Here's What It Means If You Can't Take A Compliment

Have you ever replied to a compliment with a self-deprecating rebuttal? For example, when someone praises your clean home you reply with “Oh, don’t look too closely.” Or when someone compliments your outfit, you say something like “Oh, it was cheap.”

If this sounds familiar, there may be a reason why you struggle with simply saying “Thank you.” In fact, our society makes it pretty hard for “Thank you” to be a complete sentence.

We asked therapists what it could mean if you struggle to accept compliments and what you can do to get better at it. Here’s what they said:

As a society, humility is encouraged, making it hard to accept compliments.

“In the U.S., we are taught to be very humble and honestly conservative,” said Emmalee Bierly, a licensed marriage and family therapist, co-owner of The Therapy Group in Pennsylvania and co-host of the “ShrinkChicks” podcast. “Like, the country started absolutely puritanical.”

We’re taught that accepting a compliment may even change how people view us, she added. There’s a false idea that your gratitude will be mistaken as vanity. And for women and girls, this viewpoint can be even more intense.

“Especially as women socialized in this country, we are so worried about looking self-centered or overly confident,” Bierly said. “We’re so scared about what that could possibly mean for us. I accept the compliment, then I’m ‘full of myself.’”

“For our BIPOC community, cultural beliefs and values come into play as well,” said Dominique Mortier, a psychotherapist at Bloom Psychology and Wellness in Toronto, “especially for us who are from more collectivist cultures.”

In collectivist cultures, people aren’t taught to focus on the individual because it’s viewed as selfish. “So those