people don't tend to wake up one morning and decide they're ugly. usually, it's from a lifetime of being told so by others. they're either told and treated like it to the point of believing it, or taught repeatedly that not thinking of themselves as ugly leads to even more humiliation. people are privileged as hell if they don't understand that.
Came here to say this. I was told that I am ugly in Middle-School. That stuck with me, especially when I, after weight loss no less, compare my face to the faces of my classmates. And I also observe people who are average looking or somewhat aesthetically pleasing calling themselves beautiful getting negative comments on social media. That teaches people that unless they are model level pretty they have no right to even claim being average let alone see themselves positively.
So calling myself ugly is also a part of making myself safe. (I would say I am below average but far from objectively ugly, but still.)
Exactly! People see those who are confident with their looks and decide it's a good idea to knock down their confidence and "put them in their place"! Why would it feel safe to confidently declare yourself pretty if you're not model-level pretty?
Also people underestimate pretty privilege, as opposed to a confident average looking or somewhat pleasing looking person. With model pretty people, people do not dare to give those negative comments.
Unless someone is aging, then you cannot do anything right (aged naturally = you look older than your age, disgusting; aged with work done = shallow bitch; only natural is graceful). I am seeing that too at 37.
They absolutely do give negative comments if you’re model pretty. In fact, they give more negative comments, because they’re envious. Especially when you’re young. There’s a reason why models are the most insecure people you’ll ever meet.
I have never seen that on social media or on influencers. But I am not surprise, it is not even about envy or something, one trait that many humans have is to be eager to hurt, dominate and destroy someone else.
This is why the idea of “loving yourself first” drive me up the walls. It’s like faulting an illiterate person for not knowing how to read. You need guidance and the examples of others to emulate.
Ideally you get taught, yes. But if you weren’t, or worse yet, got negative and self-defeating messages instilled in you instead, then it would be foolish to just give up on yourself and stay miserable. Because that one’s actually true, and it’s an advice how to improve your life and be happier, not an accusation (taking it that way comes from a mindset of lacking self-love, ask me how I know). You most likely already know how to treat others well. When you don’t love yourself, you just don’t believe that you deserve this, too.
The trick to learn self-love is shockingly simple — the hard part is to do it consistently: act as if you already love yourself. If you don’t know how, pretend like you are another person whom you very much love, and like the quality of your entire existence depends on treating them as kindly as you can (because it actually does). This really works because when you start to treat yourself better, this in turn leads to more positive feelings about yourself.
Nobody likes people who talk down to them, insult them, ignore their needs, don’t support them and generally treat them badly. Oneself isn’t magically exempt from this. If you treat yourself badly, you won’t like yourself. So you’ll treat yourself even worse, which can make it a downward spiral. Fortunately, the reverse is also true. People love people who treat them well, and yes, that actually starts with their own self and improves their self-perception in a positive cycle.
Otherwise, it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely love others (rather than be codependent and confuse this with love) and treat them well according to what they need from you (or even recognise what their needs are, and that there is a difference to yours), if you don’t love yourself and don’t treat yourself well first. It’s also difficult to draw good boundaries, which chips away at your self-respect, takes away resources from you, creates a lot of avoidable stress, is self-limiting and leads you into various bad situations.
For one, you lack practice with these things without good self-care, because your relationship with yourself is the most enduring and all-encompassing in your life, so it functions as a template for all your other relations. Hence it needs to be prioritised. Not like arrogance or entitlement, but like you would prioritise your spouse and treat them with respect, love and care, stand up for them etc. but that doesn’t stop you from also treating others well and leaves reasonable space for other people in your life.
Secondly, when you don’t do that, you’re like a starving person who’s too preoccupied with their own need for food to pay any attention to others.
There’s a reason airplane staff instructs you to put on your own oxygen mask first, and only then assist others. Same principle. Can’t care for others if you haven’t taken care of yourself first. Neglecting this necessary condition can only lead to dysfunctional coping strategies and bad outcomes:
You (general you) either can’t properly meet others’ needs or burn out trying because you won’t be fulfilled enough and won’t have the energy to spare. And/or you act needy and drive people away with that. And/or you’ll give way more than your fair share out of desperation to keep people around and constantly get used, and/or end up resenting others.
And/or you seek out other miserable, unfulfilled people to avoid feeling less than, which keeps you trapped in a crabs in a bucket mentality. And/or you’re drawn to people who mistreat you, because you become convinced you deserve it or can’t do better anyway. And/or you treat others badly to temporarily lift yourself up at their expense, but only ever feel worse for it.
This is simply how people work. It’s been tested billions of times over the course of millennia, so it doesn’t matter whether one wants to believe it or not, argue it or not, it just works that way. Those who disregard it suffer from chronic unhappiness and are either lonely, struggle to build deep, meaningful relationships or wind up in recurrent toxic relationships (not only romantic, but also bad friendships, family, workplaces etc.) and keep wondering why this is always happening to them. Poor boundaries, codependency and lack of self-love is why.
If you can’t meet your own emotional needs, the corollary is: you’ll need someone or something outside yourself to fulfil them for you. Except this never works out. Either you become wholly dependent on that person or thing (which is how codependent relationships and addictions work), or you keep driving people away because being single-handedly made responsible for another adult’s happiness and fulfilment is way too much pressure and an impossible task to fulfil, or bad people are going to take advantage of you. Or you become the emotional vampire who takes advantage of others.
Either way, externalising the source of your fulfilment leads to constant anxiety and helplessness, because relying on something outside of your control to meet your emotional needs and make you happy is to surrender your own agency, and whatever it is that keeps you going could always be taken away. Which is scary and leads to unhealthy measures to cling to it.
There is no good, healthy alternative to self-love and self-care first, because a relationship without love and care is neither good nor healthy, and that very much includes one’s relationship with oneself.
A lot of people weren’t adequately taught how to love themselves either, or were taught the very opposite (hi, here’s one 👋) but fortunately, it’s never too late to stop expecting different results from repeating more of the same and to start trying something different instead. It’s not an overnight miracle, but it definitely is a game-changer if you spend enough time treating yourself like someone you love.
Which includes forgiving yourself that you won’t always get it right even if you try, or won’t always know how to, because being safe and loved means your sincere efforts are acknowledged and you’re allowed to not know things or make mistakes and learn from them, and nobody will beat you up over it.
Exactly. I was always the tall, lumbering thing at the back of a classroom full of beautiful girls. I was kinda like Brienne of Tarth. Definitely not conventionally attractive, and as a teenager it sucks, because no matter how much I said I liked being different I would have given anything to wake up the next day and be magically beautiful.
I feel this way but with wishing I could trade in my unique weirdness and debilitating depression to be a grounded stable normal person. Btw i think Brienne if Tarth is gorgeous and powerful,and that evil handsome guy definitely would have stayed with her if not for being trauma bonded with his evil sister. Anyway I blame capitalism and our shallow society for making feel like shit for no good reason. We deserve to be happy too
I’m definitely more comfortable with myself now and have leaned into the Brienne-ness with heavy lifting and stuff. I also have a lovely beautiful partner who thinks I’m really hot and also isn’t trauma bonded to an evil sister, so I found my Tormund as it were. So these days I’m living the dream.
But as a teen the social stuff really gets to you. I was the one who didn’t have a boyfriend, who had never been kissed, who was the one people asked out as a joke. It’s hard to feel comfortable with it when everyone around you makes it so hard to be.
The thing is: you can still feel that way no matter how gorgeous you are. Models are some of the most insecure people you’ll ever meet. It’s just easier to buy into it when you’re convinced you don’t fit conventional beauty standards (which a lot of beautiful people are wrong about, btw), but you can always find fault with yourself or desperately wish for something you don’t have.
If only you had a different figure, another hair colour, if this or that was different, you’d finally feel beautiful. That’s how people end up doing the umpteenth cosmetic surgery until they look like aliens. This feeling isn’t rooted in reality.
It’s the insidiously whispering echo of the message that gets hammered into girls from a young age in this society: no matter how you look and what you do, you’re always wrong. It’s to coax women and girls into spending fortunes on beauty products, cosmetic procedures and operations, clothes, shoes.
Even more importantly: to keep them feeling small, helpless, insecure and dependent on approval, especially from men. In other words, it’s a subtle measure of control. It’s not planned or enacted by any one person or group, but is a built-in part of the patriarchy, enforced regardless of gender along with the rest of it.
In reality, there’s nothing wrong with being tall and strong. In fact, it has some serious advantages, for example how many creeps think twice before messing with you, and how much easier it is to scare several of the others off than when you’re tiny and delicate.
And you can reach more stuff, lift more, are generally stronger, don’t need help with a lot of things that other women do, tools fit in your hands properly (a lot of women’s hands are too small because tools are sized for male hands typically). People don’t obstruct your view in theatres anywhere as often. You have an easier time finding your friends in a crowd. Being tall and imposing automatically gets more people to treat you with respect (unless you act very insecure and submissive). It’s a good thing.
And if you want to be girly and feminine, you can still easily be, it’s a question of how you carry yourself before anything else, and a matter of style that fits you. Girls come in all sizes and shapes, and I’m sure you’re a very pretty Brienne.
Thank you, your comment is really lovely. And you’re definitely right - there are huge advantages to being tall and having a stronger figure. I’m very rarely bothered by creeps, and the people around me are usually left alone as well.
I’ve met models before who believe that if they just lost x amount of weight, they’d get more bookings. If they got a nose job, if they were an inch taller. I’ve even heard a girl crying about how ‘weird’ her ankles look, when they were just perfectly average ankles.
People have seemingly ‘odd’ insecurities that to them aren’t odd at all. It’s the constant feed of beauty standards and photoshopped pictures and the comparison to real life people. All it takes is for one person to point out a ‘flaw’ and that shit follows you around for years.
