Sometimes you need a treat yourself day

Today I got up early and headed into my hairdressers salon to get my hair done. I always feel so much better having getting my hair cut and colored. I realized that this small act of doing something nice for myself is a thing that I have often taken for granted.

When my mental health was at its worse I would not do anything to take care of myself. It was a excruciating chore to just do the basics like wash my hair and face, and brush my teeth. I disliked myself so much for the state of my mental health that I also began to dislike how I looked. I would even go so far as to say I hated everything thing about myself.

I stayed in this horrible cycle until about a year ago I decided that I’d had enough of feeling this way about myself. When I started seeing my therapist she asked me to make a list of things I wanted to get out of therapy. At the top of that list was to not hate myself anymore, I wanted to learn to love every thing about myself, even the messy parts like my anxiety and panic disorder. I knew it was a huge goal but I was determined to not continue to live in this toxic frame of mind any longer.

I started with small acts of showing love to myself like not talking badly about myself to myself, taking time to do my makeup and hair in the morning, and buying face masks to do while I relaxed at night. It may seem silly but these few small acts began to add up and I found myself wanting to more things to show myself love.

Today I think I’m in a good place, I still have my moments but I can honestly say that when I look in the mirror these days I don’t automatically think that I hate myself, instead I think I really love the person I am becoming and I cannot wait to see how much more I grow.