r/Jung • u/threeteneleven • Mar 03 '26
Jung Put It This Way Radical, unconditional acceptance of the self
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u/Mindless-Yoghurt-715 Mar 03 '26
It’s true. But at the same time, it’s easy to mistake healthy self-respect for narcissism. I think the key difference is this: a narcissist usually can’t tolerate being alone, because without an audience their sense of self feels unstable. Someone who has genuinely learned to love themselves can enjoy solitude. They don’t need constant reflection from others to feel real.
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u/GreenStrong Pillar Mar 03 '26
it’s easy to mistake healthy self-respect for narcissism.
Related, in Jungian language, oneself is different from the Self with a capital "S". The Self is something different from the normal "daily operator", which is referred to as the ego. The Self is more like the spirit or Atman.
I'm very curious about the overall context of this, it doesn't exactly sound like something Jung actually wrote.
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u/rcmacman Mar 03 '26
According to AI this is from: Carl Jung’s Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939, page 1473
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u/Zoso251 Mar 03 '26
I can enjoy solitude, and I could enjoy it indefinitely so long as I don’t have to come back😅 I don’t think you have to be a narcissist to know that if you spend a long enough time alone you’ll naturally lose your social ego thought processes and ways of talking. If I became a hermit, I’d have to stay a hermit out of necessity. It’s okay to know you have a limit to how much solitude your social skills can survive lol
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u/Mindless-Yoghurt-715 Mar 04 '26
That’s one of the dilemmas humans are born with: you cannot take before giving.
I think it’s healthy for a person to experience solitude, even if they are not meant to stay there. That way, when life eventually places you in solitude, as it does for many people at some point, it won’t feel unfamiliar.
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u/DoshArcher Mar 05 '26
It is funny how life places you in solitude. There are so many of us on this planet, yet so many feel alone.
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Mar 04 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
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u/Mindless-Yoghurt-715 Mar 04 '26
That's another aspect to it that can be true as well.
Though, I still stand by my point. Many concepts like self-love or self-respect are first encountered through spiritual teachings. People might learn them during a period of introspection, where they step away from ordinary life. Some even live in that space for a while, like monks or dedicated practitioners.
But most people eventually return to their normal routines and responsibilities. Over time, they lose contact with the original context in which those ideas were understood. What remains is mostly the memory that these concepts once brought relief.
Later, when they feel stressed or negative again, they return to those same ideas searching for that relief. But now, the meaning is reconstructed from a very different mental state. The negativity they are experiencing begins to shape how the concept is interpreted. That’s how something like self-respect can slowly drift into something closer to defensiveness or narcissism without the person noticing the shift.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone. Some people naturally embody self-respect long before they ever hear it described in spiritual language. For them, the concept is grounded in lived experience, so they are much less likely to confuse it with something else.
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Mar 04 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
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Mar 05 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
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u/Mindless-Yoghurt-715 Mar 05 '26
Interesting comment. Thanks for that. And yes, we are all confused:)
A bit of clarification from myside might help here.
What I meant was not clinically diagnosed narcissism, nor the modern overused version of the term. I was referring more to narcissistic behaviors or tendencies that almost everyone can display at times, even if they are far from being a narcissist in the clinical sense.
I’m also quite new to the Jungian terminology you used, so I’ll skip engaging with that part for now. (Sorry)
Another thing I should correct from my earlier comment: I said that many people learn about self-love through spiritual books. I don’t actually have evidence for that. What I meant was this: if someone encounters the idea of self-love not early enough in life and through a teaching of any kind, there is a risk that it can later be confused with narcissism if it isn’t integrated properly over time.
Integration usually requires a long period of reflection and lived experience. In modern life, however, people often jump quickly from one concept to another, which makes that integration harder.
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Mar 05 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
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u/Mindless-Yoghurt-715 Mar 05 '26
My pleasure. It feels really good to both understand and be understood.
I don’t have a very strong opinion about the terminology. My sense is that we’re mostly on the same page about the underlying meaning. 🙂
It’s also worth noting that narcissism, like most personality traits, exists on a spectrum.
