Here is my train of thought on this matter: "Anything but perfection is unacceptable. It's just not okay to be imperfect, and you are imperfect, therefore you are not okay. You will never be perfect, either; it's out of your reach, because you have bipolar disorder so you are constantly failing at life. Ultimately, you are always going to be useless. Enjoy life, you immense moron."

For me, the first step on the road to self-acceptance is to defeat my inner bully, but that's going to be hard because it has been a part of me for as long as I can remember (and then I was bullied by my classmates in secondary school, which certainly didn't help). I have lived with these horribly evil scripts for years, so that it now seems perfectly normal and acceptable for me to abuse myself. My university therapist is doing her best to deflate the bully, and she has been somewhat successful, I suppose, because I have started to notice this pathetic emotional part of me that produces feelings other than self-hatred.

I have always been very self-critical. I remember being seven and doing those handwriting exercises for my homework; I would erase the same word, or even just one letter, so many times that I'd eventually tear a hole in the page. Where that level of perfectionism and self-criticism came from, I do not know. But it feels like it is so ingrained into my being that I'm not sure I can ever fully get rid of it?