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Search Results for "self-hatred" — 67 posts

Why We Need to Stop Judging Our Feelings

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“Your emotions are meant to fluctuate, just like your blood pressure is meant to fluctuate. It’s a system that’s supposed to move back and forth, between happy and unhappy. That’s how the system guides you through the world.” ~Daniel Gilbert

As a highly sensitive person I experience emotions very deeply, though it’s not usually obvious to others that I’m having such strong internal reactions.

For those not familiar with this trait, high sensitivity is not a defect or a personality flaw; it simply means that you experience sensory and emotional input more strongly than non-sensitive people.

Of course, this …

If Self-Love Seems Difficult, Start with Self-Like

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“It’s not your job to like me. It’s mine.” ~Byron Katie

Self-love is a word that gets used a lot. Overused, in fact.

The pressures and associations around the phrase “self-love” are immense. At school, we actually tore apart girls who loved themselves, as if it was such a bad thing. As teenagers, we saw self-love as big headed and arrogant.

If only we knew the harm that we were doing, not just to others but most of all to ourselves.

So how about we begin with self-like?

I definitely felt that I had to try to get people …

Why We Can’t Have Healthy, Happy Relationships Without Self-Love

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“Worry about loving yourself instead of loving the idea of other people loving you.” ~Unknown

Body image and self-love have been my biggest struggles. They’ve affected every area of my life, including relationships.

I developed anorexia in high school after experiencing a number of losses in a short period of time.

During my high school years I didn’t date much. I had a few boyfriends, but the relationships never progressed because I was afraid of intimacy, due to the fact that I was uncomfortable in my skin and didn’t like my body.

I had body dysmorphia, thinking I was overweight …

Natural Beauty Is Accepting Yourself, Just as You Are

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“When you are balanced and when you listen and attend to the needs of your body, mind, and spirit, your natural beauty comes out.” ~Christy Turlington

It wasn’t until I stopped wearing makeup that I realized the hypocrisy in every “natural beauty” ad. Be natural, wear a mask, they say. Unleash your confidence by hiding your flaws, they say.

If only it were so simple.

My struggle with body image began at age five. That was the first time I threw up to make myself feel thin.

I began to heal four years ago after I almost killed myself. All …

Loving Yourself When You’re Too Fat, Too Skinny, Too Tall, or Too Short

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“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Living in NYC, I have seen some crazy and outrageous things. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see an ad in the subway that read, “Overcome Your Bikini Fears. Breast Augmentation Made In NY: $3,900,” or another ad from the same plastic surgery office that showed a picture of a woman looking sad, holding a pair of small tangerines in front of her breasts, and the same woman looking happy holding grapefruits, with the same caption, “Breast Augmentation Made in NY: $3,900.”

Still, I …

What’s Really Going on When Someone Seems “Too Sensitive”

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“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ~Cynthia Occelli

The whole time I was growing up, I was told, incessantly, that I was “too sensitive.” These words, when I first heard them, came from the mouth of the person I vowed I would never become.

And yet, as I grew up, these words didn’t stay within the darkness of my childhood home. They began to roll out of the mouths of kids …

How to Move Forward When You Feel Like Your Life Is Over

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“When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

At seventeen years old, baseball was my life. I played on the top summer Connecticut baseball teams, constantly practiced and trained, and dreamed of being a starter for the high school varsity team. Junior year I was on varsity but didn’t get any playing time, so I was putting all my hopes and dreams into spring of my senior year.

When I went to college showcases, I was one of the standout players and I received many letters in the mail from …

How to Change Your Habits and Your Life in 5 Steps

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“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” ~Frederick Douglass

We all experience struggles. Some are seemingly insurmountable. Others, like mine, are comparatively small. Regardless of their scale, it’s what we learn from our struggles that counts.

Mine began while at university in London. Originally from a small town in the Welsh valleys, the move to the big city was a scary one for me.

A mum’s boy at heart, I didn’t deal well with being so far away from home. I’m also an introvert who didn’t embrace the uni lifestyle of drinking to failure, so I didn’t make …

Unlearning the Self-Loathing That’s Passed Down by Generations

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“Embrace and love your body. It is the most amazing thing you will ever own.” ~Unknown

The first time I made myself throw up to feel skinny, I was five years old. My grandmother still loves to tell this story—she thinks it’s funny.

The story goes like this: I tell my grandmother my stomach feels sick. She rubs my belly. I tell her it still hurts. She asks me if I want to try the “potion.” I say, “Yes.”

The “potion,” as I realized in an unrelated context in my early twenties, was syrup of Ipecac—a strong vomit inducer. I …

Accepting, Feeling, and Releasing Painful Emotions

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“Eventually you will come to realize that love heals everything, and love is all there is.” ~Gary Zukav

Last year I developed some unexplained symptoms that could be likened to IBS, Chron’s disease, or even morning sickness (although I wasn’t pregnant, so there was no promise of a baby to make it all worth it).

