What TV Dating Taught Me About Loving Yourself
At the end of last year a friend of mine was filming to be featured in a TV show for the TLC channel in the UK. The show in question was called 'Too Ugly For Love' and is a documentary/reality style show that follows a number of people with a range of medical conditions or disabilities that they feel have held them back from finding a partner. The style of the show requires that the featured contributors are shown having conversations with friends and family about their lives, conditions and inevitably dates which are shown in the programme as well. When my friend asked if I would be happy to be part of this experience with her I agreed. Now that both episodes her story was featured in have aired I feel I am able to talk a little about it here so that I, hopefully, cannot be seen to be advertising.
The day the first episode I was in was due to air, TLC shared the following video on their website in which my friend and I speak about her online dating profile and what she's been looking for:
I don't want this to be a post about 'how to find a partner', and I'm loathed to get too heavily into advice giving, as that is not what my role as a counsellor and therapist is about. Instead I want to make the same observation that I did in the video in a slightly different manner. I want this to be about how easily we ignore our achievements or make them feel small and insignificant.
It is curious thing that we can find it all to easy to hold on to every piece of negative feedback we might get but ignore the positive things. As the negative is held onto longer it begins to form a negative loop in our mind. After a while we begin to look only for those negative things in ourselves and our experience, we see ourselves only in that negative light. In Yvonne's profile some rather remarkable things she has done in her time were given as throwaway comments or hidden in brackets, and lots of time was given over to very generic likes and dislikes such as walking. (The most common comment I have had from friends who have watched the show is "what's wrong with liking walks, Alex?" Please, believe me nothing is wrong with liking walks, but I think that most people enjoy walking. It just doesn't really compare to having been a rally driver in terms of intrigue, especially when you're looking at achievements and trying to provide an profile that is going to make you stand out!)
When it came to dating Yvonne felt limited by her condition. In some ways I think this can said to be true, but it's not because she has the condition that limits her, its that she views herself through the lens of being flawed that has limited her dating. Watching the show I feel that the same can be said of a number of the people who contributed to the show. When we only see our flaws we only see the reasons that someone might not want to like us and we don't try, or we point them out and only provide people with reasons not to come back. We become a self fulfilling prophecy. Watching the show you can see where people are worried about what, in their eyes, is a deal breaking flaw, and when the conversation gets too close to that they begin to close down and withdraw from the conversation. The person on the other side of the conversation then senses tis withdrawal and then emotionally detaches too.
However, in my professional experience, when people have been able to use therapy to gain perspective about themselves by bringing in those negative feelings about themselves and also have them coexist with their positive attributes and achievements they have been able to progress brilliantly.
