How can someone learn to love themselves?

[SpiralOut]

Externally, there's not much to appreciate. Internal "attraction" is only worth it's salt for platonic relations.

 

Women sometimes don't notice or care about certain external flaws if they like you enough. Internal attraction can make the outside look better, same as how being ugly inside can make someone look ugly on the outside too.

 

I once dated someone who hunched over when he walked and looked at the ground. I don't think he thought much of how he looked, but I thought he looked great and didn't really get where his low confidence was coming from. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[ScreamingTrees]

Women sometimes don't notice or care about certain external flaws if they like you enough. Internal attraction can make the outside look better, same as how being ugly inside can make someone look ugly on the outside too.

 

I once dated someone who hunched over when he walked and looked at the ground. I don't think he thought much of how he looked, but I thought he looked great and didn't really get where his low confidence was coming from. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

Thank you for this, I sincerely appreciate your efforts, however misguided and pointless they may be.

 

I realize that this whole thread was just a waste, just as talking to a professional will be. Oh well.

[terlislee]

You seem to have a very skewed perspective of yourself. The thing is nobody can make you like yourself unless you want to. If you keep dismissing everybody's opinion and sticking to your ingrained belief of how unattractive you are, no amount of pills or compliments will ever change thart. The therapist can help you find the roots behind this and help you change the way you view yourself. Btw the girl in the picture is pretty and there's nothing wrong with her. People don't have to fit some kind of bone structure ideal (which is different for different races and ethnicities anyway) to be physically attractive (which again is highly subjective). Hardly any of us are perfect and we always are the biggest critics to ourselves, seeing flaws that others never notice/don't consider as flaws at all. The thing is to have a healthy relationship with your body and at least some minimum amount of self esteem you have to come to terms with things you cannot change about yourself and embrace the flaws as part of yourself, otherwise you will let the insecurities cripple your social life.

[ScreamingTrees]

You seem to have a very skewed perspective of yourself. The thing is nobody can make you like yourself unless you want to. If you keep dismissing everybody's opinion and sticking to your ingrained belief of how unattractive you are, no amount of pills or compliments will ever change thart. The therapist can help you find the roots behind this and help you change the way you view yourself. Btw the girl in the picture is pretty and there's nothing wrong with her. People don't have to fit some kind of bone structure ideal (which is different for different races and ethnicities anyway) to be physically attractive (which again is highly subjective). Hardly any of us are perfect and we always are the biggest critics to ourselves, seeing flaws that others never notice/don't consider as flaws at all. The thing is to have a healthy relationship with your body and at least some minimum amount of self esteem you have to come to terms with things you cannot change about yourself and embrace the flaws as part of yourself, otherwise you will let the insecurities cripple your social life.

 

There's no way for you to be so sure that my perception is indeed skewered. You have no idea what I actually look like.

 

I guess they'll continue to cripple my social life. There are no roots to be dig up here. The only way that my beliefs would change is if my physical apperance were to change. Unless I were to suffer brain damage and not be in my right mind, I can't see how I can convince myself that 2 is 8 when I know that it just isn't. I'm sure that others see my flaws, the same way people'd see a morbidly obese women huffing and heaving just to walk through her local grocery store.

 

There's absolutely no way that so many girls can possibly be intimidated by my physical appearance to the extent that I'm invisible and ignored by nearly all females.

 

I can see that there's no incentive for any female to get to know my "self", whether they're a stranger or someone I'm aquainted with, so even if I were to deceive myself into believing my own lies, I'd still have no success, I'd still be overlooked unless I were to kick and scream. If that's what it takes, my company must not've been too enticing to begin with, and I'm not at all interested in jumping through flaming hoops to try to win over a heart lukewarm..

Edited December 17, 2012 by ScreamingTrees