Cosmetic Surgery and Self-Love

Cosmetic surgery is on the rise, with the assumption being that fixing what you don’t like about your looks will improve your self-esteem. This is not always the case. Sometimes what is making you feel bad about yourself on the inside isn’t being caused by how you look on the outside.

Cosmetic Surgery, Self-Esteem – Self-Esteem, Cosmetic Surgery?

When you are anxious or depressed, you obviously want those feelings to go away, so you start to look for what seems to be the easiest, or fastest, way to do it. A teenager may look in the mirror every day and see nothing but that bend in her nose that she thinks is putting her on the fast track to freak city. Most teens get anxious or depressed about something at one point or another. But there are other ways to fix a bruised ego than to undergo surgery, permanently changing your looks, to fix feelings that might have turned out to be temporary.

And there is no guarantee that cosmetic surgery will bolster your self-esteem. Your self-love issues may be more than skin deep. Sometimes you are so busy trying to please everyone you know, you don’t have any energy to spend on pleasing yourself. Then when your hairs grow out of shape, or you simply can’t wear that shirt one more time, you get down on yourself for not being more together.

First, Do No Harm

When someone is studying to become a doctor, one of the things they learn is, “First, do no harm.” This means trying the least invasive method of curing an illness first, and then progressing up to more aggressive treatments. Cosmetic surgery is often the most aggressive way to treat a deficit in self-love, and should maybe be held off on until you explore a little more what is actually going on in your head.

So before you go under the knife, first consider try getting a new haircut, perhaps, or go shopping for some new clothes. Just maybe, you can give yourself enough of a lift that that physical imperfection that was so glaring before, might not seem like the cause of all your troubles anymore.

Then, Go for It!

If you do opt for cosmetic surgery, it may help. It might have been what you you’ve needed for a while. That is true in some cases, but sometimes the novelty will wear off, and you will slowly start feeling anxious or depressed, or both, again. It’s then that you need to start working on accepting yourself, your whole self. Until you can learn to love yourself and care for yourself, you will find it difficult to truly care for and help others in a way that can make you feel good about yourself as well.

There is a condition known as body dysmorphic disorder, in which a person has an obsession with non-existent or slight defect in their appearance. These people are, probably unknowingly, looking to cosmetic surgery as a quick way to resolve their issues associated with poor body image and low self-esteem.

So think twice before you decide that you can’t go one more day with that bend in your nose. Maybe you should spend a little time rattling around inside your head to make sure there aren’t other things you need to do to give your self-esteem a boost.