I view myself as ugly not because I was ever treated badly (explicitly), but because of a complete lack of affection and love from anyone and everyone. It's the opposite but basically the same outcome - and I am also a man, so I am treated differently than women in some sense. I never even thought of myself as ugly until years of putting as much effort as I could into myself only to realize that the one piece missing was my looks and that no amount of effort would make up for that. No one's going to love you because they'll never be willing to look past your face.
“It costs exactly nothing to just choose to perceive yourself positively”
No. It costs emotional energy to constantly lie to myself about how I look and fight the intrusive thoughts. That shit is a finite resource. Id rather use that on getting through the work day and doing my chores. I can pick 1 or the other.
Yep. This is why in therapy they dig deep into your soul to find the root cause of your belief.
Telling someone to constantly "fake it till you make it" in their head is as dumb as advising to take painkillers everyday instead of curing the disease.
Problem is: a negative self-perception is the exact reason why it’s so costly. All that emotional energy is tied up in defending a self-defeating belief system. Because as long as you don’t believe you deserve better, you don’t really have to try. It’s miserable, but at least it’s predictable and familiar, so there’s the shallow, bitter comfort of feeling validated, even though it comes at one’s own expense. This feels like it conserves energy, because change is hard, but it’s also a habit that keeps you in that low-energy state. It’s a trap.
Merely lying to yourself doesn’t work, in the same way as you won’t convince someone you love them if you only ever say you do but don’t really act like it. Compliments alone would also feel shallow and insincere after a while if you never underpin them with actions that show you love the other person and care.
Though getting in the habit of finding something to appreciate about yourself in the mirror first thing and making a compliment to your mirror image as if it was someone else whom you liked and wanted to be nice to won’t hurt either and will boost your mood for the day. So it’s a good habit to build.
And no, you don’t have to lie to yourself at all (it worries and saddens me that you can only conceptualise of something kind to say to yourself as a lie), just be nice. You can tell yourself entirely true compliments every single day. Like that you really did your hair nicely today, or that this sweater accentuates the colour of your eyes, or that you picked a cute combination of clothes, or that a new accessory suits you well, a shirt compliments your figure etc. etc.
Make a game out of finding new things to compliment and you’ll start looking forward to looking in the mirror. You’ll also be amazed how much beauty you’ll come to see everywhere, even in completely ordinary people. Especially if you also make a habit to think the same way of others. Moreover, people are going to become nicer to you because they’ll subconsciously pick up on your appreciative mindset. This really changes the way you think and relate to yourself and others. It takes time and it’s subtle, so you won’t notice it for a long time, but eventually you’ll have a moment of realisation.
If you want to change your self-perception more profoundly and start seeing yourself in a positive light (looks-wise and in general), you need to consistently treat yourself well, beyond mere words of encouragement. They’re a good, easy start, just like you endear others to yourself initially by saying nice things to them, but obviously there’s more that needs to follow for it to stick.
Just like you need to do in a relationship so your partner feels loved. It’s very similar for yourself. The big hurdle is to believe you also deserve it. This is easy to believe about someone you’re in love with, but can be very hard to accept for yourself, if you don’t like yourself. Being nicer to oneself (in thoughts and actions) works in the same way as treating your partner better improves the relationship and your perception of them (we not only treat people better when we like them, it also works the other way around).
Remember that your relationship with yourself is the only one in your life that isn’t optional, and unlike with other people that ignore your emotional needs or treat you badly, there’s no getting away from yourself. Hence keeping your relationship with yourself positive isn’t a mere nice-to-have but absolutely is a necessity for your mental wellbeing, especially long-term. And just like bad relationships with others sap your energy while good ones give you extra, so it is with yourself, too.
If you barely have enough energy to get through each day, you’re already running dangerously low. Devoting your energy only or mostly to obligations saps a TON, but do you have ways to replenish it?
You can’t keep getting all these things done if you don’t. Taking time for yourself, to treat yourself well — even if it’s just to sit down and relax for 5-10min with a cup of your favourite tea — is where the emotional energy for everything else comes from. So if you find you lack self-care time, start small if you don’t have much energy to spare, but start somewhere.
Work things into every day that make you happy and relaxed, even if they’re silly little things. Silly little things are what makes life worth living. Make a game out of it so it doesn’t feel like another chore. The effects usually start to show after some time, but they eventually do, as long as you keep doing it consistently.
That’s why happy, confident people stay in a loop where they have the emotional energy to expend to be sweet to themselves and still get everything done. They produce a surplus, instead of barely functioning on a chronic deficit, and they reinvest it in themselves to gain even more in a positive feedback loop.
That’s what people actually mean with "fake it till you make it", they just either misunderstand how it works, phrase it badly or are misunderstood by their audience.
One of my psychiatrists told me something that helped a lot. "It's not about flipping a 180 in your emotions. It's about slow incremental changes. Flipping 180 in your emotions and switching up like that so quickly, from very depressed to happy and excited, that's more of a symptom of other mental illnesses like BPD and Bipolar. What you want is to make small changes to your mindset. Changes that feel good. Changes that you want to make, slowly for your own quality of life and for the sake of having more peace in your own mind."
I'm paraphrasing, but that's fairly close to what she told me.
I'm not going to go from "I hate my body" to "I love my body", but I do like my eyes and my legs, and my hair. That's enough sometimes. A few things I like.
I really appreciate your comment. I feel frustrated that I've spent the past 20 years in therapy and recovery and really freaking wish I could just get better already. But i know going 180 overnight to feeling positive isn't possible, I'm trying to be okay with daily small steps and hoping they add up the right way eventually. The struggle of changing from negative thinking to positive thinking is bonkers ridiculous challenging but hopefully by the time I'm 80 if im still alive I'll get it 👍😅
The way I put it to my therapist is this: after decades of being surrounded by people who put me down, I no longer had the language to express myself in an uplifting way.
It’s not about forcing yourself to believe nonsense (which doesn’t work) but about changing the way you think of yourself, talk to yourself internally, look at yourself, judge yourself, treat yourself, what treatment you accept from others etc. You don’t have to just make yourself believe apples are salty when you can actually strew salt on them. Apples may not be salty in general, but you’ll have a salty apple right there, in your hand.
Leo Tolstoy once said: "It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty". He’s right, you know. For one, it doesn’t matter how gorgeous you are, if you feel ugly, you simply won’t see it. You’ll look in the mirror and be fully convinced that you see an ugly person, and not what everyone else sees. Some of the most insecure people you’ll ever meet are models.
In the same way, the smartest insecure people can constantly feel like idiots, the most capable like impostors ever on the verge to be found out or like they merely lucked out, the kindest and most generous can be convinced they’re selfish and awful and so on. Your self-perception doesn’t have to be based in reality to be convincing. But yes, it does also have a psychological effect on how others perceive you, at least once they know you.
But if that’s the case, and once you realise how much better people who feel comfortable in their own skin and treat themselves with kindness feel and how much better they are received by others, then the inevitable conclusion is that, if you’re not objective and don’t have to be to believe it, it’s obviously better to pick the nicer option and act as if you believe it.
Now the crazy thing happens: you do that for a while and one day, you begin to realise that it’s fundamentally changing how you feel about yourself. The affirmative self-perception becomes your new reality, in the same way the downward spiral of putting yourself down was before. You actually start to see yourself differently.
Why? Well… have you ever been in love? That’s the other side of the coin. When you love somebody, you see them as if through a beautifying filter. They actually look more beautiful to you, their voice sounds more pleasant to you, you perceive their actions in a kinder, more indulgent light. Everything about them is adorable, exciting and amazing.
This also extends to your own self-perception when you practice to look at yourself as if you’re seeing yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you dearly and always sees the very best in you. Someone to whom you genuinely look like an exquisitely beautiful person. When you become that someone, you begin to genuinely see yourself that way. And that’s salting your apples.
The funniest thing is that we essentially agree on the topic, even within the whole apple example.
It won't become salty unless you salt it. You have to learn to treat yourself better, stop the derogatory talk, stop refusing yourself pleasure because you "don't deserve it", stop judging yourself too harshly, etc. That's when the self love may help you with the disrupted perception, or at least go against the trauma that made you feel bad about yourself.
My initial comment was not about this, though. It was about people advising you to flip the switch like "you think you're ugly? Just don't! It's that easy!!" Well, it's not.
That reminds me of another example. My mom raised me as a baby so that I'd never wake up to loud noises. She never attempted to be quiet when I was an infant, vaccumed, slammed things around, talked on the phone, etc. Now, I can sleep through a hurricane and can fall asleep at a heavy metal concert venue.
Someone who will involuntarily wake up at even small noises can't just decide to stay asleep. They would have to train themselves to fall asleep against things that keep them up, fighting with their own body! And for however long they don't suceed, they are losing tons of sleep. Just like our heart beating, we don't have control over every part of our body, nor every part of our brain...
This. Dealing with being unattractive is made even more difficult by people "reassuring" you that you aren't. It is a simple fact that less attractive people get treated worse in a wide variety of contexts. It's not even us vs them. Unattractive people are as guilty of preferring attractive people as attractive people are. But we can't even talk about it because the minute you suggest it happened to you, everyone tells you that it can't be because you are so pretty.
I have lost a ton of weight 3 times in the last 30 years. Each time, the way the world treat me shifted dramatically. But people will say I am imagining it, or that I am probably more confident and that is the only thing other people are responding to. It is honestly weird how committed people are to denying something that is a fundamental part of human interaction.
yeah. i hate when people try to reassure me on here then call me a liar when i literally share my life experience.
i don't take people on here serious because they overhype anyone just to feel better.
"Just choose to not". I soooo hate such people. Like you can choose what you are thinking. Whats wrong with them? I realy believe THEY need Therapy for thinking you can just don't be yourself
I have had a grudge against “just choose to” since I talked to my father about my suicidal thoughts when I was 16 and he told me to “just choose to be happy.”
This People need to be punshed in the Face, with an old stinky Fish.
