Listen to this when you feel ugly || self-worth, beauty standards, body image, inner critic

If you’re struggling with self-esteem, body image, or feeling unattractive, this episode is for you. Feeling ugly or unattractive is one of the most painful and universal experiences, but it doesn’t mean anything about your worth. In this mini “snack-size deep dive,” we explore the psychology behind feeling ugly, why beauty standards affect us so deeply, and how to untangle your self-worth from your appearance. You’ll learn how to name the feeling, challenge your inner critic, practice self-validation, set healthier boundaries with self-comparison, and rebuild a more compassionate relationship with yourself. Your worth has never depended on your appearance.

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Transcript

Hello. Welcome back to the things we say in Therapy, snack size, deep dives. This is a new series I'm doing on the things we say in Therapy Podcast, where we dive into mental health topics in a little snackable deep dive to give you some support and reassurance to learn some psychology. And to encourage self-reflection and self-compassion.

today's topic is feeling ugly or unattractive and how this impacts our self-worth and how to reassure yourself. I am feeling really ugly today, so I thought this was a great topic to start off this series.

I know that literally everybody feels this way at some point.

Yeah, I was trying to film a TikTok and it just, it wasn't happening. Um,

the first step, is to acknowledge that this is a very common feeling to [00:01:00] have.

It's a human experience that everybody has, you shouldn't feel ashamed of it. There are reasons you feel this way.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with you.

the patriarchal beauty standards are very real, and

the way that they're making you feel are very real.

But beauty standards are all made up. They're a complete illusion.

No one gets to decide objectively what is beautiful and what isn't.

Understanding this requires a mindset shift, so let's get into it.

Feeling ugly isn't just about worrying about your physical appearance. Feeling ugly is to do with things beneath the surface. It's to do with your levels of self-esteem, your identity as a person, and the way that you compare yourself to others

feeling ugly or unattractive, it isn't usually a reflection of

an objective reality. It's something that you've created in your internal dialogue.

Although, and this is a very brutal truth, if you know objectively that you don't meet [00:02:00] society's beauty standards because they're very high and they're very niche, and almost no one fits those standards.

Realistically, that doesn't mean anything. Realistically, they are just made up standards. Like who said that? That was the only standard for beauty?

Negative self-talk and comparison to do with these standards.

It's enhancing your belief that you're not attractive when you tell yourself, I look terrible When you think to yourself.

I'm not good enough. You're focusing on the fact that you don't meet these standards or you don't look like someone else, or you don't meet a certain standard that you've set for yourself.

If you focus on your perceived flaws, they're gonna be magnified. If you learn to embrace those perceived flaws that you have,

Even try and draw attention to.

, or even just the bare minimum, you accept that they're there and you're fine with people seeing them,

you'll realize that you are in fact feeding into this negative cycle by trying to hide it, by [00:03:00] being embarrassed about it.

You need to shift your mindset into embracing that as part of who you are. If you are confident in that, no one can tell you anything.

Even if someone did comment on your insecurities, which says nothing about you and everything about them, but if someone does comment on your insecurities and you've embraced it, you've worked on it, you've

become okay with it being seen. They can't touch you,

the emotional sides of our brain. They prioritize self-protection and perceived threats. So feeling ugly,

It triggers self criticism and it triggers a fear of rejection.

a fear of rejection, causes hypervigilance. You're constantly worrying

about your perceived flaws. Like I said, it's magnified in your mind.

And because it's magnified in your mind, you think that people are noticing it a lot more than they actually are. Realistically, people don't give a shit.

Your self criticisms and your perceived flaws that you have are often based on comparison to other people. Comparing yourself to photos you see online, other [00:04:00] people's social medias or peers if they fit the societal beauty standards, right?

But you also forget that everyone's internal experience is unique. And even people who meet the societal beauty standards, they have their own perceived flaws as well. Everybody does. And I know that it's different. I know that people who don't fit the beauty standards are treated differently and have a different experience to people who do.

I'm aware of that,

but what I'm trying to say here is that everyone's. Internal reality is shaped by their thoughts, is shaped by the the way that they think about themselves. There's a lot of people out there who don't fit the beauty standards, who are confident in themselves, who embrace their features, and their life is so much better for it.

