96. I feel ugly

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Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. A quick disclaimer before we get into it. This episode includes topics around body image, eating disorders, and body dysmorphia. Please consider whether you're in the right mental headspace to listen to this today. Feel free to listen to something else and return when the time is right. There are resources in the episode description if you need help or further information. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show, or welcome back to the podcast listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is great to have you here back for another episode. Well, I feel like the episode title kind of says it all. We're being vulnerable today, guys, and I'm kind of super nervous recording this, But you know what, this show has always been about being honest with the experiences, the thoughts, and the feelings of our twenties, and right now, I've been feeling really ugly. I've been feeling unattractive, and it's been really messing with my headspace and my self perception. So I want to talk about it today because I know it's hard to talk about these things, but I'm guessing there's someone out there who is going to relate and feel less alone, and that's really what matters to me. I guess, just like some background, I don't think that I've ever felt particularly beautiful during my life, Like even since I was a kid, I was such a tomboy growing up, and I always had self cut bangs and was a little bit dirty from playing outside. And I guess as I grew up and external image and beauty standards really begun to matter, I just never felt that attractive. And my body has never really looked like what I think I've been taught to see as beautiful. My shoulders have always been broad, I've always had big thighs, and there are all these other little things that only we tend to notice. And in my teenage years, I think that deficiency or those imperfections mattered so much to me. But as I've grown up, I've adopted what I would call a more mature mindset. I grew into my body but also my identity and my personality, and I used confidence as this kind of armor, even when it felt fake. You know, I firmly believe in the mentality that you need to kind of fake it till you make it, and confidence is one of those things that you can definitely fake. But recently those thoughts have really had a resurgence for me, and I've just found myself consumed with and kind of constantly thinking about beauty and whether I'm attractive and what people think of me and everything that is wrong with how I look. And I want to share that experience because it's so nuanced. You know. For the first time in my life, I've been googling plastic surgery and things I'd never thought i'd do, like a fucking chin reduction surgery. I didn't even know that existed until a few weeks ago. And I know that I would never do it. It's not something I want to do. But there is this like weirdly evil part of my brain that keeps questioning and picking at how I look and wondering whether anyone will ever love me if I look the way I do. And that's just the saddest thought. It makes me so sad. But at the same time, I keep returning to this idea that what I look like is the only thing that people will find appealing about me and I need to fix something about my appearance to feel at peace and to find someone. And that thought also makes me feel so guilty. I think, in this world where we're experiencing increasingly, you know, body positive and accepting and diverse beauty standards, I feel guilty, like why do I care about this? I know I'm so much more than my looks. I have so many positive qualities that matter so much more. That's part of me, and I always try and adopt this narrative on this podcast that our inner thoughts and ourself are what is most valuable. So there's this element of feeling hypocritical and frustrated and angry and that's hard to admit and really vulnerable. But I want to be honest and transparent. You know, life isn't perfect, and I guess neither am I, And it's complicated and it's making me feel so conflicted. So to day, we're going to talk about it. We're going to discuss and explore feeling ugly and the beauty standards that are imposed on us. What is the psychology behind obsessing over our attractiveness and our appearance and feeling like you don't meet some standard or some convention. How does that impact our emotional wellbeing? And what are the psychological origins from things like low self esteem and body dysmorphia, social comparison, negative learning experiences, and all of these societal influences. But I also want to use this time to counter some of the negative beliefs I've been having about myself and maybe some that you're having as well. I think together we're really going to dive into some of the scientific and psychological ways we can overcome these feelings by challenging negative thoughts, by shifting our focus, practicing self compassion, and limiting our exposure to unrealistic beauty standards, to kind of arm ourselves with the best possible mental tools to feel good about our bodies, to feel good about our looks. You know, today's going to be a vulnerable episode. I feel like the title gives it away, but I hope we're all prepared. I hope that it really reaches someone out there who might need to hear it, and that people are kind, and that you're in the right place to listen to it. So without further ado, I think we get into it. Feeling ugly is such a consuming experience, and it creates such a narrow view of the world. Everything becomes about appearances, and we tend to become kind of hyper focused on what we think other people notice about us and how that will reflect our