you-deserve-to-love-yourself

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

you deserve to be cherished and appreciated and supported and complimented and adored and longed for and

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

How sweet this life gets to be between the spikes and stones. The future never arrives to take from the rightful present, it claims no bed, no vacancy is left ahead. The future is coming down the barrel and it will flow like water through all the space you leave behind. Hold onto now, brace for a lifetime of little moments that shine like stars.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

May you come home to a place where you are warm and safe and loved. May your pillows be soft and your dreams be peaceful.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

may you remember, but forgive. may you learn from situations that brought you pain, but have the strength to let go of your anger if you feel like it is no longer serving you.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

To those who have to accept they will be ill/ in pain/ disabled the rest of their lives:

You will still have good days, fun moments, and fulfilling times. You will still have days you are okay, happy even. Life is a cycle, its good, then bad, then good, so one thing you can always count on is no matter where you are in life you are always on the way to a good and happy day or moment, you are always on the way to seeing the bad end.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

you can be a badass or a girlboss or whatever and put yourself first while still respecting other people’s feelings. you don’t need to think of yourself as above others to feel good about yourself.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

sometimes we have to let go of the once good things in order to make room for better things

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

May you come home to a place where you are warm and safe and loved. May your pillows be soft and your dreams be peaceful.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

i’m so proud of you for surviving today whether it was easy or hard or felt impossible. today was another step forward, and you took it!! i’m so proud of you. okay good night <3

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

New intro post

Hi everyone!! I haven't used this site in almost 3 years (3 years!), but I plan to (hopefully) be a little more active from now on and wanted to make a new intro post because who I am and what I want to use this blog for has changed.

Who I am

I go by Aure (she/her) and I've run this blog since I was 15 (I'm 20 now which is crazy!) I'm Asian-American and am studying neuroscience at my university. I want to become a doctor, specifically a neurologist and treat disorders like seizures or ME/CFS. I am diagnosed with ADHD, autism, depression, and anxiety, and take medications for all of these except autism. My main is @aureshadow.

History of this blog

This is a mental health/self love blog. I started this blog in 2020, about 5 months into quarantine. I was at a very low point in my life--an organization I had been in charge of had dissolved due to internal conflicts. At that time, that org had been the love of my life and the only source of my self-worth, and I fell into a very deep and dangerous depression.

During that time, I had a lot of realizations about myself and my warped perceptions of the world. I realized that I had placed my sense of self-worth on my accomplishments, and that once I peeled back those glorious achievements and titles, I had nothing left. I held a lot of anger at myself, my peers, and the world. I would burst into tears at random points of my day.

I didn't want to feel this way; I wanted to get better. I started using Tumblr around this time, after deleting all my "irl" social media accounts (Instagram, Twitter, etc). I followed a lot of blogs that posted affirmations such as "you are valuable no matter what," and realized that I did derive some sense of comfort from reading these words even if I didn't fully believe them. I realized that I had things to say as well, and maybe it would help other people to read them.

It blew up pretty quickly. I posted a lot of my own thoughts and became friends (ish?) with a lot of other mental health blogs here. I started getting a lot of asks, some of which were pretty personal. In hindsight, as a 16 year old I really shouldn't have been giving some of the advice I was giving on here. But I like to think that some of what I said was helpful.

I logged off of Tumblr in 2022, the summer before I entered college, and did not log back in for almost 3 years.

What I've been up to since

I've been in college and I've been doing well! I went on meds and my mental health has been much better, but I still recognize that I have a long way to go. In 2025 I'm trying to work on showing more empathy, and having candid conversations with people I'm upset with instead of complaining about them behind their backs.

When I started this blog I had essentially zero friends. My life has definitely improved in this department; in college I have a nice group of friends that love and support me. It certainly isn't perfect and sometimes I still get upset with them, but I try my best to communicate and work it out.

I'm doing well in school; medication and accommodations have significantly improved my experience. I still sometimes struggle with procrastination and forgetting to do assignments, but somehow have still managed to hold onto an insanely high GPA, lol. I'm far from the perfect student but am trying to build better study habits as I'll need it for med school!