I had no idea what caused it, why it was there, or what to do about it.

This shook me because I’d always had a strong intuitive connection with my body and I had always been healthy, but now when I asked my body a …

The Secret to Getting Along With Your Parents

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“My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we’re living with right now.” ~Byron Katie

Nothing hurts like being misunderstood, and there is no place that this feeling runs rampant quite like it does with family.

I used to think I was the only one.

For years after I moved out, each visit back home would be preceded by careful, specific preparation. I would try to brace myself for whatever would be coming my way.

I would spend the entire two-hour bus ride turning all of the possible criticisms and probable arguments over and over in …

How to Live a Full Life and Smile Your Way Through It

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“There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.” ~Tom Robbins

I recently had my thirty-first birthday. I am officially in my thirties. This leads to reflection; what have I accomplished with my time as an adult?

I recently started over yet again, making this the fifth state I’ve lived in seven years. I have a roommate, half of the stuff in my room is hers, and I’m temping for a living. I was more prosperous at twenty friggin’ three…

…externally.

If you were to see a photo of me at the age of eighteen next to a …

How We Can Reduce Our Suffering by Feeling Uncomfortable Feelings

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“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Just about everyone experiences sorrow at times. I know I do.

The other morning, in fact, I was caught off guard by a very particular sorrow. Nothing happened, per se; but from the moment I awoke, I felt an aching sense of sadness and loss at the fact that my career path has taken me away from the field of mental health counseling.

As I became aware of my sorrow, it filled my heart and mind like …

Silencing Your Inner Critic: You Don’t Need to Torture Yourself to Grow

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“You yourself, as much as anyone in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

I was tortured by self-hatred for most of my life.

There were aspects of myself that I had a hard time loving. I didn’t like that I am competitive, that I was not a blonde with blue eyes, that I am not good at math or managing money.

I did everything I could to hide these things. I was over-caring, over-helping, and over-accommodating others.

I think I did a pretty good job of not being myself. This created additional psychic pain in me. I …

Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself Interview: Amyra Mah

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It’s day four in the pre-order promotion for Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself, a book about taming your inner critic that features 40 stories from Tiny Buddha contributors. 

Over the next month, you’ll have a chance to meet some of them through daily interviews here on the blog.

Today’s featured contributor is Amyra Mah of unusualwisdom.com. Having formerly struggled with depression, addiction, and body image issues, she now works as a spiritual coach, addiction therapist, intuitive counselor, writer, and blogger.

Her contribution for the book focuses on feeling our feelings instead of running away from them (and …

Let the Energy of Unhappiness Power Your Purpose

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“The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.” ~Ralph Blum

The summer of 2007 was simply terrible. I wish I could find something positive to say about it but there really was nothing that I can think of. I was underemployed, the economy was tanking, and I was in a shame spiral of depression and self-hatred.

Following a fight with my husband, I found myself driving aimlessly, snot and tears running down my face. I’m not comfortable saying I was on a mission to stop living, but the thought had definitely crossed my mind.…

How I Found Peace When Anxiety Was Controlling My Life

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“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

For five long years during my mid-twenties I was a recluse.

Anxiety so badly affected my life it became impossible for me to venture outside my front door or to interact socially with other people.

Fear and panic would envelop my mind and body, rendering me paralyzed from doing the things I dearly wanted to do. My hopes of being a normal human being lay in tatters. Everything seemed impossible.

Seeing my old friends on Facebook and other people enjoying life, attending parties, finding partners, getting …

Don’t Let Anyone or Anything Dim Your Inner Light

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“The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be.” ~Shakti Gawain

I was born with it. I know I was. There was a light within me that showed in my smile, my dancing around the house, my love for life, for friends, for family, and my bright future.

I don’t remember the exact day it happened, I don’t remember the last event that did it, but my inner light went out. I was no longer the happy-go-lucky girl I once was; I became lost in an abyss of darkness and sadness. Happiness …

Who to Fall in Love with First: 6 Ways to Love Yourself

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“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

Most of us are so busy waiting for someone to love us that we’ve forgotten about the one person we need to love first—ourselves.

Ironically, it was when my ten-year marriage fizzled that I began the innermost process of self-discovery about love.

While discouraged and saddened at the crumbling of our relationship, I began to explore love more. How had it fizzled? Why had we stopped loving each other, and what had happened to …

How to Start Feeling at Peace with the Way You Look

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“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel” ~Steve Furtick

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had issues with the way I look. Back when I was at school, I stood out, being one of the only Asian students in a small English village. This heightened my awareness of how different I looked in relation to my peers and started my obsession of comparing myself with others.

It is often stated that adolescence can be a painful period in everyone’s life, and mine was no exception. By …