The Stories We Tell Ourselves about Handsomeness (or the Opposite) Injure or Lift

From elementary school age, I remember having the message from mom that I was less than ___. I hesitate to write this candidly upon wordpress.

I’m 51 years -old. Beginning in my 40s, Looking back, I remember the movies and TV shows to which I glued myself (having gutter-level self -esteem) as a youngster, the people and families with positive self-talk seemed to belong on-screen, or in other families. What I heard about me convinced me that the positivity didn’t belong in me.

In the early 1990s, watching “New Jack City,” after I said actress Michael Michelle was pretty, my mom blurted “why would she want you!. This was the death nell of trust in mom. It raised the summary red flag that mom was toxic.

This subtle psychological abuse, of which this was that latest symptom, was sabotage. This made the matters of image, handsomeness and presentation vital. They would be shields for my fragile psyche.

Some years later, beginning in my mid-20s I remember strangers praising my looks, insistently. Twenty years later, with niche therapy, I faintly and randomly remember a former therapist’s Bill Allen, praise from circa 2007, “you probably intimidate people. Models intimidate people.” I struggled to swallow and walk with this in-mind. The emotional scar from my mom’s word wounds was tenacious.

Still, testing the day-to-day waters of accepting handsomeness over mom’s toxic messages; to hear circa 2017, “Star Tribune” columnist C.J., a stranger, passed me alongside a Target store in Minneapolis, saying “what do you do for a living! You need to be modeling”! To hear in 2018, a handsome straight man insist ”you are a Handsome man”. These morsels of praise upset my mom-crafted sense of being less-than. 

In 2017 I decided to record from memory the praise others lavished upon me about being handsome. Over the years, which I’d brushed away, I think I reasoned any praise from me must have been a lie! That was the potency of my mom’s words and gestures when I was very young. Not yet comfortable with walking as handsome, I foresaw needing and using this. I created a list of praise for my look according to dates, as best I could remember them. 

Still In 2017 between psychodynamic counseling, and frequent introspection, I did I decide that the earnest, unbidden praise about my looks from strangers, was valid enough to counter the stings from my mom’s early barbs against my self-esteem.. 

The power I have over what, and how I tell myself about myself was great. T’was time to take control and to re-write how I talked to myself. In late 2022, while seeing a niche talk therapist, reading “The Confident Mind” introduced me to, or reminded that our psyches are built in-part from stories we tell ourselves (i.e. self-talk) and those, which others tell us. To err toward the positive and celebratory is the most constructive.

Beginning in Fall 2022, Lessons from “The Confident Mind” and affirmations of my own deductions from “Selfless” help me. In 2021, I chose to aggressive strategy to reprogram myself. erring toward praise for my looks and the surging knowledge and confidence I held in my ambitious virtues.

Beauty is neither a be-all nor an end-all. Just ask the “Eye of the Beholder episode of “The Twilight Zone”. When beside handsomeness, your parent convinces you that you are less-than, that’s a terrible wound. Once you learn you can change this, you must!  I am far enough in revising my self-image/self-concept and humble enough that white handsomeness is important, I know I carry a suite of other, related virtues