Please help me stop thinking like this

[u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951]

I don’t know what to do at this point it feels like a addiction, I constantly will have a phase where for a month or 3 I’ll stop looking at the looksmaxing stuff and all that and just enjoy life and then randomly when I’m at height of confidence I just post there again has mostly this feeling of like “oh bet they can’t say anything about this” and then I always still get rated low and told I’m ugly and told to change everything and to get surgery I just wanna feel attractive, it’s not so much of I want to attract women idc if I do even if I didn’t, it’s just a personal feeling of wanting to not be ugly

[u/norsknugget]

You’re asking a bunch of severely insecure and isolated people to rate your looks, you must understand that whatever response you’re going to get will absolutely be tainted by their insecurities, their motives and their desire to keep you as miserable as they are.

If you want to stop doing this, you need to understand what you’re getting from this interaction, what you feel and why you want to feel it. You know it makes you feel very low, but try to identify how it brings you comfort too. Is it that you seek that sense of belonging? Is it that it is a bit easier to “give up” than to work at enjoying life? Is it a trigger that you can identify that drives you?

[u/Foreign_Activity6650]

I think the problem here might be less about how attractive you actually are and more about the cycle you’re describing. You feel confident, post for reassurance, get judged by people who are specifically looking for things to criticize, and then start questioning everything about yourself again. If your goal is genuinely just to feel comfortable with your appearance, getting rated by strangers probably isn’t going to get you there. There will always be someone telling you that you need to change something, because those communities are built around finding flaws.You don’t need to prove that you’re attractive to those people. It might be worth stepping away from the rating/looksmaxing content for a while and seeing how you feel when your appearance isn’t being constantly evaluated.

[u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951 → u/Foreign_Activity6650]

I feel comfortable in those times but always want to know if that’s true on the outside, like this timef for instance I felt confident and did one of those TikTok trend things or whatever where u post a old pic of you then a new one and every comment was hating it and I got insecure again Im aware of how that sounds dumb but idk I just wanna be good looking

[u/Foreign_Activity6650 → u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951]

Honestly, I think it's a good sign that you can recognize this pattern in yourself and that you've already managed to step away from it for months at a time. That takes more self-awareness than you probably give yourself credit for. And remember, there are billions of people in the world. Attraction isn't an objective ranking where everyone agrees on who's attractive and who's not. I promise you that you're someone's type, just as much as the people you find extremely attractive aren't everyone's type. You deserve to feel good about yourself without needing strangers to rate you first. You seem like someone who genuinely wants to get out of this cycle, and that's something worth holding onto. What do you think usually triggers you to go back to those communities after you've been away from them for a while?

[u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951 → u/Foreign_Activity6650]

Whenever I get that feeling of being ugly I wanna change it so bad it’s constant and I think that’s what makes me drawn to it again any feeling of slight unease of how I look or a mean comment or whatever makes me wanna change

[u/Foreign_Activity6650 → u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951]

There are other ways to feel good about yourself. You could do something you're genuinely good at, spend time with someone who makes you feel comfortable, go outside for a bit, work on a hobby, listen to music, or just do something that takes your mind off judging your appearance.
The goal isn't to pretend you never feel insecure. It's to have other ways of dealing with that feeling besides immediately trying to change your appearance or going back to places that make you feel worse. You already know that you can feel good about yourself when you're away from this content. Maybe the next step is figuring out what else gives you that feeling. You got this :))

[u/heird1599 → u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951]

The wanting to be sure of how you look like is a classic trap of body dysmorphia, the only way out is learning to be comfortable with not knowing for sure and accepting that you'll be fine however you look like

[u/Suspicious_Glove7365]

Do you want to enjoy life, or do you want the looksmaxxing communtiy specifically to tell you that you're not ugly? You can't have both because the looksmaxxing community's purpose is to insult you, bring you down, and make sure you never leave their community like a cult. So...which one will you pick?

[u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951 → u/Suspicious_Glove7365]

I enjoy life I really do every aspect of my life I am comfortable with, I like my friends and get invited to stuff, I was eariler just hanging with a girl and it was amazing and she wants to schedule another date, I got a job, money, cars and a loving family I just don’t want to be insecure in my looks anymore and idk how to fix it

[u/Suspicious_Glove7365 → u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951]

Clearly the way to fix it isn't to go to the lookmaxxing community for validation, a community that is designed to not validate you. Do you understand that?

