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Episode 3: Loving yourself when you can't see yourself · What We Build From Here

• Episode 3 Loving Yourself Video (4): Life took a turn, but I'm still standing. Didn't see the road, but I'm still planning. Through every season, through every tear. There's still a purpose waiting here. We're moving forward, leaving fear. There's more to the store. We build from here. Real stories, real conversations, faith and purpose beyond the pivot. Welcome to what we build from here with Amanda Johnson. Hey everybody. Welcome back to What We Build From Here. I'm Amanda and today I want to talk about something that sounds simple until you really sit with it. Loving yourself when you can't see yourself. And I don't mean physically, although for me the physical part is very real. I mean those times when you look at your life and you can't quite recognize the person living it. When you hear other people tell you how strong you are, how beautiful you are, how proud they are of you, and you think I wish I could see what you see. Have you been there? I was thinking about how easy it is to say you have to love yourself. People say it like you're supposed to wake up one morning, stand in front of a mirror, give yourself a little pep talk, and that's it. You're healed. Everything's wonderful. I wish it worked like that. I really do. Because some of us have spent years learning how to see ourselves a certain way. And you don't unlearn years in one morning just because you finally know what you're supposed to believe. I want to have an honest conversation about that today. About how you view yourself and how it can be shaped long before you're old enough to understand what's happening. About what happens when life changes a reflection looking back at you, about faith. And about learning to love a person you may still be getting to know. I'm not coming to you as somebody who has it all figured out. If anything, I'm still doing the work myself. So take a breath, get comfortable, and let's talk. The first mirror was in glass. Here's something I've been thinking about. The first mirror we ever look into isn't actually hanging on a wall. It's the way people respond to us, the words we hear, the things that happen in our homes, the way we're treated when we make mistakes, the attention we get or don't get, the moments that make us feel safe, and the moments that make us question ourselves. By the time we're old enough to stand in front of a real mirror and describe what we see, we've already been learning who we think we are. And sometimes what we learned wasn't the truth. I can look back at my childhood and recognize that some of what I experienced shaped the way I saw myself. At the time, I didn't have the language for all of it. When you're young, you don't always know how to separate what happened to you from what it made you believe about you. You just carry it. You grow up, you learn how to function, you learn how to smile, go to school, handle your business. Do what needs to be done. Life just keeps moving whether you've made sense of those early experiences or not. And then one day something happens that makes you stop and ask yourself why you react the way you do, why a certain comment stays with you, why it's so much easier to recognize somebody else's worth than it is to recognize your own. While receiving a compliment can feel awkward even when you know the person means it. For some people that shows up as always needing to accomplish something. For others, it's not wanting to disappoint anybody. For somebody else, it's feeling like they have to be perfect before they deserve to be loved or respected. Sometimes it shows up as being so hard on yourself that That you would never speak to another person the way you speak to you. Now I'm not saying everybody listening had the same childhood. We didn't. And I don't want to put my story on top of yours, but I do want to ask you something. When you think about the way you see yourself today, how much of that opinion did you actually choose? How much of it came from something somebody said or Something somebody did, something you went through when you were too young to know how to make sense of it. That's a hard question because sometimes the thing you call your personality is a way you learn to protect yourself. Sometimes what people call your strength started as a situation where you didn't feel like you had any other choice, and sometimes you can be grown, successful, educated, responsible, all of those things are. And still have a younger version of yourself inside who's waiting to hear something she needed to or he needed to a long time ago. I don't think recognizing that makes us weak. I think it gives us a chance to be honest. There's a difference between saying this is just how I am and asking, where did I learn to be this way? I have had to ask myself that question, and honestly, there are still parts of the answer I'm working through. Let me ask you another question. How many parts of yourself have you hidden because you thought they wouldn't be accepted? Maybe it's the way you laugh, maybe it's something about your appearance. Maybe you stopped sharing your ideas because somebody made you feel like what you had to say wasn't important. Maybe you learned to downplay your accomplishments because you didn't want to look like you were bragging. Or maybe, just maybe, you became the person who always seemed to have it together because you didn't want anybody to see you struggle. And after a while, it can get difficult to tell the difference between who you really are and who you've learned to present to the world. I know what it's like to carry responsibilities and keep moving, but I also know that being capable of doing something is Doesn't mean it hasn't affected you. You can handle your business and still be hurting. You can be the person everybody expects to have an answer and still have questions about yourself. You can be grateful for your life and still be unhappy with the way you see yourself in certain moments. And you can love God, believe his word, and still have to confront the things you've been believing about you. I want to stay right there for a minute. Because sometimes we act like having faith means you never struggle with confidence, self image, or feeling enough. But believing