Self-love is healthy and important.

All the time now, we hear, “You can’t love another until you love yourself.” And there is certainly truth to this statement.

However, in the age of social media, we’ve created a blurred line between having healthy confidence and exhibiting narcissistic qualities. There’s a big difference between the two, but we seem to be failing to recognize this.

Getting likes, securing new followers, and reaching for constant external validation to feed our starving egos has become the new normal.

In the process, we are losing our empathy toward others and losing our ability to decipher others’ emotions—while placing a high value on our own self-importance.

Here are some key differences between the love of self and narcissism:

Self-love exudes confidence,
narcissism exudes charm.

Self-love feels inherently worthy,
narcissism requires constant external validation.

Self-loves shows empathy,
narcissism shows apathy.

Self-love requires self-reflection,
narcissism requires mirrors and selfies.

Self-love faces fears,
narcissism is fear-based.

Self-love is compassionate,
narcissism is arrogant.

Self-love sees value in close personal relationships,
narcissism sees value in having a big following.

Self-love is aware,
narcissism is detached.

Self-love runs deep,
narcissism runs shallow.

Self-love is soul,
narcissism is ego.

Self-love is grounded in reality,
narcissism is grounded in fantasy.

Self-love admits to weaknesses,
narcissism embellishes strengths.

Self-love is able to read the emotion of others,
narcissism is indifferent to the emotion of others.

Self-love is humble,
narcissism is boastful.

As we dive further and further into the fantasy realm of social media, we become more concerned with feeding our (and each other’s) ever-starving and insatiable egos, and less concerned with feeding our souls.

Self-love is universal love,
narcissism is self-importance.

It’s time we start to recognize the difference.

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Author: Kathryn Kos
Image: Seth Doyle/Unsplash
Editor: Callie Rushton