Looking for advice - Self esteem - Feeling different.

TLDR: Looking for advice on accepting myself after a trying to be someone I'm not for years.

Hello HG Community! Just a brief introduction to give some context: I'm a 24F studying engineering, diagnosed with ADHD (primarily inattentive) last year. I'm an active consumer of Dr. K content for a few years by now. I have been to therapy for a few years both psychoanalysis and CBT. CBT being the most recent one gave me a lot of tools to navigate through my daily struggles as an anxious neurodivergent. This, mixed with Dr. K workshop about inaction, has me in a spot of a really healthy life balancing studying, working and relationships but at the time being I'm not able to find love for myself.

Why do I struggle with accepting myself?: I talked with my therapist about the feeling of being different, the odd one out. Don't get me wrong, I have a boyfriend and friends that love me and support me but I still feel like I don't fit anywhere. Since I was a child I noticed kids and adults treated me different for some reason. That led me to try to fit in by any means necessary in highschool. I started dressing, acting and doing hobbies that were considered normal. In university I tried to study weeks in advance for exams as my peers resulting in really bad results. It seems that I work better studying just a few days before but people doesn't seem to like that a lot. Even now I feel like everytime I speak it's kinda of odd? like the topics and such. Thank God I've surrounded myself of ppl that don't get bothered by it.

My therapist told me that's it's time to stop trying to fit in because it's costing me too much. But after all this years of doing this on repeat I'm really struggling on accepting who I am. Because I don't really remember what I was like before all that. All of this is starting to affect my day to day life and I'm getting worried.

So the questions for y'all are:

• Have any of you experienced something similar? I love would love to hear it.
• Any advice on accepting oneself?
• Is it possible to feel proud of oneself?
• How can I stop paying so much attention to other people's opinions?

Thanks for reading❤️‍🩹