And then you just tell them: "just choose not to be hurt and don't smell like rotten Fish🤷"
"it cost nothing to perceive yourself positively!" I mean, for women it can often lead to accusations of vanity and being full of yourself. That scene in mean girls where all the leads are putting themselves down performatively in the mirror doesn't come from nowhere. We're taught that we have to have a low opinion of our own appearance and rely exclusively on others to say positive things about it, or we are vain bitches.
you have to be beautiful! But you're not allowed to think that you're beautiful! Other people have to tell you that you're beautiful, but you can't ask them outright what they think of your appearance because that's fishing for compliments!
Is it any wonder we fall into the trap of saying that we think we are ugly out loud in the hopes that someone will contradict us? It's really the only way we're allowed to seek validation in that particular aspect of our lives, an aspect of society puts a huge amount of emphasis on from the moment we're born.
Oh, do fuck off, Vogue magazine, with your hippy shite article printed next to the horoscope. You want true ugly? Try vanity, vain people are some of the most god awful personalities in the gene pool (and commonly unfaithful to boot). I'll take a depressed self-worth lacker over an egotistical bitch any day.
Cutting out self-deprecating thoughts genuinely does go a long way for one’s mental health. It’s not as simple as “just do it,” though, and also this person sounds like a bit of a dick in this post
You can ignore it and not dwell on the thoughts. But if you have been told for decades that you are ugly and now you are old, your perception is probably never going to change.
People who cant stand negativity are bratty snowflakes in my eyes. Brainless sheep with the emotional intelligence and critical thinking of a rock. So i guess the unpleasing feeling is mutual.
Yeah, this was my opinion when I was 15 and trying hard to choose happiness.
I got hospitalised with depression at 21 and diagnosed with autism and adhd recently at 35. I can forgive young me for being abelist and buying this shit, but I still need to unlearn stuff before I can be happy, or even function, to be honest.
I had a beautiful friend who called herself ugly. She had been bullied. I wish I didn't ever made her feel like she did something wrong by talking about the thoughts she had.
It costs nothing to perceive yourself positively??? Tell that to all my therapy and nutritionist bills. I would LOVE to think of myself in a more positive light but it’s a little hard when you’ve been abused and neglected your whole life!!
It’s amazing how they’re THIS close to a real point but decide to make it about them instead of reflecting on why someone might have built up this image of themselves.
What bugs me is people treating 'feeling beautiful' like some kind of prerequisite to accepting oneself, having self-esteem, etc.. I acknowledge that some parts of me are aesthetically pleasing (hazel eyes that often present green, an impressive amount of somewhat curly hair) but overall, I'm widely considered unattractive. I have a port wine stain across the entire right half of my body, my fat isn't held "in all the right places", I have an overbite, my fashion sense can be lacking, etc. etc.. I've been treated differently my whole life because I am a void of sex appeal. It has its benefits since I'm asexual/aromantic (I'm rarely propositioned and have never been assaulted beyond a grade school pantsing by another kid), but it also makes getting work harder because people don't like looking at me/think customers won't like looking at me. Insisting I'm beautiful while the world treats me like a lesser human for my looks would just be delusional and make me more upset when I was discriminated against for my looks.
How am I supposed to NOT believe I’m ugly when I have had countless people from my earliest childhood years telling me I am? If children, they would come right out and say it. If adults, they would shake their heads pityingly and tell me how pretty I COULD be, if only it weren’t for….
IDK you or what you look like. Maybe you aren't conventionally attractive or "ugly". Which is fine. Social conditioning and beauty standards are what make someone conventionally attractive. Theoretically, there could be a society where an old, bald, fat woman is regarded like Sydney Sweeney. There is nothing wrong with being ugly, despite the pressure society puts (especially on women) to feel otherwise. The beauty industry is a billion-dollar industry. Being ugly doesn't make you unlovable, unfuckable, etc. There are burn victims who have families despite being "ugly". There are people who weigh 500+ lbs and are in loving relationships. Ugly is just not fitting certain standards, a lot of which are arbitrary and change over time. Yes, being conventionally attractive can make life and dating easier, but it should not affect your self-worth. Being ugly makes you no less of a person than anyone else. It's not easy, but over time you can realize that A) beauty is fake, B) you're still worthy of everything a conventionally attractive person is, and C) at the end of the day it all comes down to money and being unapologetically ugly can be a big fuck you to everyone who wants to make you feel miserable for how you look so they can take your money. I would recommend finding a therapist you can trust and who is qualified to deal with body image issues. And that is if you really are ugly and not just experience negative bias around your own self-image,
Fuck them all. Most people are insecure and projecting and don't really care about other people, they just want to bring others down. You deserve no to have to live in other people's vacuous comments
Actually it costs a whole lot to perceive myself positively, and I do NOT choose to perceive myself ugly. These people are so ignorant. Many of us have features that are shamed (it is not right to do so but here we are), we’ve been bullied for years, our earliest memories could include being told reasons why we are hideous, our parents, our peers, our relationships, not to mention social media with editing, celebrities making an inflated balloon out of their face, and p0rn… it is actually very hard to ‘choose’ feeling beautiful when you’re not represented anywhere, and been shamed most of your life.
fun fact: it actually does cost money to perceive yourself positively when your environment has taught you not to! and that cost is however much it would cost to get therapy!
its so infuriating to know that some people genuinely think this way. when youve been put down your entire life for something (that should be (but isnt)) considered trivial, such as looks, to the point where you not only start believing it inwardly but also parroting it back to yourself, that shit takes help to unlearn. oftentimes, professional help. speaking from experience here. so people like this can suck my fucking dick.
Not everyone though. Some of us are aware that we’re not attractive and we’ve been made aware of it our entire lives. It’s impossible to ignore it because other people remind us of it all the time. I’ve been bullied and excluded since I was a child, undoing years worth of trauma isn’t going to happen with a snap of a finger. OOP is super ignorant and is most likely a very privileged person themselves. No one who truly suffers would say such a thing.
I understand the " you do need to find yourself attractive in some sense for others to see it too" sentiment but not like that... sometimes people just need a confidence boost if they open up to you and feel like they're ugly something. Being mean in return isn't going to help someone who's like actually depressed and not mentally well
I would say it would be nice if people could just decide to like themselfes. I'll even agree that calling yourself ugly out loud, can make yourself percieve your looks even more negatively. But telling people to just stop and start loving themselfes is just not helping anyone...
these people dont understand that i genuinely see myself in a distorted way from reality. ive been working on it so i have a better idea of what i look like and recently i found old pictures of myself, from an era where i thought i looked like a bloated pig. i was so skinny that you could see my ribs
I found a great video essay about the politics of pretty and ugly. After years of seeing myself as the opposite of the eurocentric standards of beauty I didn't want to be considered either or. I just want to exist now, even if I am VERY ugly I should be allowed to just exist without being discriminated against or gaslite into "no you're not ugly at all!" and erasing what I have heard and gone through.
The majority of people with physical insecurities are average looking... because being insecure about something is so incredibly fucking common and the average person is average looking
Some of those people grew up in environments that made them feel that way. It costs nothing to say "No you're not." Then carry on with your day. If they ask for an explanation, they probably just want attention, whereas I would just say, "Take the compliment." Then leave it at that.
I disagree with saying "no, you're not" as that tends to feel invalidating, but they could absolutely give a compliment which - as they say - costs exactly nothing!
My hope in saying "No you're not" would get them to be creative about what that means. Whereas a specific comment might get them to hyper fixate on that feature. Maybe that's just because I had someone tell me I had nice skin once, and I thought I t was the weirdest compliment, lol! 🙃
It's just that in my personal experience when I've expressed something I'm insecure about or struggle with and someone has said "that's not true" it's felt very dismissive of my feelings.
When I was 11, my auntie said "You have big, beautiful lips!" and it made me feel like a freak. I had had no idea my lips were bigger than average.
I prefer when someone can say, your feelings are valid but I respectfully disagree. Ive had to accept most people can't be considerate of my feelings so I'm working on the self parenting thing so I need less external validation. Also does hold auntie have thin lips? Maybe she just meant it as a genuine compliment. And if she didn't then that shit is on her not you! Plus a lot of nonwhite people have big lips, so I honestly don't know what bigger than average lips is supposed to mean. Im half Mexican and have bigger lips than a lot of people but not as big as others.
Something that acctually helped me was to start jokingly/sarcastically calling myself hot/smart/ awesome. It is a proven psycological trick that if you repeat something (even if it feels silly and not ta all helpful at first.) you eventually start beleiving it.
Even doing it as a joke has the same effects and helps with the silly feeling. After a while it has started comming more naturally and now when I do something good I say "God damn im good!" and similar things just out of reflex.
Its hard at first and it will take a lot of practice but if you slip up just sarcastically call yourself a genius and then keep going ;D
I'm sorry to hear that. It takes time, it took me years to get where I am and I still have days where I feel like an idiot/ugly/worthless but one can only keep trying.
For me that's where the sarcasm helped because I didn't believe it at all at first and the sarcasm helps validate that while still using the kinder words.
I truly hope you find something that will help you, you deserve to be happy and comfortable.
What helped me stop bullying my own reflection was asking myself: "would you tell a friend with the same feature the same thing? Would you critize a friend the same way for the same thing?" Because if it's something you'd never say to or think about anyone else, you're damaging and bullying yourself. You're being a toxic friend to your own body and need to get help.
I started trying to tell myself what I'd tell my friends and telling myself to stop when I realized I was being ridiculous.
That alone did not solve the issue and most likely never will for anyone who's genuinely struggling, but it did help a little bit, because it helped me realize when I was being reasonable and something was actually bad and when I was just being an asshole.
I couldn't have gotten out of my diy cage without my therapist. If you stand in front of a mirror or look at a picture and catch yourself thinking or saying things you'd never tell a friend, please ask for help.
It's possible to heal. It's possible to love your flaws, every imperfection. You can do it.❤️🩹
My comment is not directed at the person op was posting about, but the people in this comment section; this subreddit. I'm trying to make you see that if I could do it, you most likely can to.