My main academic interest is neuroscience, specifically neurological disorders like ME/CFS. More fandom-wise, I've been in love with danmeis, especially MXTX's works like Tian Guan Ci Fu. I won't be posting any fandom stuff here though--that'll all be on my main @aureshadow and @envythepalmtree (Fullmetal Alchemist sideblog).

What I plan to do with this blog

I plan to use this blog a little differently; I've changed a lot since I logged off of Tumblr in 2022. I still want to use it to spread positivity and messages about mental health that people might benefit from reading. Some of my values/beliefs are a little different my writing style may seem a little different as well.

The main change is that I want what I post to be more based in science. Whenever I make any kind of claim, I'll cite reputable sources and I will not reblog anything that makes a claim unless I have fact checked it first.

While I'll still be sharing general posts about self love and mental health, I also want to use this platform to make neuroscience and psychology more accessible to people. Academic papers, especially scientific papers, are very inaccessibly written but I believe that people have a right to understand what's going on in their own brains and bodies. If you have a specific disorder you would like to learn more about, a specific study you'd like to understand, or even any general questions about the brain, feel free to shoot me an ask! I likely won't respond very quickly but that's because I want to take the time to be thoughtful and give a good response.

I will continue to add image descriptions to any image-based posts I see and encourage everyone else to do the same! They are very important for accessibility and I want to make my blog as accessible as possible. Here's a guide I wrote up on a different sideblog on how to write IDs.

Asks

You can ask me almost anything. I may choose not to answer, but there is never any harm in asking! You can request a post on any topic you'd like, from brain research to my own life experiences.

I am not a therapist or a doctor (yet). I am an EMT (which means I drive an ambulance), however this is just a blog and I don't want anything I say to be taken as medical advice.

You're welcome to ask me for advice with the caveat that I do not know your life as well as you do and you are always the expert on your own life. I am always here as a second opinion and listening ear.

The only thing I request you do not send me is messages about active urges to harm yourself or others. I am not qualified to help you if you are actively considering harming yourself or others; you can find crisis helplines in different countries here. You're welcome to mention if you've attempted or done something in the past, but I ask that if you are actively in crisis that you log off of Tumblr and find a crisis helpline in your country/area.

While I will not respond to hate messages, I welcome constructive criticism! If you have any ideas on how I can improve this blog let me know. If I have posted/reblogged something harmful or factually incorrect, please let me know so I can take it down.

As always, please take care of yourselves!

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

all your stuffed animals love you. they're not sad if they're in a box, or on the floor, or not held/played with as much. they understand. they know that you might need another stuffie more, or that you don't have enough space. they're just happy to be with you, and if you ever give them away, they'll be happy there too. stuffies are for comfort. they understand. they love you too. it's okay.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

i think before you marry someone, you should sit down and go through the AITA subreddit with them and see what their take on those situations is

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

Self care tip: Fill your dash with content that makes you happy. Don’t be ashamed of unfollowing or blocking blogs that stress you out. This is your internet experience, so follow blogs and tags that help your mental health.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

tip for people with chronic pain/fatigue: lay down occasionally. haven't laid down in the past 3-5 hours? do it (if you can) and see how you feel. i've found that i'll lay down in bed just to be in my room, but then i get hit with an instant wave of relief because just sitting on the couch was too much for my body, and i didn't realize it.

when you're in pain or fatigued for a long time, your awareness of your body may get wonky - especially if you already struggle w/interoception due to neurodivergency. so. test it, sometimes. you can apply it to other things too: sit if you're standing. stop doing a task if you've been doing it for a while. have a small snack to see if you're hungry. etc. etc.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

people with mental illnesses and disabilities are not lazy for being affected by their symptoms.

you are not being lazy for not being as productive as others who can realistically afford to put that much energy into their work.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

The moon taught me there is beauty in darkness too, that even when I don't feel whole, I am enough.

[you-deserve-to-love-yourself]

a little compassion, a little generosity and a little hospitality go a long way.

you deserve these things, but don’t forget that they are also things we can all offer to each other