Taylor Swift has won over my heart again with her song, Anti-Hero. Though a romantic at heart, like Taylor, I fell out of love with her music a long time back. She was my champion when I was an awkward, love-struck teenager. But as I grew up (I’m still awkward), some of her music grated on my nerves.
Until…Anti-Hero.
Being the personal development junkie/mental health activist that I am, there’s no doubt why this song resonated with me.
Taylor battles with accepting her anti-hero – the parts of her that are flawed, make her feel insecure, and convince her to hate herself.
Each of us has an anti-hero or multiple anti-heroes who hold us back from being happy and content. And until we fully accept our anti-heroes, self-love is unattainable.
In this article, I’ll explain the concept of an anti-hero and how to make peace with yours.
Table of Contents
What Is an Anti-Hero?
I’ve always associated the term “anti-hero” with a third party or someone outside of me.
For me, anti-heroes were the social media users who have nothing positive to say, the toxic friend who makes you feel two inches small, the driver behind you who just can’t get off your ass and the family member that caused most of your childhood trauma.
And while these people suck and affect our mindsets more than we’d care to admit, the biggest anti-hero/heroes that exist are the ones inside us – because they have the power to change us the most (negatively and positively).
The person standing behind you with a gun to your head as you text your ex is you. The person beside you begging you to not send your dream job application is you. The person whispering harshly at 2 AM about how useless you are is you.
Other people or social constructs might have shaped our antiheroes – but this does not matter. Ultimately, they are just a reflection of everything we hate or fear about ourselves.
And without learning how to accept and maybe grow to love our anti-heroes, no amount of productivity advice, bad Netflix shows, social media feeds, and luxurious purchases are going to change the way we feel about ourselves. We’ll always be:
- That miserable person who can never get out of their own head.
- Envious of everyone that does something good with their lives.
- A hoarder and excessive spender who tries to bury their feelings in material items.
- Looking and waiting for bad things to happen.
- Someone who enjoys listening to others’ problems because it makes them feel better about themselves.
- Someone who never feels good enough to be in a healthy relationship, get their dream job, and live a life of peace and contentment.
- Their own worst enemy.
5 Steps to Make Peace with Your Anti-Hero
1. Acknowledge your anti-heroes
Grab a piece of paper or a book (if you have many anti-heroes like me), and be honest with yourself. This is when you must be brave enough to come face to face with your inner demons. We all have them – you aren’t stupid or evil if you have a negative side to you.
We shy away from our inner demons because there are people pretending to be holier than thou or righteous around us. And while I’m sure there are plenty of genuinely good people in the world who have a stable and healthy relationship with themselves, nobody only possesses good qualities.
Everybody has some part of them that they need to reconcile with. Everyone has to heal some part of themselves. So don’t look at yourself and think, “I’m a horrible person; I deserve to be hanged in public.”
Here are some of my anti-heroes:
The Judge
I can be too judgmental of others and their decisions – as if I’m a perfect being sculpted by a Greek God. Even Greek Gods had their flaws.
And call it karma or an awakening, but I’ve been chucked into all the situations where I’ve passed harsh judgment on people. From this, I’ve realized that we are all human and have no right to judge others until we see things from their perspective by climbing into their skin and walking around in it (Source: To Kill a Mockingbird).
I’m slowly learning to become more accepting of others and not pass judgment. However, there are some days when I unconsciously slip into old ways.
The Introvert
Although I believe introverts are the most remarkable people, and there are aspects of my introvertedness that I love – there are also parts I hate.
And most of this has to do with how others perceived me when I was growing up. I was labeled the “timid girl,” and the word “quiet” was thrown at me like an insult. This is a classic example of how outside forces can create your anti-hero. And, of course, I fed the anti-hero even more by allowing these labels to affect me.
Over the years, I have become more friendly, but the anti-hero occasionally reminds me that I’m socially inept.
The Guarded
I am extremely guarded with my emotions, which pulls people away from me (probably why I’ve been single for a long time).
People confuse my guardedness with a lack of emotion. But I feel emotions just like everybody else. However, I struggle to verbalize them and avoid showing my feelings to people.
This anti-hero feeds off my fear of allowing people into my heart. “What if they stomp all over it? What if they ridicule me for my dreams? What if they use what I’ve shared against me?” These are just a few things I hear from this anti-hero daily.
The Risk-Averse
Being a risk-taker is applauded by society. You’re viewed as brave and powerful if you take risks – rightfully so. However, I lack this ability.
My anti-hero will come up with 500 ways something could go wrong – causing me to back out of situations, break relationships, and walk away from things that might’ve been good for me.
So, these are just a few of my anti-heroes. I have many more, but I’m not brave enough to air them out here. You can use these as examples for determining your own anti-heroes.
You can even name them as I did (just to have some fun in this highly uncomfortable task).
Write down all your anti-heroes on paper, as this will give you a sense of clarity and make them “real,” which is a significant step in acknowledging them.