character and their acceptance of us as well. You know, you carry yourself differently. Every outfit seems to exacerbate some flaw. You stop going out and spending time doing things that you love. You kind of do a double take of everyone you see on the street and look at them through a new lens, like, why don't I dress like that? I wish I looked like them? And it's this weird social comparison that never seems to switch off, and it's exhausting. It's so exhausting. That's been my experience recently. And it's actually has a name. I didn't know this until I started looking into it, but it's called the spotlight effect. It's this mental phenomena whereby we overestimate how much other people notice us and think about us. We can sometimes feel like there's constantly this spotlight on us and all of our imperfections, and they're so noticeable, and everyone notices the things that we notice, and the things that we hate about ourselves. And this is also very much linked to something called the false consensus effect in psychology, which is our tendency to feel like our personal beliefs are also held by others. So if we feel unattractive and we appraise ourselves as being ugly, other people must believe that as well. I think feeling ugly is interesting when we examine it this way, because we realize that this feeling would kind of be entirely eliminated if we never had to encounter the presence of others, or if we as humans were built not to care about what other people thought of us and about their evaluations. But that's kind of not the way that the world works. We've evolved from generations and generations to feel like that spotlight matters, that what we do and what we look like is the most important thing about us, because at a time it kind of was was a factor that was correlated to survival, especially if you were a woman. Evolutionary psychology and this kind of discipline, it kind of theorizes and proposes that men and women have different adaptive strategies and perspectives on beauty because of this practice of mate selection. Right, So, some studies have suggested that women may be more attentive to their physical attractiveness and how that will attract a mate because what they look like, things like if their skin is clear and their hair is shiny and they have that body type, it signals fertility and genetic fitness. And it used to be purely about survival. You know, if you were beautiful, I guess, or attractive, it showed that you were a good potential mate. Therefore you'd be selected. Therefore you would be protected and more likely to survive. But as those assumptions and innate assessments developed, and as we have a species have matured and become more civilized, those kind of beauty standards that we typically associate with body image issues and feeling unattractive have kind of emerged. And as women in particular, but also men, I think we're told that if we don't conform to certain standards of attractiveness, a man is never going to choose us. And back when our quality of life was tied to marriage, that really mattered a lot. There's all this gender socialization that occurs from a young age in which we receive a lot of messages about our appearance and our attractiveness, especially if you're a woman compared to men, and that socialization process really reinforces the idea that my value as a woman lies in my physical appearance, and I think that's main contributor to why I've been feeling this way recently. I've kind of woken up to this really sad reality and this evolutionary reality about what my value is to society, and I think a lot of that has contributed to how I've been feeling, Amongst some other psychological factors that I'm going to discuss in just a second. I think it's hard for me to also ignore the correlation between feeling like I'm ugly and dating again. You know, I've spent the past like better half of the year really focused on myself, and now it's like I'm back to seeking male approval, and this has triggered all of these societally ingrained beliefs about my inherent attractiveness and my worth that I've kind of had since a child. It takes a lot of effort and energy to not care about what we look like, especially in a society that puts it front and center. So I think that's one factor putting myself back into an environment in which first impressions and looks feel like they matter, but also, weirdly, if you follow me on Instagram, you'll see that I've started to film some of my episodes, which you know, I've never done before. This podcast has always been such a solitary in my bedroom or my home kind of exercise, and I think that having to look at myself on video and acknowledge that other people are going to watch that and perhaps judge me, has been really anxiety inducing and brought a whole new element to what used to be instill is for me a very personal process, where my looks have never mattered, only the content of my brain and what I choose to share verbally. I think it's important to note here that from a psychological perspective, feeling ugly is a subjective experience. You know, when we talk about ugly, that means a different thing for each different person. It's all very much self evolved but also societally ingrained, and what we choose to pick at ourselves about and what we choose to hate is very much tied to self perception, and it's highly subjective. But there's also all of these strong signals from our cultural background and our societal context and society about what we should look like, about what's beautiful and what standards and features make us worthwhile. And you know the hardest part about that is that it changes from generation to generation, even from like year to year, and we can kind of never keep up. And I hate that so much