What is one thing you like about yourself and one thing you don't like about yourself and why?

“One thing I don't like about myself that I'm trying to work on, is that even though I do take and accept constructive criticism, I let it affect me way more than I'm supposed to. When I was younger I was constantly being told that what I was doing wasn't good enough by people that are supposed to tell you 'Oh you're doing a great job'. Constantly being told 'You're doing this wrong, why didn't you do it this way, or you're bad at this, why can't you do it the way this person's doing it?' Even though I would try and say, 'Look I did this, how about this?' It was almost every aspect of my life, not just school. It would be down to my social skills. I was really shy when I was younger, and I still am, but I'm working on it. They'd say, 'Why don't you talk to people? Why are you so shy? We didn't raise you to be shy and quiet.' Every aspect of my life is being nit-picked, and I can see it now as someone well into their mid-20s. Now, just at work one person will tell me, 'Oh you're really bad at this', and I'll laugh it off. But I keep it inside and I bottle everything up. I take constructive criticism to heart even though I know I shouldn't have to because I understand that this is supposed to be helpful. But I let it anger me and affect me very deeply. The smallest thing will affect me for a few days. When I let something affect me, I let it affect my boyfriend and I really hate that about myself. I think it's gotten better, and I don't cry over it as much as I used to. One thing I can work on is releasing that anger out in a healthy way. So I go for drives around the city, I'll do a lot of things by myself if something’s bothering me. I'll go for a drink by myself, sometimes I get carried away and use alcohol as an outlet, which I'm not supposed to. Sometimes one thing leads to another and I have to stay there for awhile because I have to sober up type of thing because I just want to forget about it.”

”One thing I wouldn't say I love about myself but I guess what I really like about myself is that even though I'm still really shy and don't like to interact with people too much, I've been told by my boyfriend that one of the things that he likes about me is that I'm judgement-free. I don't judge anybody. If I see someone I’m not gonna think, 'She looks like a bitch, I'm not gonna talk to her.' If somebody comes up to me and starts talking to me, some people would probably be like, 'Oh my God, get me out of this.' They wouldn’t want to deal with it, they'd rather be like, 'Oh, fuck off.' I guess for me, whenever I'm in that situation I just like to listen, I wanna hear their story. If they have something that they wanna tell me, whereas other people would be like, 'Well why'd you let them talk to you for that long?' If it's somebody with some serious mental health or something, most people would shy away from that, they'd be scared and wouldn't know how to approach it. If they come up to me, or if I just happen to be in that vicinity or something, and we happen to be talking, I'm not just gonna be rude and get up and walk away. I'll be friendly and accommodating. I just love that I love getting to know people. I never ever worry or think to myself, 'Oh, their shoes, their clothes, or they stink.' I guess what I always tell myself is that we're all on the same level, we're all human, we all go through shit. From my experience, we all just want somebody to listen to us every now and then. Because I never really had that growing up, I try to lend an ear every time. You never know what anybody is going through. You can save a life. What if they want to talk to you and you say 'No thank you' and you try to wave to your friend to come save you. What if you were their last interaction and you find out on the news that they went and killed themselves? Because they wanted someone to talk to but you wouldn’t give them the time of day. So yeah, that’s what I like about myself. I have a lot of empathy for people and try to put myself in their situation. Something that I lacked growing up, I want to give it back to other people.”