Hi there,
Most people feel insecure about how they look sometimes. Feeling bad about how you look can start in lots of different ways. It might be a comment someone makes, seeing a celebrity or influencer online or even comparing yourself to friends and family.
Whatever the trigger, it can start to become something you think about more and more until it becomes all you can think. Once you lose confidence in yourself, it starts to affect other things like your friendships and mental health. Feeling happy with yourself is very important.
One of the most important things to know about social media is how easy and common it is for photos to be changed. Many of the biggest influencers and celebrities use filters on their photos to make them look different. Filters can be applied to videos as well as photos - so you can't always be sure that what you're seeing is real.
Many top influencers and celebrities also have professional lights, cameras and photographers who can make their photos look as good as possible. These make a big difference to how someone looks in professional photos like this than how they are in reality. Normal, everyday people don't have perfect bodies - no matter how the photos you see online make it seem.
Loving yourself and your body is not always easy. Most people tend to be hard on themselves and see all the imperfect things, rather than the good things. It can take effort to change this way of thinking and get into the habit of focusing on the good things first.
Like most habits, when you get into a routine it gets easier to do - set yourself some rules and tasks that help you to get into the habit of being positive about yourself. For example - when you start to find yourself thinking about your body in a negative way, stop yourself and immediately think of a positive thing instead.
Something else you can do is write notes for yourself and stick them around. Having constant reminders of positive things makes it easier to stay positive. The more you do it, the more natural it will be to become positive about who you are and how you look.
It might be good to talk about this with other young people who could be feeling similar - if you wanted to do that you can post on the Childline message boards and see what advice they have about staying positive about how they look.
You can also always contact a Childline counsellor if you’d like to talk about how you’re feeling more.
I hope this has helped, take care.
Sam