in a way that I can't even begin to kind of form the words to explain because it's just so insidious. And I find myself in like this spiral, and then all I can think about is like my younger sisters and how they'll have to face this as well, if they're not all already. And I also just feel so much self pity and anger that some of my best years and the best moments of my twenties have been consumed about anxiety about what I look like. It's like, it's a fucking epidemic. And I think a huge contributor is social comparison that is brought on by more frequent exposure to negative and unrealistic media. I think constant exposure to carefully curated images of beauty can lead to comparison, and if you feel like you don't measure up to these idealized standards, it negatively impacts your self esteem. This I think is particularly the case when we engage in upward social comparison, and this occurs whereby we select individuals we see as superior in some domain such as attractiveness, and we compare ourselves. And that's not hard to do when we have millions of incredibly beautiful people that we can look at from our phones. You know, we can go on social media and instantly almost trigger the part of our brain that is going to make us feel bad about our appearance. It's so prolific, it's so easily acceptable, and we don't even realize it. And this is what leads to negative self evaluations, lower self esteem, and feeling kind of ugly when the comparison that we're undertaking reveals some kind of deficit in our appearance, that is what triggers this feeling of ugliness or this feeling of dissatisfaction in our physical appearance. And this also kind of links very heavily to self objectification theory. And this was first presented back in like the nineties, but I've seen such a huge rise in this theory and the popularity of this theory with the normalization and proliferation of social media. So essentially this theory self objectification theory suggests that when we are repeatedly exposed to certain beauty standards through readily accessible stimuli and content such as social media, we come to internalize these standards and view ourselves as objects to be evaluated based on appearance, as we have implicitly been doing to those we see online. So essentially, it's the internalization of the belief that we are being judged based on our bodies and our appearances because that's what we're doing to other people. And this is exacerbated by the online environment created by social media, whereby platforms like Instagram place a strong emphasis on appearance through features like likes and comments, which give us a dopamine hit. It gives us instant gratification to feel like we're receiving that gratification and validation about our bodies and our appearance from people online, and we feel like because we are somewhat evaluating and monitoring and liking and congratulating others on their appearance through these means that others must be doing that for us. Hence, this spotlight effect comes back into play here. This self objectification is what can cause us to be more susceptible to social comparison and to negative self perceptions regarding appearance. And you know, we haven't even spoken yet about the rise in things like face tune and editing. And let me tell you that everyone is doing it, everyone, because in a world where we feel like our lives have to be perfectly curated and we need to look a certain way, it's kind of hard to not fall into the trap of smoothing out and imperfection and editing our faces and our bodies because that's what we've been told matters. That's been my experience, and I see a massive correlation between my use of social media and these feelings of ugliness that I've been experiencing. And I think if you're already going through a period of low self esteem, all of these influences can become so cumulative. You know, our self esteem it refers to this overall subjective evaluation and perception of our worth, of our value, of our competence, and it encompasses how we see ourselves, our beliefs about our abilities, our attractiveness, even and the extent to which we accept and respect ourselves and see our position in the world. As valuable and the origins of our self esteem can be traced back to various factors that shape our sense of self worth from very early on in our lives. You know, our primary influence is early experiences and interactions, particularly in childhood. The way we were treated and loved and nurtured, not just by our caregivers, but also by people like our teachers or our peers, is going to significantly impact the self esteem we have as adults. If you received positive and affirming experiences, if you were treated well, if you weren't bullied, I guess that's going to foster a healthy sense of self worth, especially when your value is reinforced by your parents. But conversely, negative experiences such as criticism such as bullying, comments about looks, rejection, even neglect that can undermine our self esteem and lead to these feelings of inadequacy being a much larger part of our lives the older we get. I think, over time, our self esteem becomes ingrained. It's no longer what other people think or what other people say. We become our kind of own worst enemy and our own evil voice in our head, telling ourselves that we don't matter, that we're unattractive, and when we have low self esteem, that's where a lot of these negative beliefs about our appearance can come from. Because we focus on our flaws, we focus on our shortcomings, and what that results in is self criticism, self doubt, and feeling ugly, feeling unattractive. I think this is interesting to me because I've always felt like I've had a fairly positive self esteem until recently, so I'm still