I was hoping you could help me process some emotions from my past.

Last night I had a dream about being rejected by a peer, and the feeling of self-loathing, humiliation, and shame was so strong. It was like a feeling I had was that I was either ashamed or disgusted to be me.

In this dream, I was passed over for not being attractive enough, and in fact, the person rejecting me was quite cruel about it, laughing at me as I vied for approval.

I feel these are deep buried feelings that surface when I was a child, and my father went to prison. Many of my classmates knew that, and I went from having friends to no friends and people often making fun of me.

At that time, my mother kept my hair very short, and I was often referred to as a boy. I can barely look at some of the pictures of me from then because I can see the sadness and the shame in my eyes, almost like a picture brings back the feelings of embarrassment to be me.

My question is this — I want to work on this— my brain is offering is this the 50/50 of life, and should I approach it as it was always meant to be there, arguing with it makes it worse (option 1) or rewriting it in a way that serves me (although I don’t think I am there yet at all) or option 3 – hold the space, notice the feelings.

I want to make somehow this less burdensome to me. I see how I can’t fuel with love towards myself sometimes because this gets in the way.