Gemma Speck

Maybe there was a better way of living that wasn't just hating ourselves into existence.

It never stays internal.

A feeling as heavy and harsh as self-hatred is going to show up in friendships.

It's going to show up in work.

It's going to show up in how generous you are, how understanding you can be.

It's going to show up, especially in those situations, because we begin to think, well, if I'm killing myself, if I'm holding myself to such a high standard...

How come others aren't doing the same thing?

Like how come they don't feel the shame and the sadness and like the anger that I feel about myself?

How come they feel good about themselves?

And we don't want to rethink that key metric or key part of our identity that self-hatred is helpful or useful.

We just judge other people for not having it.

So this is what we need to be careful of.

And it's why I keep reinforcing that, again, hating yourself isn't just counterintuitive to your goals.

And your progress, it's counterintuitive to your happiness.

And the thing that I'd be most scared of is that the older we get, the more it becomes a neural pattern, right?

Because repeated mental habits over time become easier to repeat.

at a basic like neuroscientific level learning of any kind including learning how to hate yourself just involves repetition what we repeat is what sticks this has an actual term in psychology it's called long-term potentiation and it refers to a persistent strengthening of synaptic connections that are used commonly together

meaning that certain pathways become more efficient over time.

So when you repeatedly interpret yourself through a lens of loathing, when you constantly replay old embarrassing situations and say, this is proof that I am not worthy and that I'm embarrassing, or when you constantly are scanning your body or your identity for what's wrong with you, or you're picking up

apart your appearance in the mirror, you are practicing a style of self-relation that becomes neurally reinforced and recognizable.