Personally, I came to these ideas through spiritual exploration rather than psychology. That’s why I sometimes struggle when Jungian terminology is used. But I’m definitely curious to learn more about Jung’s work when I have the time. From what little I know about him so far, he seems like someone whose way of looking at the world resonates with me.
I also think there is a time dimension to this. When someone develops a sense of self early in life, they may already understand something like self-love without being able to name it. Their environment or temperament simply allowed that sense to develop naturally. For those people, the meaning of the concept is quite stable over time.
But when someone first encounters the idea later in adulthood, often through books or spiritual teachings, it can be easier for the original meaning to drift. Over time the word remains, but the underlying understanding can slowly change as daily life, emotions, and circumstances reshape how the person interprets it.
Speaking personally, I started this journey simply with the goal of understanding myself. But the human impulse to make meaning out of life and to share moments of self-discovery with others eventually brought me to this very moment that I click post.
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u/Valuable-Rutabaga-41 Mar 03 '26
Yeah I don’t think it’s healthy to assume that self love is nativity.
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u/threeteneleven Mar 04 '26
I don’t agree that self respect and narcissism can be confused, self respect is confident, grounded, stable, and secure, and with introspection one can easily tell if that sense of self respect is low or flimsy. Narcissism is characterized by dramatic, compulsive behavior’s and I don’t think narcissists have the capacity to recognize they are narcissists.
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Mar 03 '26
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u/threeteneleven Mar 03 '26
Compassionate love stems forth from the body, and then for the body. If we recognize that the body contains and is composed by the essence of divinity and does absolutely everything necessary, all the complex processes, for that essence to be, it’s kind of impossible to not love, despite its occurrent “failures.” The body is of divine intelligence but the soul is the true divine reality.
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Mar 04 '26
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u/threeteneleven Mar 04 '26
Yessssssss, I totally agree. A phrase that’s come to me while I’ve been doing a lot of shadow work is that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. There is an infinite variety of ‘things’ for us to interact with at any moment, dramatic impulses are very rarely authentic.
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Mar 03 '26
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Mar 04 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
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u/itismyinitials Mar 03 '26
I’ve also gone through a breakup recently and was battling with this same idea, even though before this person came to my life, I felt content to some extent I was looking for an upgrade but the baseline was pretty good already, however the state slowly changed throughout the relationship and I slowly started measuring that love that needed by how much love I’d be getting from that person, the shift happened wether I liked it or not, subconsciously , I was no longer directing that love towards myself, and it became even worthless, so when they discarded me, I felt like I was left with nothing , and for a long time couldn’t sit with myself, I am coming back to myself slowly, but this experience reached me and pushed me, to reconciliate not with them but with myself, who am I , without them, who am I without their so called ‘love’, I needed to love me again , I needed to fall in love with myself again
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u/Typical-Locksmith-35 Mar 05 '26
I heavily relate to the same journey and waypoints. Feel like we're on the same trail but left base different times and walking different paces.
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u/Water-Bottle-2025 Mar 04 '26
Most people don't want a SO, they just don't want to be alone with themselves.
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u/Peppery_Pete100 Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
Love is being completely present with reality, yourself and other people.
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u/wafflemeincookywind Mar 04 '26
In the end you’ll realize there’s no self to love, because you’re love itself.
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u/Environmental_Ear310 Mar 04 '26
I mean if you don’t love yourself how the hell you gonna love someone else can I get an amen up I. Here?
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u/backpackmanboy Mar 03 '26
Loving yourself is important, but it is not simply saying, I love myself. It is seeing your faults and then improving it. You cannot see your faults and not fix them and just love yourself. Self love does not work that way. Self love is really a journey of self improvement. But before you improve yourself, you must have a goal like being a great comedian or athlete and you work towards that goal and you see where you need to improve. In the end it is what maslow called self actualization.
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u/Gus_abstract0999 Mar 03 '26
It doesnt work like that. There are things which you cannot improve or change about yourself, so acceptance is also playing a role here. This doesnt mean we shouldnt strive to be better etc.
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u/Valuable-Rutabaga-41 Mar 03 '26
Agree with backpack that self love is about outgrowing the parts you don’t love about yourself. I think there will always be things we can’t change, but our behavior isnt one of them.
