I’m so sorry you’ve been struggling so much. It sounds like you’ve tried multiple avenues and they haven’t been as rewarding or transformative as you thought.

I know you’ve had a disappointing experience with therapy. You will think that what I will suggest has a low likelihood of succeeding. However, it sounds like you’re also open to options that could help.

Imagine the longest essay you’ve ever had to write for school. A dozen pages? Two dozen? Now picture it in front of you, printed out, on a desk. Imagine there’s ten copies of your essay spread around the desk. Add another layer of essays on top. And another. And another. A hundred times. If you organized the documents into a single stack of paper, it would be 1.2 meters tall. That is how many randomly controlled trials there are on the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Here are two places where you can look at the evidence: one and two.

ACT has changed my life and that of hundreds of thousands of people. While I would suggest to get an ACT therapist (and a good one!), there is evidence that you can learn the skills of psychological flexibility if you engage in the appropriate mental processes, regardless of how. You can learn about how to do ACT exercises in A Liberated Mind, which you can find here https://stevenchayes.com/.

I have to concede that I personally like the way that ACT is explained by Steven Hayes. After all, he is a developer of ACT and of the theory behind it that explains why it works. However, there are many ways of becoming more psychologically flexible. Other people in this thread have mentioned meditation, for example. What’s important is that it works for you!

I wish you the best of luck and please feel free to ask questions!

I’m really glad you found something that works so well for you! Self-love is indeed wonderful. For others reading who might want to try affirmations, it’s worth noting that research has found they affect different people differently. What helps one person might not help another, or could even decrease mood in some cases, especially if the affirmations don’t feel authentic to where someone is in their journey.

If you’re curious about building self-love, you might want to experiment mindfully with different approaches to find what resonates for you personally - whether that’s self-compassion practices, ACT, gradual behavior change, or other methods. Pay attention to how different practices actually make you feel rather than how you think they ‘should’ make you feel.

1. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy exercises. I learned them well, and now I can do them wherever, whenever. Life changing.
2. Visible Thinking Routines by Harvard’s Project Zero. Every time I want to learn something, I think visibly about it!

Depending on who you ask, feminism includes the entire LGBTQIA+ spectrum.

For example, Hélène Cixous points out that there are ways of thinking that are rigid, hierarchical, limiting, and usually patriarchal. This way of thinking creates all sorts of barriers. “Men have to be like this.” “Women have to do this and be that.” “Transexuals? They have to not be like that.”

To break free from rigid and limiting thinking, Cixous proposes to “write from the body”. When you pay attention to your own experience, without rigid categories, you can be free. You can define your body in any way. You can act in any way. You can interpret the world in any way.

This, in Cixous’ view, is feminism. Feminism is about breaking down barriers and empowering people to be free. A woman can choose to work and buy property without being rejected. A man can choose to be vulnerable with his male friends without being rejected. A woman can choose to accept a woman as a partner and not be rejected. A transexual can choose to transition and not be rejected. A man can choose to not have sex and not be rejected. It is all valid. And it is all feminism. In this view, feminist terms and LGBTQIA+ terms serve exactly the same function: they all help break barriers and empower people to choose the lives that they want to choose.

Values guide action. Humans can use cognitive rules to exhibit entirely new behaviors in entirely new situations, behaviors that are consistent with the cognitive rules. Theory may not be relevant if the situation doesn’t activate the relevant neural networks, but if someone doesn’t have ‘ally values’ how do you think they will behave in the future?

I’d say feeling admiration for others. People who are kind, patient, insightful, and critical thinkers. People who look at how political goods (including wealth) are distributed and can think critically about it. Nutomic and Dessalines for sure.