[Cochonette]

Originally Posted by Pupil

People tend to confirm these beliefs I have of myself and actually I honestly believe these beliefs stem from what I've been told about myself all my life, after a while I began to believe them, then eventually I became that person. I am so afraid of rejection, of not being good enough or lovable enough. I do not see anything good about myself. I sadly cannot think of one thing I do well. The only positive things I ever hear people tell me is that I am pretty. But I want to be more than pretty. I am always the person people make fun of, the woman with the eccentric personality.

There are times were I feel like change is possible. I dream of it every day, to be that confident woman that has friends. But then I am faced with the fears, sadness, and the voices saying change will never happen. I pray and hope that one day I will find reasons to love myself.

Sorry, I hope I don’t sound redundant and whinny. I don't feel sorry for myself and I am not throwing a pity party, I just really want to know how to change, but as you said, I guess it is a process.

Thank you for taking the time out to respond, it means a lot. People like you give me hope and encouragement to continue to fight even when I feel like throwing in the towel. You're right there is light at the end of the tunnel, I may not see it but I guess it is there.

Thank you so much!

I have been there. I know how you feel. I started my blog exactly to go from the despair of not loving myself and not believing in myself at all to become self-confident. It is always a work in progress, but ever since then, I could say that clearly I do love myself and believe that, even where I do not love myself, I deserve love and deserve to love myself completely. Check my blog if you want to see how I did/do this.

I do not see anything good about myself.

I used to think exactly the same way! I told this to my friend, and he said, "I can name several things right now that you are good at." The only one that stuck with me was that I am very introspective, because it was something I could agree I was good at and that was a great quality to have. That was the first good quality I admitted to having.

I can tell you right now some things that I think are great about you. One - you are clearly a self-educating person (1) with a strong desire to learn (2) and grow (3). You have read all these practical books (4), when the average person doesn't read much at all, or just reads romance novels or comic books. You type well (5) with a complex vocabulary (6), and I can tell that you are an intelligent (7) and thoughtful (8) person who simply needs to believe in herself. And you can. You can believe in yourself. In fact, I dare say you already do. You believe the things you have typed. YOU have typed those things you believe. You believe in your own ideas. Considering this fact, does anyone truly believe in anyone else more than they believe in themselves?

I can tell just from this thread that you have much to offer the world. You already do.

I dream of it every day, to be that confident woman that has friends. But then I am faced with the fears, sadness, and the voices saying change will never happen. I pray and hope that one day I will find reasons to love myself.

I did, too. I just wanted to be a confident person. You know? That's what we really desire, more than to have friends, more than all the "good" things about ourselves that we wish to see... we simply desire to be confident. That's how I began to develop self-confidence - I thought, "I cannot imagine having all the qualities that I imagine I would need to feel self-confident (all those 'good' qualities), but I can imagine what it feels like to be self-confident. I just want to know how it feels." So I decided to forsake reasoning for a while. Well, not entirely - I had reached the very reasonable conclusion that self-confidence makes sense. Yet I didn't yet believe in it enough to actually be self-confident. Just - whenever I had reasoned out my fears and self-hatred as much as I could - in the end, it was, well, a dead-end that did NOT make sense. It was just reasons I couldn't stop pursuing, by habit, by compulsion. That did not make sense! Yet because they were reasons, I got pulled constantly round and round into thinking they did make sense, like a dog chasing its tail!!!

You don't need REASONS to be self-confident. At least, not any you don't already have. You WANT to be self-confident. So why don't you try it out? Even if you have to pretend for a while. Pretend that all those reasons for self-doubt don't exist, for now. Give yourself a chance just to know what it feels like to be self-confident, to be who you want to be. In the end, you might realize that your reason for being self-confident and deserving to be self-confident is simply that it's what you want and that everything you don't REALLY want is actually a dead-end in the pursuit of happiness and anything.