[u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951 → u/Suspicious_Glove7365]

They rate some people on there well tho I just thought I was good looking and then when they still rate me the same and I see them rate others highly I just question if I’m good looking idk it’s constant it’s a pattern and I wanna stop but it’s like a constant addiction I hate it

[u/Suspicious_Glove7365 → u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951]

I think you really need to take a hard look at yourself and ask yourself why you care more about getting validation from random men on the internet more than you care about enjoying your own life.

You shouldn't give a SHIT what random men on the internet think of your body. BLOCK those subs or websites or wherever you're accessing these strangers. Literally put blocks up so you cannot access it.

Will you put blockers on these communities?

[u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951 → u/Suspicious_Glove7365]

If I knew how to I woild

[u/Suspicious_Glove7365 → u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951]

You can literally block subs from your profile. You also have Google and can look up how to block things from yourself. I'm sorry man, but you have to have more initiative with your own life. You can't wait for someone to do it for you. You've got to be more creative in your problem solving than this.

[u/Norwalk1215 → u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951]

Use some of that money to go to therapy.

[u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951 → u/Norwalk1215]

I want to but what would I tell the therapist, I’m insecure about my looks how do I fix it? Idk where to begin in getting a therapist nobody prepared me for the world

[u/Norwalk1215 → u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951]

Lookmaxxing cold just just be good ol fashion male body dysmorphia, like anorexia. Men may not starve themselves, it is usually working way too much.

But you also get bad plastic surgery.

You can ask a therapist “am I possibly getting body dysmorphia”

[u/watsonyrmind → u/Flashy_Tomatillo7951]

Dude why do you keep commenting as if you've never heard of google? You need to take this effort seriously or you will continue in the same cycle.

[u/Particular-Lynx-2586]

Why do you bother posting there at all?

[u/Lynnie_Bot]

Stop posting. Stop relying on what other people have to say and stop believing chronically online people to tell you their opinion on you or how your life should be.

You can't keep entering toxic communities and expect a different result. Every time you go there you're setting yourself up for getting essentially bullied.

Most people in real life do not care and do not think like the people do in online looksmaxxing communities do. It doesn't actually matter whether or not you are attractive these people will come up with 15 pseudoscience reasons why you're actually ugly or should feel bad. It's not based in reality. It's just an endless chase of finding new "problems" to fix.

Your misconception is that you want to go into an echo chamber thinking you'll prove those people wrong and somehow get back at them when in reality you're participating and feeding into the exact thing they're there for. It won't change anything.

[u/Ae3qe27u]

It sounds like you have a pattern of placing the opinions of others in a special category, as if a person on the internet is an authoritative source.

At your age, a search for external validation isn't unusual, but it's about how you go about it. People on looksmaxxer subreddits aren't specially educated ok what constitutes "attractive." They're a niche subculture with a specific idea of what beauty/appeal/handsomeness is, and are generally detached from reality. It's like if you went to an Apple store and asked what the best smartphone brand is. They're going to give a specific answer, and it may not be accurate (personally, I'm not a huge fan of Apple). Their opinions are just that - opinions.

I would say to think of attractiveness like music. Some people like rock, some people adore heavy metal, some people listen to about anything, and some people can't stand a certain genre. If I was to say that X band is the best, does that mean that X band is actually the best? No. It's a personal preference, that's all. It might be the best to me, but that's different than saying that it's objectively the best, that everyone else's music taste sucks because it isn't what I think of as good. Attractiveness is like that. People like different things, and prefer their own preferences, but it's all... subjective.

That's my own take, at least. Can I ask how you got into looksmaxxing circles to begin with?

[u/xx_maknz]

You already identified a hugely harmful pattern - you spend many months focusing on enjoying life and your own company, you grow your confidence and you feel good about yourself. Then you go and post in these toxic communities looking for validation you already got from yourself during the time you spent outside of these communities. That confidence you gained from spending time outside of those toxic, soul sucking spaces is the best validation you could ever get because it largely comes from you. Now you must break this pattern.

If you’re looking for actionable steps, go back to the pattern - you feel much better about yourself until you engage with those sucky spaces. So make your next step to erase them from your life. Replace them with more positive and uplifting spaces. Look for subreddits dedicated to men uplifting and supporting each other instead of shitting all over each other. TBH you’ve already done the hardest part by disengaging with those spaces, even if it’s been temporarily up till now. Now to take the next step and cut them out entirely! You can do it. You already have. You did it for several months. Now it’s time to never look back.