Plucking + Pulling Away Stress

I learned to love myself when I realized the relationships I was letting into my life not only affected me, but the other people around me

One life lesson that taught me to love myself is that we're all like flowers in a field, different and unique but still beautiful

Life lesson- a breakup taught me to celebrate myself

My mental health! My life lesson that thought me to love myself was my severe anxiety and agrophobia, I've spent 3 years lock up in my bedroom and last year had to leave work due to this, i started hating myself more and more, but I did a 3 month therapy I've now learnt its okay to have all these as I have a lovely family, a fiance who loves me and friends etc. 2022 we will be getting married. I have finally come to terms I have mental health and I'm not perfect but I'm grateful because its made me stronger and i love myself for that! I want to keep fighting, I'm grateful for every opportunity.

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I love your nails ❤

My life lesson of love: I’ve always known I’m different, but never fully comprehended or explored why. Instead I spent years crafting an acceptable version of my self and adapting them (me) to please whoever they (I) was interacting with. It was always exhausting. I’ve always been obsessed with perfection and controlling everyone’s perception of me. When I finally allowed myself to explore my true self, my honest thoughts, my real feelings and not just what I thought was “the right way to think or feel”/the correct human reaction, it was suddenly blatantly obvious that I was a highly intelligent autistic person that was using almost all of their brain power to fit in and make everyone like them ALL 👏🏻 THE 👏🏻 TIME. Many things about my life had been born out of a desire to impress and be loved by other people and little me must not have felt very lovable, so they started masking. So for many years I never had the brain bandwidth or self awareness to focus on my personal hopes and dreams. The perfectionist in me grieved. I panicked that maybe admitting I now knew that I’m clearly autistic would make my husband not love me anymore or make people treat me differently, think I’m not clever or equal or worse (in my anxieties view) hate me and call me a liar. Growing through that fear and pain and finally hearing that inner voice that says “so what if they do, you know who you are, be honest and the right people will surround you and love you for who you are too. But you have to start being yourself. It’s safe to be yourself”. I was so frightened, but I practiced at it and working through that fear taught me to love myself. It taught me to love myself while facing my biggest fear: rejection. I don’t know very many people like me, you don’t meet many openly autistic musical theatre performers, at least not yet. If you’re reading this and you’re neuro-divergent or think you might be, I love you and you should to. I know it’s scary not performing the social cues we think we have to, but please don’t hide yourself just because others once critisized you for being weird. Being weird without trying is a super power. It never even occurred to me until recently that it was cool or special or interesting that I have a 4.0 gpa… in my naivety I actually thought it was weird that other people could just memorise all the right answers from the text books or brain vomit essays for homework the night before it’s due. Your weird gifts might be staring you in the face, but you might not have the perspective to perceive them just yet xxxxx

Learning that I am not special. Aspects of myself do not make me special. They are just a part of me. This taught me to love who I am and see what other aspects of myself I can change or grow. I am good at math, but that doesn't make me better than someone who isn't. It's just a part of who I am.

I’m in my mid twenties and noticed a few grey hairs in the space of a couple of stressful weeks. I’ve seen them before and I pulled them out since they were only one but there seemed to be a good couple of them and it freaked me out! I realised that literally pulling out my own hair just was not the behaviour of someone who loves themselves and cared for themselves, basically boiling down to mutilating my body in a small way. I’m now going to really practise self love for my body more by letting it change freely and learn to love each stage I’m at a bit more than I did a few weeks ago💞

I have an exam tomorrow and this really helped me with my anxiety, thank you! <33

One life lesson that thought me how to love myself is actually a thing that is happening to me constantly in any kind of relationships, and that is relying on other people to make me happy. But I feel like every sad moment I’ve had regarding this made me change a bit for the better and slowly but surely I’m on my way to overcome this flaw of mine. Thanks to this I dont think flaws are something to punish myself for, I rather try to understand them and make the best out of any situation with all I am right now.

A life lesson that’s actually still teaching me how to love myself is the experiences of racism that I’ve gone through. Thankfully in the country that I live in, these experiences aren’t as frequent or extreme compared to others but being called slurs and other demeaning words simply because of my race has taught to me that the only way to fight that hate, is with love, specifically love for myself. The more the racists nitpick at my appearance, and my mere existence, the more I realize that only I can choose whether to listen and believe what they say. It’s very hard, sometimes I fail to fight, but loving myself and showing others that I love myself has really taught me that it’s a more dangerous weapon than hate could ever be. So yes, that’s the life lesson 🙂

You cannot find yourself in anybody else ❤️✨