[Tw I'm gonna talk about severe sh and what came with it in the next paragraph. If you don't think it will do you any good, skip that.]
I did hate my body and myself so much, I was literally destroying myself in different ways all the time. My intrusive thoughts about more ways to punish my body and every piece of me turned into an obsessive-compulsive disorder because it was so bad by the time I was 16. I wasn't just suicidal, I kept having urges to harm myself just enough so I'd survive and have to live with it. I got stuck in a loop of suicide thoughts and psychosis like breakdowns, got diagnosed with severe depression and a panic disorder. Then I had to move hours away to a special living facility with 24/7 professionals available and/or present, almost died of bloodloss and kept having to sit with caretakers for hours because I was haluzinating and kept circling back to trying to harm my body in the worst ways my at that point definitely fucked up brain could come up with. I had to take medication that just made me fall asleep so many times bc it was impossible to be handled differently sometimes. I got better, finished school moved in with my partner and it still didn't completely stop.
I hated my body so much, I thought I could never exist in it. I hated myself so much, I thought I could never make it out.
But I did. I love myself and my body today. I'm 20 now, spent all of my teenage years fighting for my life, at war with myself and a disorder that only got actually diagnosed last February. I had to break up with my partner, lost my older brother, but I still made it.
I know I have a kinda talent for looking at things from an outside perspective, even my own problems while I'm having them, and most people can't do that, but if you get the help you need, give up control as far as needed and put in all that painful, horribly hard work, I believe next to anyone can make it out.
Might take much longer than it took me. Plus, even for me, like most people, it's not ever actually over in a way where it won't return. You have to keep working, even when it doesn't seem worth it, because it will be.
So this person is annoying BUT you can actually attempt to try small ways to improve how you see yourself that will have small emotional impacts.
I started looking in the mirror one day and complemented myself when I was 18, due to years of being told how ugly I was in school. Eventually I started to understand that I wasn't ugly in anyway, and I think of myself in a much better light. During periods of low self esteem I do have to bring that method back back out to help, but over all it has worked well.
Dated someone with extremely bad mental health and they asked how I managed to think so positively about myself and I said the mirror thing, they tried it out and reported an improvement as well.
Like slip ups and bad mental health periods can happen, but sometimes something as small as saying something nice about yourself quietly can help improve your well being.
The poster is wrong in saying that calling yourself ugly makes you ugly, and I honestly think they suck for that, especially because negativity isn't true ugliness in itself (sometimes it's a very useful thing to be).
But most of us think we're ugly because of an outside force (fashion trends, being bullied in school, media) and it's usually never accurate.
i used to be in a friend group where 99% of us would joke and laugh about things that had happened to us. exactly 1 girl was always like “uhm actually you shouldn’t make jokes like that. like just be positive instead”. nobody knows why we kept being friends with her for an additional two and a half years😭
Like there's definitely something to be said for speaking more positively to yourself but it's not a "just choose to do it" kind of thing. It's a slow process.
You have to start small. And you have to constantly analyze everything you say about yourself. I've been working really hard to show myself more grace. Basically I kind of pretend I'm talking to my bestie instead. I would never tell her "You look like you climbed out of a dumpster." even if she did. I'd tell her "Let's get a hair brush and see what we can do here." or "Your eyes are really pretty." or "Sure, you're a mess but you're cute."
I'm learning to love myself. And I'm not fully there. I have to start small. Right now, dealing with myself is like having a coworker that can be hella frustrating but they really are trying to do their best and I should have patience with them.
And it's kind of a lot. This post though is really smug though.
You actually can choose not to, it just takes a long time, and it’s difficult. It isn’t as simple as “yippee now I am beautiful” and then you’re good. What I did was convince myself I was average first- not ugly, but not pretty either. Then I convinced myself I was cute, then once that set in I convinced myself I was pretty. Sometimes I forget and have the classic “oh no I have to go to an event while ugly” cry, but usually I like what I see in the mirror. It gives me confidence to know that I’m beautiful because I’ve decided that I am.
It's obviously way more complex than "just think positive!", but negative self-talk can reinforce those perceptions of yourself. When I stopped "joking" about being stupid/incompetant/clumsy all the time, I realised how much that had actually been feeding into those feelings of inadequacy (then I got diagnosed with ADHD).
Getting annoyed with people for having low self-esteem is pretty reductive as well lol
So I know the original post was being kinda rude about it, but I did kinda do this. No my insecurities didn't disappear. But especially during Covid, always being home with access to mirrors , I kinda just kept looking at myself and over time just because kinder about myself. Like I could just look in the mirror and pick the things I liked over the things I didn't.
So no it's not "I'm cured" and it's not like I don't still have work on myself to do. But my brain did just kinda gradually shift to be able to say "ya know, I'm kinda cute, actually."
I kind of agree. I user to call myself ugly and i felt ugly. I stopped saying it, and while i don't feel 'hot', i don't feel bad about my appearance any more.
I think there’s a difference between negative self-talk and just considering yourself ugly. Both are insecurity, but one is a bit worse as it’s putting it on other people. Why tell me that you think you’re ugly?
I think they said it badly, but it’s true. stopping yourself from saying anything bad yourself out loud does wonders for your self esteem, and reprogramming your brain to stop negative self talk. i’m not saying it’s easy, it can easily take years, but it’s worth it.
You don’t have to think that you’re beautiful and love yourself, but insecurity and whining about being ugly is not a super socially acceptable or attractive behavior. That is what this is about. Don’t tell people how ugly u are or how sad it makes u lmao. Just be ugly and move on with your life.
Signed a fellow ugly person.
Just decide to stop being traumatized by whatever shaming and abuse you’ve experienced!
I agree that people are responsible for going to therapy and learning to love themselves, yes, but you can’t help people heal if you’re encouraging them from a place of annoyance with their sadness.
Hey?! You think you’re ugly and hate it? Just choose to thing you look good! It’s annoying me that you aren’t happy with your self and it makes you ugly.
Like would this person be so generous as to cease in their vexatious verbeling
They’re not wrong though. It’s definitely possible to modify the tone of your internal dialogue (having done it myself). It takes serious time and effort, but it can make a big difference to how you feel in general. Anything worth doing always takes time and effort. The easy path is usually miserable and self-destructive.
The human brain is plastic, the more you do/reinforce anything, the more that thing becomes part of your subjective experience. If you constantly maintain a negative tone, you’re going to end up having a more negative experience of reality. If you work to shift that to just a neutral tone it can make a huge difference; it certainly did for me. Won’t work for everyone, but it’s well worth a try.
Honestly, I agree with this. I would be more self-conscious about my self too if it would be the only thing I focus on. As someone who's been struggling with ED and body dysmorphia, I've learned to not focus on my looks so much.
For example, I don't like pictures of myself almost always. I don't try to take hundred pictures to post, complain to my freinds how I look and etc. I just know it makes me self conscious.
It doesn't mean I don't like to dress up daily and feel good in what I'm wearing. I do like that very much.
I just have chosen and will choose things that do not make me being overly critical about myself. I still fight depression and anxiety daily and it would not help me in having friends nor being able to concentrate on my work and things I like.
It's great you try to be more positive about yourself. But do you get bothered when other people aren't positive about themselves and think they're "emotionally ugly" because of it?
Not ugly but I'll start avoiding them, if they need constant reassurance from everybody and are not doing anything about it. Sometimes they will start arguing about it as well and it's just too much for me.
It's not as easy as the person who said it makes it sound. That's the issue. There's also a bit of a spiteful tone. "Well, if they say they're ugly I'll agree with them. Why they not insta positive?" That last one is an inside thought.
If you constantly belittle yourself around others, they will start avoiding you more than think anything more, because it's uncomfortable and annoying to tell one person otherwise all the time.
people don't tend to wake up one morning and decide they're ugly. usually, it's from a lifetime of being told so by others. they're either told and treated like it to the point of believing it, or taught repeatedly that not thinking of themselves as ugly leads to even more humiliation. people are privileged as hell if they don't understand that.
Came here to say this. I was told that I am ugly in Middle-School. That stuck with me, especially when I, after weight loss no less, compare my face to the faces of my classmates. And I also observe people who are average looking or somewhat aesthetically pleasing calling themselves beautiful getting negative comments on social media. That teaches people that unless they are model level pretty they have no right to even claim being average let alone see themselves positively.
So calling myself ugly is also a part of making myself safe. (I would say I am below average but far from objectively ugly, but still.)
Exactly! People see those who are confident with their looks and decide it's a good idea to knock down their confidence and "put them in their place"! Why would it feel safe to confidently declare yourself pretty if you're not model-level pretty?
Also people underestimate pretty privilege, as opposed to a confident average looking or somewhat pleasing looking person. With model pretty people, people do not dare to give those negative comments.
Unless someone is aging, then you cannot do anything right (aged naturally = you look older than your age, disgusting; aged with work done = shallow bitch; only natural is graceful). I am seeing that too at 37.
They absolutely do give negative comments if you’re model pretty. In fact, they give more negative comments, because they’re envious. Especially when you’re young. There’s a reason why models are the most insecure people you’ll ever meet.
I have never seen that on social media or on influencers. But I am not surprise, it is not even about envy or something, one trait that many humans have is to be eager to hurt, dominate and destroy someone else.
This is why the idea of “loving yourself first” drive me up the walls. It’s like faulting an illiterate person for not knowing how to read. You need guidance and the examples of others to emulate.
JMO
Ideally you get taught, yes. But if you weren’t, or worse yet, got negative and self-defeating messages instilled in you instead, then it would be foolish to just give up on yourself and stay miserable. Because that one’s actually true, and it’s an advice how to improve your life and be happier, not an accusation (taking it that way comes from a mindset of lacking self-love, ask me how I know). You most likely already know how to treat others well. When you don’t love yourself, you just don’t believe that you deserve this, too.
