Almost tips on how to stop feeling bad about yourself are surficial, meaning they only skim the surface of the trouble. They don't dig upwards the roots of why y'all feel bad nigh yourself. Nor do they help when you're crushed under the heavy darkness of thoughts similar "I feel bad near myself" or even "I hate myself." Surficial tips aren't good enough.

Is "surficial" a new word for yous? It was to me! Information technology relates to the earth, not self-esteem or psychology, but I like using it. Ironically, I learned it at a time in my life when I didn't but experience bad well-nigh myself, I hated myself. I was teaching class 8 Language Arts and loftier school journalism at a private American school for missionaries' and ex-pats' kids in Africa. If y'all think it'due south hard to feel good about yourself when yous're an adult working in an office or service setting, try teaching 13 year olds grammar. Middle school is non the place for a teacher to work out her cocky-esteem and identity issues.

In this commodity, I share three tips on how to stop feeling bad about yourself. These tips are general, so you can apply them to your specific life state of affairs. Maybe you feel unloved and unwanted considering of a breakdown or divorce. Maybe you regret a bad conclusion you made in the past. Maybe yous're coping with a difficult husband who treats you desperately.

Regardless of why yous feel bad about yourself, you lot'll find comfort and hope here. These three tips are practical and applicative to daily life…and I even through in a fourth tip for costless! It's how I stopped hating myself and started living in freedom, peace, and joy.

3 Ways to Cease Feeling Bad About Yourself

These tips are inspired by an article chosen "Get Unstuck! How to Avoid the Mistakes That Sabotage Success" in a back issue of O. I don't fifty-fifty know who wrote this commodity because I tore the folio out of the magazine seven years ago — and information technology doesn't specifically address the "I feel bad about myself" problem. But her advice is pretty good, especially with my own little blossomy spin.

1. Notice when you lot feel most bad virtually yourself

I Feel Bad About Myself
How to Stop Feeling Bad About Yourself

What helped me was when I started to notice how bad I felt about myself when I was on Facebook. I found myself feeling lonely, isolated and unhappy while scrolling through all those updates, pictures, jokes and groups. I compared myself to my "friends" and ever came upwards lonelier, sadder, uglier, unhappier. I realized that Facebook wasn't helping me feel practiced, improving my relationships, or even brightening my solar day.

This tip isn't nearly avoiding Facebook. Rather, it's near noticing when you feel bad near yourself. Peradventure you lot feel heavy and encumbered at work because of a hard boss or unhappy coworker. Peradventure you're struggling with problems at home or in your marriage. Possibly you feel worse at night, or afterwards eating sure foods, or while you're with certain people. Start noticing when those "I feel bad about myself" feelings rising.

2. Surprise yourself

"As a species, humans take evolved to respond to novelty," write Hugh Thompson and Bob Sullivan in The Plateau Upshot (equally reported in the Become Unstuck article). "One time we've become accustomed to something, we may grow immune to its furnishings."

We demand to be exposed to new and dissimilar things, or our attention wanders. Further, our bodies and minds adapt chop-chop to the environs. For instance, the best fashion to lose weight is to keep surprising your body with unlike types of do: walking uphill backwards, swimming in the bounding main, playing soccer instead of pond. Original situations surprise our bodies and minds, keeping us alert and focused. What might this mean for you lot — how does it stop you from feeling bad? It depends on your life; for me, it meant practicing my flute instead of surfing Facebook on my work breaks. This makes me feel practiced about myself.

iii. Track your progress

We forget things — particularly the adept stuff. We tend to call back (and even dwell or ruminate on) our regrets, mistakes, failures and weaknesses forever…but our joys, moments of peace, spiritual highs, and feelings of love and connection? How rapidly nosotros forget.

Demand encouragement?

"We found that one of the virtually of import ways successful people stave off slumps is by establishing markers," says Sullivan in Become Unstuck. "Some form of data collection — tracking your salary, recording your waist circumference, or periodically rating how you lot experience about yourself on a calibration of 1 to 10 can help y'all spot and reverse a negative progression before it picks up speed." If you pay attention to how you're feeling better and amend well-nigh yourself, you'll keep moving forward.

These three tips on how to cease feeling bad about yourself — 1) notice when you lot feel most bad about yourself; ii) surprise yourself; and 3) track your progress — are good. But, they're surficial. That is, they help with the surface feelings of "I feel bad almost myself" or even "I hate myself"…simply they don't become to the root of the problem.

How I Stopped Feeling Bad Nigh Myself

When I read my old journals — I'1000 talking about my diaries from 30 years ago — I see these words over and over: "I detest myself!" I also wrote almost hating my mom, sister, teachers and dad. More often than not my mom, considering she's had schizophrenia my whole life. She had several nervous breakdowns and psychotic episodes, which meant I spent a lot of time in foster care.

I didn't know I felt bad about myself until I started educational activity in Africa (where I offset learned what "surficial" meant). The school offered free counseling to teachers, and I figured I had nothing to lose. I like introspection and growth. My psychologist, Nancy, helped me dig up the roots of my self-hatred. Information technology was painful, but I learned why I felt so bad about myself — and why I was self-protective, condescending, sometimes fifty-fifty cruel to other people.

Counseling helped me stop feeling bad about myself, but it didn't heal the root of the problem. My problem was that I didn't accept a potent sense of identity. I didn't experience loved or worthy. I felt insecure and scared all the time — emotionally, physically, socially, professionally. I never felt safety, or similar I had a solid rock to stand on.

What changed me was listening to a podcast sermon past pastor Tim Keller. I walk every forenoon from v to half-dozen am; that morning time I was in the forest at dawn. Keller was talking well-nigh the Male parent's love for us, as Jesus described in the "Our Father" prayer. That was the moment that God's dearest penetrated the rock wall around my eye and stared dismantling it, stone past rock. I was overcome with His power, beloved, force and presence.

That was 2 or three years ago…and I rarely experience bad near myself now. It wasn't that one moment that healed me, though. Rather, information technology'southward been a progressive strengthening of my relationship with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. My self-identity is different now and that changes everything.

I don't know how yous feel most Jesus, but I know God brought y'all here. And He wants you dorsum. Instead of trying to overcome those "I feel bad near myself" feelings by yourself, let God catch you. Let the Holy Spirit heal you lot. Follow Jesus dwelling house, and you'll never feel bad almost yourself again.

In peace and passion,

Laurie

P.S. If you're not big on praying, read 5 Ways to Talk to God When You Tin't Pray.

*