DO YOU LIKE YOURSELF?

An important part of recovery is learning to like yourself inside out. It's easy to find things wrong with yourself. We all have things about our bodies and personalities we would like to change, but while we are sick, we learn to hate ourselves. Our distorted view of the world is turned inward to ourselves. Sometimes others' opinions of us also help destroy our self-esteem. Often when we're sick we don't have the confidence to stand up to others' negativity towards us.

I learned to hate myself at a young age. My classmates and teachers put me down and I began to believe what they were saying was true. I saw myself as the stupid girl in class. Sadness began to fill me and my self-esteem dwindled. I wanted to be normal, but I felt like a worthless outcast. My mother tried to fill me up with confidence, but I couldn't see what she saw in me.

I was always a big-boned girl, who hated dresses and other girly things. My brother teased me like brothers do. He had a nickname for me with the word hog in it and he made pig noises at me. He had nicknames for my sisters too, but I took my nickname personally. It only confirmed my inner belief that I was fat and ugly. In high school teachers tried to help me to be more girly. I changed the way I dressed and it wasn't good enough. Their helpful hints only humiliated me and reinforced my inner dislike.

The more depressed I got, the more I hated everything about myself. I hated my hair, the way I talked, how I looked in my clothes, and how I walked. I picked at myself worse than my own classmates. My self-hate gave me little willpower to fight for myself or even to take care of myself properly.

Even as an adult, I couldn't find anything good about myself. Although I found enough confidence in myself to graduate from high school with honors and later graduate from college, I still thought I was a failure. I looked in the mirror and this over sized, hideous person looked back at me.

In therapy I had to learn to like myself. I had to make a list of ten things I liked about me. My therapist said I had to believe in the things I wrote down; I just couldn't ask others and write what they liked about me. It took me hours to find one thing to write down. I only had a few on my list when I returned to therapy, but my therapist told me to write those down on note cards and read them each day and add to them. I also had to work on changing my way of thinking.

As I started to think positively the brighter the light shined in my life. Slowly I began to see myself differently. In time I filled my list and added a few extra. When I met my husband, and he began treating me like a woman and telling me I was beautiful, this helped bolster my self-esteem. He is the first man who ever complimented me and made me feel special.

Learning to like myself helped me reach out of the darkness into the light. I now know I'm a beautiful and intelligent woman. I now stand in the light glowing with new confidence and self-esteem.