The key to unstoppable confidence lies in becoming unashamedly obsessed with yourself.”
Appearing innocently in my inbox, these words made me want hiss like a cat – bare my teeth and unsheathe my claws, hackles raised. The ones that followed were no better: “True self-obsession requires breaking societal conditioning that labels self-focus as selfishness.”
They were part of a mission statement being peddled by Tam Kaur, a self-styled Gen Z self-help and self-transformation expert – yes, that is a fittingly absurd number of “self”s – who is, apparently, aiming to spearhead a self-obsessed “movement” among young women. An Instagram reel sharing her patented “Five Laws of Self Obsession” quickly clocked up 400,000 views and tens of thousands of likes when she posted it last month.
The more I dug into these five laws, the more distasteful I found them. The Boundary Law instructed adherents that mastering self-obsession “means fiercely protecting your personal space and energy… Learn to confidently say ‘no’ without guilt or lengthy explanations.” Sure, on the one hand, boundary-setting can be an important tool in avoiding burnout. On the other, telling your mum you can’t come and help her clear out your late granny’s house because you “don’t have the emotional bandwidth right now” just makes you a callous a***hole.
“Remember that joy is your birthright,” claims the Celebration Law. I mean… is it? Since when? Happiness, though that most elusive of things most of us spend our lives striving for, is not recognised as a universal fundamental human right for a reason.
And finally, the capitalist piece de resistance as encapsulated by the Upgrade Law: “Your external surroundings directly impact your internal sense of value, so work on your self-worth through constantly upgrading your environment.” This could include “updating personal presentation” and reappraising “your living space and wardrobe”. Ah yes: the new, powerful version of your best self can’t possibly be manifested without splurging on fashion, makeup and homewares.
In fairness, Kaur is far from the only influencer in our increasingly secular society to declare that worshipping at the altar of the self is the magical pathway to all human thriving and happiness.
Life coach Michelle Elman, self-proclaimed “Queen of Boundaries”, penned her book The Joy of Being Selfish: Why You Need Boundaries and How to Set Them in 2021, advocating for strong boundaries to “rid your life of drama and toxic relationships”. Social media is bursting with empowerment gurus and questionable “therapists” advocating for turning our backs on anyone who “dims our light” or “drains our energy”, directing our attention instead towards the never-ending quest for personal growth.
It’s part and parcel of a trend of hyper-individualism, according to Dr Tom Davies, therapist and author of the recently published book Self-Obsession: How Our Need for Identity Threatens Our Wellbeing. He argues that, in the culture we live in, the last thing we need is encouragement to become more inwardly-focused.
“I definitely think we have become more self-obsessed, especially in the more Western, individualistic, capitalist societies – like, for example, the UK,” he says. “It’s a historic issue of humanity, but I think it’s one that has significantly worsened. This is the real pandemic of our age.”
Davies defines self-obsession as a preoccupation with our objective self – the elements of who and what we are: “The ‘who’ is our personality, our beliefs, our interests; the ‘what’ is more a collection of things like our careers, our physical appearance, our relationships, our economic status, our material possessions.”
Unlike narcissism, a trait usually associated with an inflated sense of self, self-obsession does not always necessarily equate to big-headedness or arrogance. “It’s a literal obsession with ourselves, and often that’s an obsession with the things we don’t like about ourselves, or the things we wish we had but don’t.”
In fact, self-obsession could in some cases be categorised as the “shadow side” of narcissism, says W Keith Campbell, professor of psychology at the University of Georgia and co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, published amid what he calls “the big millennial boom of narcissism”. While he suspects individual narcissism scores have reduced since the turn of the century, another toxic issue has sprung up in its place.
“My speculation is that when social media started, it was a really good avenue for everyone to get narcissistic,” he says. As social media spread, a subgroup of people were able to use it effectively to expand their reach. “But a whole lot of other people started getting a little anxious and depressed because they were socially comparing.” Some used it to broadcast how “awesome” they were; others were left feeling “less than”. Regardless of which category they fell into, both groups wound up “chasing ego”.
