“I don’t give myself enough consideration, or the same empathy that I extend to others. I think that’s a legacy from the emotional relationship I had with myself and my family when I was younger. My family was very distant emotionally and was focused on being private, and separating yourself from your emotions. Also being in the closet for 18 years had a disassociating effect on my identity and sense of self. Through that, I never learned to adequately give weight to my emotions, and to fully understand who I was. I sort of had to separate myself from everything that was going on, and couldn’t connect emotionally, just cognitively. Through doing that, I created a big gulf between who I was, my identity and my emotions, and it made it really hard to see myself holistically, understanding that I am a person with negatives and positives; that I am a full person. That’s made me very insecure and uncomfortable with who I am. One thing that would be good to address that would be to focus on the positives, really get to know who I am and not be so hard when negative thoughts come up, and make a consistent effort to give myself credit where it’s due.”