One of the things that I commonly say is -
You don’t want to learn swimming with a weight tied to your legs.
We want to make sure that we are removing all the negative influences before we revamp ourselves for the positive influences.
Part of removing the negative influences is about educating ourselves on what the negative influences are doing to us first. Here we are going to look at common false beliefs for self-hate.
1) People, Things, Circumstances Can Help You Feel Better About Yourself.
This is the most common way for someone to feel less bad about himself/herself. I do it too sometimes.
If we feel horrible about ourselves, the first thing we do is try to find...
people that affirm us.
things that make us look better like cloth.
things that make us feel better like ice cream.
more control like exercising.
Or if we finally found someone that is willing to be our friend or accepts us fully for who we are. We think it’s true love and that this is it.
I’m not trying to be negative here, but if we don’t like ourselves, no happiness will last.
These things are all great, but they can’t boost our self-image permanently. Self-image is about how WE see ourselves. If that doesn’t change, nothing will change permanently.
Can someone change how you feel about yourself if you don’t want to?
No.
All the things we do are changing the environment around us, but not the mindset that we have. This is an inside job.
2) Confidence Can Be Faked.
There are some things that can work when faked, but confidence isn’t one of them. If we don’t feel good about ourselves, we can pretend to be confident around people, but that isn’t going to last, especially around social settings.
People can see through fake confidence like no other.
Moreover, most of the time, we are already putting up a front to try to blend in or not be a burden to anyone. This outer facade that we have is only but an empty front.
If you have a decent amount of self-esteem, this might work for some selected individuals, but if you feel horrible about yourself already, this will only make things worse.
3) You Can Hide Your Real Self from Others.
I’ve seen a lot of people trying to talk and form genuine connections with other people while being afraid to show who they are as a person. These people have good intentions and very nice people, but a connection is only formed by conversing between real people.
If we are only trying to talk to someone while only showing part of us or the “acceptable” parts of us It’s like trying to talk to someone with a ski mask on. You can’t exactly see or feel like you got to know the real person. Moreover, you might be wondering what this person is hiding.
4) It Only Affects You.
People underestimate self-hate and their relationships. It’s easy to think that because this is only about you and how you treat yourself, not how you treat others. They are very much linked.
The closer someone is to us, the more they will be influenced by how we treat ourselves.
For adults, you will start to handle their mistakes the same way you handle it, overly critical. For kids, they just copy whatever they see and they absorb your principles as their own. They basically become a smaller version of you.
The solution isn’t to further exclude yourself, not have friends, or not have kids. The solution is to get help, so you can have wonderful relationships later on.
5) It Gets Better With Time.
People say time heals wounds. This is partially true. Healing needs time, but untreated emotional wounds can last a lifetime.
I always felt like emotional damages are more severe than physical damages because they don’t heal themselves. You have to be intentional in working through the pain or it might stay there for the rest of your life.
A lot of people experienced horrible traumas, tried to stuff it down, and pretended everything is ok. It will never be just ok. We’re not robots. Having emotions make us human.
Trying to avoid emotions or suppressing it will be like you walking through a minefield because there are so many things that will act as triggers to the emotions that you are trying to avoid. Then the emotions come back more intense and unpredictable.
And no, it will stay there unless you clean it up.
6) If You Try Hard Enough, It Will Change.
I am big on change because allows us to go to a different place than our current place. However, if we work extremely hard on something that doesn’t work, we just wasted a lot of valuable time and energy.
If a car has a broken engine, we don’t work hard to push the car, we work hard to fix that engine. It’s not just about putting in the effort, but putting in the effort in the right places.
It’s so easy to spend all that time and energy to polish who we are on the outside to make sure that we never make any mistakes and being nice to everyone, but the real person that needs help is the one inside us.
7) Other People Have the Responsibility of Helping You.
I swear I am not trying to be a jerk when I say this, but people really don’t have any responsibility to help you. We all have the responsibility to help ourselves, and if other people help us, that’s us receiving grace.
We are not entitled to any help from anyone.
This doesn't mean go and solo this thing ourselves, and that we can never depend on anyone ever again.
This doesn’t mean everyone is selfish for not helping us.
This means we have the responsibility to learn how to care for ourselves emotionally. If we are feeling extremely sad, we have to learn how to love and care for ourselves when we are vulnerable.
We have to learn how to feel through painful moments and being gracious & loving to ourselves. That is undoubtedly one of the best gifts that we can give to ourselves. Be actively responsible to care for ourselves, not neglect our needs.
First Step -
Did you feel like any of your myths were debunked?
- Augustus
Losing Interests, Losing Relationships [Free PDF]
- Understanding the 5 CAUSES for an emotional wall between you and everyone else.