something in your spirit and learning to live like you believe it are not always the same thing. You can know the scripture and still catch yourself speaking negatively about your face or your body. You can tell your children they're wonderfully made and then look at yourself with a level of criticism you'd never want them to learn. And that's worth paying attention to. Not so we can beat ourselves up about it, but so we can change the conversation we're having inside our own heads. I think a lot of us are more familiar with correcting ourselves than comforting ourselves. We notice what's wrong immediately. The thing we didn't finish, the weight we haven't lost, the goal we haven't reached, the mistakes we made five years ago that nobody else may even remember. But when was the last time you acknowledged something good about yourself without adding a button? behind it. I did a good job, but I look nice today, but I've come a long way, but why do we do that? Why can't something good simply be good for a moment? I'm asking you, but I'm asking me too. The mirror during chemotherapy. I want to tell you about a different kind of mirror. When I went through chemotherapy and I lost my hair, there was a period when I refused to look at myself in the mirror. Honestly, I just started looking at myself in the mirror over this past year. I want you to really hear what I'm saying. I wasn't just having a day where I didn't feel like I looked nice. I had reached a point where I did not want to see my own reflection. There's a difference. Before cancer, I had lived in my body my whole life. I knew the woman looking back at me. And then I was going through treatment, dealing with changes I didn't ask for. In seeing physical reminders of something that had turned my life upside down. The hair is one part of that story, but it wasn't only about hair. It was about what the changes represented. It was about not having a choice in so much of what was happening. It was about trying to recognize myself when my body was going through something I never wanted it to go through. There are things you can prepare your mind for in theory, and then there is an experience of actually living through them. Those are not the same thing. People can tell you that you're beautiful without hair. They can tell you that hair doesn't define you. They can mean every word, and that can be true. But you can also be the woman or the man receiving those words and still not be ready to look in the mirror. Both can exist at the same time. I think that's one of the things we don't always leave room for when we're talking to people who are going through something difficult. We want to encourage them, and I understand that. I appreciate encouragement, but sometimes a person doesn't need you to rush them to the positive part of the story. Sometimes they need room to say this is hard for me, without being told what they should feel instead. I was grateful to be alive, I was grateful for treatment, I was grateful for the people who cared about me, and I still had moments when I struggled with what I saw or couldn't bring myself to see. My gratitude didn't erase my emotions, and my emotions didn't erase my faith. That mattered because I had to stop treating every difficult feeling like it canceled out every good thing in my life. If you've ever experienced a change in your body because of illness, surgery, aging, a disability, weight changes, having children, or anything else, you may understand some of this. You don't have to have my experience to know how unsettling it can be when your reflection no longer feels familiar. And if your struggle isn't physical, I still want you here. Because there are people who recognize their faces perfectly, but don't recognize their own lives anymore. They've been through something, and what they see in themselves has changed. I want to be careful not to turn this into one of those stories where I say and then one day I looked in the mirror, smiled, and everything was fine. Because that's not what I'm trying to tell you. Learning to look at myself again is And learning to be gentle with myself are bigger than one moment. They are part of an ongoing process. I still have things I'm learning to accept. I still have days when I need to remind myself of what is true. And you know what? I don't think that makes the progress any less real. The person beneath the changes. One thing that a major life change can do is make you ask a question you might have avoided for years. Who am I without the things I'm used to seeing? Who am I when my appearance changes? Who am I when my body can't do everything it used to? Who am I when I'm not getting the same recognition or reaching goals on the same timeline? And who am I when I'm having a hard day without And I don't feel strong at all. I haven't talked on this podcast about changes in my life and what it means to build after a chapter closes. But today I'm talking about something more personal than the next job, the next plan, or the next goal. I'm talking about the person who has to live with themselves through all of it. Because I could accomplish every goal on a list, and if I still couldn't look at myself with kindness, I There would be something important left untouched. I could put on something beautiful, have my hair done, take a picture that I love. And that would be wonderful. I enjoy those things, but I also want to be okay with Amanda on the days when none of that is happening. On the ordinary days, the tired days, the days when my body is reminding me that it has limits. The day when I'm not in the mood to be inspirational for anybody. Can I still be kind to myself then? That's the question. And I think it matters because sometimes we attach our worth to a version of ourselves that can perform. The version who has energy, the version who gets everything done, the version who looks a certain way, the version who seems to make everybody proud. But what about the version of you who's resting, who needs help, who hasn't figured out the next step, who doesn't have a smile ready? Does that person still deserve your patience? My answer is yes. But I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that saying yes means I've mastered it. I'm learning. And I wanna give myself permission to be learning without talking to myself like I'm failing. Loving