I don’t know about you all, but I love a good self-help book. The market for books targeted at millenials spans everything from washing your face, to stop apologizing, to accepting your flaws and becoming a kick-ass businesswoman. I always enjoy these reads for a couple of reasons. Mainly, I love to learn and feel like I’m taking control of my life. Reading books with all the latest tips and tricks about self-care, relaxation, owning your insecurities, and harnessing your creative energy help me feel like I am spending my time wisely by working on myself.
This feeling is good, and I do believe that taking time to care for ourselves is also very good.
But what happens when the self-help books and positive affirmations stop working? Where do we go from here?
My entire life, for as far back as I can remember, I have struggled with self-esteem. I have also struggled with body image, and I intentionally list those two things separately because although they tend to get lumped together in our society, they really are (and should be) two entirely different things that support each other.
Before we dig any deeper, let me be sure to reiterate that what follows is not clinical advice in any way, but rather is my experience learning to not only come to terms with my body and myself, but to even embrace it (not that I’ve reached the finish line but if I was doing one of those couch to 5k programs targeted at loving yourself I’m at least off the couch at this point. Small steps).
For so much of my life, I felt like I did not have low self-esteem. I was nurtured by family and friends growing up and always verbally praised for my accomplishments. I never hesitated to sign up for new experiences or leadership positions at school, and I was always seen as outgoing and friendly, not reclusive in the way that one may be stereotyped into being if he or she was self-conscious.
So as I grew older and stepped into therapy for disordered eating and general emotional regulation concerns, I immediately was convinced that every therapist was dumb and knew nothing because they referred to me as having “low self-esteem” and was insecure when I knew good and well I was very confident in my abilities to do many things on a daily basis.
And so early on, this idea of self-esteem and body image quickly became entangled into a web of sameness. The two began to go together like the diet coke and granola combo that I ate every day for lunch for 6 months. “Low self-esteem comes from poor body image and vice versa” became the concept that developed in my mind. I didn’t know it at the time, but this dangerous entwining of ideas would later make shifting my views of myself infinitely more difficult.
You see, when we begin to believe that self-esteem comes from a positive body image, the task of developing positive self-esteem can become very daunting.
For someone (like me) who felt very angry and upset with her body for most of my life, the belief that I could not overcome this hatred of self until I learned to love (or even like) my body seemed near impossible.
I haven’t fully delved into the deep parts of my subconscious self, but I really do believe that this concept played a role in deterring me from “getting better” for so long. I hated my body for as long as I could remember, so the idea of needed to come to terms with its appearance before developing positive views of myself overall seemed like a lost cause.
If you’ve ever battled negative thoughts about yourself, or distorted thoughts of any sort, really, you are probably familiar with the way the cycle unfolds. We start of by hearing or internalizing this thought or idea, which eventually becomes one of our core beliefs. and that belief begins to shape the ways we feel and respond to ourselves, and those actions then start to reinforce this idea that was never even true to begin with BUT ALAS, you did finally act in a way that gave you evidence that the idea was true, and so it is reinforced again, and again, and again.
What this looked like for me seems really simple looking back on it. I started to hate my body and so I started to believe that my body was bad. This idea took many different forms, like “My body would be good if….” or “My body is only bad because….” but essentially, it was all the same. This core belief became my identity- my body is bad but if I could just lose 20 pounds, then it would be good. So I started to feel like I had to do it- I had to make my body “good” because we are meant to be good, right?
So then I would restrict. Or over-exercise. Or binge and then purge to make myself feel like I was getting what I deserved. And you know what? Ina society that worships thinness, I got what I was looking for. The comments about my weight loss and how its so impressive “that I can choose to not eat or just eat vegan” reinforced what I believed the whole time.
“My body was only bad because of this thing, and now that I am changing it, I am becoming good.”
I finally had evidence! What people did not know was that the comments about my weight loss were reinforcing every distorted belief I held about who I am. And every time they reaffirmed that I was better when I was thinner, the cycle would restart. The issue with a cycle like this, though, is that it’s not sustainable. There comes a time when you burn out on the unhealthy cycles and start to yearn for some sense of normalcy.
But when I started to want to like my body just as is, I mean really want to like it, I just couldn’t.
These thoughts of who I was and where my worth stemmed from had become so deeply entwined with my DNA that my body, and my mind, could not even imagine making this choice. It was so simple: one way made you good, and one did not.
It would not be until years later, as an adult, that my best friend would say the words that many parents, therapists, and friends had said all along. For some reason, this time, it started to become clear.
“You will never change your habits until you change the way you view yourself.”
She wasn’t talking about the way I viewed my body. She was speaking to the way I viewed my self- the whole person of me held up in the skin that I worried so much about.
And so the new work began: the work of untangling self-esteem from body image and learning to see the parts of me that made me truly good, apart from my body.
Please do not read this and misunderstand what I am saying. My body (and yours, too) is so good already. My body shows up for me day after day even when I completely mistreat it or ignore its needs, even after years of starvation and caffeine and trying to fix something that wasn’t broken.
But what I was beginning to learn is that I don’t need to just think of my body as being good in order to know that I, the whole person, am good.
I was slowly beginning to learn as a 20 something, that this body that has carried me my whole life is just a shell of what I really am: the strength I possess, the care I extend to others, the passion and drive and personality that is me, is just housed in these skin and bones.
Yes, it is important to thank our bodies for the work they do for us. It is important to care for our bodies and listen to them and honor them.
But we are not just our bodies. We are infinitely more complex than the vessels that house our neurons and ligaments, our blood and our hearts. What makes me a living person cannot fully be contained in this body that I have been given, and until I realized this truth, I would never be able to fully appreciate the whole of the person I am.
This realization brought me to actual tears. It’s a strange feeling to realize you have been rejecting yourself somewhat for most of your life. It’s a weird phenomenon to feel like you need to simultaneously forgive apologize and forgive yourself all at once, like you were living a lie but really did not know and never meant to hurt anyone by it (especially not yourself).
The work that follows such a realization is long and hard. These core beliefs cannot be easily undone, and take patience and pain to work through.
If you, too, feel like you might be stuck, its okay.
Your body and your heart will forgive you.
It’s okay to take the first step of asking your body and your soul what it needs from you. It may say you have been taking too much, or it may say you have not given enough. And if this is the case, it’s also okay to say, “I’m sorry” and promise yourself to try to do better.
It can be a heartbreaking feeling for someone feeling lost to finally recognize that they will not be able to separate themselves from this body that feels like a trap, or a mistake that you cannot remove yourself from.
But it can also be beautifully refreshing to remember that this body will always be your home, for better or for worse, no matter how far you run. We can’t separate ourselves from ourselves, and while it may be one of the most difficult things humans can do, learning to love the parts of us that are scary or frustrating can open up entirely new dimensions to what it feels like to really, truly, be human.
Some practical things we can do to help target negative views of self are the things that most people roll their eyes at: positive self-talk and affirmations, dismantling negative and untrue thoughts about ourselves, and taking time to care for ourselves to remind ourselves that we are loved.
Something as simple as repeating a positive statement to yourself like, “I am worthy of love simply because I am alive” two to three times a day can actually make a difference. I know, it seems unrealistic, but we actually can see positive shifts in thinking in about 15 weeks with something as simple as remembering to talk to ourselves a few times a day. Start with something small, write it on your mirror or on a post-it in your car, and watch the shifts that your thinking will take.
It can feel like an uphill battle trying to change the ways we see ourselves, but change is possible and it is worth it.