For many years it was so difficult to talk about my struggles with friendships as I felt so much shame and embarrassment. The worst years were high school and in my early 20’s. I had a hard time making friends and when I did, I struggled to maintain the friendship.
For years, this reinforced my belief that I wasn’t a likeable person. I felt this to my core. If I was likeable, I would have friends, right? So…no friends must mean that I had nothing to offer people.
That was a really hard place to live. It then became quite easy not to like myself. I could only see what I perceived as my failures: quiet, too sensitive, too serious, not adventurous, boring, weird…
For years this was how I saw myself.
And I tried so hard to change. I would spend hours imagining myself showing up to a social gathering and easily talking with others, laughing, sharing delightful stories. But when I actually showed up at these gatherings, the same thing happened that had always happened. I was quiet, overwhelmed, felt awkward, acted awkward…so painful.
Over the years, my perception of myself has slowly healed. This was a combination of therapy, no longer accepting relationships where I wasn’t treated well, developing my career and creating work that I love to do. As I started to feel better about myself, I realized that I was likeable. The issue was how I judged myself.
To be fair, when we are quiet and sensitive, we are often misunderstood and encouraged to be different which does lead to the belief that there is something wrong with us.
But back to the original question: do you like yourself?
In a first session, I often ask people if they like themselves. Most often the answer is “it depends”. When they are feeling good they can name some things they like about themselves. But when they are in a negative space, it can feel impossible to see anything good about themselves.
If this feels true for you it can be helpful to reflect on what makes you feel bad about yourself.
How might others reinforce this? And what do you want to believe about yourself?
We can’t change the past ways we’ve been hurt but we definitely can heal from it and learn to love who we are. One of my favorite things about being a therapist is seeing my clients start to like who they are.