Everyone here is good folks, and strong, and trying so hard to struggle through so much shit, and even if you can't silence the self-hating voices, you have to trust that they're not telling you the truth. Even when they tell you that people like me are BS'ing you to be nice, and if we really knew you we'd be repulsed and hate you all the more. Which is exactly what my voice tells me about my real self and what all of you would do if you really knew me.

JZ is wise. I am going to mark that post for the future.

Not everyone has a teflon ego. And my lack of a teflon ego doesn't make how I feel right now any less real.

I'm sure it's real, and I don't mean to dismiss it in any way. Or imply that it's a simple fix. I'm not stupid. I doubt anybody really wants to hear tales of positive self-regard. I mostly just feel like there's something deeply wrong with our culture that these feelings of self-loathing are so actively reinforced in so many people's lives.

Sometimes I look at Hec and his robust ego and placid neurochemistry, and I want to throttle him.

Note to self: remove garrotte from bedroom

Hey. Just cause y'all are married doesn't make hearing about your sex life any less embarrassing, bunk. Really.

Hey. Just cause y'all are married doesn't make hearing about your sex life any less embarrassing, bunk. Really.

It's just there for decoration, honest.

JZ is wise.

I spent the last couple of years feeling exactly as Tep does. I was the heaviest I'd ever been. I was out of shape. I was not eating well. We are struggling to get out of lots of debt. I wasn't reading much. I felt like my life was out of my control. None of that worked to get me to change my habits. It wasn't until I realized that I had the thrilling coincidences of A. having my blood pressure getting high enough that the Doc thought I might I need medication, B. being too fat for my clothes, and C. not having any money to buy new ones if I got any fatter, that I was motivated to do something. I was just too damn broke to gain any more weight.

I feel better now that I have lost 16 lbs (so far--15 more to go)--and I have more to wear--but I know how the hate monsters can put the smackdown on unbearably sometimes.

Everyone here is good folks, and strong, and trying so hard to struggle through so much shit, and even if you can't silence the self-hating voices, you have to trust that they're not telling you the truth. Even when they tell you that people like me are BS'ing you to be nice, and if we really knew you we'd be repulsed and hate you all the more. Which is exactly what my voice tells me about my real self and what all of you would do if you really knew me.

Yes, this. And yes, I know that being told that sort of thing doesn't even come close to silencing the voices of the Low Self-Esteem Monsters, but sometimes it helps.

Yes. Yes to having the feelings, and yes to "knowing" the feelings aren't true, necessarily. But they still make me feel that way. JZ is amazingly wise.

I know that being told that sort of thing doesn't even come close to silencing the voices of the Low Self-Esteem Monsters, but sometimes it helps.

I got into a bad self-punishment loop when I tried to silence the voices altogether; every time they yipped at me, I felt worse for not being strong enough to muffle them, which just proved how right they were after all about me, which just made them crow with triumph, which made me feel even worse and more self-defeated, which made them louder, etc. ad infinitem.

It was a huge relief to have the therapist suggest I treat them the same way I treated the people outside my brain who did disappointing or insensitive things: instead of wasting my time and energy and setting myself up for more failure by trying to make them stop, I could just shrug, say, "Well, that was nasty but totally unsurprising," step around it and keep moving.

Not wise, just well-trained. And shit, I bloody well ought to be. The amount of money that went into all that therapy probably could've gotten me through a master's/Ph.D. program (for about a year I was up to 3 times a week, or maybe 4; it was so bad that whole year is sort of a blur and I just don't remember); I'd better have some kind of edjumafication to show for it.