yourself is not the same as liking everything. Here's where I think we get confused about self-love. We hear that phrase and assume it means we're supposed to love every single thing about ourselves all the time. Every feature, every feeling, every decision, every season. I don't believe that's realistic. There are things about myself I want to change. There are habits I want to grow out of. There are ways I want to become healthier. And my thinking, my choices, and the way I live, and I'm allowed to want those things. But wanting to change something about myself doesn't require me to hate myself until it changes. Let me say that again, because that's the part I wish more of us understood. I can want growth without making shame the price of admission. I can take care of my body because it matters to me. Not because I have to punish it for looking different than it once did. I can acknowledge a mistake, take responsibility for it, and still believe I'm worthy of another chance. I can look at an old photograph and miss something about the woman I was without deciding that the woman I am now is less valuable. That's not an excuse to stop growing. It's a different way of growing. And I know this isn't only a woman's conversation. Men are listening too. You may not talk about it the same way. Your struggle may be tied to providing, getting older, an injury, your health, losing a job, or feeling like you're supposed to have everything under control. Maybe you don't tell anybody when your confidence is shaken because you think you're supposed to be able to handle it. But what you carry matters too. This isn't about standing in the mirror admiring yourself all day. It's about not making your relationship with yourself another place where you constantly are under attack. There's already enough in life that can wear us down. We don't need to join in against ourselves. And please hear me. Loving yourself doesn't mean you're above correction. Beyond accountability or entitled to treat anybody however you want. Sometimes loving yourself means being honest about something you need to work on. Sometimes it means apologizing. Sometimes it means taking a step that's uncomfortable because you know it's good for you. To me, self love has room for truth and grace at the same time. I want both. When I couldn't trust what I was seeing or when I was seeing something that was difficult to face, I had to think about what God says about who I am. Psalms one hundred thirty nine fourteen talks about being fearfully and wonderfully made. Now I know we've heard the scripture many times. It gets printed on shirts and shared on social media, but I want to slow down and really think about it. Do I believe that applies to me on a day when I like the way I look? Sure. But do I believe it applies to me when my body has changed? When I'm tired, when I don't feel attractive, when I'm dealing with the effects of treatment, when I don't feel like the best version of myself? Because if I only believe it on my good days, then I've made God's truth dependent on how I feel that morning, and feelings change. First Samuel sixteen seven reminds us that people look at outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. That doesn't mean appearance is meaningless or that we're wrong to care about how we present ourselves. It means what God sees in us goes deeper than what is in the mirror. And for me, that's important, because the mirror can show me changes. It can show me things I like and things I struggle with. But it cannot show me the whole person. It can't show every time I kept going when something was difficult. It can't show what I've learned, what I've survived, how I've loved, what I've prayed about, or who I'm becoming. It doesn't show my entire story. And if I judge my entire worth by the one thing I can see in that reflection, I'm leaving out so much. Sometimes I think about how gently God has dealt with me through seasons when I've been hard on myself. Not because everything has been easy, it hasn't. But because he hasn't required me to arrive at some flawless version of Amanda before I can come to him. I don't have to show up with everything fixed. I can come to him honestly. Lord, I'm having a hard time with this. Or Lord I I know what your word says, but I'm struggling to see myself that way. Lord, help me to stop holding on to something about myself that was never true. Those are real prayers, and I would rather pray honestly than say all the right spiritual words while hiding what I'm actually dealing with. I don't think God needs a performance for me. I think He wants my heart. Learning a different way to talk to yourself. So what does that look like in everyday life? Because I can sit here and talk about self-worth for 30 minutes, but tomorrow morning we still have to wake up and live our our lives. We have to get dressed, make decisions, face our responsibilities, and hear the thoughts that pop up when nobody else is around. For me, I think one place to start is paying attention to those thoughts. Instead of letting every one of them pass as the truth. When I catch myself being critical, I can stop and ask, would I talk to someone I love this way? Not because I need to make every thought positive. Some days, I'm not feeling positive and I don't want to pretend. But there's a difference between acknowledging something difficult and using it as proof that I'm not enough. For example, I'm frustrated with where I am right now, is honest. I will never get it together is a judgment about my entire future based on a moment. My body is different now, is an observation. My body is different, so I'm less of a woman is a story I don't have to accept. I wish I had handled that better, can lead me to take responsibility. I always ruin everything. It just keeps me stuck. I want to get better at noticing the difference. Another place is learning how to receive kindness without arguing with it. If someone gives me a genuine compliment, I don't need to immediately point out the flaw they missed. I can say thank you and leave it there. I'm smiling because something that small can be surprisingly hard. But maybe that's where some of the work happens. Not always in a big breakthrough. But in little moments when you decide not to tear yourself down. Maybe for you it's allowing yourself to be in a picture even