If they continue to exist in your head or, worse, go unnoticed by you, you can’t confront them.
You’re bringing them to life by giving them a name and acknowledgment on paper. And if you can do this, you’re a thousand steps ahead of people who are too afraid to recognize their anti-heroes.
2. See the good parts of your anti-hero
Surprisingly, some of our anti-heroes might not necessarily be bad. Of course, this might not apply to all of them – but some might have protected you in the past.
For example, my extreme introverted tendencies help me weed out the people who only look for surface-level relationships. Hence, the relationships I form are stronger because I only hold onto those who serve me positively. People that can initially get past my cold exterior eventually become a permanent fixture in my life.
The Risk-Averse has helped me avoid making stupid decisions. Similarly, the anti-hero scared to show vulnerability probably saved me from spilling my guts to inconsequential people or opening up too fast.
Of course, one could also argue that my guardedness made people run away from me, and I may have missed out on meeting some good people.
I’m not trying to justify my flaws or encourage you to do the same. However, this is a chance to see your anti-hero as a real person who was created to protect you to some extent.
So, try and objectively look at your anti-heroes and how they might’ve protected you in the past. We harbor so much hate for the negative parts of us but are they really that bad?
We’re all human, after all – the hero and the anti-hero.
3. Forgive yourself
Forgiving yourself sounds very simple on paper.
Forgiving others is easy and comes naturally, but our hate for ourselves can overpower every other emotion. I’m willing to bet that most of us carry deep hatred for ourselves right from childhood – over things we’ve done, said, and thought.
However, forgiving our anti-heroes is the only step forward to release us from years of self-hatred. As I’ve said before, your anti-hero is human because they’re a part of you. They aren’t some mystical being created by a God to destroy you.
They’ve been created from your circumstances. They’re a culmination of your childhood traumas, ingrained fears, and probably genetics.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to feel compassion for them and release yourself from that bitterness.
4. Forgive others
It’s been said that what you hate about others is what you hate about yourself.
This is also a good way to gauge your anti-heroes if you’re still trying to figure them out.
Something can only make us angry, irritated, or frustrated if it is familiar to us. We are indifferent toward what we are unfamiliar with in ourselves. And therefore, it does not bother us.
For example, because I am a risk-averse person, it angers me when I see people close to me afraid to take risks too. Sounds contradictory and confusing? I was confused too – until it made sense. Because I recognize my fear of taking risks, I can easily spot it in most people. Half the time, I even advise them to take the plunge and see where it leads them. Although I never take my own advice.
Similarly, if I’m feeling jovial at a party (seldom) and speaking to everyone I can, I get annoyed if I see someone else behaving like a wallflower. I think, “What’s wrong with them? Why are they being so snobbish?” Yet, I act that way most of the time.
Because I can feel that person’s feelings like they are my own – I criticize them when I’m actually criticizing myself.
There are also certain qualities in my dad that I get annoyed with. When I look deeper, I realize I share the same traits. So, why does it annoy me? Perhaps because they remind me of my shortcomings?
Weird hey? The human brain is complicated, and I’ll leave it to scientists and psychologists to figure it out.
But here’s what I’ve managed to understand: to relinquish yourself from your own negativity, you have to let go of the chokehold you’ve got around other people. View them as normal, imperfect individuals like you.
The more hatred you feel in your heart for not just yourself, but anybody, the more weighed down you get, and there’s no way to move forward.
5. Be the face of your self-improvement
Self-improvement has been receiving a lot of flak recently – and I agree to an extent. It’s more focused on improving your outward approach to life – meaning, productivity, improving your grades, doing ten tasks at once, etc.
But real self-improvement is improving the “self” – the unhealed parts of you – your anti-hero.
Without repairing your relationship with your anti-hero, it doesn’t matter how much you do in a day or how much you make in a month; it will always come back to bite you in the rear end.
However, instead of following someone else’s self-improvement program, tailor your self-improvement to your anti-heroes. See how you can make them better.
Most of the time, we blindly follow someone else’s idea of self-improvement. We exercise 10 times a day because a fitness YouTuber told us to, or we’re forced to journal because that’s the new “in” thing. Or, God forbid, we take a nap instead of working.
My advice is to work on your anti-hero qualities. For example, my self-improvement plan would entail becoming more confident, so I can easily speak to people. To improve The Judge, I should be more open-minded and see things from different perspectives. The Risk-Averse can step out of her comfort zone more by sending her dream job applications instead of worrying about the outcomes too much.
Final Thoughts
It took me a while to put this post together because facing your own anti-heroes before advising people how to accept theirs isn’t easy.
I haven’t reached the epitome of self-acceptance with my anti-heroes yet, and you shouldn’t expect yourself to get there fast, either.
Like every healing activity and mental health exercise, this will take time. Don’t be disheartened when your anti-heroes get the better of you. Now that you’re aware of them, you’re more likely to develop the strength to resist their harsh words and judgment.
2 comments
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