Why is it so hard for so many people to take a compliment? Why, when someone tells us how well we've done or how important we are, do we deflect this?** I see it happening everywhere, but especially in graduate school. In many ways the response is one in which we provide a "reality check" for the complimenter. Someone might say, "wow, you did a really great job on that memo" and our reply might be "yeah, but that's the only thing I understood from the reading" or "I was just bull-shitting my way through." Another response is often to deflect the compliment onto the complimenter. "oh, but you're the real superstar here" or "that's nothing compared to yours" or "you paved the way for my ideas." Rarely does the complimenter get a "thank you" without some kind of qualifier about how the compliment is not completely justified. Why do we do this? What does it say about how we value our own capabilities? And what does it mean for the complimenter?
By immediately countering or qualifying the compliment, it serves to invalidate what the complimenter said. We're essentially saying, "You're wrong. Let me tell you how it really is." I have been on the receiving end of this many times, as the complimenter, and it feels pretty shitty. Sometimes I am offended. Sometimes I am sad. And sometimes it makes me really ticked off. When I compliment someone, 99% of the time I really do mean it and I started to realize that this tends to be the case. Most people don't give out compliments unless they mean it. Yes, sometimes people might offer you a compliment simply because you complimented them first or because they feel the situation calls for it for some reason. But most of the time, they are telling you something they like about you because they truly like that thing about you.
So about a year or two ago, I really started to think about these encounters and realized that I do exactly the same thing. I deflect compliments all the time! I, of course, speak from my own experience here, but I believe that others feel this way too, especially in graduate school. Most of the time I don't mean to invalidate people's beliefs about me or offend them or tell them they're wrong. Often, I truly believe that I do not live up to what they say about me. I feel that I must set them straight, that their expectations of me are too high and I will inevitably fall short because I am not as great as they seem to think I am. However, after I realized how much I do this, I started accepting some compliments. Sometimes my only response is "thank you." Of course, sometimes I still don't truly believe the complimenters know enough about me to make those kind of statements about me, but I do believe that they are telling me because they believe them. And now even more so, I pay attention to the observations I make about others and I do think that outsiders can sometimes see things that you either cannot see or do not accept about yourself. So, sometimes it's good to listen and to take a compliment as insight into how others perceive you. And sometimes it's just nice to bask in the glow of someone thinking that you're kind of great.
Now, I cannot leave this discussion without noting that of course there is a gendered story here (and surely a raced and classed story too). Women tend to deflect compliments onto others, probably because we learn that we are supposed to take care of others, to put others before ourselves, so before we can allow ourselves to be complimented, we must ensure that others feel that validation first. In addition, women tend to be complimented on our bodies more than men. Here we must also think about our own perceptions of our bodies, how society tells us to feel about our bodies, and how our reactions are partially a response to both of those things, among others. A truly gendered analysis of compliments could be a whole post in itself and here we might also discuss what compliments can mean for women coming from different people (see note at the end of this post).
My challenge to you now is to start paying attention to compliments. Notice how you react when you are complimented. What's your immediate reaction? If it's to redirect the compliment onto someone else or to qualify it with some way you don't actually live up to it, try to refrain from doing that. Try to just say "thank you." Also, notice other people's reactions to compliments you give. Are there gender differences? Race, class differences? Other status/power differences (for instance if a professor compliments a student as opposed to the reverse)? You might be surprised at what you see. If you are (or even if you're not), I would love for you to share your observations with me.
Now, go forth and accept those compliments!
*After I wrote the title for this post, I realized readers might think this post was about sexual harassment or cat-calling because often when a woman reacts negatively, this is the response: "Why can't you take a compliment?" Or as man recently said to me at a club, "It was just a f***ing compliment" when I reacted negatively to his hand on my arm and his compliment: "you're f***ing adorable." As you can see, this post was necessarily thinking about these types of compliments, but this possible confusion brings up an important reason why some alleged compliments are not taken as such because they may feel objectifying or in some way threatening.
**In this post I use "we" and "us" frequently (sometimes known as the "royal we"). This is not to say that I am speaking for everyone, but that I am speaking to those who identify with what I am saying and to those who may not even realize they do this. I am speaking from my experience of being a compliment-deflector and a compliment-acceptor, and seeing other people act as compliment-deflectors. By no means is this experience universal, nor does it apply equally to people from all social locations.