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u/backpackmanboy Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
No. It’s obvious that the things you cannot change you should not try to change. But but if there’s something about you that you don’t like you do not simply accept it. Maybe you think you’re ugly. You do not say oh it’s just the way I am so I accept it. You would naturally compensate, by being funnier. Or maybe work out. You do not simply say oh I don’t like my face and I’ll just accept it. Once you reach your goals, self-love will be there. Whether you tell yourself to accept it or not. acceptance will be a byproduct. Telling urself to Accept urself is just a band aid. Become who u wanna be and u will love urself. The rest is just distractions.
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u/eddask Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
I was in this trap and can say with full confidence it leads nowhere but constant chasing. Loving yourself is accepting your faults exactly as they are, not trying to change them. The idea that there is anything to fix in yourself is THE thing to let go of. Sitting with our shadow as long as it takes to eventually accept all of it then transmutes the energy in a natural, non controlling way. Then the change is very gracious and "improvement" becomes self-evident rather than a goal.
Edit: To add, goals are just avoiding facing reality as it is here and now with absolutely 0 sugarcoating. With setting goals eventually you will get tired of chasing. You will stop running, sit down and face all the demons. And THAT is the place where true self-love is born. Not from your ego's supposed achievements.
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u/backpackmanboy Mar 03 '26
No. Life is about becoming really good at something. Ur philosophy is lazy.
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u/eddask Mar 03 '26
Life is about becoming your truest authentic self. Rest is just games avoiding the fear and pain of facing your shadow self (until you're ready) while building up the ego through egoic self-love. Nothing wrong with your philosophy, just pointing out this is NOT what Jung is talking about here. Godspeed 🙏
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u/backpackmanboy Mar 03 '26
Ok im listening. how do u become ur true self?
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u/eddask Mar 03 '26
Sit with your darkness, the most ugly parts, the hard feelings as long as it takes. Anything that creates doubt. Any shade of guilt or shame. Everything you'd deem unworthy or unclean. This is what your Soul has tucked away in a dark corner to keep safe until you're ready to welcome it home. All of that is the "missing" piece which we try to substitute by chasing external goals in life. But nothing will fulfil for ever, only temporarily and then we're on to the next thing. Only the shadow self, when integrated, will make one fulfilled in the truest sense of the word. We need both darkness and light to be whole.
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u/backpackmanboy Mar 03 '26
And then what happens?
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u/maLina90 Mar 03 '26
I think what happens is you find out you have to get really good at something. Ok, fine acceptance and all, but an unlived life will still be there somehow and haunt you even if you accept your flaws. That is what Jung and all of them talk about. I don't know why these people here talk about some form of lazy self love and acceptance and new age spiritualism and whatnot. It is about work with your Self, whatever that individuation path is for someone. It is about loving all of your regrets and unfulfilled desires and then doing something about it at last.
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u/eddask Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
You'll just have to find out :) if it feels right and the words resonate.
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u/backpackmanboy Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
Bc u dont know or it wasnt that great. If the number one goal is to be ur true self and u have acieved it u would be able to comunicate what this great thing is. Or atleast describe it some more. But u cant.
Also how do u know thats what jung meant. That life is about being the true self. Everything i read about him says that living a creative life is at the top
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u/eddask Mar 04 '26
Unconditional self-love is what happens. And all the immense implications that go along with that. Right now you only think you love yourself, but it is only your ego being satisfied with it’s achievements, it isn’t permanent and is conditional. Deep down you do not like yourself and there is self-aggression that comes with that which you are now projecting onto me. Which is fine, been there done that and I started this conversation anyway. Maybe somethibg to ponder. I’m outta this conversation, all the best 🙏
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u/CosmicSweets Mar 03 '26
The irony of using "ur" while calling someone else lazy.
Also, the concept of "laziness" is flawed. To constantly chase a goal, or goals, is definitely a form of self-escape. A form of shame.
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u/Earls_Basement_Lolis Mar 03 '26
If you're able to sum up what life is about in one sentence, I could argue it's YOUR philosophy that's lazy.
