Treat yourself kindly and compassionately. Allow that to be the standard for how you should expect to be treated by others.
Experts in the arenas of child psychology, children’s education, and child rearing can all agree on one thing: A child needs positive reinforcement, early and often, in order to grow into a confident person with a healthy self-image. But many of us had emotionally immature, distant, absent, punitive, or otherwise toxic parents. So what happens to the child who didn’t get their emotional needs met? Are they doomed to have more self-confidence and low self-worth? Absolutely not. As adults, we have the opportunity to take stock of how we were raised and the areas in which our parents or guardians were lacking (whether consciously or subconsciously). We can then take an honest inventory of how this has effected our behaviours, our wants, our needs, and our expectations of life.
Many people who were silences as children learn to be silent in order to be “liked,” never speaking up for themselves. Many people who were mistreated when young learn to expect to be treated poorly by others. Some even internalize the incredibly self-destructive belief that can eventually earn love if they endure enough cruelty or neglect from others. But in how we speak to and treat ourselves, we can write a new script for our lives, instead of playing the same old, tragic part. In learning to speak to yourself kindly and treating yourself tenderly, you re-program your mind to understand what care and compassion look and feel like, and to look for those behaviours in your relationships with others. You should treat yourself so well that any time someone enters your space with hostility, condescension, or dismissal, you are instantly repelled. Do not wait for others to be good to you. Be good to yourself, and let those who seek to be a part of your life follow suit.
