited about. When you don’t love yourself enough, it’s a struggle for you to be fully immersed in your own life because you feel like you can’t appreciate what you have if others have more.

12. Always feeling intense anxiety and dread for the future

Even when you love planning the future and know where you eventually want to go, you still doubt your ability to handle anything that’s unknown and unpredictable.

13. Holding yourself back from going after what you know is best for you

There’s always something within that says you can’t do anything you want to do because you’re unqualified for it and have no chances of success, even when you know you’re capable of more. You listen to this voice of fear and allow it to make decisions for you, which is why you don’t fully love who you are because you associate your inner self with fear, doubt, and ruthless criticism.

14. Saying “I don’t know” a lot, even when you do know

You subconsciously believe that blurting out, “I don’t know” will shield you from consequences of saying something wrong, but instead, it just undermines your credibility, and reinforcing your inadequacy this way only makes you dislike yourself even more.

15. Not allowing yourself to enjoy what you really enjoy because you associate effortlessly doing things with being lazy, immature, and spoiled

You force yourself to do what you don’t want to do to prove that you can be disciplined and self-sacrificing enough. You’re afraid to embrace your true self when it comes to activities you enjoy because you worry that you’ll be seen as self-indulgent and unwilling to do grueling work.

16. Seeing obstacles as physical manifestations of your own insecurities, character deficiencies, innate worthlessness, and lack of willpower

You blame yourself for any obstacles you face, even when it’s not your fault. You believe that somehow these obstacles are here to teach you harsh lessons because you haven’t measured up to some universal standards. You ascribe your recurring life problems to your own inner deficiencies, which makes you think you can’t ever love yourself enough unless you resolve to turn those deficiencies into strengths.