It’s often been said that the most important relationship in life is the one with yourself. If this is true — and let’s assume it is for a moment, even though, as we’ll see, it’s not really — I’m the first to acknowledge that, across many stretches of my life, I’ve suffered from a toxic relationship with myself.
When I listen to my mind, it sometimes feels like there’s a maniac living inside my head who can’t shut up. He’s the most insulting, oppressive, clingy, clumsy (not in a cute way), overwhelming person I’ve ever met. If I were to see this guy on the street, I’d think something traumatic has happened to him, and I’d immediately turn the other way. I’d do anything to avoid crossing paths with him. The trouble is, he follows me around, everywhere I go. Day in, day out. He is my mental roommate, and he refuses to leave.
So, what the hell should I do with this maniac? Should I be extra nice to him, should I try to fix him, should I bend the knee to him? To phrase the problem differently: How can I have a healthy relationship with myself when there’s no model relationship?
I don’t know about you, but I’m living with myself for the first time.
The best way to approach this riddle, I suppose, is to begin by asking what a healthy relationship with myself does notlook like. For one thing, I can easily rule out traits like self-hatred and self-criticism. This should go without saying, but as I’ve sketched out above, this is difficult enough as is. For another, and more counterintuitively, I also want to rule out the other extreme: self-love. I’ve explained why elsewhere, but essentially, the problem with self-love is that the concept is too vague (there’s no clear definition), too self-focused (it flirts with narcissism), and too demanding (it’s complicated and frustrating to love yourself, thus catalyzing more self-criticism).
So, if there is such a thing as building a healthy relationship with myself, it should aim at being neither too kind nor too harsh with myself. What I’m looking for, then, is to scrape off the indulgence and narcissism of self-love, while renouncing the negativity and slave-like productivity of self-hatred.
Aristotle once argued that true virtue must aim at the mean between two extremes. So, for instance, when cultivating the virtue of courage, the proper dosage lies between the deficiency of courage (cowardice) and its excess (recklessness). What people often leave out when citing this idea is that the mean between virtues is not arithmetic. If cowardice scores 0/10 courage points and recklessness 10/10, then the ideal amount of courage isn’t always 5/10. Instead, it’s context-sensitive. When you finally want to overcome your skin-crawling fear of spiders, you might need an 8/10. However, when you have the impulse to rescue someone out of a blazing house, a 2/10 might be more appropriate.
The point is to avoid extremes, because those are most definitely vices. Anything in between is fair game, depending on the situation you find yourself in.
The same should apply when developing a virtuous self-esteem. It seems to me that self-criticism is a 0/10, whereas self-love is a 10/10. Neither of the two extremes is desirable, but in between deficiency and excess — that’s where the answer lies.
However, this brings me back to square one: How do I know if what I need right now is to move more toward self-criticism or self-love? Should I force myself to go to the gym or take the day off and rest? Should I attend that birthday party, even though I feel anxious, or stay home? Should I stick with the job I hate or push through and hope it gets better?
Again, how could I possibly answer these questions when there’s no future self who traveled (or will travel?) back in time to advise me what to do and what to avoid?
In his book Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World, the philosopher Iddo Landau proposes an idea that cuts through the Gordian knot: simply treat yourself as you would treat others. He calls it the “reversed golden rule” because it’s the inversion of the traditional golden rule: “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” The reversed golden rule could also be expressed as: “Do not treat yourself as you would not allow others to treat you.”
I love this idea because it explains why it’s so challenging to have a healthy relationship with oneself. It’s challenging because we often falsely assume that our relationship with ourselves is special in some regard and fundamentally differs from our relationships with others. And yes, we do have unique access to our own thoughts and feelings. But that doesn’t mean we should treat ourselves radically better or worse than others. And yet, the default mode for most people remains self-criticism — which, according to Landau, is a moral double standard. “If it is wrong to discriminate against people,” Landau says, “it is also wrong to discriminate against ourselves, even if we are doing it. We too are people. If we believe that there is significant worth in others, it is odd that we should not consider the same to be true of ourselves.”
Applying the reversed golden rule shows why neither self-discrimination nor self-love is fruitful. I’d never criticize a friend or even a stranger for making a mistake in the way I tell myself that I’m not good enough, that everything is my fault, that I’m a failure. It wouldn’t even occur to me.
In the same way, though, I’d never tell a friend every single day that I love them, that I trust their decisions, that they’re strong and brave, and so on. If I behaved like this toward a friend, they’d probably think that something’s wrong with me. And I doubt they’d want to remain friends. As the ancient philosopher Plutarch once said: “I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.”
With this in mind, it’s becoming increasingly clear what a healthy dose of self-esteem might look like. Neither self-criticism nor self-love, but a stance we could call self-friendliness. The benefit of this wording is that I intuitively know what a healthy friendship looks like. I can also recall what goes through my mind when a friend struggles. When a friend experiences rejection or failure, I can see that this has nothing to do with their worth as a person. They’re good enough as they are, and nothing is ever going to change that. This goes without saying.
Even so, when a friend wants to improve a particular area of their life, I try to support them however I can — not because I want to fix them but because I want to help them flourish. And when their efforts seem over-compensatory, I might gently ask why they want to excel or improve in that area to begin with.
If all people applied self-friendliness strategies, many therapists, psychiatrists, and life coaches would be out of a job within a month. It’s almost too simple. When I’m in doubt whether I need to be more strict or more forgiving with myself, I just need to ask myself what I’d advise a good friend if we were to swap places.
As the philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris puts it: “If your best friend were to ask you how he or she could live a better life, you would probably find many useful things to say. And yet you might not live this way yourself. On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than the ability to follow one’s own advice.”
The idea of self-friendliness also strikes me as fitting because friendships often define themselves by allowing a lot of latitude. The other day, I randomly met a friend on the street who I hadn’t seen in months. I’d been wanting to meet them, but they hadn’t replied to my texts. And yet, my initial reaction upon seeing them was goodwill. When they explained why they hadn’t responded to my messages, I said that, yes, I did feel annoyed and wouldn’t want to be treated like this in the future. But then, almost immediately, I was able to forgive them and move on.
This encounter stuck with me because it encapsulated the type of friendliness I want to extend to myself. This mix of honesty, compassion, flexibility, and firmness.
The most important relationship in life, then, is not the one with yourself. Rather, it’s the one with the circle of your closest friends and confidants. They will show you what a good enough relationship looks like, so you can extend the favor onto yourself.
I, for one, won’t respond to the babbling maniac inside my head by exuberantly telling him how much I love him, nor will I duct-tape his mouth or whip him like a workhorse. The first step might actually be to forgive him for what he has done to me. I know he’ll leash out again in the future. And I’ll have to forgive him again. But ultimately, that’s the only reasonable move here: treating this guy like a true friend, again and again, until I’ve befriended him.
After all, I only need to live with myself for the rest of my life.