Working on things
I've decided I need to put more effort into self-confidence. After 20 years, just saying "I don't like myself and I'm used to it" isn't gonna cut it for me anymore. I always figured that I was just stuck hating myself but honestly that's a lazy answer. All of my plans for self-improvement started with fixing the things that I hated about myself, never fixing the actual problem, the hatred itself. I'm never going to like myself if self-improvement is equivalent to self-attack. So rather than starting with "I need to lose weight" I'm starting with "I need to learn to love my body" and "I need to be healthy so that I'll be happier." I've quit smoking. I walk to work -- though granted that's not really by choice, since I don't have a car, that's still giving me about 6 miles a week. I spent the last ten years or so thinking to myself "When I lose weight I can get my navel pierced," thinking that if I was just thin, I could be proud and show off my body. I decided pride needed to come first. I got my navel pierced (yes, it hurts). I'm forcing myself not to think about how people look at me (which I get a LOT of practice at since my work uniform is uuuuugly).
Hopefully this is something I'll be able to keep up. I've actually started to feel better already and hopefully it'll spread and maybe I won't end up undermining any more relationships due to my insecurity. I always looked at those effects as just more proof that I wasn't worth liking. My insecurities damaged my relationships by pushing me into self-destructive behaviors, which made me more insecure because I couldn't be in a successful relationship, which pushed me to more self-destructive behaviors, etc. And now rather than trying to work around my insecurity and just avoid the behaviors (like avoidance, infidelity, etc) I'm trying to get through the insecurities themselves.
I know this sounds like a huge revelation but it's actually been working up to this over a span of the last few weeks, and reading back over it, it seems so damn obvious. But really, all of the right ways to do things do seem obvious once you figure them out. Yet somehow it took me years to figure them out. I guess it just took a forcible denial of my helplessness that I'd been using as a crutch for my self-pity and self-loathing.
So that's what's been in my head lately, for those of you interested.
Hopefully this is something I'll be able to keep up. I've actually started to feel better already and hopefully it'll spread and maybe I won't end up undermining any more relationships due to my insecurity. I always looked at those effects as just more proof that I wasn't worth liking. My insecurities damaged my relationships by pushing me into self-destructive behaviors, which made me more insecure because I couldn't be in a successful relationship, which pushed me to more self-destructive behaviors, etc. And now rather than trying to work around my insecurity and just avoid the behaviors (like avoidance, infidelity, etc) I'm trying to get through the insecurities themselves.
I know this sounds like a huge revelation but it's actually been working up to this over a span of the last few weeks, and reading back over it, it seems so damn obvious. But really, all of the right ways to do things do seem obvious once you figure them out. Yet somehow it took me years to figure them out. I guess it just took a forcible denial of my helplessness that I'd been using as a crutch for my self-pity and self-loathing.
So that's what's been in my head lately, for those of you interested.