There's a saying that goes "You have to first love yourself before you love someone else." Like most wise, old sayings, I think think this one is full of it. Right up there with, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Ha. More like, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but they will eventually heal. Words will cause spiritual scarring so deep that it'll take years of therapy for me to feel whole again." Yes, words can do a lot more internal damage than any external injury, especially when those words come from within.

Take it from me: it's a whole lot easier to love someone else than it is to love yourself. If I were asked to write down all the things that I loved about my friends, family, and sorority sisters, I could write paragraphs, pages, or even books. If I were asked to write all the things I loved about myself, I could put down three things: my sense of humor, my intelligence, and my writing skills. That's it. Granted, at one point, I couldn't list anything, so, I consider this progress! Now, I know if my friends, family, and sorority sisters were asked what they loved about me, I'm sure they'd come up with many more items than I did. And I'd have to fight very hard not to refute them all immediately.

In Amy Poehler's memoir, "Yes Please," she says that everyone has a "demon voice" inside their head that tells them all sorts of horrible things about themselves: you're fat; you're ugly; no one loves you; you're a monster; you're a failure; you only hurt the people you love; you don't deserve to be happy. These types of thoughts can run on repeat for hours, days, weeks, months, or years. And if you have a mental illness (in my case, depression and anxiety), then the demon is even stronger. Even though this horrible thing isn't you, it sure sounds like you. What's worse, it sounds logical. If left unchecked, it could run your life. One day, everything's fine, and the next, you're in your bed curled in the fetal position, paralyzed by self-loathing and sadness.

So, how do you get the demon to go away? Well, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that you can never destroy it completely. The good news is that you can make it hibernate for a while. When I was little, I was terrified of Jacob Marley in "A Christmas Carol." To make me less scared, my dad said I should yell, "Go away, Marley! Leave me alone!" when he appeared on-screen. While it didn't really work in that particular situation, it does work on my internal demon most of the time. Whenever my demon rears its ugly head, I tell it strongly and firmly to go away. It tells me that no one cares; I tell it that I have a (biological and sorority) family and friends who love me very much. They say so all the time. It tells me I'm a failure; I show it the 'A' I got on my last paper. It tells me I'm stupid; I show it my respectable GPA. Eventually, it gets tired of being wrong and goes to sleep, for a bit, at least.

Not to say that this process is easy; it's not. It took me years to distinguish the "demon" thoughts from my regular ones, and even longer to figure out how to combat them. Most of the time, the method works, but despite my best efforts, sometimes I get too exhausted to fight. The demon takes over for a short while, but I regain control more quickly than I would have before. And that's all thanks to the wonderful support system I have around me. Whenever I'm in a really dark, negative place, I reread old text messages, emails, and letters full of reasons why I am amazing and loved. When I can't see anything to like about myself, I let the people I care about tell me, either in person, in writing, or through saved voicemails.

You don't have to love yourself before loving someone else—loving someone else can help you love yourself. Many of the qualities you love about them are actually in you too. It just takes another person to help you see that. The tricky part is letting them love you and believing they love you. Even accepting compliments with a smile instead of a qualification or a self-deprecating retort can be incredibly tough. In one of the "Smart Girls: Ask Amy" videos, Amy Poehler says that one way to decrease negativity is to respond to compliments with a simple "thank you" instead of a "thank you, but..." I've been trying to do this for a while now (emphasis on "try") and it's much harder than it looks. But I have made some progress. For example, when someone says they enjoyed reading one of my articles, I am genuinely pleased, rather than constantly finding ways to prove them wrong.

Your demon wants to isolate you, because it's at its strongest when you're alone. But the thing is, no one is ever really alone; you don't have to fight it on your own. There are lots of people who love and care about you, who want to help. Please let them, because you deserve to be happy, we all do.