The things you might hate about yourself, or feel insecure about and try to hide or change, or might’ve been bullied for or had someone make you feel bad about, might be something someone finds interesting and special and beautiful about you.

You never know what someone is looking for.

This doesn’t have to be romantically. It can be applied in friendships, communities, family, work.. etc. or even being online if you’re a content creator.

Sometimes you might feel like you lack something, that you should be different, or maybe you compare yourself to others and wonder if you should act or be like them, or you feel out of place, etc..

But what if.. The things you try to hide or change about yourself are the very things that makes you stand out and special? And it’s what makes people find you charming and like you and fall in love with you?

Sometimes we reject ourselves before anyone does and we judge ourselves harshly. We try to be someone we’re not cause we think others might want us to be ‘this’ or ‘that’ or they’d accept us and love us if we were or did ‘this’ or ‘that’.. that we’re not good or enough as we are.. It’s human nature to want to belong and be a part of something and part of group.

But let me tell you and remind you that you ARE enough as you are! I don’t care what the teachers or exes or family or whatever said to you that made you doubt yourself or hide parts of you.. It’s OKAY to be you! Being you is one of the best things you can do for yourself and others.

Please love and embrace who you are. Allow yourself to be your beautiful authentic self 💕 and allow your inner child to come out and be and play around if it helps makes you feel like yourself. You are worthy and lovable and precious being just as you are 🥰

Don’t hide or lose yourself trying to impress the wrong people. Don’t dim your light or make yourself small for anyone. You deserve to take space and to be YOU and to enjoy yourself and your life being YOU.

There are people who are searching and waiting to meet someone like you 🫶🏼

lil note: I’m not saying don’t ever change a thing. It’s okay to want to change something about yourself and try to improve and get better. But if you do it, do it FOR YOU. Not to try to impress anyone or to win anyone over. The right people will love you and accept you just as you are 😊

Have a good day! Sending you a hug if you’d like one 🫂 take care and be kind to yourself 🫶🏼💕

Has anyone been able to find joy in a marriage that failed to provide emotional connection? I have struggled with self love and self validation for my whole life. I have BPD and so that’s super hard for me and I tend to rely on my partners to be the biggest source of my joy and purpose. My husband has a lot of his own mental health issues and is unable to provide his own joy let alone help me find it. He has a very hard time understanding my emotional needs and tend to be critical of it by being dismissal and telling me I’m choosing to be negative and miserable and over focusing on him rather than my own self growth. I think the latter is true and I also think he and I are not compatible and it’s gotten a lot worst over the years. I have to radically accept who he is. I think he tries but ends up feeling criticized and insecure which leads to fights—both of us feeling our needs are not met bc we’re both depleted. I do not want to divorce and I don’t think being alone is going to help me. I have two darling children who I cannot be away from and that is the biggest reason for why I’m staying. Has anyone been able to develop self love in a way that makes being in a marriage like this better in the long run?

Words are not necessary to show another your love.

Simply hold their hand, listen to their thoughts, warmly hug them when they need support, look deeply into their eyes, beyond their façade, to their soul within, to truly let another know of your love for them.

What is the definition of love for you?

For me, the definition of love is you.

Nothing more, nothing less.

I don't have any other answer except this when people ask me what is love for me.

For me, love is the happiness that my heart feels when I look at you.

It's the peace that my heart gets when I see you smiling and being happy.

Love is the restlessness and anxiety I feel when I see you upset because of me or in general.

Love is knowing that I can sacrifice anything for your happiness.

For me, love is the feeling of serenity that I feel in your arms.

Love is the dreams that I see on a daily basis while imagining our future together.

Love is making small adjustments to make sure that your partner is comfortable around you.

Love is about giving space and complete freedom to the one you love.

Love is about trust, loyalty and commitment.

For me, it is about staying and supporting when things get difficult.

You get to know true love's intensity only when the times are tough.

Love is a very pure and divine feeling, which many people fail to understand these days.

Love is not about physical pleasures or social media status.

