A lack of self-love often shows up in ways that don’t look negative on the surface. In fact, many behaviours that stem from low self-worth are commonly praised as positive such as being busy, helpful, productive, or self-rewarding. The key is becoming aware of what is driving these behaviours. Are your actions intentional and nourishing, or are they habitual responses rooted in unconscious beliefs about not being enough?
This article explores four common behaviours that can be subtle signs you don’t truly love yourself. I invite you to view these as gentle guideposts for self-awareness and growth, rather than reasons for judgement. You may think that your self-esteem level is pretty good, and in many ways it may be, and there may also be deeper parts of you that hold more fearful beliefs. Remember, self-love is not something you “fix” once and then move on from. It is a lifelong practice of noticing, understanding, and responding to your inner world with compassion, as new layers, challenges, and patterns continue to unfold.
Sign 1. You Keep Yourself Very Busy
Do you feel unsettled when you are not actively doing something?
In our modern society busy-ness is usually viewed as a positive sign that you are taking action, being proactive, living life responsibly and/or making things happen. However, when you feel like you always need to be doing something or planning something or that you can’t stop, and you go from one activity to another, to another, then it can indicate that you have a subconscious belief that you are not enough. Often the motivation for constantly doing things is a belief that you need to prove you are capable, or that you are worthy.
A need to DO more, often equates with a need to BE more.
Constantly keeping busy can also be used as a positive distraction tool. Things like taking drugs, consuming excessive alcohol and sex addiction are destructive or negative behaviours that people use to distract themselves from having to deal with their uncomfortable feelings of pain, guilt, shame, doubt and fear. Busy-ness can be a positive form of this. When we are constantly doing things, then our mind is full of activity oriented thoughts and we can avoid listening to our deeper emotion based thoughts and feelings. When we stop, and are still and quiet, we become conscious of our inner thoughts and feelings, and for some of us these can be very uncomfortable and we don’t want to listen to them, or deal with them. Busy-ness can be a way of distracting ourselves from that.
Self-love grows when you can acknowledge and sit with all parts of yourself.
Sign 2: You Are Always Doing Things For Other People
While giving and serving others is a positive thing, you do need to be aware of why you are doing it.
When you do things for other people that you don’t want to do;
or you serve others even though you are tired and you are sacrificing your own physical, mental and emotional needs;
or when you help everybody who asks for it, especially if you feel a sense of obligation to always help;
or you often feel over-committed to doing things for other people
– then it is a sign that you don’t love yourself because you are not treating yourself with love and respect.
Usually the motivating beliefs behind giving to others in this way are things like:
“I need to be nice so that other people won’t think I’m a bad person.”
“I need to be nice so that other people will think I’m a good person”
“I need to help others so that I feel like I’m a good person”
“I feel like a bad person if I don’t help people when they ask or need it”
“I need to help others so that other people won’t feel disappointed or angry and reject me”
As with sign 1, the deeper drive behind constantly giving out to others is a sense that you need to earn or demonstrate that you are worthy. You may not be aware of these unconscious underlying beliefs, but you may be aware of the resulting feelings of overwhelm, dissatisfaction, frustration, and/or resentment. When these are your underlying reasons for doing things for other people you will feel like you are constantly seeking approval in order to feel like a good, hard-working and kind person. You will also feel like you are often ‘running yourself ragged’ and that what you do is never really enough.
This can also express itself as a consistent desire to want to help other people be better, or to fix people and things.
An ongoing sense that other people need to be helped or fixed is often a sign that you believe that you need to be fixed somehow or be better somehow. This belief is usually subconscious and you are not consciously aware of it. Your sense of dissatisfaction with yourself causes you to look for ways in which the people and world around you are broken or in need of being fixed or made better. Taking action to make other people and things better eases the discomfort you feel about not being better yourself. In psychology terms this is called projection.
Sign 3. You Spend Money on Yourself Because You Think You Deserve It
On the surface, giving yourself treats looks like a loving thing to do. However, usually the sense that you deserve a treat comes from an underlying sense of dissatisfaction and emptiness. For example, buying yourself a McDonald’s sundae on the way home from work because you deserve it after the bad day you’ve had, or buying a new wardrobe of clothes after a relationship break-up, or buying a ticket to a concert because your partner said something critical to you. If you were feeling emotionally fulfilled, then you would not sense the need to buy yourself a special treat to make yourself feel good.
It’s not wrong to buy things you enjoy or which give you pleasure. However, if you buy them because you think you deserve it in response to something unpleasant in your life, then you are trying to fix or fill an emotional need with a material, external object or circumstance, and that is not effectively addressing your emotional need. Buying yourself a treat may give you a temporary lift, but it is really just a distraction. The only way to truly feel better, to feel long-term joy and fulfilment, is to learn to love yourself and fill your own emotional needs.
Sign 4: You Keep Searching For The Perfect . . . Diet, Partner, Car, House etc.
Consistently looking to the next new thing to fix you or your life, or to make you happy, is a sure sign that you do not feel settled and satisfied within yourself. If you are searching for something outside yourself to make you feel better it indicates that you are not aligned with your internal foundation of love, and that your emotional needs are not being met.
As with sign number 3, external things, experiences, or other people may help you to feel better, but the lift is only temporary because you have no control over them, and the world around us is constantly changing. The only person completely dedicated to you, is you. The only love, joy and fulfillment that you can control, is that which you give and create for yourself.
Awareness: The First Step in Learning to Love Yourself
If you’re wondering ‘how do I know if I don’t love myself?’, these signs can help you recognise patterns with compassion rather than self-judgement. You may be just beginning your self-love journey and these signs may seem like a big revelation to you, or you may have already worked through a number of layers of limiting beliefs and past painful experiences, and these signs may show you where you can grow further. Awareness is the significant first step because it gives you information to make intentional choices and changes. The People Pleaser Evolution posts give you tools to do that, or if you want a step by step system follow then you can find one in my book 10 Steps to Happiness.
Feel free to share this post with someone you think would appreciate it.
Want More?
Thank you for reading this post. If you would like weekly insights and tips from me about how to transform your people pleasing habits and have more confidence, love, respect and freedom then you can subscribe to my People Pleasing Evolution newsletter. When you subscribe be sure to check out the welcome email from me as it contains a link to my FREE ebook: How to Say No Without Feeling Guilty. This ebook It gives you practical tips to successfully overcome the three main issues for people pleasers learning to say no:
1. Knowing what words to say (sample phrases provided)
2. Confidence to say the words
3. How to manage feelings of anxiety and guilt about saying the words
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter via Substack
You can also check out the Resources page on my website. This page also contains information about my books 10 Steps to Happiness and The Great Life Planner.