I had no idea how negatively I viewed myself until I got into therapy for my postpartum OCD. OCD is the type of disorder that can make you completely doubt your self and your entire life. I can attest to that because it happened to me. I had been viewing myself negatively for so long that I felt that it was normal to feel that way.

The negativity towards myself really started my freshman year in college. I had a rough year that year where a lot of people I really cared about were no longer my friends. I really started questioning myself and started obsessing about everything that I perceived was “wrong” with me. That became my obsession during this time period. I completely lost my self-confidence and really started disliking myself. I quickly started comparing myself to anyone and everyone, and no matter what, it always seemed that the other person was better than me. This pattern of thinking continued on throughout my entire college career.

Before I went through my major postpartum OCD phase, I was a teacher. I had been living with OCD consuming my life during that time as well, and I didn’t even realize it. I was amazing at telling my students to love themselves for who they are and that a positive mindset was important for them to be successful. The sad thing was I couldn’t follow my own advice. I basically didn’t like myself at all. Even writing this now makes me sad because I wasted so much time in my life feeling down about who I am.

During my postpartum OCD episode, I still didn’t like myself, which created me thinking I was not going to be a good mom. I had no idea how much I really didn’t like myself at the time. My lack of self-confidence during this time made it really hard for me to make my own decisions as a mom. I didn’t believe I was good enough to do it on my own. I felt that every other person than me knew what was best for my baby. It is really hard to be your best self and mom when you completely doubt everything about yourself.

I remember in my first couple therapy appointments, my therapist asked me for qualities I liked about myself. I could not name a single one, not one. I didn’t even realize how bad my self-image had gotten. It was like this postpartum OCD storm was ten years in the making starting with my freshman year of college. Slowly my therapist helped me realize the good qualities about me, and helped me turn my self-image around. I started by slowly learning things about myself that I liked. Now that I have a positive mindset and more self-love, I am so much happier. Not only am I happier, but I am more confident as a mom. Please don’t be like me and live in the negative space that I did. I wasted ten years of time where I could have loved myself.