This is the year to start appreciating yourself more than you used to. After everything that has happened, self-love has declined exponentially.
According to Eric Thompson, an associate professor and clinical psychologist, there have been surveys done and there has been a high percentage of people with low self-love.
I know I went through a depression during quarantine. I was slowly hating myself more and I noticed others falling into a rut. People are slowly losing themselves and are separating themselves from everything around them.
Stop beating yourself down and start building yourself up. When you beat yourself down you can lose relationships with people that actually matter. I was hurting myself more by disconnecting from my friends and family. It wasn’t until I connected with my loved ones again that I started feeling better.
When discussing spending time with my family and if it helps improve self-love, Thomspon put things into perspective for me. I thought spending time around people that encourage you can increase your self-love, but Thompson explained that it depends on the person if the interaction can help with self-love. Sometimes, people need to be alone and read an interesting book.
With the pandemic, we may have started hating the person we see in the mirror every day.
According to patient.info, a NHS England certified website, therapists say we should challenge our negative beliefs to make us feel better.
Make a list of anything negative about yourself, and for each negative, write down a positive. Then, you have to prove each positive/negative criticism about yourself. I started this technique a few days ago and I cried. I cried out of relief that everything negative that I thought about myself wasn’t true.
Eric and Isabel Thompson also had advice on challenging negative beliefs.They stated that it was an interesting activity to increase people’s self-love.
Isabel Thompson did warn, “If the negative thoughts keep returning to your mind, reach out to someone for help.”
Boosting your self-esteem is hard because there will always be a little voice in your head that will tell you, “You’re not good enough,” but eventually. the voice will die down because you will finally be yourself and that is beautiful.
