Was going to post this in the depression forum but it might as well go here.

Self-love always seems impossible. How can you be so delusional as to,love yourself when there re clearly others out there who are smarter, more attractive, more successful, just generally better? For me this can transmute into obsession with intelligence or giftedness, or anxiety about things like transhumanism or genetic engineering (basically things that will leave me even further behind, make me Ben worse by comparison, unless I make alterations I'm deathly afraid of making and/or risk losing myself somehow...fears that just make me even less loveable).

Ack, I went off there. I was actually trying to get to something else: a growing belief that I can never love myself until someone demonstrates that I'm worth it. Until someone loves me, basically. I don't see how it can work any other way, since self-acceptance and love seems so impossible.