How Severe Acne Taught Me To Accept Myself: 4 Ways To Accept Yourself

I'd always been a relatively shy, quiet child and didn't like people looking at me. When acne appeared on my face at age 12, my fear of people looking at me intensified.

I started wearing make-up to cover up the acne. From then onwards I experienced acne on and off for 15 years, wearing make-up every day to help with my confidence.

I'm now 31 and I understand that my acne manifested for a reason.

Acne brought up my struggle with self-acceptance to the surface, how could I accept myself with a face full of acne? Society teaches you that acne is embarrassing, ugly and often represented as comical in films/TV.

I realized that even before having a visible skin condition, that I struggled with liking and accepting myself. The acne manifesting itself on my face simply drew my attention to this.

Here are lessons I learnt that ultimately helped me to accept, like and love myself again (with or without acne).

1) Realize that you are uniquely you for a reason.

The odds of you being born are 1 in at least 4 trillion, so if you think you're here by mistake or that you're not special or good enough - think again. If you can accept your uniqueness and your quirks, your confidence grows and you realize how uniquely valuable you are.

2) Realize that you've been programmed to self hate.

Most of us are not taught how to genuinely love ourselves, especially women. We're taught to pick ourselves apart and de-value ourselves, and so it takes deep work to unlearn self hate. It's not your fault that you were programmed this way, but it's up to you to take control and change this programming.

3) Start with being gentle with yourself.

If you find the idea of truly loving yourself intimidating or even impossible, start with self acceptance and by being gentle with yourself. What small action can you take today to be slightly gentler with yourself? Instead of beating yourself up, how can you be kinder towards yourself?

4) Understand the benefits of truly accepting and loving yourself.

I can tell you from personal experience, that self acceptance and self love come with so much joy, rewards and surprising insights. When you feel happy with yourself, it's much easier to let go of trying to impress others, trying to live a life that looks good to others rather than it feeling good to you. It becomes easier to say no to people, life generally becomes better and more aligned with who you uniquely are.

Self acceptance and confidence is something I've struggled with throughout my life, and I know if I can finally accept and love myself, then you can too.

After 15+ years of acne, the year I decided to make my intention self-acceptance instead of clear skin is the year my acne healed, and I finally had clear skin.

Thanks for reading,

By Mehgan Weatherley

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