The only thing that matters is the way that you perceive yourself.

So what are some of the reasons that we feel ugly? What are the reasons why we feel this way? One thing is early experiences in your life.

If you've had comments from your caregivers, your parents, your [00:05:00] peers, or society. if you were in my generation or older than me, there have been trends of being, you know, extremely skinny. So if you are fat, then you objectively think that you are unattractive or ugly. There's certain labels that society puts on people, and if you have that particular thing, then you immediately label yourself as ugly because that's what you're told from magazines or magazines back in the day, or social media, online.

those tabloids, that comment on people's body weight and stuff is so

sad.

But feeling unseen and feeling picked on or rejected during childhood, it's a lifelong sentence. It creates lifelong sensitivity and hypervigilance towards those perceived flaws that you've developed.

Like I mentioned before, your weight, if you've always been a bigger person or

your weight's fluctuated, whatever, if you've experienced being fat, you'll know what I'm talking about.

If you are fat and you have low [00:06:00] self-esteem, you immediately label yourself as unattractive. No matter what your other physical features are like. If you're fat, you are way more likely to feel that way because society is labeled you that way.

But the objective reality is that your weight and being unattractive are mutually exclusive concepts. They're not tied together.

It takes a lot of mental rewiring to learn that if you see yourself that way, but it's just the truth.

Another reason we feel this way is societal pressures. There is unrealistic beauty standards.

There's social media where we have constant exposure to unrealistic images, edited photos, and now AI as well of, you know, the perfect person. And something that I've spoken on before as well is cosmetic surgery. Now, I don't believe that people should be getting cosmetic surgery unless it's necessary for their health. I think it's unhealthy. I think it fucks with people's minds. I am of the belief that if no one got cosmetic [00:07:00] surgery unnecessarily.

Confidence among people would be so much higher because we would all just be embracing ourselves the way that we are. And I think there's so much more beauty to that than trying to chase this perfection by changing how you look. I think that we should be changing our mindsets to love how we look instead of changing how we look to fix our mindsets.

Another reason we feel this way is the confusion between self-worth and our physical attractiveness. A lot of people tend to link their personal value, their value as a human to how physically attractive they are. Instead of focusing on your traits, your personality,

and being a good person. I am so guilty of this. I actually don't know at what point in my life this became a thing. I'm still working on discovering why I feel this way, but I absolutely have tied how I feel about myself on the outside to how I feel about myself on the inside.

So whenever we don't get that external validation of our physical appearance, whenever we don't get

that [00:08:00] reassurance or if we're we're insulted by someone or someone insinuates that maybe we don't look very good,

then that then equates to us that we are just not worthy as a person, that that we are unlikable or unlovable because someone doesn't like the way we look or whatever it is.

I think this is quite common.

A lot of people don't wanna accept it though. another reason we feel this way is emotional triggers.

Feeling ugly often coincides with feeling unseen or rejected or unworthy or vulnerable.

And so it's easy to kind of tie those things together.

In your day-to-day life, feeling ugly can show up in some really horrific ways. Avoiding wanting to look at yourself in mirrors, not wanting people to take pictures of you.

Overanalyzing certain areas of your body

you could be trying to overcompensate with makeup or

approval seeking.

I've seen scenarios where people aren't able to leave the house unless they have a full face of makeup on, they're insecure about their skin or whatever.

And they feel [00:09:00] excessive amounts of shame. Without it, there's feeling self-conscious and social interactions,

and obviously your internal dialogue and the things that you say to yourself and the way that you treat yourself if you were prettier, you'd be enough. If you were prettier, that person would like you back.

But the point I'm trying to make here is that these behaviors of survival strategies, but they will never address the root feeling. and it's really important that you do work to get to that root feeling.

So let's talk about some ways that you can shift that feeling, when these actions come up in your day-to-day life, you can recognize what you're doing, why you're doing it, and try and actively change your mindset.

