RingoProbably posted on this before but it’s an ongoing struggle. I can’t seem to take a compliment without deflecting, diminishing, or out right disagreeing with it. I have the same problem when people thank me. I feel awkward and try push it off. No just the platitude, it’s no big deal, but dropping phrases like “why? “That’s just normal behavior” or “Same thing anyone would do, don’t need to make a big deal of it.”
A dear friend told me once to knock it the fuck off. She told me in ways I understood, blunt straight forward language. Criticism. It felt good. I understood where we were. 2 minutes earlier she had complimented me on…something I can’t remember now, probably fighting? And I blew her off. “Oh no, I’m not that good.” Because that moment felt awkward. I was embarrassed and uncomfortable with the compliment. It did not feel good.
Apparently this is both fairly common and also really weird. Talked to a number of people who likewise dislike getting compliments, and find them to be off putting. Some people, like me, automatically default to a person is either lying or simply didn’t pay attention enough to see the suck. While other people I talk to have trouble hearing criticism unless you hide it in a shit sandwich. For awhile I thought this was just a way of being and had no real outside effect. Luckily I have friends who will call me on shit and explain how I am in fact being an asshole.
What I’ve learned is that when you dismiss a compliment, you are actually kinda insulting the giver. Not just in a I didn’t accept your gift way, which is shitty in and of itself. We should be gracious in receiving gifts and being overly humble and self deprecating is not that. Saying thank you and showing genuine appreciation is. That however isn’t the only problem. The real problem, is that when someone says “Man you did really well at that thing you do” and you say
“Nah, I sucked, I messed up 5 times” what have done is tell the other person they don’t know what the fuck they are talking about, are wrong and stupid, and should feel bad about themselves for being so dumb. Hyperbole added.
What a way to show thanks huh? Insult the mother fucker just trying to be nice to you. Good job asshole, you done shat on someone trying to lift you up. Someone genuinely reaching out for a human connection that you could have helped up with mutual appreciation. But nah, that self doubt monster and cancerous lack of self esteem needs too fed, and apparently your tears, hopes, and dreams aren’t enough. You got to take the positive energy of a would be supporter and empty it into the black hole of your never being good enough.
Can you imagine going up to your source of inspiration, your hero, trying to tell them how cool that thing they did(or even just how cool they are) is to you, only to be told you’re a fool for thinking it and you could never understand the thing as well as them? How bad that must fucking feel. Not that I’m ever likely to be in that position of hero status, but still even on a minor level it must suck. Scratch that, it does suck. I know from being on the other side.
I have so many people close to me that suffer with self esteem problems. At this point I kinda feel it’s the default human position. One of the worst feeling I get interacting with them is when I try to tell them they are smart, talented, pretty, or whatever the thing is, and they tell me I’m wrong. And I’m just sitting here like, why can’t you see it? Why can’t believe in yourself? And maybe they do, but what I see hurts and it sucks, and also it pisses me off, because I’m like look here Mister Gloomy Gus, I’m sitting watching you from an outside perspective, with no attached internal dialogue trying to convince me of a thing and this is what I see. I’m a Negative Fucking Nancy that loves to poke holes in things and shit on the tiniest of problems. So if I’m here telling you done good, you fucking done good.(Note to self, I am the gloomy gus, stop that).
The thing that compliments this is that sometimes, unfortunately, they really are wrong and stupid. Like I’m not that great at fighting, but I’m pretty ok and I have a decent understanding of it. I know pretty accurately that in Steel fighting I’m near the top 10% of my league. But I also know that in 10 years everyone in the league now will look like chumps to the average fighter. Compare early MMA fighters to the guys now and it’s no contest. In the SCA, I’m barely past that first level of competent fighter. I might be top 50% of “active” fighters. But def not top 25%, not even top 25% in the east kingdom, let alone the whole game. So when some people tell me I did well and I’m still thinking of 1000 things I did wrong I need to fix, it can be hard to pull out of that. Sometime they are right, I did fight well and I’m hyper focusing on the negative cause, that’s how I do. Other times…well other times they mean well, but they really didn’t see what happened cleary, through a variety of reasons. And the same is true in plenty of other pursuits I have. Sometimes I really did well and other times, it just looks like I did well because we have different standards of what good is.
Still that’s not a reason to blow them off. At the very least I could say thanks and then maybe try and discuss it and use it as a teaching moment. And maybe they don’t care enough to have that deeper understanding and just taking the compliment, feeling good that someone else feels good about me, should be enough. Especially since they can then feel good, about feeling good about me. Feel ception.
The biggest problem I have with this is I’m one of those failed perfectionists. You know the type? The people who think everything needs to be perfect and when it starts to become clear they’ll fall short, they give up completely? Yeah. Dat me. Hi there other wanna be perfect friends. I know you feel this. See growing up I rarely got actual compliments. Good was essentially the expected. Not like olympic level good, not that much perfectionism. But the idea was that if things were done right, they were ok. That’s the expected. No need to comment on things being done well, unless they were far and above expectations. When it was just good, that’s it done, no need to talk about it more. It was only aberrations that needed to be called out. Things that went wrong. Flaws in arguments, bad mechanics, poorly done assignments, that all got alot of attention. I got really good at looking for the problems. Not so good at looking for the good, for what was done right. My focus was always on how is this wrong, not how is this right? Always how could this be better, never is this actually good enough?
It’s paid off in some amazing ways. I’m a great editor and a pretty decent coach. Want some honest critiques and ruthless evaluation? Holla at your boy. It’s not my default after many years of getting negative responses to my negativity. I’ve learned to try to soften my edge. I’ve learned how to find and talk about what went right. But if someone ever gives me permission to go full asshole, man I got that skill on lock.
The downside is of course that I had to learn how to give positive feedback over nearly a decade. And now I’m realizing I need to learn how to take positive feedback. 90% of the time I get it, no matter the source, even those I know and trust, I assume it’s blowing smoke up my ass. Like they are just pumping me up to make fun of me later. Which I now realize is some weird leftover defense from when the cool kids used to do that to me in grade school. Weird, I keep realizing I didn’t make it through being bullied nearly as intact as I thought I did. Gonna have to confront that later.
Anyway, that other 10% is mostly made up of me not wanting to accept it because it’s too prideful. I hate braggarts and I know that it’s in my nature to be one. So I try to overcompensate by self deprecation to make up for overcompensating arrogant bragging I do to make up for the crippling self esteem issues. Woof, that sentence crammed too much in. Oh well. The point I’m making is that in my effort to try and remind myself to be humble I tend to shit on the few compliments I do get that I might actually believe.
There’s no productive positive reason to continue this behavior and while it’s not the worst or most toxic thing in my life, it still makes both mine and others lives worse when I could be making both better. So I’ll strive to be better. And If you followed me this far through this unfocused ranting, please call me out if I start trying to brush off a genuine attempt to express gratitude or admiration. Thanks pals. Hope you have a wonderful day.