![]()
WHY YOU DISLIKE YOURSELF
YOUTH: So, after last time, I calmed myself down, focused, and thought things over. And yet, Iâve got to say, I still canât agree with your theories.
PHILOSOPHER: Oh? What do you find questionable about them?
YOUTH: Well, for instance, the other day I admitted that I dislike myself. No matter what I do, I canât find anything but shortcomings, and I can see no reason why Iâd start liking myself. But, of course, I still want to. You explain everything as having to do with goals, but what kind of goal could I have here? I mean, what kind of advantage could there be in my not liking myself? I canât imagine thereâd be a single thing to gain from it.
PHILOSOPHER: I see. You feel that you donât have any strong points; that youâve got nothing but shortcomings. Whatever the facts might be, thatâs how you feel. In other words, your self-esteem is extremely low. So, the questions here, then, are why do you feel so wretched? And, why do you view yourself with such low esteem?
YOUTH: Because thatâs a factâI really donât have any strong points.
PHILOSOPHER: Youâre wrong. You notice only your shortcomings because youâve resolved to not start liking yourself. In order to not like yourself, you donât see your strong points, and focus only on your shortcomings. First, understand this point.
YOUTH: I have resolved to not start liking myself?
PHILOSOPHER: Thatâs right. To you, not liking yourself is a virtue.
YOUTH: Why? What for?
PHILOSOPHER: Perhaps this is something you should think about yourself. What sort of shortcomings do you think you have?
YOUTH: Iâm sure you have already noticed. First of all, thereâs my personality. I donât have any self-confidence, and Iâm always pessimistic about everything. And I guess Iâm too self-conscious, because I worry about what other people see, and, then, I live with a constant distrust of other people. I can never act naturally; thereâs always something theatrical about what I say and do. And itâs not just my personalityâthereâs nothing to like about my face or my body, either.
PHILOSOPHER: When you go about listing your shortcomings like that, what kind of mood does it put you in?
YOUTH: Wow, thatâs nasty! An unpleasant mood, naturally. Iâm sure that no one would want to get involved with a guy as warped as me. If there were anyone this wretched and bothersome in my vicinity, Iâd keep my distance, too.
PHILOSOPHER: I see. Well, that settles it then.
YOUTH: What do you mean?
PHILOSOPHER: It might be hard to understand from your own example, so Iâll use another. I use this study for simple counselling sessions. It must have been quite a few years ago, but there was a female student who came by. She sat right where you are sitting now, in the same chair. Well, her concern was her fear of blushing. She told me that she was always turning red whenever she was out in public, and that she would do anything to rid herself of this. So I asked her, âWell, if you can cure it, what will you want to do then?â And she said that there was a man she wanted. She secretly had feelings for him but wasnât ready to divulge them. Once her fear of blushing was cured, sheâd confess her desire to be with him.
YOUTH: Huh! All right, it sounds like the typical thing a female student would seek counselling for. In order for her to confess her feelings for him, first she had to cure her blushing problem.
PHILOSOPHER: But is that really the whole case? I have a different opinion. Why did she get this fear of blushing? And why hadnât it gotten better? Because she needed that symptom of blushing.
YOUTH: What are you saying exactly? She was asking you to cure it, wasnât she?
PHILOSOPHER: What do you think was the scariest thing to her, the thing she wanted to avoid most of all? It was that the man would reject her, of course. The fact that her unrequited love would negate everything for her; the very existence and possibility of âIâ. This aspect is deeply present in adolescent unrequited love. But as long as she has a fear of blushing, she can go on thinking, I canât be with him because I have this fear of blushing. It could end without her ever working up the courage to confess her feelings to him, and she could convince herself that he would reject her anyway. And finally, she can live in the possibility that If only my fear of blushing had gotten better, I could have âŠ
YOUTH: Okay, so she fabricated that fear of blushing as an excuse for her own inability to confess her feelings. Or maybe as a kind of insurance for when he rejected her.
PHILOSOPHER: Yes, you could put it that way.
YOUTH: Okay, that is an interesting interpretation. But if that were really the case, wouldnât it be impossible to do anything to help her? Since she simultaneously needs that fear of blushing, and is suffering because of it, thereâd be no end to her troubles.
PHILOSOPHER: Well, this is what I told her: âFear of blushing is easy to cure.â She asked, âReally?â I went on: âBut I will not cure it.â She pressed me, âWhy?â I explained, âLook, itâs thanks to your fear of blushing that you can accept your dissatisfaction with yourself and the world around you, and with a life that isnât going well. Itâs thanks to your fear of blushing, and itâs caused by it.â She asked, âHow could it be ⊠?â I went on: âIf I did cure it, and nothing in your situation changed at all, what would you do? Youâd probably come here again and say, âGive me back my fear of blushing.â And that would be beyond my abilities.â
YOUTH: Hmm.
PHILOSOPHER: Her story certainly isnât unusual. Students preparing for their exams think, If I pass, life will be rosy. Company workers think, If I get transferred, everything will go well. But even when those wishes are fulfilled, in many cases nothing about their situations changes at all.
YOUTH: Indeed.