though you don't love how you look. Maybe it's buying clothes that fit the body you are in today instead of making yourself miserable waiting for a different size. Maybe it's finally resting without explaining why you deserve to rest. Maybe it's admitting that an old experience still affects you. And choosing to talk about it with somebody you trust. And maybe it's simply looking at yourself and saying, I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'm going to stop treating myself like an enemy while I get there. That might not sound dramatic, but for somebody who has been carrying harsh thoughts for a long time, it can be a big deal. I don't want another list of rules I can fail at. I want a different relationship with myself, one where I tell the truth, take care of what needs attention, and leave room for grace. I want to speak for a minute to the part of us that is still carrying things from long ago. Not everybody has a neat explanation for why they struggle with self worth. Sometimes you remember exactly when something changed. Sometimes all you know is that you've been feeling a certain way for a long time. And sometimes you've built a perfectly respectable adult life around an old hurt. People see the outside. They see what you've accomplished. They see your family, your work, your responsibilities, maybe even your faith. They may have no idea that you're still learning how to be comfortable being you. That's why I'm trying not to make assumptions when I look at people. We don't know everything somebody is carrying just because they look confident. And that includes ourselves. I can acknowledge the younger Amanda without allowing every old belief to keep deciding who grown Amanda gets to be. I can be honest about what shaped me without believing it has to define the rest of my life. There's something powerful about realizing you can question a belief you've carried for years. Just because it feels familiar doesn't mean it's true. Just because somebody made you feel small doesn't mean you're small. Just because you learn to hide something about yourself doesn't mean it's something shameful. And just because a version of your life ended doesn't mean everything good about you ended with it. I wish I could go back and hand the younger me all the understanding I'm learning now. I can't do that. None of us can rewrite every moment behind us, but I can decide how I speak to myself from this point forward. I can give myself the compassion I might have struggled to receive or accept before. I can stop measuring my worth against an image I think I'm supposed to maintain. I can allow myself to be a whole person, confident in some areas, uncertain in others, healing in some places, and still growing. The goal isn't to become someone who never feels insecure again. The goal is to stop letting insecurity have the final say about who I am. Seeing yourself again. I keep coming back to that mirror. Not because I'm trying to make this a story about appearance, it's because the mirror represents something to me. It asks a question every time I stand in front of it. Can I be present with the person looking back? Can I see the changes without turning them into shame? Can I remember what I've been through without treating myself like I'm broken beyond repair? Can I make room for the fact that I am not exactly who I used to be and not decide that's a bad thing? There are parts of my life I would not have chosen. There are things I miss, there are things I'm still understanding, and I don't want to erase any of that just to give this conversation a pretty ending. But I also don't want the hard parts of my story to be the only things I recognize about myself. I'm more than what happened to me, and so are you. Maybe you don't feel ready to stand in front of a mirror and declare that you love everything you see. I'm not gonna ask you to fake it. But what if today you could begin by being a little less cruel to yourself? What if you gave yourself the same room to be human that you give the people you love? What if you stop waiting to look a certain way, accomplish a certain thing, or finally get life completely together before you allow yourself some peace? I know those are big questions. You don't have to answer them all right now. I just want you to sit with them. Because if we're gonna talk about what we build from here, I don't want us to forget the foundation. And part of that foundation is how we treat the person who has to live inside the life we're building. I'm talking about you and I'm talking about me. A moment of honesty. Before we close, I want to leave you with three questions. You can write them down. Think about them while you're driving, talk about them with somebody you trust, or simply carry them with you this week. Number one, what did I learn about myself growing up that I may need to question today? Number two, when I look at myself physically or otherwise, am I seeing the whole person or only what I think is wrong? And third. What would it look like to show myself a little more compassion in this season exactly as I am? I also want to say a short prayer because this is something I'm asking God to help me with too. Father, thank you for seeing us completely, even when we struggle to see ourselves clearly. Thank you for knowing every part of our stories, the things we speak about, and the things we still carry quietly. Help us recognize the beliefs that have kept us feeling small. Teach us to be truthful with ourselves without being cruel. Help us care for the bodies, minds, and lives you've entrusted to us, and when we look at ourselves through old pain or disappointment, remind us that your love is not dependent on a perfect reflection. Give us courage to heal, wisdom to grow, and grace for the process. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for spending this time with me. I know today's conversation was personal, and honestly, that's why I wanted to have it. If any part of this sounded like something you've been carrying, I hope you're not the only one trying to work through it. I'm right there learning too. I'm Amanda and this is what we build from here. Until next time, take care of yourself. And that includes the way you talk about yourself. Don't be afraid to turn the page. I'm Amanda Johnson. And this is what we build from here. We build from here.