Dear sparkle00,

The story you’re telling yourself is flawed, though you aren’t alone in that.

Before your current relationship, you carried the thoughts that you didn’t have anything to offer anyone, that you weren’t enough as a person. Now that you’re dating someone, you constantly compare yourself with other women you meet on the street. You tried to tell your partner your thoughts and maybe he meant well when he told you that it was all in your head, but in the end, no matter how much he may reassured you that your relationship is doing well, it won’t be enough. Because you will constantly fear the future, with whirling thoughts of your soon-to-be-over relationship, constantly worried then constantly needing the reassurance from your partner that “it’s all in your head”. So yeah, what you’re doing is a self fulfilling prophecy.

And it sucks, doesn’t it? It’s not like you want to constantly compared yourself to others; you want your own confidence, yet lack the heart for it. But that never ending loop of self-deprecating will never go away until you face yourself. I don’t know what happened to you that you lost your confidence and self-esteem as a person, but I can tell you that it will take a lot of work to build it again.

Many people who loses their confidence tend to begin telling stories about themselves that ripped apart their self-esteem over and over and over again. Others might not see clearly, but you who spent your entire life with yourself is the one who received all your self criticism and your self praise. You are the one to spend your whole life with you, so regardless of what others might tell you, the stories you’re telling yourself will always be the most powerful and the most believable.

So those stories that you’re telling yourself: the ones where you’re no good, where you don’t amount to anything, the ones of you being ugly or not enough, that’s all you. And that ‘you’ will project your rejection of yourself on other people because you can’t believe that you are enough as a person so others will think so too. Even when you meet someone who genuinely wants to get to know you, you will reject their intention as something fleeting because you don’t trust yourself.

The stories you are telling yourself is flawed because you don’t believe you are enough as you are. And those stories are the truth to you because you are the one telling them to yourself. I can direct you to have self-love for yourself but that is one of the hardest thing for you right now seeing as you can’t look at yourself kindly. If you wish to break the cycle, you need to seek help in rewriting those stories. So go look for someone who is compassionate, but has no qualm telling you what you don’t want to hear because the objective truth is not meant to be kind. It’s meant to punch you in the gut because it might take that much for you to face the ‘you’ that keeps telling you you aren’t enough. Because it takes a lot of courage to look for the core reason of that ‘you’.

Have hope as you dive into your heart, it’s not all murky water.

Good luck.