Q&A for How to Understand Yourself

Life is really a beautiful mess. Even when the world is chaotic and confusing, you need to look for the beauty there. Find something that makes you happy and hold on to it. Relish it. Find something that brings you joy and pursue it.

It's a lot easier to control the way you respond to things if you understand yourself. For example, if you know your fear of being alone goes back to your parents forgetting to pick you up from school or something, you can start challenging negative thoughts when you're worrying about picking your kids up for school. It just makes it easier to process everything you go through.

A daily meditation practice can help you peel back the layers and find out how you're feeling on a deeper level. For instance, you might touch base with things that are making you feel triggered or bothered throughout your day. Over time, that can help with your inner resiliency.

Because they are fake, they're good at shifting their personality around different people, lying, and pretending to be someone they're not. This makes them appeal to a wider range of people (who do not realize that they're fake). It's much better to cultivate close friendships with people who really know you and care for you rather than becoming popular by being phony.

To answer accurately, an advisor would need to know much more about you. I find that reflecting on events where the outcome was different than I intended with the purpose of identifying how my perceptions led to the actual outcome aids me in understanding how I could change to better achieve my intended goals.

Based on how you've described yourself, it looks like you already have. Once you accept the way things are, you can learn to live with them and be happy in your life.

Be who you feel you are. Don't let outside emotions and opinions change you. The most real you can be is to stay true to yourself even in a fake society.

Maybe you'd like to be a journalist/photojournalist when you grow up? If you'd like to do something like this, take English classes that will improve your writing skills, take photography courses if this is an option, and learn your History/Social Studies as well. If you want to travel to other countries and report on them, it will be important to have knowledge of their pasts.

Use contraceptives every time you have sex. It's that simple.

You can shop for them online, or create your own journal.

Maybe because you are one? Listen, everyone is "bad" on some level, in some respects. We are all fallen, broken creatures trying to find our way in a broken world. Sin is real, and guilt and shame are real. They are meant to be a catapult to fling us into the arms of God, who is ready to forgive us for our faults and to heal and restore us. People will rush to reassure you that you are a "good" person, but that's a meaningless statement, since "good" is relative. No one is good but God, but He can and will help you to learn to love yourself if you ask Him to.

Relief comes from doing different activities for different people. For example, some people find relaxation in music. Go down memory lane and think of the times you felt relieved. If it was an activity, try to do that again or a similar activity. If it was a person who made you feel that way, then try to bond with them or others. If it was nothing, and you felt relieved or never felt it, start with common activities that work on others, like spirituality, reading, music, online or offline volunteering hobbies like sports, art, etc.

Whatever you turn to doing more often or think of doing or like others while they enjoy that activity, are the things that you like doing. Your self is formed by what you truly like and also what you eventually end up doing. Your combined effort into your thoughts, speech and actions make you either relaxed and chilled out, or happy and impatient etc. You are not any one thing. Your self is a combination of emotions and characteristic traits.

Your thoughts transition. Today you think this, yesterday, you had some other thoughts. If you can get beyond these transitioning thoughts about what mattered to what matters, maybe you can get closer to yourself. Ask yourself, what you want to do now with the time you have and with your life? These questions take time to bring forth answers from deep within. Ask and give it time. In the meantime, read whatever you like for some minutes or hours. If you already read, then try different books or a different calming activity, like meditating or cooking.

Give it time. Continue to want it. Wanting something makes way for achieving it. Go ahead and thank whoever helped you. Gratitude builds strength. So you can heal your guilt. If you tend to hurt others, try to speak when asked and help only if you are sure. Other times, just continue being responsible at your work.

We all want what we are used to. People in abusive relationships tend to be more afraid of the unknown that awaits if they leave than of being hurt by their current partner. From what you say, the thought comes to my mind that you do not so much like having your heart broken as that you are afraid to actually love someone. Choosing only the ones who will say no grants you the certainty of being rejected, rather than risking the unknown. I would stop all love for at least six months, a hard reset of your heart. Focus on other things in life, then try again.

It takes as long to get out of depression as it did to get into it. The process involves understanding your own thought processes, learning how to control them and recognizing it when they happen. You can do this all by yourself, but it's a lot easier with a psychologist.

Observe your natural disposition on a regular basis and be honest with yourself with regard to your feelings, thoughts, opinions, etc.