The trick to learn self-love is shockingly simple — the hard part is to do it consistently: act as if you already love yourself. If you don’t know how, pretend like you are another person whom you very much love, and like the quality of your entire existence depends on treating them as kindly as you can (because it actually does). This really works because when you start to treat yourself better, this in turn leads to more positive feelings about yourself.
Nobody likes people who talk down to them, insult them, ignore their needs, don’t support them and generally treat them badly. Oneself isn’t magically exempt from this. If you treat yourself badly, you won’t like yourself. So you’ll treat yourself even worse, which can make it a downward spiral. Fortunately, the reverse is also true. People love people who treat them well, and yes, that actually starts with their own self and improves their self-perception in a positive cycle.
Otherwise, it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely love others (rather than be codependent and confuse this with love) and treat them well according to what they need from you (or even recognise what their needs are, and that there is a difference to yours), if you don’t love yourself and don’t treat yourself well first. It’s also difficult to draw good boundaries, which chips away at your self-respect, takes away resources from you, creates a lot of avoidable stress, is self-limiting and leads you into various bad situations.
For one, you lack practice with these things without good self-care, because your relationship with yourself is the most enduring and all-encompassing in your life, so it functions as a template for all your other relations. Hence it needs to be prioritised. Not like arrogance or entitlement, but like you would prioritise your spouse and treat them with respect, love and care, stand up for them etc. but that doesn’t stop you from also treating others well and leaves reasonable space for other people in your life.
Secondly, when you don’t do that, you’re like a starving person who’s too preoccupied with their own need for food to pay any attention to others. There’s a reason airplane staff instructs you to put on your own oxygen mask first, and only then assist others. Same principle. Can’t care for others if you haven’t taken care of yourself first. Neglecting this necessary condition can only lead to dysfunctional coping strategies and bad outcomes:
You (general you) either can’t properly meet others’ needs or burn out trying because you won’t be fulfilled enough and won’t have the energy to spare. And/or you act needy and drive people away with that. And/or you’ll give way more than your fair share out of desperation to keep people around and constantly get used, and/or end up resenting others.
And/or you seek out other miserable, unfulfilled people to avoid feeling less than, which keeps you trapped in a crabs in a bucket mentality. And/or you’re drawn to people who mistreat you, because you become convinced you deserve it or can’t do better anyway. And/or you treat others badly to temporarily lift yourself up at their expense, but only ever feel worse for it.
This is simply how people work. It’s been tested billions of times over the course of millennia, so it doesn’t matter whether one wants to believe it or not, argue it or not, it just works that way. Those who disregard it suffer from chronic unhappiness and are either lonely, struggle to build deep, meaningful relationships or wind up in recurrent toxic relationships (not only romantic, but also bad friendships, family, workplaces etc.) and keep wondering why this is always happening to them. Poor boundaries, codependency and lack of self-love is why.
If you can’t meet your own emotional needs, the corollary is: you’ll need someone or something outside yourself to fulfil them for you. Except this never works out. Either you become wholly dependent on that person or thing (which is how codependent relationships and addictions work), or you keep driving people away because being single-handedly made responsible for another adult’s happiness and fulfilment is way too much pressure and an impossible task to fulfil, or bad people are going to take advantage of you. Or you become the emotional vampire who takes advantage of others.
Either way, externalising the source of your fulfilment leads to constant anxiety and helplessness, because relying on something outside of your control to meet your emotional needs and make you happy is to surrender your own agency, and whatever it is that keeps you going could always be taken away. Which is scary and leads to unhealthy measures to cling to it. There is no good, healthy alternative to self-love and self-care first, because a relationship without love and care is neither good nor healthy, and that very much includes one’s relationship with oneself.
A lot of people weren’t adequately taught how to love themselves either, or were taught the very opposite (hi, here’s one 👋) but fortunately, it’s never too late to stop expecting different results from repeating more of the same and to start trying something different instead. It’s not an overnight miracle, but it definitely is a game-changer if you spend enough time treating yourself like someone you love.
Which includes forgiving yourself that you won’t always get it right even if you try, or won’t always know how to, because being safe and loved means your sincere efforts are acknowledged and you’re allowed to not know things or make mistakes and learn from them, and nobody will beat you up over it.
Exactly. I was always the tall, lumbering thing at the back of a classroom full of beautiful girls. I was kinda like Brienne of Tarth. Definitely not conventionally attractive, and as a teenager it sucks, because no matter how much I said I liked being different I would have given anything to wake up the next day and be magically beautiful.
I feel this way but with wishing I could trade in my unique weirdness and debilitating depression to be a grounded stable normal person. Btw i think Brienne if Tarth is gorgeous and powerful,and that evil handsome guy definitely would have stayed with her if not for being trauma bonded with his evil sister. Anyway I blame capitalism and our shallow society for making feel like shit for no good reason. We deserve to be happy too
I’m definitely more comfortable with myself now and have leaned into the Brienne-ness with heavy lifting and stuff. I also have a lovely beautiful partner who thinks I’m really hot and also isn’t trauma bonded to an evil sister, so I found my Tormund as it were. So these days I’m living the dream.
But as a teen the social stuff really gets to you. I was the one who didn’t have a boyfriend, who had never been kissed, who was the one people asked out as a joke. It’s hard to feel comfortable with it when everyone around you makes it so hard to be.
The thing is: you can still feel that way no matter how gorgeous you are. Models are some of the most insecure people you’ll ever meet. It’s just easier to buy into it when you’re convinced you don’t fit conventional beauty standards (which a lot of beautiful people are wrong about, btw), but you can always find fault with yourself or desperately wish for something you don’t have.
If only you had a different figure, another hair colour, if this or that was different, you’d finally feel beautiful. That’s how people end up doing the umpteenth cosmetic surgery until they look like aliens. This feeling isn’t rooted in reality. It’s the insidiously whispering echo of the message that gets hammered into girls from a young age in this society: no matter how you look and what you do, you’re always wrong. It’s to coax women and girls into spending fortunes on beauty products, cosmetic procedures and operations, clothes, shoes.
Even more importantly: to keep them feeling small, helpless, insecure and dependent on approval, especially from men. In other words, it’s a subtle measure of control. It’s not planned or enacted by any one person or group, but is a built-in part of the patriarchy, enforced regardless of gender along with the rest of it.
In reality, there’s nothing wrong with being tall and strong. In fact, it has some serious advantages, for example how many creeps think twice before messing with you, and how much easier it is to scare several of the others off than when you’re tiny and delicate.
And you can reach more stuff, lift more, are generally stronger, don’t need help with a lot of things that other women do, tools fit in your hands properly (a lot of women’s hands are too small because tools are sized for male hands typically). People don’t obstruct your view in theatres anywhere as often. You have an easier time finding your friends in a crowd. Being tall and imposing automatically gets more people to treat you with respect (unless you act very insecure and submissive). It’s a good thing.
And if you want to be girly and feminine, you can still easily be, it’s a question of how you carry yourself before anything else, and a matter of style that fits you. Girls come in all sizes and shapes, and I’m sure you’re a very pretty Brienne.
Thank you, your comment is really lovely. And you’re definitely right - there are huge advantages to being tall and having a stronger figure. I’m very rarely bothered by creeps, and the people around me are usually left alone as well.
I’ve met models before who believe that if they just lost x amount of weight, they’d get more bookings. If they got a nose job, if they were an inch taller. I’ve even heard a girl crying about how ‘weird’ her ankles look, when they were just perfectly average ankles.
People have seemingly ‘odd’ insecurities that to them aren’t odd at all. It’s the constant feed of beauty standards and photoshopped pictures and the comparison to real life people. All it takes is for one person to point out a ‘flaw’ and that shit follows you around for years.
I view myself as ugly not because I was ever treated badly (explicitly), but because of a complete lack of affection and love from anyone and everyone. It's the opposite but basically the same outcome - and I am also a man, so I am treated differently than women in some sense. I never even thought of myself as ugly until years of putting as much effort as I could into myself only to realize that the one piece missing was my looks and that no amount of effort would make up for that. No one's going to love you because they'll never be willing to look past your face.
Lowkey I feel bad now cos I was never really called ugly, maybe like two or three times but I really don't understand why I think I'm ugly 😭
I agree about self-deprecation, but it has always bothered me when people said "just choose the other option" in regards to perception.
Like, how? It's like forcing yourself to think that apples are salty. Self deception is not the solution to change your beliefs.
People tend to fail to understand that a belief can be deep rooted because for them that specific belief is shallow and flexible.
Bet you OOP would be hard pressed to change their opinion about something theyre heavily invested in.
Are you calling me fat?
“It costs exactly nothing to just choose to perceive yourself positively”
No. It costs emotional energy to constantly lie to myself about how I look and fight the intrusive thoughts. That shit is a finite resource. Id rather use that on getting through the work day and doing my chores. I can pick 1 or the other.
Yep. This is why in therapy they dig deep into your soul to find the root cause of your belief.
Telling someone to constantly "fake it till you make it" in their head is as dumb as advising to take painkillers everyday instead of curing the disease.
Problem is: a negative self-perception is the exact reason why it’s so costly. All that emotional energy is tied up in defending a self-defeating belief system. Because as long as you don’t believe you deserve better, you don’t really have to try. It’s miserable, but at least it’s predictable and familiar, so there’s the shallow, bitter comfort of feeling validated, even though it comes at one’s own expense. This feels like it conserves energy, because change is hard, but it’s also a habit that keeps you in that low-energy state. It’s a trap.
Merely lying to yourself doesn’t work, in the same way as you won’t convince someone you love them if you only ever say you do but don’t really act like it. Compliments alone would also feel shallow and insincere after a while if you never underpin them with actions that show you love the other person and care.
Though getting in the habit of finding something to appreciate about yourself in the mirror first thing and making a compliment to your mirror image as if it was someone else whom you liked and wanted to be nice to won’t hurt either and will boost your mood for the day. So it’s a good habit to build.
