One of the articles you have to come to it yourself is owning who you are, what you are, what you are made of, your weakness, your strength.
You can never run from it. You have to accept the truth and enjoy what life has in store for you. You cannot be perfect. Good begins when you honestly know about what you feel, how you speak to yourself and how you treat people around you and how people treat you and what is the reason they treat you that way.
It's more hard to ask yourself what was the path that you were going through but maybe you were emotionally immature, you didn't know what to do, you don't want to hurt anybody else, you were too shy, you were too awkward but you don't have to be perfect about yourself.
But you just have to be confident unapologetically and you don't have to seek that validation. Start defending yourself and start confronting yourself. I don't think I did.
Take away other people's power to judge you and finally give yourself that chance. You have to become someone better and bigger in everything you do.