Compliments are easy to believe when you feel you need that compliment to be true in your life. Sometimes you can’t understand how someone could fall for an adult pretending to be a teenager online or how come someone who is being abused at home doesn’t ask for help.
Everyone has something inside that they desperately want to believe or hear from others. Often you don’t even know what it is until it’s said either from someone you know or a stranger. You may read what your heart needs to hear in a book or in a song. Your favorite celebrity may say that this was important to her life and to her ‘change’ as a person and it all makes sense to your heart. All this is normal, but it’s important to understand that what you need to hear in order to be heard, healed, and valued is true of you already even if no one has said so.
Yes, this is so true for you to hold in your heart Unique Gurl; all important truth about you is in you already. This is why you connect to certain messages when they are said. We are trained to think that our meaning and value is in the mind or mouth of others; that they announce our importance and that others say who is beautiful or ‘on trend’. Of course, the power of social media puts everything you do and say under pressure. You want to believe and to belong; we all do. You want to have an impact.
Please consider that you already know the real unique you. You understand what makes you happy, sad, or angry. You already know what makes you a giving, loving person but everyone desires to hear it from others. Yet, think about how most of us never think to tell ourselves all the positive things we believe about ourselves. Do you wait for another to tell you that you are special? Why depend on hearing it from others just to believe? You don’t actually need to wait to hear a compliment in order to believe something positive about yourself. Don’t put yourself at the mercy of the opinions of others. This can be hard, but you are worth it.
This is why it is easy for you or your friends to be tricked by a Groomer or a sex Trafficker. Too many teens make connections online and also in real life based on compliments and words that seem to be understanding of their deepest feelings. It’s hard to imagine that someone can fool you or your friends, but there are people that are tricking girls up to 18 years into Sextortion and even rape.
This is why it is very important to be careful about your online presence and the information and contacts you make. One of the most powerful things you can do is to be real enough with yourself to get help if you need it now. Next, take time to write down what you like about you so that when you hear another person say it you will not be so easily impressed or moved towards romantic connections or thinking you should follow this person. If you don’t yet understand that you are special and a UNIQUE GURL stick with us for a while and you see yourself in a new and true way.
It is also possible that you or one of your friends is being abused at home or by someone that everyone knows. Whether you feel brave or you are terrified, please get help now. Know that it's not right or legal for even a relative to take advantage of you or your body.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233
Believing in YOU, Angela