And no, you don’t have to lie to yourself at all (it worries and saddens me that you can only conceptualise of something kind to say to yourself as a lie), just be nice. You can tell yourself entirely true compliments every single day. Like that you really did your hair nicely today, or that this sweater accentuates the colour of your eyes, or that you picked a cute combination of clothes, or that a new accessory suits you well, a shirt compliments your figure etc. etc.
Make a game out of finding new things to compliment and you’ll start looking forward to looking in the mirror. You’ll also be amazed how much beauty you’ll come to see everywhere, even in completely ordinary people. Especially if you also make a habit to think the same way of others. Moreover, people are going to become nicer to you because they’ll subconsciously pick up on your appreciative mindset. This really changes the way you think and relate to yourself and others. It takes time and it’s subtle, so you won’t notice it for a long time, but eventually you’ll have a moment of realisation.
If you want to change your self-perception more profoundly and start seeing yourself in a positive light (looks-wise and in general), you need to consistently treat yourself well, beyond mere words of encouragement. They’re a good, easy start, just like you endear others to yourself initially by saying nice things to them, but obviously there’s more that needs to follow for it to stick.
Just like you need to do in a relationship so your partner feels loved. It’s very similar for yourself. The big hurdle is to believe you also deserve it. This is easy to believe about someone you’re in love with, but can be very hard to accept for yourself, if you don’t like yourself. Being nicer to oneself (in thoughts and actions) works in the same way as treating your partner better improves the relationship and your perception of them (we not only treat people better when we like them, it also works the other way around).
Remember that your relationship with yourself is the only one in your life that isn’t optional, and unlike with other people that ignore your emotional needs or treat you badly, there’s no getting away from yourself. Hence keeping your relationship with yourself positive isn’t a mere nice-to-have but absolutely is a necessity for your mental wellbeing, especially long-term. And just like bad relationships with others sap your energy while good ones give you extra, so it is with yourself, too.
If you barely have enough energy to get through each day, you’re already running dangerously low. Devoting your energy only or mostly to obligations saps a TON, but do you have ways to replenish it? You can’t keep getting all these things done if you don’t. Taking time for yourself, to treat yourself well — even if it’s just to sit down and relax for 5-10min with a cup of your favourite tea — is where the emotional energy for everything else comes from. So if you find you lack self-care time, start small if you don’t have much energy to spare, but start somewhere.
Work things into every day that make you happy and relaxed, even if they’re silly little things. Silly little things are what makes life worth living. Make a game out of it so it doesn’t feel like another chore. The effects usually start to show after some time, but they eventually do, as long as you keep doing it consistently. That’s why happy, confident people stay in a loop where they have the emotional energy to expend to be sweet to themselves and still get everything done. They produce a surplus, instead of barely functioning on a chronic deficit, and they reinvest it in themselves to gain even more in a positive feedback loop.
That’s what people actually mean with "fake it till you make it", they just either misunderstand how it works, phrase it badly or are misunderstood by their audience.
One of my psychiatrists told me something that helped a lot. "It's not about flipping a 180 in your emotions. It's about slow incremental changes. Flipping 180 in your emotions and switching up like that so quickly, from very depressed to happy and excited, that's more of a symptom of other mental illnesses like BPD and Bipolar. What you want is to make small changes to your mindset. Changes that feel good. Changes that you want to make, slowly for your own quality of life and for the sake of having more peace in your own mind."
I'm paraphrasing, but that's fairly close to what she told me.
I'm not going to go from "I hate my body" to "I love my body", but I do like my eyes and my legs, and my hair. That's enough sometimes. A few things I like.
I really appreciate your comment. I feel frustrated that I've spent the past 20 years in therapy and recovery and really freaking wish I could just get better already. But i know going 180 overnight to feeling positive isn't possible, I'm trying to be okay with daily small steps and hoping they add up the right way eventually. The struggle of changing from negative thinking to positive thinking is bonkers ridiculous challenging but hopefully by the time I'm 80 if im still alive I'll get it 👍😅
The way I put it to my therapist is this: after decades of being surrounded by people who put me down, I no longer had the language to express myself in an uplifting way.
Plus it’s worse to think you’re hot when you’re quite clearly not.
True. It's wild that some people use "you're delusional" as an insult while others explicitly tell you to be delusional
I think these are the same people.
It’s not about forcing yourself to believe nonsense (which doesn’t work) but about changing the way you think of yourself, talk to yourself internally, look at yourself, judge yourself, treat yourself, what treatment you accept from others etc. You don’t have to just make yourself believe apples are salty when you can actually strew salt on them. Apples may not be salty in general, but you’ll have a salty apple right there, in your hand.
Leo Tolstoy once said: "It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty". He’s right, you know. For one, it doesn’t matter how gorgeous you are, if you feel ugly, you simply won’t see it. You’ll look in the mirror and be fully convinced that you see an ugly person, and not what everyone else sees. Some of the most insecure people you’ll ever meet are models.
In the same way, the smartest insecure people can constantly feel like idiots, the most capable like impostors ever on the verge to be found out or like they merely lucked out, the kindest and most generous can be convinced they’re selfish and awful and so on. Your self-perception doesn’t have to be based in reality to be convincing. But yes, it does also have a psychological effect on how others perceive you, at least once they know you.
But if that’s the case, and once you realise how much better people who feel comfortable in their own skin and treat themselves with kindness feel and how much better they are received by others, then the inevitable conclusion is that, if you’re not objective and don’t have to be to believe it, it’s obviously better to pick the nicer option and act as if you believe it.
Now the crazy thing happens: you do that for a while and one day, you begin to realise that it’s fundamentally changing how you feel about yourself. The affirmative self-perception becomes your new reality, in the same way the downward spiral of putting yourself down was before. You actually start to see yourself differently.
Why? Well… have you ever been in love? That’s the other side of the coin. When you love somebody, you see them as if through a beautifying filter. They actually look more beautiful to you, their voice sounds more pleasant to you, you perceive their actions in a kinder, more indulgent light. Everything about them is adorable, exciting and amazing.
This also extends to your own self-perception when you practice to look at yourself as if you’re seeing yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you dearly and always sees the very best in you. Someone to whom you genuinely look like an exquisitely beautiful person. When you become that someone, you begin to genuinely see yourself that way. And that’s salting your apples.
The funniest thing is that we essentially agree on the topic, even within the whole apple example.
It won't become salty unless you salt it. You have to learn to treat yourself better, stop the derogatory talk, stop refusing yourself pleasure because you "don't deserve it", stop judging yourself too harshly, etc. That's when the self love may help you with the disrupted perception, or at least go against the trauma that made you feel bad about yourself.
My initial comment was not about this, though. It was about people advising you to flip the switch like "you think you're ugly? Just don't! It's that easy!!" Well, it's not.
"it costs you nothing to thing differently about..." Yes it does! It cost constant effort and focus to change anything.
Try to suddenly find loud, shifty music relaxing and helpful for sleep. It costs you nothing and it's so easy, right?!
Stupid take that just trivializes the person's suffering and puts the blame on them too.
Well I fall asleep to hardstyle and other genres like that :3
I can fall asleep to Sabaton, but the music my friend listens to keeps me awake lol
That reminds me of another example. My mom raised me as a baby so that I'd never wake up to loud noises. She never attempted to be quiet when I was an infant, vaccumed, slammed things around, talked on the phone, etc. Now, I can sleep through a hurricane and can fall asleep at a heavy metal concert venue.
Someone who will involuntarily wake up at even small noises can't just decide to stay asleep. They would have to train themselves to fall asleep against things that keep them up, fighting with their own body! And for however long they don't suceed, they are losing tons of sleep. Just like our heart beating, we don't have control over every part of our body, nor every part of our brain...
And other things people who were naturally born gorgeous say.
Similar to how rich people say "money can't buy you happiness".
wow so i was throwing thousands into therapy for nothing, i could've just did it for free
Bet you feel silly now, don't you?
god forbid someone acknowledges reality and what they've been told
This. Dealing with being unattractive is made even more difficult by people "reassuring" you that you aren't. It is a simple fact that less attractive people get treated worse in a wide variety of contexts. It's not even us vs them. Unattractive people are as guilty of preferring attractive people as attractive people are. But we can't even talk about it because the minute you suggest it happened to you, everyone tells you that it can't be because you are so pretty.
I have lost a ton of weight 3 times in the last 30 years. Each time, the way the world treat me shifted dramatically. But people will say I am imagining it, or that I am probably more confident and that is the only thing other people are responding to. It is honestly weird how committed people are to denying something that is a fundamental part of human interaction.
yeah. i hate when people try to reassure me on here then call me a liar when i literally share my life experience. i don't take people on here serious because they overhype anyone just to feel better.
"Just choose to not". I soooo hate such people. Like you can choose what you are thinking. Whats wrong with them? I realy believe THEY need Therapy for thinking you can just don't be yourself
I have had a grudge against “just choose to” since I talked to my father about my suicidal thoughts when I was 16 and he told me to “just choose to be happy.”
This People need to be punshed in the Face, with an old stinky Fish. And then you just tell them: "just choose not to be hurt and don't smell like rotten Fish🤷"
"it cost nothing to perceive yourself positively!" I mean, for women it can often lead to accusations of vanity and being full of yourself. That scene in mean girls where all the leads are putting themselves down performatively in the mirror doesn't come from nowhere. We're taught that we have to have a low opinion of our own appearance and rely exclusively on others to say positive things about it, or we are vain bitches.
you have to be beautiful! But you're not allowed to think that you're beautiful! Other people have to tell you that you're beautiful, but you can't ask them outright what they think of your appearance because that's fishing for compliments!
