Guest Author - Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen

You may feel bad about yourself for a specific reason. Perhaps you snapped at your partner or child, or insulted a colleague, or treated a store clerk rudely (maybe you're a store clerk who treated a customer badly!). Maybe your relationships are limping along; you don't like who you are with certain people – or how they treat you. Or, maybe you drank a whole bottle of wine (or two), ate the entire bag of potato chips, let a full pound of chocolate (or two) melt in your mouths not in your hands.

Going overboard occasionally is inevitable, it's human nature…it's what makes us who we are. Don't worry if you make a mess of things sometimes – because you also make a treasure of things sometimes, too!

You may feel bad about yourself for no reason at all. Maybe you can't pinpoint exactly why you feel ugly, fat, or stupid – you just do. That's normal; sometimes that's just the way you are. That's the way we all are. There's no specific source that fuels the mood, it's just a blah, bleak and bummed out feeling. Even though you're attractive, fit, smart, in a good relationship, out of a bad one – whatever you want your life to be, there it is – and yet you feel bad about yourself.

Sometimes vague feelings of discontent point to a problem you're not facing. Bad feelings could also result from a medical condition that could be easy to identify and treat; if you've been feeling sad or tired for more than a week, consult a doctor.

Should you wrestle with your mood? Perhaps whether you should wrestle with your feelings of fatness, ugliness, and stupidity depends on why you feel that way. If there is a reason behind your bad feelings, then maybe you need to deal with it. If you feel ugly, you could consider changing (or better yet, simply accepting) whatever it is that you dislike about yourself. If you feel fat, perhaps you need to start a fitness plan or watching what, when, and how you eat. If you feel stupid, consider the source of your feelings. Are you really of low intelligence, or are you comparing yourself to other people? Maybe you're comparing your education, experience, and profession with another woman – and you're coming up short. So stop comparing yourself, and start accepting yourself for who you are! Just letting yourself be yourself brings freedom, lightness, and joy.