You accomplished something, made a witty remark, or just wore a nice shirt and here it comes: a compliment. You feel weird about it. You might not even know why, but here you are already deflecting the nice thing someone said about you. There has to be a better reaction, right? You don’t want to hurt feelings or anything, but accepting the compliment outright might feel…well, off.
Experts and therapists wouldn’t blame you. While it’s common courtesy to accept the compliment, there may be several valid reasons why it just doesn’t sit right with you. If that’s the case, there are some proper responses to compliments depending on what was said and the situation.
@gigi_leflair I cant just take the compliment & go & i dont know why #selfdoubtistheworst #compliments #unneccessaryanxiety #gigileflair
A compliment based on appearance or what could be perceived as a stereotypical trait or a micro transgression can make you feel weird or activate poor self-esteem even if the person giving the compliment didn’t mean anything negative about it. Some broad examples of this would include complimenting a Black person for being “articulate” or admiring a woman’s body. If this type of situation has happened to you and you interact with the compliment-giver regularly, you may want to pull them aside and tell them that while their intentions were friendly, compliments about your sex, appearance, and the like don’t reflect that positive intention.
But what if the compliment isn’t about your appearance? What if someone says “Nice hit!” at a home run you made during softball or “That was a great presentation” at work? You did do a good job, so why does it still feel weird when someone acknowledges it? Well, it could be because the compliment unintentionally makes you feel pressure and anxiety to meet that expectation all of the time (“I have to score a home run every time now? Gulp!”) or that you are uncomfortable being the center of attention (“I hope I didn’t do so well that I have to do presentations every month now.”).
@genemeyerlol #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #foryourpage #xyzbca #mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters #therapy #anxiety #anxious #funny #haha #lol #lmao #friends #selfcare
What about the compliments that are harmless? Why do some people (maybe including yourself) make a self-deprecating joke like, “Don’t look in my closet, haha” when someone remarks about how clean your home looks? Why does a person comment, “Oh, it’s just a good idiot-proof recipe” when someone praises their cooking? Why can’t you just accept a banal compliment like, “Nice shirt”? Well, if it isn’t due to past trauma, it could be because you’re just American.
“In the U.S., we are taught to be very humble and honestly conservative,” said Emmalee Bierly, a licensed marriage and family therapist. “Like, the country started absolutely puritanical.”
@vinsvisionbtw A simple compliment goes a long way 🤍 #pov #fyp #confidence #positivevibes #social #positivity #hopecore
Given how some of America’s roots came from literal Puritans, it’s not a surprise that people in the U.S., women especially, have trouble accepting praise due to the fact that they still value modesty and don't want to come off as arrogant by merely agreeing with the compliment. We may be stereotypically loud and brash, but accepting compliments tends to clam us up culturally as an aftershock from those original strict viewpoints.
So what’s the best response to a compliment, even if you don’t agree with it? While there are certain situations in which you may need to gently correct the compliment-giver, the majority of the time the best response to a compliment is simply, “Thank you.” Saying thanks to a compliment doesn’t brush it off and allows the compliment-giver to know that their intention was appreciated. Framing it in this way is saying, “This is what this person believes to be true and they have a right to that opinion” rather than relying on your self-perception and self-assessment to make it true to yourself.
@karolinageits that reaction 😍
Saying "thank you" to compliments is also shown to have a more positive effect on your life. You either don’t let the compliment impact you or you’ll eventually accept it as truth to boost your self-esteem and confidence over time. While other people’s views can only impact your self-worth so much, getting positive feedback helps increase it to make you feel good and accepted. This is generally the whole point of a compliment in the first place.
So, if you’re a person who’s bad with compliments, do your best to say thanks and move on when it’s applicable. It’ll make the compliment-giver feel validated while either boosting you or allowing you to move on to a different topic of conversation depending on where your head is.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.