Feeling Inadequate.

Hey y'all! Hope you had a fantastic Valentine's Day.  It's a day of love, pink and  hearts, so I don't know how you couldn't :) 

Today, I want to talk about something completely unrelated to Valentine's Day though.  Although, it may be more related than we realize.  Feeling inadequate.  Let me begin with a little scenario:

Last week in class, we were asked to post pictures of ourselves on our class website so that the professor could learn our names by looking at our pictures.  As I uploaded my picture, a guy in my class was looking over my shoulder.

"That's you?" He asked.  Why, yes, I am actually putting up a picture of myself, not someone else.  

"Your hair looks so much longer there.  And fuller."

In my mind, that means: Your hair looks terrible.  

I can't believe he would say that to me! He thinks I am ugly.

Sound familiar? I would guess that it does to many of you.  We so often take careless comments that others make and immediately tell ourselves that that person doesn't like us.  We are ugly, stupid, boring, (insert correct adjective here).  Most likely, however, this is NOT what the person intended.  Usually they just mean what they say.  Ben didn't mean that I was ugly, he just meant my hair looked different in the picture.

Once I have removed myself from the situation, I am usually able to calm down and realize that whatever comment someone made was not intended to be hateful.  What do you do when you find yourself in this self-derogatory state of mind?