PHILOSOPHER: When a client shows up requesting a cure from fear of blushing, the counsellor must not cure the symptoms. If they do, recovery is likely to be even more difficult. That is the Adlerian psychology way of thinking about this kind of thing.
YOUTH: So, what specifically do you do, then? Do you ask what theyâre worried about and then just leave it be?
PHILOSOPHER: She didnât have confidence in herself. She was very afraid that things being what they were, heâd reject her even if she did confess to him. And, if that happened, sheâd lose even more confidence and get hurt. Thatâs why she created the symptom of the fear of blushing. What I can do is to get the person first to accept âmyself nowâ, and then regardless of the outcome, have the courage to step forward. In Adlerian psychology, this kind of approach is called âencouragementâ.
YOUTH: Encouragement?
PHILOSOPHER: Yes. Iâll explain systematically what it consists of once our discussion has progressed a little farther. Weâre not at that stage yet.
YOUTH: That works for me. In the meantime, Iâll keep the word âencouragementâ in mind. So, whatever happened to her?
PHILOSOPHER: Apparently, she had the chance to join a group of friends and spend time with the man, and in the end it was he who confessed his desire to be with her. Of course, she never dropped by this study again after that. I donât know what became of her fear of blushing. But she probably didnât need it any longer.
YOUTH: Yes, she clearly didnât have any use for it anymore.
PHILOSOPHER: Thatâs right. Now, keeping this studentâs story in mind, letâs think about your problems. You say that, at present, you notice only your shortcomings, and itâs unlikely that youâll ever come to like yourself. And then, you said, âIâm sure that no one would want to get involved with a guy as warped as me,â didnât you? Iâm sure you understand this already. Why do you dislike yourself? Why do you focus only on your shortcomings, and why have you decided to not start liking yourself? Itâs because you are overly afraid of being disliked by other people and getting hurt in your interpersonal relationships.
YOUTH: What do you mean by that?
PHILOSOPHER: Just like the young woman with the fear of blushing, who was afraid of being rejected by the man, you are afraid of being negated by other people. Youâre afraid of being treated disparagingly; being refused, and sustaining deep mental wounds. You think that instead of getting entangled in such situations, it would be better if you just didnât have relations with anyone in the first place. In other words, your goal is to not get hurt in your relationships with other people.
YOUTH: Huh âŠ
PHILOSOPHER: Now, how can that goal be realised? The answer is easy. Just find your shortcomings, start disliking yourself, and become someone who doesnât enter into interpersonal relationships. That way, if you can shut yourself into your own shell, you wonât have to interact with anyone, and youâll even have a justification ready whenever other people snub you. That itâs because of your shortcomings that you get snubbed, and if things werenât this way, you too could be loved.
YOUTH: Ha-ha! Well, youâve really put me in my place now.
PHILOSOPHER: Donât be evasive. Being âthe way I amâ with all these shortcomings is, for you, a precious virtue. In other words, something thatâs to your benefit.
YOUTH: Ouch, that hurts. What a sadist; youâre diabolical! Okay, yes, itâs true: I am afraid. I donât want to get hurt in interpersonal relationships. Iâm terrified of being snubbed for who I am. Itâs hard to admit it, but you are right.
PHILOSOPHER: Admitting is a good attitude. But donât forget, itâs basically impossible to not get hurt in your relations with other people. When you enter into interpersonal relationships, it is inevitable that to a greater or lesser extent you will get hurt, and you will hurt someone, too. Adler says, âTo get rid of oneâs problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone.â But one canât do such a thing.
ALL PROBLEMS ARE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS
YOUTH: Wait a minute! Iâm supposed to just let that one slip by? âTo get rid of oneâs problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone?â What do you mean by that? If you lived all alone, wouldnât you be horribly lonely?
PHILOSOPHER: Oh, but being alone isnât what makes you feel lonely. Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people. That is to say, it is only in social contexts that a person becomes an âindividualâ.
YOUTH: If you were really alone, that is, if you existed completely alone in the universe, you wouldnât be an individual and you wouldnât feel lonely, either?
PHILOSOPHER: I suppose the very concept of loneliness wouldnât even come up. You wouldnât need language, and thereâd be no use for logic or commonsense, either. But such a thing is impossible. Even if you lived on an uninhabited island, you would think about someone far across the ocean. Even if you spend your nights alone, you strain your ears to hear the sound of someoneâs breath. As long as there is someone out there somewhere, you will be haunted by loneliness.
YOUTH: But then, you could just rephrase that as âif one could live in the universe all alone, oneâs problems would go awayâ, couldnât you?
PHILOSOPHER: In theory, yes. As Adler goes so far as to assert, âAll problems are interpersonal relationship problems.â
YOUTH: Can you say that again?
PHILOSOPHER: We can repeat it as many times as you like: all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. This is a concept that runs to the very root of Adlerian psychology. If all interpersonal relationships were gone from this world, which is to say if one were alone in the universe and all other people were gone, all manner of problems would disappear.
YOUTH: Thatâs a lie! Itâs nothing more than academic sophistry.
PHILOSOPHER: Of course, we cannot do without interpersonal relationships. A human beingâs existence, in its very essence, assumes the existence of other human...