The first time I remember thinking about my body compared to others’, I had looked up to my father and asked, “am I pretty?” I couldn’t have been older than 7. I don’t think I knew why I felt compelled to ask that, and I still don’t. But ever since then, I’ve been keenly aware of my own self compared to others. I noticed the differences more often than the similarities, and I grew a strange sense of shame for simply occupying space. Somewhere along the line it affected my behavior enough to drive my peers away. I was visibly unhappy a lot of the time, and would lash out at anything that could be perceived as mockery (when in hindsight it wasn't quite that). It got so bad during puberty that I became convinced of myself being an outsider; something so alien and despicable, inside and out, that I was repulsed by acts of kindness. Why do you try to include me? Can’t you see that I am like a drop of oil in clear water? I wish I was exaggerating.

Now, I could go deeper into analysing my mental health history to prove that I somewhat know what I'm talking about, but this isn't about that. My point is that in my two and a half decades of being alive, I’ve found myself fighting an unfortunately common enemy. That enemy being self-loathing, or insecurity, or whatever problems one can have with oneself to keep them from pursuing things and getting close to people. Sometimes it targeted different things about me; my body, my interests, skills I lacked and strange little quirks. There is always something to pick apart, a little imperfection that can be blown up into a failure of self, if you look hard enough. I’m not sure what exactly made me finally tackle that distorted, ugly belief I had of myself and the world around me, but I do remember thinking, who do I think I am? Why waste so much energy dragging myself down when I could try being happy? I was angry at myself for spending so much time dissociating and being miserable while everybody else seemed to just move on, to grow, to thrive in spite of their own challenges... Not that it was an easy fight, and I’ll never fault anybody for struggling with themselves like I have, and still do. But like I said, my experience is not unique. That’s why it doesn’t matter how silly and embarrassed I feel now about sharing it. Younger me might've appreciated seeing this, and maybe someone today will as well. That’s why I’ll be sharing my personal top three ways to tackle self-loathing:

First: Accept that you’re human. You need to acknowledge that you really are just a regular person. Not below, nor above, nor an outsider. You are flesh and blood with love and anxiety in your heart like any other passerby, and this is an important fact to remind yourself about. The things that you beat yourself up about are features and experiences shared by thousands of other human beings, most of whom you wouldn’t even think twice to blame or judge about. So why should it be different when it comes to you?

Second: Treat yourself like a friend. Like it or not, you’re stuck in that flesh bag of yours. You have to take care of it to live, and taking good care of it reflects on your wellbeing. Not that you need me to tell you this, but we tend to take little things like sleep and hydration for granted. It’s so easy to just push through sleepless nights and skip lunches when you think you have “more important” things at hand, but you probably wouldn’t be so happy to know that, say, your favourite person on Earth did that same thing. So, again, why are you an exception? To be real with you, I know what it’s like when you don’t think you deserve it. So if it helps, you can instead think of it as appeasing your loved ones. Or as machine maintenance: motors need fuel, batteries recharging, and even computers need to be shut off between use. Whatever excuse keeps you going is good enough. It may feel like a chore at the moment, but I promise you, keeping up the habit does pay off in small ways.

Third: Keep your brain in check. The human brain is quite an incredible machine, but it doesn’t always know how to manage itself. Because of this, we may sometimes need to challenge our impulses and correct unhealthy thought patterns. Whenever I have trouble getting something done, or if I don’t fully feel like myself, I have several go-to questions prepared: How long has it been since I’ve eaten? Are there any unfinished tasks? Should I change my environment? Should I text a friend? When a day is starting to look bad, even if I don’t feel like it at the moment, past experiences have taught me that an outside perspective is invaluable, because people tend to withdraw from their stressful surroundings to live inside their own head. But this self-protective instinct to marinate in a bad feeling isn’t very helpful to a modern human being who has obligations and deadlines. When you do that, you run the risk of overthinking or blowing up a situation into something worse than it truly could be.

Here, I’ll give you an exercise I picked up from cognitive behavioral therapy. It's more of a paraphrased amalgamation of several specific exercises that respond to automatic negative thinking, so do take it with a grain of salt! Pick a recent negative thought, and question it: what happened to make you have that thought? Do you really believe it, even if it were someone else in your place? Consider arguments against it. How would you reframe it to be more accurate, preferably positive even? Keep doing this, and see how your attitude changes over time.

A more concrete example of this might be my own experience: I used to get really bad anxiety about entering rooms full of people, because a few of them usually look up to see who came in. My first thought used to be that I was disrupting and calling attention to myself, and that they were to varying degrees unhappy with me being there. The looming discomfort in me would then slowly simmer and boil the longer I had to be there, feeling like I didn’t belong. In reality they were just looking out of curiosity, or their eyes were subconsciously drawn to the sudden movement and sound, only to forget about it after. No one is that obsessed with random strangers, after all. See how this works?

Now that we’ve gone over all these steps, quite a lot of what I’ve said here circles back to empathy, and turning it inwards. You are a human being among other humans, and all those other humans have complex inner worlds just like yours. Mirroring may have been what initially caused me to have a very distorted and unfair image of myself, but it is also something I now use to dispel all that self-hatred. To deny myself the same love and kindness I know others to deserve by default would not only insult the honour and intelligence of those who care about me, but it would also make me a hypocrite. That is what I believe, anyway.