Narcissism vs Self love: What’s the difference?

Self-love is a good thing. It helps you appreciate yourself and be your own best friend. When you love yourself, you don’t need anyone else to love you! While there is absolutely nothing wrong with loving yourself and being your favourite, sometimes people confuse this with narcissism.

Narcissism loosely translates as self-obsession. It makes you selfish and vain as a person and is VERY different from self-love. To avoid this confusion, have a look at some ways in which these two are different from each other.

Self-love

Self-love is prioritising and taking care of yourself. It means having a high regard for your well-being. 

It makes you a positive person and builds your self-esteem. When you have high self-esteem, it becomes easy for you to treat others as your equals. You don’t look down upon anyone and know how to appreciate their achievements and celebrate their success.

When you love yourself and are comfortable and secure, you instantly become humble and empathetic as an individual. You have no qualms in encouraging others and seeing them succeed.

Narcissism

Narcissism is having an inflated sense of importance. It involves having an excessive interest in yourself.

Narcissism makes you jealous and insecure as a person. You don’t feel happy when others succeed and are somehow always trying to find ways to pull them down.

You have this insatiable need to be better than others, even if it involves manipulation. You crave appreciation and compliments. You feel incomplete and worthless without them and are always looking for validation. 

You always need to be in control of things. You have this desire to always be the center of everyone’s attention and are willing to do anything for it.

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