trying to figure out what's changed. And I guess another explanation that we just have to discuss here that we can't ignore are certain psychological disorders that are linked to increased feelings oftractiveness, or an obsession with our appearance. And I think the one that is most valuable and appropriate to discuss here is body dysmorphic disorder. Body dysmorphia is another name for it, and essentially it is a psychological disorder. It's characterized by an obsessive preoccupation with our perceived flaws, and it often leads to distress and impairment in our daily functioning because we are so caught up in these small things that we see as imperfect, so we avoid certain activities, we enter into a negative thought spiral. We feel anxious, and people with body dysmorphic disorder, they often have a distorted perception of their appearance, meaning not objective. We focus successively on minor or imagined defects, and I think it impacts everyone. I think any mental disorder or condition like this is not just reserved for a certain group of people. You know, you could be the most beautiful person in the world and still have body dysmorphia because it is entirely subjective and based on your own self appraisal. And there are so many key features of this disorder that explain why sometimes we just feel gross and ugly without any explanation or justification. Some say that this condition is genetic, that it comes from social influences, that it comes from parents, comes from caregivers, it comes from even OCD, it's superchromorbid. But I think it is a really complex psychological condition that really explains why sometimes nothing can appear wrong from the outside. Everything can look perfect right, you can be so conventionally attractive, but there is just this obsession with how we look, and it shows up in things like you know, needing constant reassurance, never feeling good enough, always believing that people find us unattractive, always being able to identify some flaw, checking mirrors all the time, trying to conceal ourselves and hide away. And I just think that it's something that needs to be considered in this broader experience of feeling constantly unattractive and feeling like your appearance and your perception of your appearance is holding you back in your life. And importantly, you know, I think this information it's not really a guide for self diagnosis. It's just a possible explanation. And if you can relate to this explanation, it's really important to seek a professional diagnosis because it can get you into the treatment and the therapy that you may need. And this is just such a nuanced space, and there are a million contributing factors and reasons that we tend to feel this way. But regardless of these psychological explanations, like, let's be real, it just it really sucks to feel this way. It kind of casts a shadow over our whole lives and can become such an obsession. It just weighs everything down. It just makes everything feel distorted, and like if you feel ugly, the world feels ugly, and that's really no way to live our lives kind of stripped of enjoyment and obsessed with whether our chin looks too big in that photo, or whether our lives would be better if we lost weight. You know, I know that on an intimate level, and amongst all of my feelings of frustration and anxiety and just general apathy for life at the moment, I also just want to have agency over how I feel. I don't like feeling trapped by my thoughts, so I kind of want to move on, and I really want to be free of some of these worries and these anxieties and these thoughts. So how do we kind of counter and overcome feeling ugly? I think I'm providing these strategies very much for you, but also for myself to kind of remind me that there is freedom from these thoughts and there is freedom from these feelings. And hopefully we can kind of share and talk through some of the strategies that I've been adopting recently to take time for self reflection and reinforce my inherent belief that looks do not determine my worth. It can be really hard to believe sometimes, especially when other parts of our minds are kind of self sabotaging us, but it's not impossible. So if you're kind of on a self love journey like I obviously I am, at the moment, we're going to talk tangible strategies for shutting down the nasty parts of our brain that try to tell us our appearance is all that matters. Here's the thing I keep repeating to myself as kind of a self soothing reminder. Appearance doesn't matter as much as society often makes it seem. And no one is looking at you as closely as you are looking and examining yourself. Ask yourself this question. How often do you look at someone and pick apart their every floor? How often do you think about how someone is an attractive or how they don't look good? And how often do you think about that for like hours of the day, Like I would say, we never do that. I never do that at least, So why do we think that people are doing the same for us? Why do we think that people are spending so much time in their day worrying or appraising us as unattractive? And if that even is the case, if there are people out there whose entire purpose in life is just to think about how we don't look good enough for them. Does their opinion even really matter? Do we really want to be around those people? You know, those people aren't doing that. There are very few people in the world who are choosing to make that decision in their life to feel that way about others. And I think it's a common but important reminder that your true beauty really lies beyond physical appearance, and it's rooted in the qualities that make you unique. Your worth and value as a human being should not be determined solely by how you