I feel like my self worth goes back and forth across various extremes. I also feel like my self worth (and admittedly this is a little unhealthy) is directly related to stress/productivity and success/outside validation. The little voice (I typed “vice” the first time on accident ironically) goes from “Wow look at you, that was successful. Things are great. You’re talented and beautiful and you deserve happiness and success” to “Who are you kidding. You’ll never succeed and you’ll be miserable because you’re not very attractive, you're not talented enough, and you’re dumb and lazy.” Like I said, extremes. Particularly the last couple months i’ve had the latter attitude about my self worth. Between being behind in school work and not having much success personally or for my career I’ve been in a bit of a slump. I’m at one of those points where I’m thinking, “Okay, somethings got to give. This thing coming up is gonna work out. This is gonna go great and be the thing that breaks this cycle of negativity.” Then I don’t get whatever it is and the self worth sinks a little more. I will be the first one to admit that I need to look more to myself for positive self worth and positivity. I don’t generally consider myself a negative person, but I think I have a bad habit of looking for validation from other people to get me going. A lot of times this validation comes from getting cast in a show. Anyone who has known me for a long time can tell you. I am my happiest when I’m in a show and i’m at my most unhappy in long chunks of time where I am not working on a show. I guess subconsciously when someone puts me in a show it’s kind of like them saying, “Hey it’s valid that you love theatre because you’re actually kind of good at it and by the way, you’re attractive enough that people won’t mind having to look at you on stage for two hours.” I’m aware that this is silly and I should know and believe these things automatically it’s just one of the little things about me I need to work on. I would like to find a happy medium between these two extreme states of self worth. I would like to be able to think about myself and say, “Hey, you're pretty smart and you’re a good person and you deserve happiness. You’re gonna be okay it’s gonna be a great day.” But it’s just a really hard thing for me. I blame part of this “looking for validation” thing on rough experiences in elementary and middle school. I didn’t have a lot of friends and the kids I went to school with were pretty mean so I kind of felt like something wrong with me. I remember when I was in Annie was 11 and I invited a couple of the other orphan girls over to my house. I asked one of them if I was annoying and told her to make sure to tell me if I was being annoying and I would stop. It was really sad but I just assume that people weren’t going to like me. While I have lots of wonderful friends and have had lots of success since bing that award middle school girl there’s still a part of me that still feels the need to check in with people to make sure that I’m still okay and still an acceptable human being. I think once I can figure out how to just be comfortable and confident on my own I will be a little bit healthier of a human being.
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