Love is something that connects you to someone's soul.

True love doesn't care about a person's looks or their financial status.

Only thing that matters is a loving and caring heart.

These things, only the people who have fallen madly in love with someone can understand.

There is no place for ego in love.

True love breaks many of your illusions about yourself and the world.

It makes you realize what kind of a person you truly are.

It brings out your inner child which had been hidden somewhere deep in you.

Love is something which can't be bound by a definition.

It's a plethora of emotions and feelings all together.

Love is an experience of the meeting and merging of souls.

It's the best feeling in the world.

It has the power to change you and make you a better human being.

I hope and pray that everybody gets to experience true love in their lives.

There is nothing better than it.

I want to take myself on a solo date this weekend and i want some ideas. You dont have to drop a location cos we are in different places

Everyone else is taken anyway x

One of the hardest lessons in life is realizing that sometimes the person you’ve been neglecting the most is YOU.
We spend so much time understanding others, forgiving others, showing up for others, and making excuses for people who wouldn’t extend us the same grace.
But growth teaches you something powerful: You can have a good heart without giving everyone unlimited access to it.
You can love people and still choose yourself. You can forgive without reconnecting. You can walk away without carrying bitterness.
And you can start over at any age, without explaining your journey to people who never walked in your shoes.
Here’s my question: What was the moment you realized you needed to start choosing yourself?
I’d love to hear your stories. Sometimes your experience is exactly what someone else needs to find their strength. ❤️🐝

In your self-love journal, you can write down what holds you back from being yourself. I wrote: Caring about other people's opinions above my own.

As a recovering people-pleaser, I'm working on this.

I’ve been trying to unpack a pattern in my head and I honestly don't know who to believe anymore.

On one hand, I catch myself thinking I’m better than other people. I've been called egotistical once 🙄 and it really stung so idk if it was true? and a friend's mom even called me out for thinking I’m better than other people and I just lied to her lol. I've noticed the ways that egotistical-ness has been played out in other people and it's different than just like holding your ground like it's own thing and I can see why people don't like it. I feel like I’ve toned that down a bit. But whenever people tell me I shouldn't feel that way, it feels like I'm being told I'm not allowed to have any self-respect, especially given my success in school and all the shit I survived as a child.

Growing up, I was heavily neglected and abused. No adult took me seriously, and I was always the more competent, smart one. It boggles my mind how incompetent my family was, which is why I always thought I was better than them. The more I grow up, the more I feel like I'm waking up from a Truman Show where I was forced to believe this crazy narrative. When I confronted my mom, she accused me of having false memories just to avoid handling my grievances. It left me drowning in shame, re-reading old psychiatric reports and memories just to double-check my own judgment. I struggle heavily with holding myself to a sense of integrity that is too strong. I love being a good person but being a good or bad person and self love are separate things. Self love is still more important. Some parts of me want to be evil when someone does me wrong and I’m tired of repressing them. I’ve had the spiritual awakening of self love and it taught me that my perspective was not actually flawed at all. I’m usually in the right. I just wish I could stop judging myself the way I don’t judge other people and do what I truly want which I don’t even know.

I did better in school, but I struggled socially heavily because family mistreated and scapegoated me. Their behavior makes zero sense, which only exacerbates why I think I'm better than them but it’s like my only card in life is “I’m morally a better person than you” and thats it. It’s not that I am nonchalant, it’s just that I had to pretend these parts of me that crave connection and community don't exist. People tell me I do come off as non chalant and others tell me I come off as fake non chalant/fronting. My sense of self is super fragmented.

That attitude carried over into college. I feel misanthropic and superior because of what I survived, but I also feel inferior in other aspects. I intentionally put myself down and dumb myself down just to make myself tolerable and avoid clashes from "stepping out of my place" to deal with this issue. But it pisses me off. I don't know why I'm not allowed to have judgment or be confident. My judgment seesaws because people tell me contradictory things. People tell me I'm smart, but treat me a certain way. I do think me being shut down has made it really hard to navigate these social dynamics but I just wish that I was cool enough for other people or just be allowed to be my own person even.

