Mr. Pudgycheeks

On the topic of self worth

At one time, I had expressed to a therapist that I had no self worth. I said to her, “I can’t love myself because I don’t know where to start. I’ve never experienced the feeling of loving myself before.” She replied “Well you see other people around you doing it… Do you think maybe you can learn to mimic their actions?”

It’s an interesting concept, one that I’d heard before, but I think widely misused by the general population. People seem to say that, and then a week later go “You’re no better than before, I bet you’re not even trying.”

And every time someone tells you “You’re not trying”, you look at your own progress and see how tiny it is in the grand scheme of things, and you begin to believe that you’ve made no progress whatsoever.

But I’ve realized for myself, and I’m going to say to everyone I know: Stop.

Stop believing you’ve made no progress.

Every person who tells you “I bet you’re just not trying” or “It’s so easy, I don’t understand why you can’t do it!” or “There are hundreds of thousands of people in this world who can do it, why can’t you?” is wrong, and I’m going to tell you why.

In fact, I’m gonna have you remind yourself why.

Every time someone says something like that to you, say “So can you speak French yet?” or “Can you speak Chinese?” And when they give you a weird look, say “Well hundreds of thousands of people on this earth can speak it, why can’t you?”

And when they respond with “I’ve never learned how!”, there’s your answer. If they respond “Well I was raised to speak English”, there’s your answer. If they respond with “I’ve never had a reason to learn,” there’s your answer.

You’ve never learned how to love yourself.

You were raised not to love yourself.

You’ve never had a reason to love yourself.

and that’s not your fault.

And it is not up to others to judge you by standards that do not apply to your life.

No one can be expected to learn an entirely new language inside and out in a week, or a month, or a year, or in five. It’s a process. It takes time. And if you learn something wrong, you need to go back and relearn until it’s right and ingrained into your brain as second nature.

The same goes for loving yourself. It’s hard. By the time you want to learn it yourself, it becomes a chore instead of an experience. Instead of learning from the people around you, you need to learn through books and the internet and by observing others. And it’s not something that’s easily practiced around other people in your life. The only people who really “study” it are the people in your same position.

So every time you feel you’ve made no progress in achieving self worth or self love, remember that it can take years. Remember that it’s not your native emotion. Remember that there are other people learning the same things as you.

One day you’ll speak it fluently, and that’ll feel like more of an achievement than anything else in your life.