How to accept yourself when others don't accept you as you?

I wish to make everything stop just for one day.

Hello all who will see and or read this , I am so sorry for not posting, I got ....busy. But I wish I could disappear, PLEASE SOMEONE KILL ME, OR I CUT MYSELF UNTIL I FEEL SOMETHING. I was told by my own flesh and blood which hurts a lot worse, that I would never be good enough to be a RN. And My mom has the most fucked up rules I have ever seen and delt with in my years that I have been with her. I just wish to make it STOP, everything. And to make it worse I cant even be myself at home, I have to pretend to be something I am not, and to add to that I have to worry about school, graduation in May, If things will work out in the future, which I hope will. So my question is: does anyone have a magic wand to freeze or stop time? And I WILL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR ANYTHING!Peace out,Ginny Snow.

@ginnysnow, sometimes words fail me. But we only have text, so I will do my best and try. I don't have a magic wand. I wish I did. You are good enough. Love starts by you loving you. That is cliché as heck, but it's true.

It doesn't matter what other people think or how other people define you or want you to be. See yourself -- I mean really see. Look at yourself as that young innocent child who deserves to be loved and see you. Banish the words that others have used. Love the person you are and want to be.

My words may not have hit the right chord. I hope they do not offend. My ears are open. I'm listening.

@colleenyoung

Mrs. Colleen, Your words did not offend me at all, How are you supposed to love yourself when no one loves you? Young and innocent, I am neither of these things, because I have hurt so many people who did not deserve it. And loving myself for who I want to be, I can't do that because I am not allowed to be myself, don't you have to be yourself to love yourself? I am very thankful for your kind words though, I am sorry for ranting btw, and am thankful for your listening to me. Your words did not fail you, they left more questions for me to answer on my own. You know I am very thankful to be here with these very kind and supportive people, you and the other people who created this site, help people like me and many others, for that I am very thankful. So thank you.

With love always,
Ginny Snow 🙂

@ginnysnow Let me be clear, I have not faced the struggles you are facing today. However, I have been at the precipice you mention, and that causes me to reach out. I highly recommend to seek out the services of a therapist who works with us in the LGBTQIA+ community. Even better would be one with WPATH credentials. I urge you to get on line and find one. You can do all of it via zoom (my therapist lives 200 miles from me). Many offer reduced rates or "scholarships" where money is an issue. Do you have a counselor at school you can trust? They may have access to health providers in your area. The bottom line, you need to be in a dialog with someone who understands. Trying to deal with this yourself is not a great option. Good luck, dear.

@bobbie4481

Bobbie, please know that I never implied you were experiencing the same struggles as me. We all navigate our own unique challenges every day, and that's precisely the reason why we come to this community for support, isn't it? I am currently actively seeking out a therapist to confide in, as I find it difficult to trust everyone completely right now. And I do deal with this by myself, your right it is a challenge, but we get through it

@mbixler I am glad you haven't cut your son off because of a scripture. Too many people, including myself, quote scripture that instill hate for people who never chose to be homosexual. I used to be in a X-gay ministry that gave hope to Christian folk about (healing) gay people. I hated myself and went through very damaging unlicensed "therapy". I am sorry for those I miss-led. Nearly suicidal, I educated myself about how our Bible was formed through reading religious historians' discoveries over the past century. It has been eye opening and freeing. Through loving licensed therapy I now respect myself and have a much healthier concept of God and Jesus. I hope your husband has come around to accepting your son also. I never told my Dad, but he was wiser than the church. There are numerous documentaries and books on the subject of homosexuality and the many denominations that are "Welcoming and Affirming".

@david707 My husband came around very quickly once I reminded him that this was our son, whom we love with all our hearts. He is the same person we have always loved - we just know his secret self now. We all have a very close relationship now. And I am beyond proud of his sister, who knew for several years, but kept his secret until he felt safe telling us.

i feel like i am pretending to be happy when i am not

Ginny,
I am glad you found this as a place to be in community. The internet is a tough place for so many reasons. The moderation in this space makes it a bit more trusting and safer.

We have all had our own struggles and everyone’s different. I transitioned later in life. Both my parents have passed, and I am not close to my siblings, though one refuses to accept me and one cut me out completely. One of my kids won’t talk to me either. I must admit, it is hard.

I can promise you that things will change over time. Sometimes it feels like forever, then you realize a year has passed and things are different (or in my case, 62 years). You will have new found family, the political pendulum will swing in some other direction, and living situations change. Even things that you think will never change will. Just keep making choices that move you forward on your path as those choices arise. Take advantage of change whenever you can to find your way through this crazy world.