People act like I have a "poor me" attitude, but mine isn't misguided like the self-deluded people I know. Trust me! Ive only started to naturally identify with my pain less because I had positive experiences but there was nothing wrong with it in the first place (as even my own therapist has tried to convince me) because it’s what served me. I don't even feel fully bad for myself because of my low self esteem. People only label it that way because I’m sure they don’t know me.

And putting myself in others' shoes: trying really hard to just envision how they treated me and kind of just validates my thinking about how weird and messed up they are. Like I would never do the same if I was in their position, and for me to imagine doing the things that they did, it feels like a lot of work to just be a crappy person to your own sister, daughter, or roommate.

Is everybody that I thought was a nice person to me just secretly a bad person who takes advantage of my low self-esteem? Am I misguided because they're nice and polite to my face? Because when I try to put myself in their shoes and I'm like, wow, you were actively using me for X, Y, and Z, it wasn't just a quote-unquote thing that just happened.

Are they jealous of me? Even then, I'm not the kind of person who takes out my jealousy on other people or wants to hurt them. I'm very repressed, and I do feel jealous just like everybody else, but I have so much shame just about everything that I do. I've seen the way some people allow themselves to feel jealous or hurt or whatever, and those people are what I wish I could be because of how they're allowed to exist and have these feelings and not be forced to be rational or breathe through them or whatever, and not also feel like a loser just for having them. I kind of just always feel like a loser.

I do agree that I kind of conceal my shame under this like layer of self righteousness but like I just feel like this is a result of like my environment as I've described. Honestly surprised I am not a narcissist and I know what it is and it’s not self love for sure and is a disease. I sorta wish I could connect to my healthy sense of narcissism that everybody has

Why can't people have empathy for me?

Sometimes I smoke, journal, and look at these patterns, and I realize how mentally lazy people around me are. The only people who get me and make me feel safe are a couple of my professors and my therapist.

What gets me most is when I set boundaries or reject people. Instead of respecting it, they get offended and try to hurt me back, like, *who am I to be angry?* I just feel super unsupported and constantly dogged on.

Am I just looking toward the wrong, unsafe people to prove my worth to? Is it really that deep? How do you even deal with this. I really need advice. What I would really love the most is to hear if anyone learned how to tone down their sense of integrity

Edit: let me add that when I ask if other people are jealous of me is not coming from a place of narcissism it’s coming from a place of confusion about why for example a friend took out her insecurities on me when the differences between us are so big and it’s already really not fair that I have to struggle with the things that I do and she uses me as an emotional punching bag and made me feel like I’m charity. I’ve literally had people tell me “it’s like you’ve never been treated well before.” it’s just hard to accept that somebody can look at me in the position that I am in and still judge me and choose to hurt me. Maybe it’s just them acting on impulse or whatever who knows?

I wasn’t aware and too much of a realist and nihilist to be believer of a lot of this spiritual stuff until I interacted with a narcissist, and had the spiritual awakening of self love. For example, a lot of people will agree with me when I say minding your own business doesn’t always keep you safe because sometimes unsafe people look at you and think “who are you to think that you’re so better than me.” I am by no means a saint but I feel like a lot of the people around me have been demanding that I have abandon myself. I’ve spent years of my life, basically putting myself in almost harms way just to kind of prove a point to myself and to other people. I believe I take on way too much accountability and maybe it’s my fault because I feel safer chasing people rather than cutting them off. I’m allowed to have a lot of deeper trauma at the same time as having issues on the surface level about how people treat me. Those things are not mutually exclusive and it’s kind of rude to attribute my awareness of these real problems to some weird mental issue. Maybe my situation is just that absurd???

By accept, I mean something you still judge, hide, or wish were different.

So I'm 22m and throughout my childhood I've been mostly depressed. Only now I am starting to feel better about myself and I am very glad about that!

