Fight Depression | By Sawan Kumar

If you want to know how to love yourself again after years of self-doubt, the answer is simpler than therapists make it sound: stop carrying labels that other people handed you when you were too young to argue back. I am Sawan Kumar, a Chartered Accountant turned AI educator based in Dubai, and I have walked 79,000+ students through mindset shifts that fix what bad conditioning broke.

Direct Answer: How To Love Yourself Again

To love yourself again, list every reason you currently hate yourself in one column, and in the next column write the name of the person who first told you that thing. In almost every case, you did not discover those flaws yourself — a parent, teacher, sibling, neighbour, or friend planted them. The moment you separate inherited criticism from observed truth, the self-hate loses its foundation, and self-love returns by default.

The Real Reason So Many People Are Depressed

The biggest reason so many people are depressed, stressed, and unhappy with themselves is not their job, their bank balance, or their relationship status. It is that we have stopped loving ourselves. And we stopped loving ourselves because of all the bad things we believe live inside us — most of which are not even ours.

I have seen this pattern repeat across thousands of student conversations. Someone tells me they cannot launch a course, cannot show up on camera, cannot raise prices — and when we trace the belief, it never started with them. It started in a sentence somebody said to them at age seven.

What People Said About Me When I Was A Kid

When I was a child, I was told I was dumb. I was told I was an idiot. I was told I was not good for anything, that I would never make anything of my life, that I would always be dependent on somebody else. I was also told, repeatedly, that I was an introvert — as if that were a permanent diagnosis.

So when I grew up, my reasons for hating myself read like a script:

• I am not good for anything.
• I am dumb.
• I am an introvert who cannot communicate.
• I cannot be successful.
• I cannot make money.

Every single one of those was a sentence somebody else wrote and I memorised. None of them were observations I made about myself. That distinction is the entire game.

The Two-Column Exercise That Reverses It

Here is the exercise I want you to do today. Take a piece of paper. Draw two columns.

• Column 1: Every reason you hate yourself. Every flaw, every limit, every label.
• Column 2: The name of the person who first said that thing to you.

Make your subconscious work a little. Sit with each item and ask, "Did I discover this about myself, or was this said to me?" In the highest probability, you will find a name for almost every line — a parent, a teacher, a sibling, a neighbour, a friend. No matter how close they were to you, if you did not discover it for yourself, it is most likely not true.

Why Inherited Criticism Is Almost Always Wrong

Think about who hands out these labels. They are usually delivered when you are a child — by adults working through their own frustration, fear, or unprocessed pain. A child cannot challenge "you are dumb" the way an adult can. So the sentence enters the subconscious unchallenged, and twenty years later you are still paying interest on it.

Here is the rule: when something is not true, you do not owe it your suffering. If a label was installed, not earned, you can uninstall it. That is not denial. That is accurate accounting — and as a Chartered Accountant, I trust accurate accounting.

The Second List: Things You Have Actually Done

Once you have crossed out the inherited labels, write a third list. List out the things you have achieved. List out the things you have been successful with. List out the things you are genuinely good at — the ones you know, in your gut, you are good at.

Be specific. Not "I am hardworking." Write the project, the result, the moment somebody thanked you, the skill you built, the problem you solved. The moment you do this, something shifts. You start to fall in love with yourself again — not because of affirmations, but because the evidence is now on the page in front of you.

What Changes When You Try This

I teach AI, automation, GoHighLevel, and Canva to operators across 74+ courses, but the single biggest predictor of whether a student finishes a course and ships a business is not skill — it is whether they have done the inner work of separating inherited self-hate from real self-assessment. The students who do this two-list exercise stop self-sabotaging. They charge what their work is worth. They show up on camera. They send the cold email.

Self-love is not a soft topic. It is the operating system everything else runs on.

How To Love Yourself Again — The One-Page Plan

• Step 1: Write every reason you hate yourself.
• Step 2: Next to each one, name the person who first said it.
• Step 3: Cross out every line where the source was somebody else, not you.
• Step 4: On a fresh page, list every concrete thing you have achieved, built, learned, or helped someone with.
• Step 5: Read that page out loud once a day for seven days.

If you have stopped loving yourself, the fastest way back is not a retreat or a new morning routine — it is two columns and an honest hour. Today, before you go to bed, write the two lists. That is your one specific next step.

Support Option	Cost	Best For	Access
BetterHelp	$70–$100/week	Licensed therapy via chat/video	Global, English
UAE Mental Support Line	Free	Crisis & confidential support in UAE	800-HOPE (800-4673)
Headspace	AED 47.99/month	Daily meditation & sleep support	App, 30+ languages
Calm	AED 219/year	Sleep stories, breathwork	App, iOS/Android
Dubai Community Clinics	AED 350–700/session	In-person psychiatry & CBT	DHA-licensed centers

Source: Pricing from BetterHelp.com, Headspace.com, Calm.com, and Dubai Health Authority (DHA) clinic listings as of 2026. Crisis line: UAE Ministry of Health & Prevention (MOHAP) 800-HOPE.