Here's Something Stupid: The Catcatfish

Taichung Metro Green Line

How do i love myself???

I've been meaning to write something like this for a while!

First off, what is self love?

I consider self love to be compassion towards yourself. Aware of your flaws, and aware of your good traits, but not hinging your sense of worth on either. I think of it as similar to characters people like - oftentimes our favorite characters are highly flawed people, and it's not that we love them despite those flaws, but we love the whole picture and want to see those characters grow.

How do you learn to love yourself?

I think it takes time! It's not something you can learn overnight, but something that comes with going through life.

And I think another important thing to remember is that baby steps are great, and it's absolutely okay if you don't love yourself right now. Your journey will take time. It might be a huge accomplishment for you to be self neutral - being okay with yourself and being neutral in your skin, even if you don't 'love' yourself. Here's a short blog post that talks about self neutrality!

Something simple you can do to change how you think of yourself is replace things like "ugh, I'm so stupid" with more neutral self talk, like "whoops, I made a mistake!" Your mind is listening to things you say to yourself, so work on replacing negativity with kindness.

Resources

Who Am I? Worksheet: Helps you enhance self awareness by looking at other people's perception of you, and your own perception of yourself (you can print and handwrite or just type your answers on a doc, whatever's easier for you)

'Love Letter' to Myself Worksheet: Helps self love by having you write down things you love about yourself, how they benefit you, and how you can continue to honor them

Loving Kindness Meditation: If meditation is your thing, loving kindness meditations are amazing! Essentially, they have you direct statements like "may I be happy, may I be well, may I be peaceful, may I be loved" at yourself, then a close friend, then an acquiantance, etc. I've linked my favorite one here, that I've done countless times. But if that particular recording isn't doing it for you you can search "loving kindness meditations" on youtube, spotify, etc and see what you like!

Ways to practice self love: An article that I really liked, because the author talked about how she'd pinned her sense of worth on her accomplishments and learning to let go of that.

You can also go through my self love tag! I use it for strategies, as well as things that you might have needed to hear.

I’m happy you exist

We cling to music, to poems, to quotes, to writing, to art because we desperately do not want to be alone. We want to know we aren’t going crazy, and someone out there knows exactly how we’re feeling. We want someone to explain the things we can’t.“

Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

the craziest thing about books is you can pick one up and remember exactly where you read and what you felt like when you read it. maybe it was a summer afternoon and you were sad, maybe it was a school night and you were up much too late and already feeling the next morning’s regret, maybe you read the book right after a fight with your mom and you were angry. and a book brings all those emotions and memories back, even if you don’t remember the story the book actually holds. don’t tell me literature isn’t magic 🪄

tender love

thomas merton // “eurydice” sarah ruhl // ernest hemingway // anis mojgani “in the pockets of small gods” // lemony snicket // franz kafka “the castle” // @fridayiminlovemp3 (mitski “strawberry blonde”) // mitski “pink in the night” // khalil gibran // gustave flaubert from a letter to george sand, 1876 // danez smith “acknowledgments” // “love freely” E.C. @desultory-suggestions