look. It is literally the least important thing about you. Your body is a vessel, That's what I keep saying. My body is just a vessel for my character, for my kindness, my empathy, for my actions, and those are what truly defined me. My inner qualities, my passions, my talents, the way that I treat others. I always think of this quote from what's that children's book. I think it's called The Twits or I don't know what it's called. It's like a roll Dar book or something. And there's this quote though that really stands out that a person who has good thoughts can never be ugly, because if you have good thoughts, they will always kind of shine out of your face like sun beams, and you will always look lovely. And I firmly believe this. I know that's probably not much of like a psychological evidence base for this, but I really do believe that when you have a positive outlook and you treat others well and you think good things, that really shows up in how you behave, and it shows up in how you carry yourself, and it immediately makes you more attractive. But I guess what are some of the ways we can reinforce this from a psychological perspective. It really doesn't matter what you look like. If you feel unattractive, that's really all that matters. That's really what's going to impact your life and kind of ruin your day. So we need to find a way to overcome that. I think firstly, one of the biggest things is to challenge those negative thoughts. Become aware of those negative appraisals about your appearance and challenge them with more realistic and positive beliefs. When you find those kind of feelings creeping in, like I wish I was thinner, my pores are so huge, I hate how I look, remind yourself instead and replace those beliefs with your positive qualities, with your achievements and the things you like about yourself beyond physical appearance. For everything that you can say you hate about the way you look, for everything that you find wrong, for every floor list something positive about your character, I think shift your attention away from appearance and place more value on your inequalities. And part of that is also developing skills and pursuing passions and engaging in activities that cultivate a sense of self worth that is based on your character and accomplishments rather than something that's super fleeting and unimportant like appearance. I think you also need to question the evidence for these thoughts. That's something that I've been really trying to do. Like this idea that I'm ugly, This like a compulsion that I have at the moment. Are you know, is that really based on objective facts or is it a subjective perception? I think often our negative thoughts about appearance are distorted and they're not supported by objective reality. Like has anyone ever said those things to you? Has anyone ever really picked up on those small features and factors about yourself that you don't like? How often have they actually said something, and if they have said something, do you really care about their opinion? Have you ever looked at your friend and loved them less because of some feature they don't like about themselves? Have you ever discredited someone's opinion because of their appearance? And why is that? Was there a valid reason behind you doing that? I think we need to challenge the validity of these thoughts and consider some alternative rational perspectives. You know that's easier said than done. You know I'm coming at you right now saying that even I can't do this, like I'm giving you really hearing advice from someone who probably needs to take their own advice. But I think it's just something to really think about and something that I need to put in place in my own life as well. And that's where the second tip comes in, which is to practice self compassion. We're not always going to be good at countering our negative thoughts and beliefs. Sometimes they are still going to be there and they're still going to exist no matter how much positive thinking and attitude work we do. So treat yourself with kindness and compassion instead of being overly critical, practice self acceptance. Treat yourself as you would treat a friend, or even better, treat yourself as you would treat the childhood version of you. If you wouldn't say the things you're saying about your body or your appearance to the child version of you, to your inner child, why are you saying them to the adult version of you. That child is still inside of you, that version of you that is innocent and vulnerable and needs to be protected. They still exist, so protect them. Treating that version of you with kindness means treating yourself with kindness as well. And I think a part of practicing self compacres is also treating others with compassion and the respect that we feel we deserve. I think when we do kind things, when we do good by others, we express the best parts of ourselves, and we prove to ourselves that how we treat other people and how we make people feel is worth so much more than how we appear physically to others. I think of equal importance here is to surround yourself with positive influences, and surround yourself with supportive and positive people who appreciate you for who you are. Avoid those toxic relationships or those toxic environments that reinforce your negative self perceptions and environments that kind of subconsciously or implicitly forced you to be self critical, one of those being out online environments. I think an element of this is limiting exposure to harmful beauty standards. Be very mindful of the media and the content that you consume. If someone makes you feel inadequate, you have the agency and the power to unfollow. You get to control your environment and your exposure to the images and the