I am working with my therapist on how to love myself. For years I have beaten myself up in my head and he is trying to get the point across to me that no matter what you need to love yourself… and it is hard to put into practice? Non- OCD related but any advice?
I’m right there with you both. I have always struggled with self love and beating myself up unnecessarily. Having undiagnosed OCD and ADHD as well as being picked up from family and others certainly didn’t help and it got to the point where I pushed everyone away and basically turned my emotions off and hated myself for not being good enough. Like Greg2 said, we are definitely our harshest critics and our ocd bully likes to reinforce it for sure since doubting ourselves just fuels its fire. It’s been hard and I am still my harshest critic sometimes, but I try to remind myself that being harsh on myself only keeps me from being truly happy and fully loving my fiends and family and significant others and if I really was so worthless and unloveable than why would they chose to be in my life and care about me like they do. Every time they support me when I mess up or have a bad day I need to remind myself that if I was the terrible person my mind wants me to believe I am, then they would not be there for me right now. I also try to remind myself that I can never fully be who or what I want to be if all I do is shoot myself down before even attempting anything. So what if I fail, at least I tried and learned something and can adapt and move on. At the end of the day, we can be our biggest ally or worst enemy, we just have to choose which. Lol, wish I could follow my own advice better, but I’m trying like you both, that’s all we can do. Take care and chin up and have a wonderful day.
@Brian K. I am definitely my biggest enemy and scared to take even minor risks. Idk why but I just can’t do it. I get too freaked out something bad will happen.
I am going through the exact thing. I always make jokes with my friends about hating myself but it’s kinda true. But what I like to remember is I am my biggest critic. No one else is judging us the way we judge ourselves as we hold ourselves to a higher standard. I’ve been trying to challenge negative thoughts and be more positive overall lately. I’ve actually downloaded an app that is simple and helps with confidence and loving yourself. It’s called Self Love. At the end of the day, you are the one that can make yourself happy. It’s hard but I’m working on shifting my mindset off negative thoughts.
I don’t know if you’re a Christian, but I am and have freedom in that I don’t need to “love myself” or “make myself happy” which is a modern day concept that I believe puts a burden on those struggling, because what if you can’t? Then the failure of that is on you. I can instead rest in the fact that God loves me immeasurably, like when I don’t like myself I rest knowing He does, and I don’t have to make myself happy, because I find joy in being His! His love and His joy cannot change and cannot fail, but mine and my efforts to love myself can.
How do I reduce my stress levels? My therapist told me I need to ‘heal my inner self’ and start to love myself again and start living instead of thinking about others. Care more for myself. But how do I gain confidence and start loving myself?
Hi all! I am trying to practice self compassion with myself as i suffer from ocd, ptsd and bpd and due to years of sa abuse and so on I have a very very negative self image of myself. Anyways, I realized I was avoiding talking to my nicely (compulsively if you will) and being actively proud of myself as it triggers a mean ocd thought about myself. E.g.: ‚i did really well today on xyz‘ —> immediately my ocd says ‚sure but you are dirty and should feel guilty because you had sexual thoughts and enjoyed them about xyz‘. I think you get the point… Do some of you experience the same ? How do you deal with it ? The same way as with other intrusive thoughts ? Let it pass and restrict compulsiions ? Thank you!!!
I’m wondering if anyone has tips for practicing self love. I feel like I’ve hit a wall because of my ocd, where I’m upset because I was born with a brain that doesn’t allow me to trust myself, and even though my traumas and trials weren’t my fault, it’s still entirely my responsibility to fix the damage that’s been done, a task made extremely difficult because of ocd. I have to trust myself to put in the work to be better, I’ve made so much progress too, but it’s not enough, and it’s not coming fast enough. For example, I have a skin picking problem. I keep making progress and then stress or other factored cause me to relapse. I stare at myself in the mirror and ask myself why I can’t just be normal, why I can’t just stop, leave it alone and let my skin heal. I hate myself for struggling with this, but the more I shit in myself the worse my condition becomes. I want to practice self love, I want to learn to trust myself, but I have no idea where to start. I don’t want to feed into the ocd by googling possible solutions and whatnot, I figured asking members of the community would be a safer choice. If you have any tips to share please do, thanks 💪
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