Why Compliments Make Us Uncomfortable?

     A lot of us squirm when someone pays us a compliment. How do we go about Understanding and Overcoming Discomfort with compliments? There was a time, when compliments used to make me really uncomfortable . To be fair, sometimes they still do! But the frequency and intensity are almost negligible. Earlier, whenever someone would compliment me on anything, I would just mumble something and just try to wriggle out. The inner dialogue would be like – “What? I am looking handsome? Get your eyes checked!” or “Why is he/ she buttering me up? There must be something that person wants!”

     So when I started working on the self, I started understanding why it was so. It was the inner dialogue again – the one which was silent and held me in contempt! He thought that I was not even average looking and that I was not worthy of compliments. And hence the reaction to the outside complements!

     You see, most of the time, we are being run by a part of us that we are not consciously aware of. How many times it happens that after an emotional outburst, we are puzzled as to what was the need or where did that come from? One moment you decide that “I won’t be angry” but the next moment you get triggered by something trivial and out comes the anger.

     There is a part of us that is hidden from our conscious but runs our lives. It always has and as we grow up, it also does. If you have read till here, then I am sure you have a question that what changed? Let me try to tell you the sequence in a nutshell.

The Way Out

     So, you may ask that Abhinav, how did you come out of it? And the truth would be - I have not come out fully yet, the process is still on (and will go on for quite sometime). An inner dialogue that old doesn't give up so easily. What actually happened was that I slowly started catching the reflex in real-time. Just noticing the mumble, the deflection and the joke that waved the compliment away, without trying to stop it yet. 

    Then I started to get curious as to what was the voice underneath it actually protecting me from believing? Turns out it wasn't modesty or humility. It was a much older conviction that if I accepted the compliment, It would mean that I had been wrong about myself. That people could actually appreciate me without any vested interest. And I became empathetic to my younger self and others like him. 

So the real work wasn't learning to say "thank you" gracefully. It was getting honest about what I believed the compliment to be and slowly, starting to accept it to myself.