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Steering Away From Negativity While Dealing With Acne
I knew operating from such a negative mindset could only cause more dissatisfaction in my life as I pulled away from connections, opting to suffer through my dark moods alone. But I felt there wasn’t any way to stop the thoughts that led to this low state. I truly felt defenseless at times and just let the familiar gloom descend, riding it out until it lifted on its own. Since I couldn’t find a way to gain command over negative thoughts, getting rid of acne seemed like the only solution to not feeling depressed. This conclusion made having a clear complexion the one key to my happiness. This didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t like basing all of my ability to feel joy on one outcome. I believed there were a great many things worse than acne I could be challenged with and still never be locked out of happiness. On a deeper level, I understood that happiness is accessible to everyone regardless of circumstance. I did want clear skin but I wanted to know I could be happy with myself without it. I rejected the idea that I was defenseless against feeling depressed over the condition of my skin. I made a pact with myself to uncover and detangle the real issues at the center of the bitterness. Just taking an observant position toward my thoughts helped. I stopped feeling as guilty when dissatisfied or envious thoughts formed. I saw them as separate from me; more like an outdated program that continued to run automatically because I hadn’t yet figured out how to permanently delete it from my system. This saved me from the flood of self loathing that used to follow. Eventually, I realized I harbored certain beliefs about myself and social ideals that do not support a positive self-image. Identifying and understanding these root patterns of negative thought helped me consciously reshape my internal dialogue. I could see more clearly how I was not defenseless against feeling low. Feeling low didn’t even come directly from having acne. Dealing with acne simply uncovered how I was wired to create unhappiness for myself. I haven’t uncovered all of the outdated programming and of what I have uncovered, I’m still learning to delete. But being aware of the triggers that can sometimes spiral me into a funk has lightened the load infinitely. We really can actively claim our personal happiness without putting specific outcomes in front of it. Saying you’ll be happy when you get clear skin is backwards. You can be happy now—that’s when you’ll get clear. The following are the main beliefs and thought models I’ve found that can feed inner negativity and lead to a damaged self-image. Working through these destructive ideas can give you a much more accurate perspective of what it means to experience acne, helping you to form a healthier self-esteem and reconnecting you to your natural happy state. Acne is ugly so I am ugly. The condition of your physical appearance, whether you’re satisfied with it or not, is not a direct reflection of you. You are not your body. Your body is the vehicle you have to navigate the world and experience life. Your body has the potential to express a lot about you but the way it looks is only a fraction of your true expression. Labeling yourself one way because you’ve labeled your body a certain way would be like self-identifying with the car you drive. It may lend something to the way you’re perceived by others and even yourself but its physical attributes are not your character attributes. Your authentic beauty—the beauty that is most powerful because it is felt not seen—is revealed in how you master your vehicle to extract the most joy from your life. People are judging me based on my skin. People are making judgments about you. This is how humans operate—we make value judgments throughout our days, filtering things through past experience and individual belief systems in order to simplify information. Making judgments helps us understand our world and make decisions about how to maneuver through it. Some people are more accurate than others, and some people are more aware of their judgments than others. But you will be judged, you will judge, and these facts aren’t anything worth focusing on. Most people form a perspective of you based on much more than their impressions of your physical appearance. It factors but it usually doesn’t carry a lot of weight. People are concerned with what they sense from you, and this is communicated through things like what you say, how you say it, what you do, and how you do it. If you feel like acne disables you in situations like interviewing for a job or landing a date because they require a person to evaluate you partly on your appearance, rest assured most people will react strongest to the attitude you give off. Apart from jobs that require certain physical standards like modeling, or encounters with people who are quite shallow, interviewing and getting dates hold the same potential for success whether you have pimples or not. People may form some thoughts about your outward appearance in the first few moments of meeting you but unless they have deep rooted prejudices about skin conditions, acne will have a very small impact on the potential for a real connection. Blemished skin is not as good as unblemished skin. Blemished skin is a sign of less than optimal health. Striving to be healthier when you notice your health is compromised is a goal that can have real benefits in your life. Being healthy is the natural state our bodies are meant to exist in. It’s a state of well-being where happiness is created most easily. If unblemished skin can be a sign of good health, we might say that it’s better to have unblemished skin that blemished. It’s better to be healthy than unhealthy. But maintaining a perspective where the blemished skin itself is labeled “not as good” can lead to the dangerous belief that “my skin is blemished, so I am not as good”. This can be an especially sensitive trigger if you compare yourself to someone with unblemished skin. Subconsciously you are saying, “their skin is unblemished, so they are better than me”. I’ve struggled with comparing myself to others across many areas of my life, including my physical appearance. I continue to struggle with this one because it’s usually automatic for me to start measuring myself against others when I feel insecure about where I stand. I’ve found the best approach around this isn’t to try and logically think through the reasons why you are no better or worse than the person you’re comparing yourself to. As soon as you become aware that you’re comparing, tell yourself, “this is abuse”. Then stop. That sounds like a difficult thing said too simply but it actually is very simple once you fully grasp that comparing yourself to others is serious self-abuse. It’s very tempting to follow comparison thoughts through to a final determination because there are times that what we conclude makes us feel pretty good. We might determine we measure up just fine. Other times the process spits out the determination that we excel in certain areas, that we can’t be matched. We’re actually more than fine but better—the best. The validation inflates a false self-image but the good feelings, if delusional, are reassuring. We strengthen the self-perceptions we feel need to be true about us and feel secure again. But the secure feeling is temporary. If we actively practice comparison against others, we’ll never be fully satisfied with what we determine because there is an infinite amount of attributes to compare and millions of people to compare them to. If a secure sense of self is what you hope to gain, comparing yourself to others is the absolute worst thing you can do to achieve it. It’s natural to be curious about your abilities and how you are different or similar to others but simple observation can give you this information. It isn’t important how you or your skin compares to another’s. We’re meant to experience how we grow and change in our own individual lives. Look to how you measure up to yourself, how you rise or fail to rise to your unique challenges. Notice that the gains you see when you focus on comparing yourself to where you once were feel like real achievements that never fade with time. Realize how empty and hurt you feel after you compare yourself to others. There is no “good” or “not as good”—there just is. So quit hitting yourself. ………… If how you feel about your skin has become a source of persistent anger, sadness, frustration, envy, and hopelessness, distancing yourself from your naturally occurring thoughts can prevent further self-flagellation. Putting your energy into observing your thoughts without judgment rather than berating yourself for feeling what you feel can lead to valuable insights. What you learn about your current internal dialogue will help you weed out those beliefs and thought models that only result in negativity. It’s not an easy process and it can take time but this kind of self-reflection is the real key to finding happiness with yourself. Consciously reshaping your perceptions while physically healing your acne speeds your healing and ensures that once clear skin is achieved, your confidence comes from not solely what you see outside but what you know is true about yourself inside.Ê Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Malissa McLaughlin writes about practical measures for fostering the physical and spiritual conditions that lead to restored health and clear skin. |
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