Eve,

I cannot help but sympathize with your struggle. Learning to love myself has been (and continues to be) a lifelong process. What I do know is that it starts with learning to adjust your inner monologue. Stop criticizing yourself. Stop comparing yourself to your supposed “prettier friends”. I would recommend exploring the technique of mindfulness and then learning to use it everyday.

Also, take some time to “date” yourself. Rediscover what makes you feel good about yourself. Try and focus on what you like about yourself. Be grateful for the things you do have. And take part in activities that bring you joy.

It seems to me you are an intelligent, thoughtful young woman. It would be a shame to waste the rest of your life trying to fix something that ain’t broke! Good luck and take care.

Hi Eve,

I will share what I have discovered lately…. There are many times when I would find myself with negative thoughts about myself… Although people find me attractive; I would think, ‘they must be crazy, hell I’m not or may be what they see is a facade’. Our mind is a strange place and difficult to handle sometimes.

I would look rarely in the mirror and one fine day, it caught my attention and I said, hey, wait a minute, this person in the mirror is pretty, is that really me? Well, then I should come here often and look at the mirror and develop positive thoughts about myself…

The point here is not if we look pretty or not, but the way we see ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves, we can’t expect others to love us.

Another way of feeling good about ourselves is to journal what we like about us or the things we are good at. Everyday, atleast 10 things, it will be difficult in the beginning, but you’ll feel great about yourself!

Affirmations is another good practice to implement in our daily life.

Lots of love and positivity to you….:-)

Hi Eve,

I completely empathize with you. There have been numerous occasions where I had no love or self-respect for myself and found it a difficult journey to try and pull myself up from that position of low self-worth. It’s a constant struggle, but let me tell you, when I can find ways to make myself feel whole again, it’s an indescribably wonderful feeling; I know that you can reach this level of self-love as well. We all go through dark times in life (whether it be sporadic, short-term, or long-term), and that is okay. It’s what we can take out of these dark times that shape our character.

It seems to me that you are letting your past define you. Because your parents did not show interest or care in your emotions, you felt unworthy of their attention & love and therefore carried this with you into your adult life. No matter what your inner critic tells you, I’m here to tell you that you ARE in fact worthy of love. Your first obstacle and something that you need to acknowledge is this–you need to let go of your past. It’s nothing but a chapter in your book of life, and it’s over. You now have the capacity and room to start a new chapter and make a “new beginning”. How you overcome this obstacle is entirely up to you, but I know you have the strength to surpass it. To give you some guidance though, I would start with forgiveness. Forgive your parents, and forgive yourself.

As for your significant other, I think it’s natural to let some of our insecurities spill over into the relationship. But we can’t make this a permanent thing. Having someone who is patient with you and understands that you are struggling with some inner conflict is definitely someone worth keeping, but even the most understanding and loving person can only take so much after awhile. I do not tell you this to discourage you, it’s just a fact that many couples go through. Your boyfriend should complement who you are, not try and make you whole. I ALWAYS ALWAYS encourage others to make themselves whole and not seek out this responsibility in someone else. My advice, and you can take it with a grain of salt or carefully consider it, is to be single. Loving yourself is a journey that must be completed on your own, otherwise it becomes a viscous cycle of looking for other partners to fill your voids (and believe me, it never ends well).

Maybe right now you need to focus on a career. Or you need to go out there and socialize with new people. Don’t worry about the so-called-friends who couldn’t stand listening to your problems after awhile. Do they sound like genuine friends to you? Look for people in life that are only going to lift you higher and raise you up. Of course some of this must be done on your own because not everyone can carry your whole weight, metaphorically speaking. Surround yourself in an enriching environment with mindful and wonderful people who are going to bring out the best in you. Take up new hobbies and rediscover your strengths and passions. Start reading (read self-help books if it’ll repair some of your confidence and esteem), or write in a journal everyday and let your thoughts out. There are many creative outlets to expressing our emotions.

You are not alone in this, and I’m sure if you found the right crowd, they would be more than willing to hear you vent and to get rid of some excess anger/frustration/sadness.

Try your best to keep a positive attitude and remind yourself that you will get through this dark time and that things always get better. But keep in mind that you must take action in order for things to get better. I have faith in you and I know you will do quite well. You seem like a wonderful and thoughtful woman. You just need to believe in yourself more, but you’ll get there. Best of luck, dear!

-Namaste

Hi Eve,

Maybe too late now, but I hope you are doing well. I have recently been going through something like this myself. Really confusing to be honest. People say follow a certain steps to love yourself, set goals etc. Really none of that shit seems to work.  It just feels like I am fighting an endless battle with myself trying to love myself. Interestingly, all the counselors and psychologists think that by fighting this battle with yourself, you will learn to love yourself eventually as a part of you will over power the other part. I think all of this is just encouraging neuroticism.

Recently, through my explorations, I have learnt a new way to resolve my internal conflicts. Basically goes like this, having an insight out of self-understanding and that very insight brings the dissolution of conflict (something similar to what has been communicated by J Krishnamurti and Buddha — Being a light to oneself). Now while reading your article, I kind of had some insights about my (and probably yours as well) situation. It seems to me that we often think we have a lot of time in our lives, and facing the fact that we are getting old and would die one day brings more stress and anxiety. But the truth is our time is passing by, and yet we are faced with this tremendous self-conflict and disorder. How do we understand this disorder so fully that we free ourselves from it immediately so that we aren’t wasting any more life energy living in conflict?

Let’s see, I think I lack self-love, because nobody really taught me how to love myself. My father was emotionally abusive. I don’t think he intended to be that way, but he had become one. In the culture where I come from, it is considered to be a favorable thing when a kid is scared of his father, as then, the kid stays in control and doesn’t just do whatever the hell he/she likes. I was beaten with belt/slippers, shouted on as well. And then, when I wanted to cry, because my mom was to weak to see me cry, she would cry in return and emotionally black-mail me to stop crying. And if my father saw me crying, well then I was legit fucked! He would shout at me even more until I stopped crying! You see, I became a master of suppression! There were reasons that I continued suppressing my wants and my needs you know:

I.) Probably because suppressing my feelings kept me safe from the wrath of this maniac I called my father and also kept that one weakling (my mother) happy. This way we could all pretend that nothing was wrong in our family and we are/were a happy family.

ii.) Suppressing my desire to hang out with friends seemed to help me study better. Studying better meant better reputation among classmates and teachers. Finally, the love that I wanted!! But then, studying more, becoming more and more perfect became my ambition, and in this ambition, I ironically, isolated myself more and more from people. Also, in this ambition for excellence (fueled by the need for love and respect from people),  I further suffocated myself until I achieved perfection. You see, I turned against myself lol!

Honestly, it is very complicated. But I hope that through this self understanding, I would eventually be free. I don’t know honestly. Really, I personally feel that self love should be something natural. A dog knows how to take care of itself. So does a kid (cries everytime it experiences inconvenience, not caring whatever the hell adults face lol!). Somehow in this demand of meeting externally set standards, we seemed to have become excellent at suffocating ourselves. Maybe all we have to do is understand ourselves, than to suffocate ourselves further with the pressure of loving ourselves to achieve some results. Because it seems like if we are striving to love ourselves, then we are fighting ourselves, and then inturn, maybe not loving ourselves.

Take care 🙂