I don’t think we’re born hating ourselves. I think we’re taught to—slowly, casually, and often by people who don’t even realize they’re doing it.
The most dangerous insecurities are the ones that were never ours to begin with. They were handed to us through jokes, side comments, and repeated observations until they feel permanent. I never hated my height—until other people decided it should matter.
I remember standing in line at school, looking far ahead and realizing I could see the first girl because I was always looming over everyone else. Being a tall girl in my country was a rarity, which meant I was easy to identify in a crowd. At first, it felt neutral—just a fact about my body, no different from eye colour or shoe size.
But people made it a conversation.
“Oh my God, you’re so tall.”
“How does it feel up there?”
As if the air I breathed at 5’10 was somehow different from the air everyone else breathed at 5’4.
I’ve always believed that when someone repeats something often enough—even as a joke—it stops being harmless. The moment a comment becomes consistent, it starts to feel like a diagnosis. And when my height became the first thing people noticed—the first thing they mentioned—and the main way they described me, I started to wonder if there was something wrong with it.
Not because being tall is bad. I actually think it’s great now. But because it overtook every other characteristic I had.
So, I tried to make myself smaller.
I wish I were exaggerating when I say that I started bending my knees—standing unevenly, slouching slightly—just to shorten myself. Just to blend in. Just to stop the comments. I lived like that for nearly two years, letting something I couldn’t change quietly turn into an insecurity.
Looking back, it feels unnecessary, almost painful to admit. If I had simply said, “And what about it?” the first few times my height became a spectacle, I could have saved myself years of discomfort. But insecurity doesn’t announce itself all at once: it grows in silence, reinforced by repetition.
Eventually, I switched schools, and everything shifted.
I met three tall girls who looked like me, moved like me, and took up space without apology. The difference was that they loved it. They embraced the attention, carried themselves with confidence, and treated their height like a gift rather than a flaw. Being around them forced me to question why I had ever learned to hate something so neutral—so powerful.
In this new environment, people reacted differently. Instead of jokes, I heard things like, “Wow, it must be so nice to be tall.” That confused me. Since when was being tall something to be embarrassed about?
That’s when I realized the problem had never been my height. It was projection.
People had projected their own insecurities onto me, and because I heard those projections often enough, they became mine. I hadn’t disliked my height naturally—I had been taught to. I see this happen everywhere.
Recently, I met a girl with the most adorable ears—tiny, slightly pointy, genuinely beautiful. I complimented her without thinking much of it, and she stared at me like I was crazy before laughing. She told me it was the first time anyone had ever said something nice about her ears. For years, people had compared them to elf ears, joked about fantasy movies, and turned them into a running punchline.
The thing is, she had never noticed her ears until other people did, just like I had never noticed my height.
This pattern repeats itself constantly. Women who are athletic are told they look “too bulky.” Short men are ridiculed. Fat people who are confident are told their confidence is misplaced. Any trait someone else lacks becomes the very thing they try to diminish in you, until it outweighs every other positive quality you possess.
It’s rooted in self-hatred, amplified by normalization and crowd behavior. When enough people say the same thing, it starts to feel like truth.
So, the next time you feel like you are too much, or not enough, or lacking something—or having too much of it—pause. Ask yourself: Is this actually how I feel? Or is this how other people have taught me to feel?
Because the truth is, most of the things we’re insecure about never mattered to us in the first place. They only started to matter when someone else decided they should.
And once you realize that, you get to decide whether you carry those insecurities forward—or leave them where they belong.