the best way to improve your mental health and self worth is to stop explaining yourself to people committed to misunderstanding you, you were not put on this earth to fulfil anyone elses preferences or expectations, fulfilling your own is hard enough and that is all that matters
after yourself, the people around you are what matter. You will never please everyone, and often you’ll have to choose to listen to grow & become a better person. But rest assured those people who will encourage you to change & grow will do it out of love and with love
as soon as you come to terms with this, you can redefine your own expectations and the whole “living up to standards” becomes a lot easier. There are always going to be too many standards to live up to, its up to you to determine which ones you need to follow
Anyone trying to incite change in you or put expectations on you with anything other than love & proximity is not worth listening to, because it’s not about you, it’s about them. It’s about their desire to have you as something that serves them rather than yourself, so it has to
come from within them. Even if you do mould your life and yourself to fit their expectations, it’ll never be good enough because it’s not you who needs to change. Stop allowing yourself to be a puppet in other people’s lives, or you’ll always be fighting a losing battle