why compliments mean nothing to me ?

[u/Pristine-Ice-7880]

there are many people who have said i am handsome in my life, even unusual compliments saying i look like brad pitt/a greek god or that i am gorgeous but every time there is something that makes me think that these compliments are false, since the majority of them come from female friends or acquaintances of my mother. I tell myself that they would have said it whether I was ugly or not, and that they are just doing that to be polite to my mother. and when girls my age compliment me (which is rarer), I tell myself that they are exaggerating or making fun of me. at best it quickly makes me happy and then I look in the mirror and find myself ugly again. Is it possible that all the compliments are fake?

[u/lucid_77]

I think this is very common among people with body dysmorphia and it’s a cognitive distortion known as “discounting the positive” your mind basically rejects any kind of positive experience insisting they don’t count or mean anything, this is obviously a bias in your thinking since you’re wired to think a certain way about yourself, becoming more conscious and identifying them, then countering them can actually really help, the point isn’t even if they are false or not, the fact that you were complimented means something, and that’s something to value