How can I love myself? (kind of long, sorry)

Dear all,

Thanks for being here. I’m a first-time poster and would appreciate some insight into my situation.

I’m 24 (an INFJ, if it helps), and I’ve been dating my long-distance boyfriend for a little more than a year. This is my first serious relationship, and I’ve learned a lot about myself and about the complexities of other people.

I’ve always been an extremely emotional people-pleaser, and I have an anxious-attachment style. These qualities were established in childhood experiences – I am repulsed by verbal conflict because I grew up in a volatile and emotionally violent household – and I’m currently trying to iron out in therapy. In general, I’m extremely quiet, shy, and a really really good listener, and I prefer to be in the background doing things to my own liking. But when it comes to making other people happy, I unfortunately put my desires aside and throw myself into helping them out. This attribute of mine has caused me more harm than good – I seek validation from others, constantly believe I’m not good enough, and listen to my own inner critic because I believe I deserve everything it’s saying.

I’m now in therapy trying to unravel these things, but practicing what my therapist asks me to work on – standing up for myself, saying what I need to say, and expressing my emotions outside the heat of the moment – has been a nightmare when trying to be vulnerable with my boyfriend. Because of my personal “people-pleaser” history, I began this relationship with a polished, if fairly bland, personality: I buried my emotions to seem “low-maintenance,” I went with my boyfriend’s plans rather than my own to avoid a “I didn’t really like that” comment, I agreed with his tastes to the point where I forgot what I liked to do, and I got angry at myself whenever I felt my manicured image slipping.

Now, I’m done with my passivity and am starting to embrace my personality and my ugly emotions more, but all the self-inflicted anger comes back during conflicts. Conflicts happen when I am triggered by something tiny my boyfriend does or says, causing me to explode. Bad feelings linger for days on my end because I don’t know how to explain what’s going on in my head in words, and I can’t let the feelings go. Early in the relationship, he used to get impatient and frazzled when I broke down, but now he’s become much better – just listening to me and comforting me when I cry and try to process what I’m feeling. He could definitely improve, though – he teases me a little about my emotional episodes (they happen around twice a month), and it bothers me – but I’ve brought this up to him, and I hope I’ll see some positive change there.

He’s shown no signs of leaving me, and his style of comforting has improved. Perhaps some part of how I feel is due to his teasing, but just saying “I feel bad” to my boyfriend requires hours of giving myself a pep talk. I feel horrible after saying how I feel, and I feel like a subpar human being that is unworthy of love, and that it’s understandable if he left me because who wants to be with this mess?

Finally, here are my questions: How can I love myself, flaws and emotions and all? And how can I stop overthinking everything I’m doing? I want to just go with the flow and be organic and relaxed, but I’ve been trying to be perfect for so long that I just can’t stop overanalyzing my every thought and action.

Thank you so much for reading!

I can relate to a large extent in the over analytical department. I have come to the realization that it too is an intrinsic aspect of my personality and can't be removed. Lol
The way I became accepting of myself, loving myself as it be, was to simply observe my mind go through its ruminations, with a type of bystander off handed approach. Not sure if it makes sense the way I'm describing it here, I can definitely expound upon it if you'd care to discuss. But suffice is to say that it took some practice to control when I drive and when I just watch as a passenger, but once I got the hang of it, it was much more organic, free flowing less stress etc. meditation and self hypnosis are some of the techniques I've used in training. Anyway, I'm interested to hear what you think and if you'd like to discuss it further.

What does your therapist say about your questions?

I had therapy for something similar. My advice is to stay the course, continue in therapy, and realize that it takes a while to heal (through therapy) what took years to develop.

This helped so much! I've been trying to put this into practice over the last few days and am already observing myself calm down and take things as they come. Thank you for reading and for your input!

I haven't had a chance to ask her yet – I've only had five sessions with her thus far, and we've spent all that time dissecting my family dynamics. But good point! I'll write these questions down and have a discussion with her next time, which is coming up soon. Thank you so much for your support!!

Hello bubblelord: Since you're a first-time poster here on PC... welcome to PsychCentral! I hope you find PC to be of benefit.

Another forum, here on PC, that may be of interest would be the coping with emotions forum. Here's a link:

https://forums.psychcentral.com/coping-emotions/

And then here are links to some articles, from PsychCentral's archives, the first by our host Dr. John Grohol, Psy.D. on the subject of how to raise your self esteem that may be of interest:

https://psychcentral.com/blog/6-tips...r-self-esteem/

https://psychcentral.com/blog/signs-...dium=popular17

https://psychcentral.com/blog/5-quic...dium=popular17

https://psychcentral.com/blog/7-tips...dium=popular17

https://blogs.psychcentral.com/culti...dium=popular17

https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-sel...ula-for-women/

https://psychcentral.com/lib/how-to-...r-self-esteem/

My best wishes to you...