Self Love

[haikyufan123]

Hi,

I’ve been questioning so many things lately. How do I truly love myself? I know to love myself I need to know myself but as a 16 yr old teen i’m trying to figure out who I am. I don’t know myself. I want to love myself. I want to know who I am.

[Mo]

I think it can be hard to think about "loving yourself" as a change you have to make in your feelings, because it's hard to change how you feel about something by thinking "okay, I need to feel differently now!"
But when I think about love, I think about how it isn't just a feeling you have, but a way that you treat someone; maybe it would be helpful to think about "loving yourself" as "treating yourself with love." Are there ways you feel like you could show yourself some extra love right now? I don't think you have to know everything about yourself (and you're right that you're at a point in your life where who you are is likely to be a big and complicated topic) to focus on being kind and loving to yourself.
I don't know what taking those steps to love yourself might look like for you, but for me that includes things like trying to cut down on negative self-talk, celebrating and maintaining my close friendships, and allowing myself to enjoy and feel pride in things I'm good at doing.

[haikyufan123]

Thank you that helped!

It’s just I realized that I have low self esteem and i’m too hard in myself. I also have trust issues and poor boundaries. I want to improve on them. I don’t want to have these. I don’t know what my values or needs are

[Mo]

One good place to start might be this article, about setting boundaries and standing up for yourself: Be Your Own Superhero: Learning How and When to Stand Up for Ourselves. It has some good tips for how to go about getting better at boundaries and assertiveness, including ways to start small so you aren't diving into the deep end and trying to have a serious confrontation with someone first thing.
Maybe you could take a look at that and think about some small steps you could take to change how you navigate boundaries with other people?

[haikyufan123]

thank you for the article I understand how important it is to set boundaries but what if I don’t know what my boundaries are?

[Heather]

It's one of those things that really is a lifelong learning process, especially because our boundaries aren't the same with everyone, or in every situation, and they can also shift over time and in any given relationship.

You say that you aren't good with boundaries: can you say a little more about what you mean by that? That might give me some clues that help me work out how to help get you started here.

[haikyufan123]

im not good with emotional boundaries. i seek for people’s validation and i’m kinda a people pleaser. i dump my emotional stuff onto people hoping they could fix if. i don’t trust myself. i really want to improve this.

[Heather]

Thanks for filling me in a little more. That list feels like a lot of things to tackle all at once, and like you'd probably feel pretty overwhelmed if you tried. How about you pick one thing from it to get started with first? If that sounds good, let me know which and let's see if we can't help you with ways to work on it.

[haikyufan123]

thank you so much for trying to help me out i really appreciate it! and well one thing out of the list that i want to work on is how do i manage my emotions instead of dumping out on people?

[Siân]

hi haikyufan123

Managing our emotions is a skill that takes a lot of time and practice - we won't always get it right and we need to be gentle with ourselves as we learn. I'll share some of the things that help me with my emotions in a second, but first I want to say that it is okay to share your feelings with people! It's easy to mistake taking responsibility for your feelings with trying to make them go away, not sharing them or asking for support.

I think that managing our emotions begins with stopping to listen to our emotions. Can you name the feeling that you're having? Can you accept it and try to understand it a little more? Something simple like writing down what you are feeling without trying to change it can help. Often one of the things that causes us most trouble is how we feel about how we feel and if you can move from "I feel sad, that's bad and I have to do something about it" to "Oh, I feel sad, okay" it can feel a lot less scary. Then you can start figuring out what you need - like maybe you'd like a hug from someone or to talk about something you're worried about, or maybe you just need to go for a run to let off the stress.

It's good to have some supportive relationships where you can turn to your friend/partner/family member and talk about some of the things you're going through. It's how you go about it that is important. Managing your feelings means recognising that they are yours and no-one owes you a specific thing - but you DO get to ask for what you need. Does that make sense?

Do you have an example of when you have felt like you were "dumping out"? Maybe we could use that to think about what you'd like to have done differently.

[haikyufan123]

again thank you for the clarification about that. i just feel anger and resentment towards my ex best friend who randomly stopped being my friend and excludes me out a lot from our shared friend group. when she stopped being friends with me i felt so upset. i couldn’t stop overthinking and just naming every bad thing about myself to prove why she left even thought she gave me no reason. i vented out so much to my friends and expected them to relieve the pain and the anxiety. sometimes i still bring up the past due to resentment and one of them tells me i should stop. i know i should and i’m less sad about it now but i just look back and just saw how i acted and cringe about it. i feel like i looked like a child

[Sam W]

Hi haikyufan123,

I think, as much as you can, try to forgive yourself for how you acted after losing your friend. It sounds like you lost a relationship that mattered to you and had someone start pushing you out of contact with your other friends. Even if you didn't handle your feelings around it the absolute best way, they were still an understandable reaction. I'll also say that it's in some ways a positive sign that your friends actually asked you not to vent to them about it anymore; it means they're comfortable telling you where the limit of how they can support you is, which goes a long way towards maintaining friendships long-term.

When it comes to finding other ways of processing those feelings, or any negative emotion, have you had any luck trying things like journaling?

[haikyufan123]

Wow I’ve never really thought about forgiving myself for that. I will defined try that. and yes sometimes i do journal and its very helpful not gonna lie

[Mo]

I think working towards forgiving yourself is a great goal. Sometimes it helps for me to think about it as treating myself as kindly and tenderly as I would want to treat a beloved friend. It can be easier for me to extend compassion to myself if I first think about how I'd do it to another person I cared about.
I'm glad journaling has been helpful for you; that sounds like a good habit to keep up with if you can.