Let’s Stop Saying Self-Love and Love Yourself

In television and popular culture, I have been noticing the term “self-love” or the call to “love yourself” has been growing in popularity. With the rise in mental health challenges (For US click here, for Canada click here), this is good! We need more language to aid us all in the path of flourishing. However, I want to suggest we try to stop saying “self-love.”

All Forms of Love Are Not Equal

We are relational beings. Creatures made for love.

We can love our parents, partners, children, friends, nieces, nephews, animals, and our food. We may love all these different things, but certainly, the types of love are different, no?

In Ancient Greek, there was no such word as just “love.” It was at least 4 words. One meant the unconditional love of a parent. Another meant the love for a friend, and another the love for a romantic partner.

So when we tell ourselves or others to love ourselves, as whom, and to whom, is this love being done? In other words, in what context, in what relationship is this love?

Are we saying to love ourselves as a parent loves their child or as a romantic partner loves their romantic partner? Or as an owner loves their pet?

If there is one thing that I have gleaned over the many conversations I have had with parents and people who have been married, it is this: love is hard. Of course, when I say love, I mean the people to people love.

“Love,” at its best and when it is most challenging, is patient, sacrificial, self-giving, humble. But it is also strong, courageous, persistent, and stubborn.

Love is not a feeling but an action and a choice. An often, if not always, a difficult and hard one. And I think the more we say “self-love” the more we are telling ourselves that love is easy. And if we keep thinking that love should be easy, are we not setting ourselves up for failure when it counts? When we need to know love is hard?

The Enneagram and Love

One of the things you’ll hear me repeat on and on again about why I love the Enneagram is that it provides a visual map of the biases and blind spots that we have as individuals, organizations, and cultures.

Every child, community, and country has a personality— a way of seeing, understanding, and interpreting life and the world. A way of thinking, feeling, and acting.

And if there are different views on life and the world, different ways people think, feel, and act, wouldn’t it be reasonable then to say that there are different “loves?” Different ways to love people, and thus, love ourselves?

Let’s Stop saying “Self-Love”

Call me a vocab fascist, but let’s stop saying “self-love.”

Whenever we use a word too often or in the wrong context, we soften and weaken the word’s true meaning. When we say we love pizza or love traveling, we unintentionally make the love between two people slightly less. We degrade, diminish, and downgrade love itself.

When we say “self-love” or tell someone to love themselves, usually what we are saying is that people should have self-compassion for or give compassion to themselves. To not be so hard on themselves, to care for themselves, and or to get some rest and relaxation.

The problem, however, with this (again, call me a vocab fascist) is that we make “love” synonymous with “compassion.” Although we ought not to put our children to an impossible standard and give them an impossible burden to carry, we should also not do the opposite.

In other words, we shouldn’t all raise children as if we were 9’s, afraid of the conflict that may arise from putting expectations on them. Sometimes children need rules and to learn the consequences of their (wrong) actions!

Unconditional compassion is not the solution to an impossible standard.

No matter how ineffective and harmful one extreme is, another extreme is not the answer.

Accuracy is the Answer

With the Enneagram, we can first be aware of our biases and blind spots regarding our understanding of love. For example, the perfectionistic One’s “you are better than this” will learn that true love will incorporate a “Four love,” that will say “just be you.” And the high-achieving Three’s “you can do anything you set your mind to, so set your mind on great things” will learn to say as a Nine that “it is what it is.”

Words have power.  And when we dilute or narrowly define one of the most important words in our vocabulary, I think we do ourselves and others a disfavor.

When you see the Enneagram 9 you care about swimming in self-loathing and sloth; you don’t tell them to love themselves or practice self-love. You tell them (kindly and compassionately) to give off their butt, help them set some SMART goals, and tell them they can and have to do it. You tell them to love themselves in the way you know they need to be loved and not the way they want to or fall prey to.

The next time you are having a conversation with yourself or someone else, and you are about to offer love, ask yourself, “Is there another word I can use? How can I be more specific? What exactly would “love” look like in this situation?”

If it’s compassion, then call it compassion. But if it’s motivation, a higher set of standards, courage, reason, wisdom, or simply a strong and kind kick in the pants, then just call it that.

So let’s stop saying “self-love” and use a better, more accurate word.