Is it any wonder we fall into the trap of saying that we think we are ugly out loud in the hopes that someone will contradict us? It's really the only way we're allowed to seek validation in that particular aspect of our lives, an aspect of society puts a huge amount of emphasis on from the moment we're born.
pet peeves is sometimes relatable and other times the worst
I don't think I've once seen a good take there when it finds it's way to my page
"Such negativity is true ugliness"
Oh, do fuck off, Vogue magazine, with your hippy shite article printed next to the horoscope. You want true ugly? Try vanity, vain people are some of the most god awful personalities in the gene pool (and commonly unfaithful to boot). I'll take a depressed self-worth lacker over an egotistical bitch any day.
Cutting out self-deprecating thoughts genuinely does go a long way for one’s mental health. It’s not as simple as “just do it,” though, and also this person sounds like a bit of a dick in this post
Yeah but if you’re ugly, you can’t avoid the comments from other people tho.
You can ignore it and not dwell on the thoughts. But if you have been told for decades that you are ugly and now you are old, your perception is probably never going to change.
People who cant stand negativity are bratty snowflakes in my eyes. Brainless sheep with the emotional intelligence and critical thinking of a rock. So i guess the unpleasing feeling is mutual.
Yeah, this was my opinion when I was 15 and trying hard to choose happiness.
I got hospitalised with depression at 21 and diagnosed with autism and adhd recently at 35. I can forgive young me for being abelist and buying this shit, but I still need to unlearn stuff before I can be happy, or even function, to be honest.
I had a beautiful friend who called herself ugly. She had been bullied. I wish I didn't ever made her feel like she did something wrong by talking about the thoughts she had.
Im 41 and ive been on a similar journey. Solidarity hope we get to happiness someday
I love posts like these dunking on self depreciation.
Sorry I slightly annoyed you with my mental illness stemming from childhood trauma 🙃
This is why I just say I'm not my type.
Yet the guy choose to complain on reddit about it instead of trying to help. Aight.
It’s not just “choose to see yourself positively” it took me years of therapy to tone down the self deprecation
It costs nothing to perceive yourself positively??? Tell that to all my therapy and nutritionist bills. I would LOVE to think of myself in a more positive light but it’s a little hard when you’ve been abused and neglected your whole life!!
It’s amazing how they’re THIS close to a real point but decide to make it about them instead of reflecting on why someone might have built up this image of themselves.
What bugs me is people treating 'feeling beautiful' like some kind of prerequisite to accepting oneself, having self-esteem, etc.. I acknowledge that some parts of me are aesthetically pleasing (hazel eyes that often present green, an impressive amount of somewhat curly hair) but overall, I'm widely considered unattractive. I have a port wine stain across the entire right half of my body, my fat isn't held "in all the right places", I have an overbite, my fashion sense can be lacking, etc. etc.. I've been treated differently my whole life because I am a void of sex appeal. It has its benefits since I'm asexual/aromantic (I'm rarely propositioned and have never been assaulted beyond a grade school pantsing by another kid), but it also makes getting work harder because people don't like looking at me/think customers won't like looking at me. Insisting I'm beautiful while the world treats me like a lesser human for my looks would just be delusional and make me more upset when I was discriminated against for my looks.
"If you're homeless just buy a house!" Ahh
"If you're depressed just be happy" might be a better comparison to this tho
Wow! The depression read this and left out of my car window! It works!
How am I supposed to NOT believe I’m ugly when I have had countless people from my earliest childhood years telling me I am? If children, they would come right out and say it. If adults, they would shake their heads pityingly and tell me how pretty I COULD be, if only it weren’t for….
What am I supposed to think?
IDK you or what you look like. Maybe you aren't conventionally attractive or "ugly". Which is fine. Social conditioning and beauty standards are what make someone conventionally attractive. Theoretically, there could be a society where an old, bald, fat woman is regarded like Sydney Sweeney. There is nothing wrong with being ugly, despite the pressure society puts (especially on women) to feel otherwise. The beauty industry is a billion-dollar industry. Being ugly doesn't make you unlovable, unfuckable, etc. There are burn victims who have families despite being "ugly". There are people who weigh 500+ lbs and are in loving relationships. Ugly is just not fitting certain standards, a lot of which are arbitrary and change over time. Yes, being conventionally attractive can make life and dating easier, but it should not affect your self-worth. Being ugly makes you no less of a person than anyone else. It's not easy, but over time you can realize that A) beauty is fake, B) you're still worthy of everything a conventionally attractive person is, and C) at the end of the day it all comes down to money and being unapologetically ugly can be a big fuck you to everyone who wants to make you feel miserable for how you look so they can take your money. I would recommend finding a therapist you can trust and who is qualified to deal with body image issues. And that is if you really are ugly and not just experience negative bias around your own self-image,
Fuck them all. Most people are insecure and projecting and don't really care about other people, they just want to bring others down. You deserve no to have to live in other people's vacuous comments
Actually it costs a whole lot to perceive myself positively, and I do NOT choose to perceive myself ugly. These people are so ignorant. Many of us have features that are shamed (it is not right to do so but here we are), we’ve been bullied for years, our earliest memories could include being told reasons why we are hideous, our parents, our peers, our relationships, not to mention social media with editing, celebrities making an inflated balloon out of their face, and p0rn… it is actually very hard to ‘choose’ feeling beautiful when you’re not represented anywhere, and been shamed most of your life.
fun fact: it actually does cost money to perceive yourself positively when your environment has taught you not to! and that cost is however much it would cost to get therapy!
its so infuriating to know that some people genuinely think this way. when youve been put down your entire life for something (that should be (but isnt)) considered trivial, such as looks, to the point where you not only start believing it inwardly but also parroting it back to yourself, that shit takes help to unlearn. oftentimes, professional help. speaking from experience here. so people like this can suck my fucking dick.
Most people are more attractive than they give themselves credit for.
Not everyone though. Some of us are aware that we’re not attractive and we’ve been made aware of it our entire lives. It’s impossible to ignore it because other people remind us of it all the time. I’ve been bullied and excluded since I was a child, undoing years worth of trauma isn’t going to happen with a snap of a finger. OOP is super ignorant and is most likely a very privileged person themselves. No one who truly suffers would say such a thing.
I understand the " you do need to find yourself attractive in some sense for others to see it too" sentiment but not like that... sometimes people just need a confidence boost if they open up to you and feel like they're ugly something. Being mean in return isn't going to help someone who's like actually depressed and not mentally well
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I would say it would be nice if people could just decide to like themselfes. I'll even agree that calling yourself ugly out loud, can make yourself percieve your looks even more negatively. But telling people to just stop and start loving themselfes is just not helping anyone...
https://i.redd.it/q808swkc015g1.gif
these people dont understand that i genuinely see myself in a distorted way from reality. ive been working on it so i have a better idea of what i look like and recently i found old pictures of myself, from an era where i thought i looked like a bloated pig. i was so skinny that you could see my ribs
Wow, I never tried this. So enlightening! /S
But seriously, it's understandable that self-deprecating can hurt your own self image, but that simplification is more harmful that not.
I found a great video essay about the politics of pretty and ugly. After years of seeing myself as the opposite of the eurocentric standards of beauty I didn't want to be considered either or. I just want to exist now, even if I am VERY ugly I should be allowed to just exist without being discriminated against or gaslite into "no you're not ugly at all!" and erasing what I have heard and gone through.
The majority of people with physical insecurities are average looking... because being insecure about something is so incredibly fucking common and the average person is average looking
They got ratioed into oblivion lol, and for good reason.
It's trivially easy to "choose" to believe you're attractive if you're attractive. OOP is Projecting their Pretty Privilege hard.
Some of those people grew up in environments that made them feel that way. It costs nothing to say "No you're not." Then carry on with your day. If they ask for an explanation, they probably just want attention, whereas I would just say, "Take the compliment." Then leave it at that.
I disagree with saying "no, you're not" as that tends to feel invalidating, but they could absolutely give a compliment which - as they say - costs exactly nothing!
My hope in saying "No you're not" would get them to be creative about what that means. Whereas a specific comment might get them to hyper fixate on that feature. Maybe that's just because I had someone tell me I had nice skin once, and I thought I t was the weirdest compliment, lol! 🙃
It's just that in my personal experience when I've expressed something I'm insecure about or struggle with and someone has said "that's not true" it's felt very dismissive of my feelings.
When I was 11, my auntie said "You have big, beautiful lips!" and it made me feel like a freak. I had had no idea my lips were bigger than average.
I prefer when someone can say, your feelings are valid but I respectfully disagree. Ive had to accept most people can't be considerate of my feelings so I'm working on the self parenting thing so I need less external validation. Also does hold auntie have thin lips? Maybe she just meant it as a genuine compliment. And if she didn't then that shit is on her not you! Plus a lot of nonwhite people have big lips, so I honestly don't know what bigger than average lips is supposed to mean. Im half Mexican and have bigger lips than a lot of people but not as big as others.
Oh, she did mean it as a compliment. She's never been nasty to me. I just didn't know I had big lips or that big lips were considered attractive.
And some peiple are just objectively unattractive. Gaslighting yourself won't change that
Something that acctually helped me was to start jokingly/sarcastically calling myself hot/smart/ awesome. It is a proven psycological trick that if you repeat something (even if it feels silly and not ta all helpful at first.) you eventually start beleiving it.
Even doing it as a joke has the same effects and helps with the silly feeling. After a while it has started comming more naturally and now when I do something good I say "God damn im good!" and similar things just out of reflex.
Its hard at first and it will take a lot of practice but if you slip up just sarcastically call yourself a genius and then keep going ;D
That hasn't worked for me yet, for every time i call myself handsome or hot i encounter something that makes me feel unwanted 😔
I'm sorry to hear that. It takes time, it took me years to get where I am and I still have days where I feel like an idiot/ugly/worthless but one can only keep trying. For me that's where the sarcasm helped because I didn't believe it at all at first and the sarcasm helps validate that while still using the kinder words.
I truly hope you find something that will help you, you deserve to be happy and comfortable.