Relish in joy where you find it. Trudge through the muck as you need to. Forget about all of this from time to time and enjoy nature. This world is turning, the trees are growing, the sun keeps rising. You are part of this amazing tapestry.
-Clara

It can be really tough living in an environment where you don't feel affirmed and accepted. I'd like to share a little bit about my journey finding self-acceptance in the hopes that it might be something that resonates with you or others.
I grew up in the 1970s and '80s and at that time without internet or ways to connect with larger world I had very few positive role models in terms of other lgbtqi people. I was also the only indigenous students in my school and experience a lot of negative stereotypes on that subject to from both teachers and peers.
At the time I didn't realize this but I internalized a lot of those negative messages and stereotypes about who I was both as a queer person and as an Indigenous person. The result was that in my teens I engaged a lot of self-destructive behavior, experienced anxiety depression and try to self-medicate that with my drug of choice.
It was just before my 25th birthday that I ended up going to rehab. When I wasn't using all of the feelings of not liking myself not feeling accepted etc became even more intense and for a while I had panic attacks so bad that was very hard for me to leave the house.
At the time I didn't recognize this but I later came to understand that so much of that anxiety and fear was of being judged by others, rejected by others. Most of my thoughts were always on what other people might think of me.
At the time I was really reconnecting with my culture and I was fortunate to meet an elder who was incredibly nurturing and kind to me. He used to invite me over to to his house and we would sit in the kitchen and drink coffee and talk and one day he said," Alistair, your life belongs to you and no one else. Take time to think about the kind of human being you want to be and the kind of character traits you want to develop in yourself and live according to that. Throughout your life everyone's going to have all kinds of opinions about you, but in the end it's your life to live according to what you believe and value."
What he said really struck a chord with me and of course it wasn't as easily done as said, but I spend a lot of time journaling and figuring out what kind of person I want to strive to become in my lifetime. I spent untangling the differences between my feelings about my gender identity and sex orientation from the opinions of others and in the end I think that being who I am has given me a more nuanced understanding of the world and cause me to think a lot more about love and relationships and gender identity this helped me become a more open-minded person and so all of that is a good part of me. I also came to conclusion that my gender identity and or sexual orientation do not directly affect anyone else.
One of my habits is that at the end of each day I spend a little time journaling her meditating and asking myself what I did that day that I am proud of, what things I would like to work on, and if they're were any interactions I had with others that don't rest easily with me or where I feel I might have been unkind or unhelpful to someone. If that's the case I try my best to acknowledge what happened and put things back into balance, or as they say in Western culture "make amends".
Part of self-acceptance for me is learning to be honest about things within myself that I need to work on, but still being able to love myself in that process.
There was another aspect for me of not feeling accepted, and that was loneliness and isolation. One of the things that helped me was finding ways to volunteer and help others, in my case both people and animals. It has given me a sense of connection and purpose and responsibility.
Early in recovery when I was really struggling with PTSD and anxiety and depression I just started off small. This was in the days before email so I used to volunteer to put News letters in envelopes for the local lgbtqi organization. As my life began to become more stable I began to take on more responsibilities and eventually ended up being offered a job doing harm reduction work.
That job really challenged me to set aside my fears of rejection and become more outgoing in meeting total strangers and talking to them. This was back in the days when there were almost no treatments for people with HIV and I had lost a number of good friends. Therefore I knew how important the work I was doing was and even though it wasn't comfortable for me I learned to be much more outgoing and set aside fears of rejection.
That translated into making me more comfortable around people in life in general and I found that I began to be able to meet new people and eventually find the people that were the right ones to form strong and lasting friendships and relationships with.
An irony is that the same things that I felt rejection for in my youth, are the very things friends tell me they like best about me today. It made me realize that some people not seeing my value didn't mean that I am not a valuable human being. It just means that my values and their values don't align and if we aren't meant for each other's lives.
I know it's difficult on the societal level because while we can pick the people we invite into our life as friends and chosen family, we cannot always escape the ways in which we face discrimination in the larger society. I think that right now it is a struggle to be inundated with negative messages and not the affected in how we see ourselves and our place in this world.
Because of that the way that I deal with this is that each day I set aside a certain amount of time I spend becoming informed about what is going on in my community or the country or the world and decide what action steps I could take to support others/etc. Based upon what my capacity is to do I decide on what action steps I'm going to take and carry those out. And then I turn off the news, stop scrolling the comments under articles about trans people, because my goal is to get informed get out and get on with living my life and caring for the people I love.
I also try to remember something that an amazing mentor of mine said to me: "Sweetheart, nothing pisses of the bigots more than seeing us experiencing joy and celebrating our lives!"
And so every day I try to remember to feel some Joy no matter what else is going on in life... Because I, like you, like every human being deserve to be able to feel that Joy...and celebrate the one of a kind, beautiful, human being we are.