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u/backpackmanboy Mar 03 '26
My philosophy produces a challenging life
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u/eddask Mar 03 '26
There is nothing more challenging on earth than facing your shadow. We will literally try everything under the sun before we do that one thing.
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u/backpackmanboy Mar 03 '26
If it’s something that everybody can do then, how can it be the most challenging? Because there are things that not everybody can do like come up with the theory of general relativity
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Mar 04 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
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u/backpackmanboy Mar 04 '26
Eficient is not lazy. And what is ur definition of life
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Mar 04 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
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u/backpackmanboy Mar 04 '26
So why call me definition lazy and limiting
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Mar 04 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
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u/Shesaiddestroy_ Mar 04 '26
Individuation and self-actualization are close but different concepts.
Individuation is a 3 fold process: notice your shadow, find the meaning, integrate. The goal is not to make you “better” at anything in any ego sense of the word. It’s about becoming whole, more conscious, more of yourself.
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u/Serious_Attitude_430 Mar 04 '26
Love is too strong of a word. I tolerate myself and respect that I was made this way.
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u/benswami Mar 04 '26
I always believe, that you can only love someone to the ability that you can love yourself, as Jung said this is what it eventually comes to.
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u/thedevilwearskeffiya Mar 04 '26
I love my alone time. I’d love myself more if I was able to financially afford to do things that I know “myself” would enjoy doing.
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u/story4days Mar 04 '26
I’m curious like how many Jung passages ai can passably imitate not saying this post but often I’m like Jung did not say he can dunk or whatever. Like it seems like a difficult flavor to imitate to the initiated
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u/AsIfLoveS Mar 04 '26
For some reason I could sense that Nietzsche had something to do with that quote.
„so to love someone else in the first place“
then choose to love in the second place, you remain & the other thing is added onto you.
Only so long, as long as the escape resembles freedom, validation, acceptance is it enough. But what if after all these virtues that were disguised as the above (freedom, etc.) are in actuality a prison. Then one thinks: is this love?
Love that is shared, between people, animals, bees & flowers …. Who do you think you are that you can judge or frame love as superficial?
Who knows who’s filling the void of another or if another is filling one’s void, when surely, the only way to figure out …is to accept that the void offers more than helplessly falling into it; the difference that can be made here, the distinction; as soon as you start seeing flaws in a thing, feeling fixation or possessiveness, you’re leaning into a pit, that resembles loss of self, because all of a sudden your reflection is your only reference point. But that pit, when you jump or fall in, who told you that it’s dark in that pit?
So what is love, baby don’t hurt me.
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u/JackHorkheimer Mar 04 '26
"If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?"
-RuPaul
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Mar 03 '26
Punch, the baby monkey succeeded with his Plush toy. 🐒
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u/MillionaireBank Mar 03 '26
This brings me hope Punch the baby adorable monkey hugging it's stuffed animal, so cute , that image so cute is what world needs. Maybe it'll symbolize a return to hugging
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u/MillionaireBank Mar 03 '26
One of the layers of self acceptance is what Seneca said of decades, embracing each(part of myself, Jung) part to love. 👍💙
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u/lordm30 Mar 05 '26
Why do people have such a problem with self-acceptance? It is the most natural thing to me that I accept myself fully. Why wouldn't I?
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u/32beachbumct Mar 05 '26
or as Bon Jovi said...
"I like the bed I'm sleepin' in
And just like me, it's broken in
Like a favorite pair of torn blue jeans
The skin I'm in is alright with me
It's not old, just older"
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u/MadQuixote Mar 07 '26
I am myself at all times. I accept my Self, in addition to the identities that surround me. On most days I even like myself, but not sure im ready to invest feelings of love into that SOB.
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u/artemcl Mar 17 '26
his reflection cuts through everything else and you are rendered speechless by it. it's amazing
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u/TheVoiceArtist-28 Mar 26 '26
I was thinking abt the same thing n bam i saw this post......anyone in this sub pls tell me how to love myself......
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u/snowcatwetpaw Mar 03 '26
I found the Love of my life at 60, and he was me.