In my opinion, it’s good that you’re noticing your irrational thoughts and are recognizing that they’re irrational. That’s good because that means you can change them. If you know something is irrational you can dig deeper into the WHY. Why am I thinking this? What is it that I really want? If I got what I thought I wanted, would it REALLY help me or is what I TRULY want something deeper than that?  Once you start questioning this stuff and really dig in there and hash out the root, it fixes the cause of a lot of this stuff.

The irrational thoughts that you’re having is where that book comes in handy too. There is a chapter on recognizing the “automatic thoughts” or “thought errors” as they call them, labeling then (overgeneralizations, mind reading, “should” statements, etc), and then rethinking/rationalizing a more adaptive thought. Once you practice doing this, your thoughts will likely turn from automatically maladaptive to more adative thoughts, so they’re more rational than irrational.  To change your mindset you just sort of have to retrain your brain, and that takes time.

With the meditation, if it’s leading you to pick out irrational thoughts, it might actually be working. Those bad feelings and thoughts are just there to show you what needs to be looked at and worked on, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing and definitely not a waste of brain energy. Recognizing and acknowledging your issues is how you fix them 🙂 So that’s actually really mindful… to be able to even recognize your issues. (and having issues/bad feelings/irrational thoughts also doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with you… we all have them for different things. Life is a constant state of growth). Maybe try meditation again, a little more regularly for a bit… like set aside 10-15 minutes in the morning to do it and then another 10-15 in the afternoon, same time every day if you’re able to, and see what comes up.

No matter what, be gentle with yourself. All of this stuff takes time. Realistically, you’re at an age where you’re going to care what other people think at least to a certain degree. I think that’s normal, too. My advice is to just try not to actually compare yourself to them (not comparing will save you a ton of suffering), and just keep working on being okay with who you are because the RIGHT people for you will love you for exactly who you are. The right kind of people can really appreciate someone who is genuine, authentic, and loves who they are, so that’s a good goal to work toward… just figuring out who you are for yourself and being that person… and knowing it’s okay to be that person and that you don’t have to put on an act for anyone.  And it’s also okay for not everyone to like you.  One of my favorite quote is by Dita Von Tease and she said “You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.”   And how true that is.