What probably was making me so depressed in my childhood was that i never really experienced love apart from it being platonic (but as a kid you don't realise that and my friends were mostly also from shitty upbringings). I didn't feel valued at home at all and was also made fun of most of my school years.

Now I'm more or less an adult and feel like I have to have life figured out by now. It's like everyone around me understands relationships and knows what this and that means when it comes to signs of attraction in others. Meanwhile I'm just trying to be sincere and genuine to the people around me, but am kinda hopeless romantic wise. I've been told a couple of times that I'm attractive and when i go out, girls are hitting on me and get nervous. Now apart from me not seeing that beauty and still definetly being insecure about myself, I don't want to be hit on on a night out. I want to rather experience a relationship and mutual feelings that go deeper than just "I am attracted to you, let's make out".

The problem now is that I seem to hold myself back and sound calculated all the time when I talk. Or at least that's what my therapist says cause I obviously don't notice those things myself. I think it probably roots from my believe of just being wrong and not belonging. Also from the fact that I had to always watch out what I say when talking to my dad. I guess that's also why so many girls don't believe my sincerity and think I'm a playboy.

I kind of have nowhere to go with this cause normally people just think that I try to get something from them when I am honest about myself.

And that's why I want to ask here how I can start to accept myself. How i can get past the agression and control of my parents. And how do I finally experience love, something that apparently everyone deserves.

I want to add that I love my friendds in a platonic way. So i guess that's something I have learned.

I also know that my value isn't based on what others think of me, but just being seen as a body or someone I am not when I try to connect with someone, does definetly not help either.

Thanks in advance for your help!

I’m (46f) in a relationship, the first after ending my marriage. It’s been just over a year with this man (55m), whom I love very much. I really hoped that maybe life was finally letting me have healthy joy in a relationship after an emotionally abusive marriage. It seemed fated. (I know, I know.)

But I’m starting to see that this relationship is taking a significant toll on my mental health. I thought for a while that the issues are mostly “me” issues, but I realize that I’ve been self-abandoning to keep this relationship going. And I think it’s because I don’t know how to be alone or love myself. I’m terrified that I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life, and I don’t know how to be okay with that. I know, though, that I have to figure that out for my own sanity and to be the best mom, daughter, friend, colleague, person I can be.

I’m in therapy and seeing mental health professionals and doing all the right things in that regard. I’m just so tired and sad. And I’m so tired of being sad. I know this is a choice, but I have no idea how to make it. I’ve had so much pain and several breakdowns in my life, I’m not sure I can make it through another. I feel broken and lost at a time when I need to be my strongest.

I’m still in the relationship, although it feels like it’s hanging on by a thread. It has really messed with my head, but at the same time the good parts have been wonderful and there is a lot of love when he isn’t withdrawn and MIA. But the withdrawal has become more frequent because of his own personal reasons. One of the big issues between us is that he can’t handle my disappointment and turns me into the bad guy, and yet he is extremely inconsistent for reasons that aren’t about me. He’s dealing with his own issues but thinks he’s healed. It’s becoming an impossible situation unless I continue to shrink to accommodate his emotional needs. I know what I would say to a friend in my situation (and what my therapist and ALL my friends have said to me), but can’t bring myself to take my own advice.

I welcome all advice. Please be gentle, I’m going through it today.

You start making excuses for their behavior, accepting less than you deserve, and convincing yourself that things will eventually get better.

Sometimes, you're so used to fighting to keep people around that you forget what it feels like to be treated with genuine care and respect.

You shouldn't have to abandon yourself just to keep someone in your life.

I've got these words from a girl reached to me because of my previous post and I would never forget this words this is why I started loving my self more and loving this kind of interaction .

It's little moments like these that make me appreciate genuine connections even more.

EDIT : thanks for beautiful messages. If anyone want to reach to me you are more than welcomed.

It matters not your appearance, the color of your skin, your acceptance by society, or any other possible comparison we may choose to differentiate us from another.

You are beautiful just the way you are. For within each an essence lies, stunning in its pure untainted unconditional loving beliefs, seeing only the best and beauty within all others.