So the first thing you need to do is name the feeling,

but instead of labeling your identity, depending on how you are feeling, you label how you're feeling. So instead of saying, I am ugly, you'd say, I'm feeling ugly right now, or I'm feeling unattractive right now. This separates who you are from that temporary uncomfortable feeling,

and subconsciously you will [00:10:00] then distance yourself from thinking that you just are objectively not an attractive person.

Number two is to investigate your inner critic.

Ask yourself, whose voice is this? In my head? Who is actually saying these things to me? And is it actually true? Often you are recognize that the way that you feel about yourself is dependent on things that have been said to you in the past, ways that you've been made to feel in the past.

With a mix of comparison culture as well, because we do self-sabotage ourselves by comparing ourselves to other people every single day.

Step number three is self validation. This is arguably the most important step because you should always, always, always prioritize self-compassion.

You need to affirm your worth outside of your physical appearance.

You need to tell yourself that you are valuable regardless of how you look. How you look is so unimportant

when it comes to looking at you as a whole. Now that's not me saying [00:11:00] that. It's never important how you look because.

Uh, doing things to make yourself feel good about yourself and feel pretty, like wearing a bit of makeup, doing your hair, whatever. That is also important. But my point is that how you look is the least important thing of you as a whole.

You are so much more than how you look.

Another way that you can self validate is affirming to yourself that your worth is not defined by other people's opinions. If you are constantly worrying about what other people are gonna think about the way you look, that is something you really need to get rid of because

you can't live your life decided by other people's opinions of you

because you're not living your life then are you? You're living someone else's life. You're living your life in fear of what other people can say to you

and anyone who does say anything about you. Or to you about the way you look. They are literally just insecure people themselves. They're people projecting onto you because it makes them feel better about themselves if they can put you down or bring you down to their level.

So [00:12:00] moving on to step number four, redirecting your focus.

You need to actively move your attention from the way that you look to your actions, what you're doing for yourself. Are you working towards your goals? Are you doing things every single day that make you feel better on the inside?

Working on your connections, being creative,

and being kind to yourself and to other people.

Practice gratitude for the good things in your life. Practice gratitude for the aspects of your body and yourself

you don't usually acknowledge because you're so focused on how you look.

Number five. It's really important to set boundaries with social media and comparison culture. You need to limit exposure to the triggers and the things that make you feel shame about yourself.

Now this absolutely could be seen as avoidance, and you don't wanna be isolating yourself away from the world.

You just want to be following accounts that celebrate authenticity and that celebrate diversity and following people that look like you, that can be [00:13:00] inspiration for you.

Because how silly is it that you are following a bunch of accounts of women that look nothing like you, just so that you can compare yourself to them and feel shit about yourself? Obviously. Celebrating everybody is very important. There's all types of people around the world, but you need to prioritize you and you need to

acknowledge when you're consuming content online, whether that's making you feel shittier about yourself or whether it's inspiring you or making you feel happy.

And number six, notice the people around you and how they treat themselves.

Usually you adopt the habits of the people that you are closest with and the people that you spend the most time with. If you're spending time with people who are negatively talking about themselves, they're always insulting themselves and putting themselves down.

It can really have a negative effect on your mindset and you will most likely be doing the same thing. it's really important to surround yourself with confident people who [00:14:00] build themselves up and you. It's literally life changing.

Feeling ugly is a feeling, not a fact.

Everybody has days where they feel unattractive. It does not define your value whatsoever.

You need to talk to yourself as if you would a friend. When you notice yourself negatively talking to yourself, think whether you would say that to somebody else. And if you wouldn't, why are you treating yourself worse than you would a loved one or a friend?

Finally, remember that confidence and beauty are not the same as self-worth, and if you're equating your entire self-worth to the way that you look on the outside, you're basically saying that

you literally have nothing else to offer.

And that's just not true, is it?

Please subscribe, follow, comment, share. find me on socials. I'm on TikTok and Instagram at things we say in therapy Pod. Share this with someone who might benefit from this today. If you liked this mini deep dive, comment down below. Any

topics that you'd like me to cover in the future. I'm gonna be doing [00:15:00] these mini episodes every, so now there'll be a longer episode on Mondays and a mini snack size deep dive on Thursdays.

As always

be kind to yourself and be kind to others. I'll see you again. Bye.