Even in the world of therapy, there is a huge drive to help people solve their problems by focusing on themselves in various navel-gazing guises, rather than healing in relation to others: self-care, self-improvement, self-actualisation, self-love.
“We’re at risk of overdoing that,” warns Dr William Van Gordon, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Derby Online Learning, who birthed Ontological Addiction Theory – the idea that you can be addicted to yourself. “There’s a lot of research at the moment within my field into something called ‘self-compassion’. If we take that too far, it can promote selfishness and self-obsession – because what about compassion for others? We live in a world where other people need help, love, care and consideration. Sometimes we do just have to get over ourselves and reach out to others without ego or selfishness.”
And, while “working on yourself” may sound positive, it could have the opposite impact on those struggling with their mental health. “It’s all about becoming a better version of who we are,” says Davies. “That can be toxic – because if you’re trying to become a better version of yourself, you’re pretty much implying that you’re not OK as you are. Self-improvement culture is in a way exacerbating the sense of inadequacy that many people already feel.”
In fact, the worst part about relentlessly focusing on ourselves? It’s categorically unlikely to make us happy. One 2002 meta-analysis of more than 200 studies found a strong correlation between self-focused attention and negative feelings. According to the Self-centeredness and Selflessness Happiness Model (SSHM), developed in 2011, while self-centeredness is related to fluctuating happiness, selflessness is strongly associated with what they identified as “authentic-durable happiness”. Ie, caring more about others than yourself was found to induce stable and long-lasting happiness.
Campbell goes so far as to argue that “about the worst thing you can do for your wellbeing is focus on yourself,” adding that “self-focused attention is what drives depression and anxiety – if you spend a lot of time looking at yourself, you’re just going to be freaking miserable”.
We are currently facing a mental health crisis in the UK, particularly among Gen Z. One in four young people in England now have a mental health condition such as anxiety, depression, OCD and panic disorders, according to an NHS survey published last month. Rates have soared by more than a third in the last decade in 16- to 24-year-olds, with young women more than twice as likely to report mental health problems than young men.
Davies believes this is “no coincidence”: “I do not believe it’s mere correlation that we’re becoming an increasingly individualised society, increasingly self-obsessed, and the rates of mental illness are increasing significantly,” he says. It also tallies with rising levels of isolation; chronic loneliness is experienced by 7.1 per cent of UK adults (3.83 million people), according to research from the Campaign to End Loneliness, up from 6 per cent in 2020.
Swapping a focus on our communities and the wider world for self-absorption could also have much further-reaching negative implications. “Global issues are about the collective – and how long would it take for climate change to affect the individual to the extent to which they’re motivated to change anything?” Davies points out. “The problem with individuality is that it makes us an island. We see ourselves as separate to other people. And when you’re separate, that creates division, hostility and intolerance.”
The good news is that it’s not too late to change. Van Gordon speaks of a three-stage path in which a person recognises how much ego and self-obsession influence their thoughts, choices and behaviours; begins to deconstruct the stronghold it has over them; and reconstructs the ego around the idea that we inter-exist alongside everyone else on the planet. Meditation can help with this, he advises, allowing us to “reflect from a place of calm on who we are: do I exist separately, or do I inter-exist?”
Campbell, meanwhile, advocates for a method he calls CPR, which stands for compassion, passion, and responsibility.
“Compassion means I care about other people, I treat them like they have souls,” he says. “That’s a natural buffer for my ego.” Then there’s passion – doing things purely because you love them, not because you’re attention seeking or status hunting. “It’s a way to do things that are ego-focused, but they’re not ego-inflating,” he adds. And finally, taking responsibility. “If you practise responsibility-taking or ownership – just going, ‘hey, look, I don’t know exactly what happened, but let’s just say it’s my fault and move forward’ – that doesn’t feel good for your ego, but it’s very empowering.”
Van Gordon puts it simply: “We’ve just got to make a choice to get over ourselves, frankly. We’ve got to be more willing to expose ourselves to the world in a safe but courageous way – because it’s only there where we can actually allow our positive, natural human emotions, such as love, compassion and joy, to flourish.”
