Why You Don’t Feel Like You Deserve Compliments
By: Zulie Rane
Tags: Relationships, Lifestyle, Mental Health, Self, Psychology

I have a real issue. When people say nice things about me, I don’t believe them.

Whether it’s how I look, an accomplishment I’ve recently achieved, an idea I had, or even just on cookies I baked, when people compliment me, I think they’re lying or trying to manipulate me somehow, or that they mean well but don’t recognize that what I’ve done is actually not that good. Like when your partner tells you you’re beautiful — they’re kind of obligated, so the meaning’s gone for you.

So when someone says to me, “Wow, your dress looks amazing today!” I deflect. I’ll say, “Oh thanks — I don’t know, I guess I like it. I can ride my bike in it, which is the important thing!”

Cue the classic: “Thanks, it has pockets!”

Often, if someone compliments me, I’ll immediately flash back to the one time someone said something negative about me instead. This might sound familiar to some of you — the ability to overlook fifty positive comments in favor of the one negative one that someone said to you, once, ten years ago.

It’s so easy to believe, dwell on, eternally reflect on the negative even when it’s overwhelmingly outweighed by the positive. Why does that happen? Why do we struggle to believe good things?

Science tells us it’s a loop.

There are three factors happening here, feeding into one another endlessly to make it hard to accept compliments: low self-esteem, cognitive dissonance, and high expectations.

It goes like this: you don’t think much of yourself, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s imposter syndrome, maybe you’ve only been valued for one aspect for most of your life, so it’s impossible to see your worth in others. Maybe you’re continually comparing yourself to others and coming up short in your own estimation.

Either way, you have low self-esteem. So when someone compliments you, this jars with the truth you hold about yourself. It’s uncomfortable for your mind, because you’re faced with two prospects: one, you’re wrong about yourself, or two, they’re lying. You can’t simultaneously believe you suck and believe someone else when they say that you don’t.

So while your brain is working furiously to justify the two things concurrently, your mouth will pop open and start to justify things to the other person.

“Oh, I just got lucky.” “I guess the stars aligned.” “Good thing they asked the right question that I knew the answer to.”

Just like that, the pressure’s off. This plays into the last factor: high expectations. Because you have low self-esteem, because you struggle to believe other people when they’re kind to you, you want to shirk any expectations as soon as possible. So you respond to the situation in a way that lets you off the hook if you don’t succeed next time.

This relieves a bit of the pressure and anxiety you feel when someone compliments you. You’ve successfully shucked off their expectation that you’re gonna do well.

But it’s unpleasant to constantly be second-guessing every nice thing people say. Sometimes, people are just nice.

It’s good for our brains to be told we’re good.

We’ve established why this thing happens — because we don’t believe in ourselves, and it’s more comfortable for our brains when nobody else believes in us, either.

But it’s healthy when, instead of forever dwelling on negative feedback, we linger on the positive.

Being able to experience happiness when other people notice you can be an important source of fulfillment. — Dr Whitbourne, Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

It turns out that when you push those positive memories away, you’re actually losing the ability to experience happiness over positive remarks. You can tell they’re positive, but there’s no warm glow of pride accompanying them. Research showed that people who routinely dismissed positive comments actually had a harder time remembering the level of positivity of the feedback, more so than people who accepted them to begin with.

Accepting compliments can be hard.

It’s worth it to accept compliments, both for your memory and your mental health in the long run. But it can feel boastful, to accept that something you’ve done is good. Who wants to be the narcissist who says “Yeah, I’m aware,” when someone compliments you?

But even when you’re just trying to say “Thanks,” it feels like pulling teeth. The urge to justify or qualify your success is overwhelming. You want to buckle and say that it wasn’t you, that you just got lucky, that you won’t do so well next time.

I’m like that, so I know it sucks. Obviously, I’d rather just believe the other person, say thanks, and move on with my life instead of obsessing over the appropriate way to accept compliments. But I want to get better.

What happens when you stop self-criticizing?

For one week only, just while I was at work, I accepted compliments. I did not deflect, I did not qualify, I did not put myself down immediately after accepting it.

I simply said “Thank you,” to anything nice that people said about me.

If my success was partially due to someone else, I said thanks and acknowledged their hard work, too, but I didn’t say it was all them. If I didn’t agree with a compliment, I still took it, choosing to believe that someone else’s opinion could still be valid even if I didn’t think it was true.

In short, I tried to live for a week as though I could take credit when I did stuff well.

My brain tried to convince me that any would-be complimenters were just being sarcastic, or that I’d spectacularly fail the next time I tried at anything and embarrass myself.

But you know what? I didn’t spontaneously combust. I did not get fired. I didn’t become amazingly self-assured either, and my self-esteem wasn’t fixed overnight, but it felt good to accept that I might be good at some things. I didn’t get better at believing it — yet — but it did start to feel more natural to simply accept and move on. I hope in time I’ll find it easier to believe compliments, and not just give lip service to the idea.

Compliments can feel like just a minor form of social interaction. We all say them, we all receive them. But I believe that just as important as learning to give one, is learning to take one.