My mother told me I looked well and I could not speak

I found the comments from people who had known me a long time hardest, because they carried an implied opinion about before.

My therapist pointed out that I was describing my body in the third person, and I had genuinely not noticed I was doing it.

No advice, only that you are not the only one who found this part hard.

Something practical: I bought two things that fit, properly, rather than waiting. The waiting was itself a message I was sending myself.

The kindest thing anybody said to me was that I did not owe anybody a reaction to their compliment.

Something that helped was reducing how much I looked. Not as a punishment. Just less often, and it made the looking less loaded.

What I got wrong was expecting a change in circumstances to change how I felt. It did not. The feeling had its own history.

No advice, just company. Here if it helps.

The thing that has helped most is spending time doing things where my body is useful rather than looked at. Swimming, mostly, badly.