Hard To Accept Compliments

[Lucille]

Does anyone else out there think it's difficult or near impossible to accept compliments from others? I feel like my emotional numbness has done two things:

1. Made it impossible for me to be confident in myself by myself and for myself​

and​

2. Made it impossible for me to see positive things in myself that others see in me.​

I consider myself to be intelligent, logically, so I recognize that there are plenty of things I should be proud of myself for... One of the things I've talked about on here is my recent job offer... YAY? Someone out there things I'm smart enough and friendly enough that they want me to work for them and with them. YAY? I don't have to be unemployed when I get out of college... but I just can't feel excited about it. Same thing happens when my parents tell me they're proud or my boyfriend tells me I'm beautiful.

I don't know how to hold my head up high and be confident and be happy with myself. But at the same time, I'm the farthest thing from being suicidal. I'm just "BLAH." Like I'm sleep walking through life. :notworthy: It's so frustrating.

How am I supposed to recover from this stupid disorder if I don't feel confident when good things happen??

 

[Sandra]

I have been known to turn a positive into a negative. It also depends on where the compliment is coming from as well.

 

[Lucille]

For me, it's almost like I can't believe what they're saying or appreciate the compliment if I don't already believe it. But I think it's true for me no matter who it's from

 

[Sandra]

Like if my abused said something nice I probably wouldn't believe them.

 

[alleycat]

Yep. Can't take a compliment at all, from anyone. I immediately discount or lessen it, whether aloud or in my head, and usually wonder at the person's motives.

 

[Meadowsweet]

I dont take spoken compliments, and if they are spoken by the wrong kind of person, in the wrong kind of circumstances or with the wrong tone of voice, compliments have been a common trigger. But, at uni, my work is marked anonymously, and so the grades I get are complimentary, and I feel wonderful if I get a good grade.

But I did go for years without either good or bad feelings. So I feel that emotional numbness is different to there being a problem with accepting compliments. Its only my opinion, and I'm not a psychologist by any means, but I feel that emotions are either on or off. So we either feel everything or we feel nothing. I don't think we can choose to feel only the good stuff and not feel the bad stuff, and we numb to protect ourselves from the bad stuff. But I think if you're noticing that there are compliments and opportunities to feel good, it could be an incentive to keep aiming towards being able to open up more to your feelings. You have bad things in your life, thats why you have ptsd, but it seems like now you have good things too - and even if you can't feel them yet, they are there and will still be there when you are ready to open to them.

 

[Ted Moen]

Compliments are a trigger for me, a here we go again type of thing. A compliment means I'm being set up again. Someone's trying to distract me from what I should be paying attention to and any minute now my situation is going to explode in my face. I become very hypervigilant, looking for the slightest hint of what is going on and, if I let myself act on the feeling, seriously overreact to something pretty much insignificant.

So my challenge is to respond appropriately to the compliment, then talk myself through the current situation (this person is not setting me up ...) and use appropriate tools to counter the hypervigilance and related anxiety and panic.

Ted

 

[reallydown]

Hi Lucille, I can relate to what you say on many levels...I have a very hard time with compliments...I also have a hard time believing people when they say good things, especially about my looks or intelligence...People have thrown around words like ("brilliant," "gifted" or "beautiful" or "hot" etc) and I just don't believe it...I always feel like...sooner or later they'll realize I'm a fraud...If anything, I'm a major failure...

I also have trouble giving out compliments...Usually, when someone says soemthing nice to someone, that person responds in kind...For me...beyond a very awkward "thanks"...and even more awkward silence...nothing. And it's not that I don't want to...it just seems stupid/redundant to say the same thing to them...Or if someone says: your hair looks great tonight...somehow..."you're super smart" doesn't seem like the right way to respond...(or whatever...) Not sur eif this is making any sense (I always say that in my post because...well...I never am)...Oh and totally hear you on "sleepwalking through life"...In fact I don't even feel like that...not even because I can't sleep...But yes...merely existing, as opposed to living, or something like that?

 

[Lucille]

I totally relate to what reallydown and Ted have said!

Don't worry, reallydown, I understood completely what you were saying there. I even got a little chuckle because I think the same thing! I never used to be socially awkward, but now I guess I am, certainly in this situation I am. It's like I'm just confused by the compliment since I obviously didn't see it coming.

 

[maddog]

The whole issue of compliments, both giving and receiving them, is a particularly sensitive and sore dimension of social awklwardness for me.

As others have said, I feel il-equipped for either offering or receiving, always hamstrung when I feel the need to offer one by the what ifs... what if it's too presumptuous, bold or intrusive, what if the timing is wrong, or the compliment has a hidden meaning I've missed, or the person doesn't accept it from me... at the critical moment it always seems easier to hold my tongue and feign that horrible breed of social oblivion and ignorance that I so shamefully confess to utilising all too often. But no soonner has the moment passed than I am usually bitterly regretting the opportunity to have done something nice for someone else, or built an all-too-rare bridge of social connection between myself and another human being, the opportunity for which might never recur any time soon.

As for receiving compliments, this is far more painful. It feels like a fraudulent act, as though I am accepting something to which I am not entitled, and as though soon my vicious secret will be exposed and the deserved condemnation will be forthcoming. Maybe it just deepens the feeling of isolation I experience towards the rest of the world, as though how can someone know me so little and interpret me so inaccurately as to presume I am worthy of whatever it is...

I know the nature and origin of these toxic core beliefs that torture me so deeply when it comes to compliments. I can analytically dysect and analyse why I feel this way and what I need to do to begin to combat it. But when you're so wired to live in a world that deals only in the commodity of cruelty and rejection, again both giving and receiving, then it's so very hard to try to find a path to a place in which goodness and human kindness and recognition of the good in others are traded as a matter of course.

Maddog

 

[windwoman]

It never occurred to me before that any one else went through this. As sad as it is I feel like I'm not so broken after all. When people tell me that I'm awesome, talented, or anything else good I jut tell them that they don't really know me and that I'm not a nice person.

I had someone ask me one time, "Is there anything you can't do?" I replied, "I cant keep a marriage together." (been married 3 times) The look on this person's face told me I had just shocked her and in someway really hurt her feelings.

I try to just say thank-you and leave it at that - nothing else.

 

[pokeprofrich]

I have recently received several complients from old friends and people who went through the trauma with me.
I just feel embarrassed and can't seem to accept the praise. I have not shyed away with sharing my journey as a way to help others who were there with me. But I guess as all the years of scouting with my son's I consider it a Good Turn. Not wanting or expecting anything in return.. Maybe I should ...... But I just can't .