Okay so this kind of turned into a long ramble about social anxiety, but yeah.

I think social anxiety is often related to a lack of self-acceptance and therefore having one's self worth tied to getting acceptance from other people. I used to have extreme social anxiety and even minor rejection could make me feel completely unlovable and worthless. I had a short bitter stage where I tried to "turn off" the part of me that cared what others thought, and to do that I had to actually devalue them in my mind and focus on their flaws. I was trying to cure an inferiority complex by devaluing others the way I devalued myself, in an attempt to level the playing field and keep rejection from hurting so much. Thankfully, I soon discovered that my problem was a complete lack of self-compassion combined with the fear of being innately unlovable (obligatory 'thnx brene brown').

At that point, I thought that the hole I felt inside could be filled with love and acceptance from other people, which gradually led me to start blaming others for their inability to make me feel loved and accepted 100% of the time. My "bitter phase" was the result of an addiction to external validation and it seemed like I wasn't getting nearly as much as I was giving. I felt like the problem was that I'd been giving out validation way too easily and therefore diluting its value. Therefore, I started withholding acceptance and validation from others in an attempt to increase its value so I could give less and get more.

When I was denying myself love, compassion, and acceptance, I was actively denying myself connection and belonging–even though I had close friends that loved me and went above and beyond to show it. And the interesting thing about this behavior is that the critical thoughts and unrealistic standards I had for myself felt like they were coming from somewhere else. It truly felt like they were coming from society and from the people that I interacted with. Self rejection is so normal to the people who practice it that to them it feels like the rejection is coming from society, from the strangers that turn them down, and maybe even from the close friend that seems ever so slightly more distant than usual.

Self rejection is caused by painful experiences and therefore is innately a very painful feeling. Many who practice it become hypersensitive to anything that could possibly be interpreted as rejection, because even the tiniest hint of it can trigger their overwhelming fear that they're not worthy of love. And this is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts: when they worry deep down that there's something wrong with them, they're incapable of authenticity which makes them incapable of true connection and belonging, which makes them bitter as fuck because those are basic human needs.

I "discovered" self-acceptance exactly one year ago this month. I say "discovered" because I of course had heard that self-acceptance was the only way to be at peace with oneself and even thought I was on the "journey" towards it (and that suffering a lot meant I was getting closer). But it was a year ago that things got so bad that I was forced to realize that my "journey" to self-acceptance was actually an avoidance tactic–an actual defense against it, that there was a difference between a "journey" and a "choice that must be repeated often", that self-acceptance was the latter, and that I needed to make that choice then and there for the first time in my life or else I was going to alienate everyone that cared about me and end up alone.

Until then, I had no idea that rejection wasn't supposed to be excruciating. I had no idea that the reason I was starving all the time was because I'd never learned how to feed myself. But goddamn, it seems so obvious in hindsight.

tl;dr - Love, acceptance, and compassion are like food: if you rely exclusively on other people to provide them for you, then you're probably gonna have a bad time.

Someone who practices self-love, -acceptance, and -compassion: "I'm almost always full. Sometimes I get distracted and forget to eat but once I notice my hunger I take care of it."

Single terper: "Alphas don't get hungry, look it up. Your hair is okay looking, btw. grumble grumble What? No. Nothing. Shut up. That skirt looks hideous on you. Whore."

Male in ideal terper marriage: "I'm never hungry, and if I am then it's my wife's fault for not feeding me enough. Probably too busy looking for guys to cheat with. Whore."

Female in ideal terper marriage: "If I'm hungry it's because I've been focusing all of my energy on being the best wife and mother I can possibly be. Plus, my husband says I'm so much sexier when I'm hungry."