Just btw
What helped me stop bullying my own reflection was asking myself: "would you tell a friend with the same feature the same thing? Would you critize a friend the same way for the same thing?" Because if it's something you'd never say to or think about anyone else, you're damaging and bullying yourself. You're being a toxic friend to your own body and need to get help.
I started trying to tell myself what I'd tell my friends and telling myself to stop when I realized I was being ridiculous.
That alone did not solve the issue and most likely never will for anyone who's genuinely struggling, but it did help a little bit, because it helped me realize when I was being reasonable and something was actually bad and when I was just being an asshole.
I couldn't have gotten out of my diy cage without my therapist. If you stand in front of a mirror or look at a picture and catch yourself thinking or saying things you'd never tell a friend, please ask for help.
It's possible to heal. It's possible to love your flaws, every imperfection. You can do it.❤️🩹
Don't worry, I'm fine! I just thought OP was being an asshole.
Definitely. It's easy for most people to talk about problems they don't have.😬🙄
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But you need to be in order to have a healthy relationship with your body and view of yourself. That's one thing I was trying to say🫠🥲❤️🩹
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In that case, you clearly are not someone my comment was directed at.
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My comment is not directed at the person op was posting about, but the people in this comment section; this subreddit. I'm trying to make you see that if I could do it, you most likely can to.
[Tw I'm gonna talk about severe sh and what came with it in the next paragraph. If you don't think it will do you any good, skip that.]
I did hate my body and myself so much, I was literally destroying myself in different ways all the time. My intrusive thoughts about more ways to punish my body and every piece of me turned into an obsessive-compulsive disorder because it was so bad by the time I was 16. I wasn't just suicidal, I kept having urges to harm myself just enough so I'd survive and have to live with it. I got stuck in a loop of suicide thoughts and psychosis like breakdowns, got diagnosed with severe depression and a panic disorder. Then I had to move hours away to a special living facility with 24/7 professionals available and/or present, almost died of bloodloss and kept having to sit with caretakers for hours because I was haluzinating and kept circling back to trying to harm my body in the worst ways my at that point definitely fucked up brain could come up with. I had to take medication that just made me fall asleep so many times bc it was impossible to be handled differently sometimes. I got better, finished school moved in with my partner and it still didn't completely stop.
I hated my body so much, I thought I could never exist in it. I hated myself so much, I thought I could never make it out.
But I did. I love myself and my body today. I'm 20 now, spent all of my teenage years fighting for my life, at war with myself and a disorder that only got actually diagnosed last February. I had to break up with my partner, lost my older brother, but I still made it.
I know I have a kinda talent for looking at things from an outside perspective, even my own problems while I'm having them, and most people can't do that, but if you get the help you need, give up control as far as needed and put in all that painful, horribly hard work, I believe next to anyone can make it out.
Might take much longer than it took me. Plus, even for me, like most people, it's not ever actually over in a way where it won't return. You have to keep working, even when it doesn't seem worth it, because it will be.
So this person is annoying BUT you can actually attempt to try small ways to improve how you see yourself that will have small emotional impacts.
I started looking in the mirror one day and complemented myself when I was 18, due to years of being told how ugly I was in school. Eventually I started to understand that I wasn't ugly in anyway, and I think of myself in a much better light. During periods of low self esteem I do have to bring that method back back out to help, but over all it has worked well.
Dated someone with extremely bad mental health and they asked how I managed to think so positively about myself and I said the mirror thing, they tried it out and reported an improvement as well.
Like slip ups and bad mental health periods can happen, but sometimes something as small as saying something nice about yourself quietly can help improve your well being.
The poster is wrong in saying that calling yourself ugly makes you ugly, and I honestly think they suck for that, especially because negativity isn't true ugliness in itself (sometimes it's a very useful thing to be).
But most of us think we're ugly because of an outside force (fashion trends, being bullied in school, media) and it's usually never accurate.
i used to be in a friend group where 99% of us would joke and laugh about things that had happened to us. exactly 1 girl was always like “uhm actually you shouldn’t make jokes like that. like just be positive instead”. nobody knows why we kept being friends with her for an additional two and a half years😭
I just agree with them because I assume they'll want at least one person on their side, since most people will disagree with them.
I mean… it’s kinda true… I did that and it worked
I am great at lying to myself. But telling myself I am not a 5/10 on good days is too difficult, even for someone like myself.
Like there's definitely something to be said for speaking more positively to yourself but it's not a "just choose to do it" kind of thing. It's a slow process.
You have to start small. And you have to constantly analyze everything you say about yourself. I've been working really hard to show myself more grace. Basically I kind of pretend I'm talking to my bestie instead. I would never tell her "You look like you climbed out of a dumpster." even if she did. I'd tell her "Let's get a hair brush and see what we can do here." or "Your eyes are really pretty." or "Sure, you're a mess but you're cute."
I'm learning to love myself. And I'm not fully there. I have to start small. Right now, dealing with myself is like having a coworker that can be hella frustrating but they really are trying to do their best and I should have patience with them.
And it's kind of a lot. This post though is really smug though.
You actually can choose not to, it just takes a long time, and it’s difficult. It isn’t as simple as “yippee now I am beautiful” and then you’re good. What I did was convince myself I was average first- not ugly, but not pretty either. Then I convinced myself I was cute, then once that set in I convinced myself I was pretty. Sometimes I forget and have the classic “oh no I have to go to an event while ugly” cry, but usually I like what I see in the mirror. It gives me confidence to know that I’m beautiful because I’ve decided that I am.
"oh you're suicidal? Just don't! You're welcome :)" that motherfucker probably
It's obviously way more complex than "just think positive!", but negative self-talk can reinforce those perceptions of yourself. When I stopped "joking" about being stupid/incompetant/clumsy all the time, I realised how much that had actually been feeding into those feelings of inadequacy (then I got diagnosed with ADHD).
Getting annoyed with people for having low self-esteem is pretty reductive as well lol
So I know the original post was being kinda rude about it, but I did kinda do this. No my insecurities didn't disappear. But especially during Covid, always being home with access to mirrors , I kinda just kept looking at myself and over time just because kinder about myself. Like I could just look in the mirror and pick the things I liked over the things I didn't.
So no it's not "I'm cured" and it's not like I don't still have work on myself to do. But my brain did just kinda gradually shift to be able to say "ya know, I'm kinda cute, actually."
I kind of agree. I user to call myself ugly and i felt ugly. I stopped saying it, and while i don't feel 'hot', i don't feel bad about my appearance any more.
My pet peeve: toxic positivity
I don't like it when people don't feel good about themselves. They should stop that
I think there’s a difference between negative self-talk and just considering yourself ugly. Both are insecurity, but one is a bit worse as it’s putting it on other people. Why tell me that you think you’re ugly?
I think they said it badly, but it’s true. stopping yourself from saying anything bad yourself out loud does wonders for your self esteem, and reprogramming your brain to stop negative self talk. i’m not saying it’s easy, it can easily take years, but it’s worth it.
You know what. For that im just going to look in the mirror and say il even more ugly than before.
I mean, not calling yourself ugly is a good way to start feeling better about yourself, but saying it’ll cure you is so ignorant it hurts
You don’t have to think that you’re beautiful and love yourself, but insecurity and whining about being ugly is not a super socially acceptable or attractive behavior. That is what this is about. Don’t tell people how ugly u are or how sad it makes u lmao. Just be ugly and move on with your life. Signed a fellow ugly person.
Sometimes you're just ugly bro
I almost downvoted this fucking post just because of how stupid that sentiment is.
if only it was so easy as RE ENTERING FCKING CHARACTER CREATOR
Yet again we have someone correctly identifying the problem but utterly unable to solve it or even understand how hard it is to solve.
Ok so wtf am I supposed to do if I am ugly lol
Just decide to stop being traumatized by whatever shaming and abuse you’ve experienced!
I agree that people are responsible for going to therapy and learning to love themselves, yes, but you can’t help people heal if you’re encouraging them from a place of annoyance with their sadness.
It costs nothing to be positive, but negativity is natural.
It’s in pet peeves as well..
Hey?! You think you’re ugly and hate it? Just choose to thing you look good! It’s annoying me that you aren’t happy with your self and it makes you ugly.
Like would this person be so generous as to cease in their vexatious verbeling
They’re not wrong though. It’s definitely possible to modify the tone of your internal dialogue (having done it myself). It takes serious time and effort, but it can make a big difference to how you feel in general. Anything worth doing always takes time and effort. The easy path is usually miserable and self-destructive.
The human brain is plastic, the more you do/reinforce anything, the more that thing becomes part of your subjective experience. If you constantly maintain a negative tone, you’re going to end up having a more negative experience of reality. If you work to shift that to just a neutral tone it can make a huge difference; it certainly did for me. Won’t work for everyone, but it’s well worth a try.
Honestly, I agree with this. I would be more self-conscious about my self too if it would be the only thing I focus on. As someone who's been struggling with ED and body dysmorphia, I've learned to not focus on my looks so much.
For example, I don't like pictures of myself almost always. I don't try to take hundred pictures to post, complain to my freinds how I look and etc. I just know it makes me self conscious.
It doesn't mean I don't like to dress up daily and feel good in what I'm wearing. I do like that very much.
I just have chosen and will choose things that do not make me being overly critical about myself. I still fight depression and anxiety daily and it would not help me in having friends nor being able to concentrate on my work and things I like.
It's great you try to be more positive about yourself. But do you get bothered when other people aren't positive about themselves and think they're "emotionally ugly" because of it?
Not ugly but I'll start avoiding them, if they need constant reassurance from everybody and are not doing anything about it. Sometimes they will start arguing about it as well and it's just too much for me.
It's not as easy as the person who said it makes it sound. That's the issue. There's also a bit of a spiteful tone. "Well, if they say they're ugly I'll agree with them. Why they not insta positive?" That last one is an inside thought.
Of course it is not, but the idea is still there.
If you constantly belittle yourself around others, they will start avoiding you more than think anything more, because it's uncomfortable and annoying to tell one person otherwise all the time.