I am the problem
Hi
i don’t know how to love myself.
I grew up with an “almond mom” I love her to death but she is a kind of person who responds to fear with anger. Ik she loves me and wants the best for me but that seems to justify her treating me poorly. I was a chubby kid and for as long as I can remember I was conscious of my weight. My mom always told me that no one would love me when I look like this. To her she was motivating me to loose weight but that really *** me up. I am so insecure and truly believe I am unloveable in this body. At 21 I have never been in a relationship, never been in a situationship, never been kissed, held hands or even seriously talked to a guy. It’s not that I have never been approached or hit on by guys, that’s not the issue. The issue is my immediate reaction to a guy showing interest in me is pure disgust. My disgust is not directed at the guy but for the guy for finding someone like me attractive. I don’t know what to do because I want to feel loved too. Ik nothing is ever going to change unless I work on myself but how?
Ik I should probably try therapy but I just wanna know if anyone has felt like this and how they moved on.
@Icouldbebetter8923
Putting together all the things you wrote it looks like: Your self-esteem feels highly dependent on your mother's ideas of you (or even her temporary moods). You don't feel like a valuable person yourself. When somebody is expressing some interest in you, you react with disgust. And those poor people cannot have the idea that disgust was about how are you feeling with yourself, not your disgust to them (or, for example, mistakenly taking it as pride). It sounds like a totally crazy vicious circle...
I guess the goal of making you a person with some healthy level of self-esteem would be you being not ruined by the people saying bad things about you, and not too dependant on people saying good things - but knowing that you are a valuable person, no matter what happens - even while still accepting some critics and some compliments.
Adding some God to the equation: You say you are a religious person, or at least you want to be. How would you feel about God accepting you the way you are, every moment, every place? I think that a self-esteem might be a close cousin to believing that your God loves you. And looking at yourself the way God would, knowing all your imperfectness, your strong and weak points, things you excel at and your deficiencies - but loving, not condemning.
"Do not hate yourself" seems like a good starting point of the road to self-esteem some of us have taken many years ago and mostly succeeded with...