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Actress Millie Bobby Brown has taken the world by storm since her big breakthrough as the now beloved character of Eleven on Netflix’s Stranger Things. Becoming somewhat of a phenomenon, the world hangs and Millie’s every move. Recently, Millie Bobby Brown took to Instagram to discuss a topic not common among young women in their early teenage years: self-love.

Teenage girls are renown for their self-criticisms and self-obsessions, often manifesting through body image or social concerns. Brown’s character Eleven is not the average teenage girl. The young supernatural super hero is a survivor of trauma. She’s been through an immense amount of trauma, has been psychologically and physically abused, and has saved the immediate fictional world of Hawins, Indiana, twice, nonetheless. Yet Eleven learns how to cope with her feelings and emotions as best possible. Brown seems to have taken a cue from Eleven’s experience and apply it to her own. Refinery29 reports on Brown’s instagram posts as saying,

“I’m human. I’m a teenager. I make mistakes. I get pimples. I get irritated by small things. I get hurt. I have emotions. I have feelings…And if you are happy in your own skin, if you truly love yourself, then you will love other people, and you will be kind to other people. And that’s what’s important.”

“I’m human…I make mistakes…I have feelings”

Trauma does something strange to our perception of ourself, the world, and how we fit into that world. We can start to feel like a stranger thing among people who we think are normal. What we fail to realize in such moments is that trauma or no trauma, nobody is really “normal”. That is, if you define normal as being oppositional to making occasional mistakes or having feelings. The real normal of being a human is being flawed. Humans make mistakes. Humans have feelings. Even Brown’s character Eleven, who has super human powers, is still a human teenage girl who makes mistakes and has feelings.

What needs to become the new normal is loving yourself no matter how normal or not normal you are. Trauma attempts to convince you that you do not deserve to be loved, especially because of the mistakes you make and the feelings you feel. Make like Eleven and start to love yourself today.

The Guest House Ocala offers residential treatment programs for trauma, addiction, and related mental health issues. Call us today for information on life at the estate and our concierge level of customization for each guest’s treatment plan: 1-855-483-7800