content that is potentially triggering, and you deserve peace and a gentler mind. And part of that is setting boundaries around what you choose to expose yourself to. You know, it sounds really obvious, but I think we don't always realize how much of these kind of beauty standards and these toxic negative beliefs creep into our minds and our self perception from mindlessly scrolling and consuming. Someone also said this to me the other day, this kind of fourth tip that I have, and I was like, this is amazing. I need to share this. And I think it's always a good thing to engage in activities that make you feel accomplished or like a good person that have nothing to do with looks being good at something or just spending your time cultivating a new hobby or a skill. It takes you away from that negative self talk and it diverts that energy into something that builds your self esteem in a positive direction. For me, that's you know, doing this, that's getting to share my thoughts and my feelings and my knowledge on this show. But it's also things like going out into nature or swimming in the ocean, hiking, all that good stuff. And honestly, nature is the best equalizer because she does not care what you look like. She doesn't care if you're conventionally attractive or not. She treats everyone the same. And these activities also take us out of our minds and into the present and allow us to break free of that spiraling that can often accompany critiquing our image and our appearance. And finally, I think it goes without saying, but seek professional support if these negative feelings about your appearance persist and significantly impact your daily life. Sometimes we just need someone who's separate from the situation to help us out. And that's something that I'm doing. Like you know, we are pro therapy on this show. We are so pro therapy. I did a whole episode on your Guide to Therapy in your twenties, and I think that it's really valuable to speak to someone who has perspective, maybe someone who is older, and especially when it comes to things like a body dysmorphic disorder or something along those lines, you may need a more clinical explanation and some more guidance around some of the practical and even medical ways that you can really assist your brain in saying goodbye to these to these fears and these worries and these feelings. Like sometimes you just need a space that's free from judgment to say. But what I'm saying right now like I feel ugly, I feel unattractive, and I want to talk about it, and I want to kind of release some of that built up stress and energy and frustration and just sadness that I feel like I always have to hold. So I really want to reinforce this one last time. I'm so sorry, but you're not alone in this. No experience is ever solitary or isolated. You know, maybe my feelings help validate that for you. I really hope so. And I sometimes think that if someone looked at me, I don't think they would know that this is what's been going on in my mind. Our thoughts are experienced in solitude unless we choose to communicate them and be open with those around us. And yes, I feel ugly, and this is something that has been part of my reality for a little while. So as hard as that is to admit, I don't want to feel that way anymore. And I'm really tired of being so focused and obsessed on my appearance. And I know I am so much more than that, and every day I really strive to reinforce that and remind myself of this truth. You know, when I'm seventy, I don't want to look back at my twenties and regret how much time I spent worrying about whether other people thought I was beautiful or attractive. I want to know that I treated people well. I want to know that I was kind, that I made a difference, that I enjoyed my life and made incredible memories and didn't care if I was ugly doing it. So I hope that you get to feel that way as well, and looking at it holistically and forcing ourselves into kind of that hindsight mentality can really help. And I also think sharing can help you'd be surprised how many people in your life are probably feeling the same way. When I was talking about this with my friends and being like, ah, is this too personal? Is this too intimate? They were like, fuck no, I feel this way as well, and as someone out there who's feeling equally this kind of terrible about their bows in their appearance. So I hope it's reached you, and I hope you feel better knowing that you're not experiencing this by yourself. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. Kind of a tough one, super vulnerable, so please be kind. I don't want to wake up tomorrow and have people being like you were entirely correct. You actually are super fucking ugly, so show your mouth. I don't think anyone would ever say that. But you know, if you didn't like this episode and it provided you with some valuable insights, maybe share it on leave a five star review if you feel cool to do so. It really does help the show to grow and reach new people, and it makes my day. It makes me feel like I'm doing something valuable. So if that's something you feel cool to do, so please give it a go. If not, that's all right, You're still welcome here, and I hope to have you back for another episode. If there is something on your mind to do with your twenties, to do with psychology and you want to know more, please follow me at that Psychology Podcast and shoot me an episode suggestion. I love hearing about what everyone's going through and what your experiences are and how we can kind of apply a scientific and deep psychological knowledge and explanation to it, So hope to see you over there as always. Thank you so much for listening and for supporting the show, and we will be back next week with another episode