This post has been a tricky one for me to write which is why it’s been on my ‘draft’ list for a few months now. I’ve been wanting to talk about this but in a way I feel unqualified to; I’ve never suffered from an eating disorder, I’ve got a pretty healthy body image and for the most part, I like the way I look. But still, the relationship I have with my body hasn’t always been the healthiest and there’s things I’ve struggled with and learned through those struggles. Does being ‘okay’ with my body mean that I can’t step into the body image arena when so many other women out there struggle immensely with these things every day? No, I don’t think it does. I think creating a space of openness, honesty and vulnerability about potentially difficult and taboo topics is important and one of the many ways we can start dismantling the “perfection ideal” that social media contributes to.
For most of my life I have been pretty okay with the way that I look. “Okay” in the sense that I never struggled with an eating disorder or body dysmorphia, I have never engaged in harmful or destructive behaviours against myself, and I’m fairly confident in the way that I look. But I say “okay” because I’ve also spent a lot of time comparing myself to others and feeling like my body could look “better”. I’ve spent a fair amount of time feeling insecure about things that I thought “loosing weight” or “toning up” would solve. I’ve judged my body, criticised it and willed it to look different at times. Although I’ve never actually done it, I’ve gone through the mental cycles of restricting what I think I should eat and then feeling guilty for eating differently to that. I’ve bought into the pressures of social media and at times turned on myself, becoming my own biggest enemy.
The reason I wanted to talk about body image is because in the midst of my lockdown time in Dubai I hit a personal low in my relationship with my body. I was house bound in my apartment which I quickly realized was clad with mirrors; my bedroom had a huge mirror positioned in such a way that I could pretty much see my own reflection the entire day. Or I would turn away from it and see myself in the bathroom mirror. Or I would walk out of my room and see myself in the full-length mirror in the living room. It was unnatural to see myself as much as I did in quarantine. Also, going through so much change and uncertainty threw me for a loop and although it took me a while to figure out what was really going on, my body became a coping mechanism for me.
I got it into my head that because I was so house bound and stationary during lockdown I needed to make more of an effort to workout every day. Working out in the morning also became part of a daily routine that helped me cope with the uncertainty of life. Lockdown forced all of our worlds to become so small – mine even smaller than necessary as I was away from all of my loved ones and had no access to a garden or outdoor space. I noticed that as my world shrunk I became more obsessed with the way my body looked. I found myself working out harder, for longer. I would deem my day good or bad by the amount of steps I had taken and calories I had burnt according to my Garmin. I found myself trying to eat less and becoming unusually preoccupied with what I was eating, even keeping a photo food diary on my phone to track myself. Some days I would feel irrationally sad about how my body looked even though I was probably looking fitter than I had previously when I felt happy with my body. I was stuck in a vicious loop of trying to “fix” myself with the hopes that looking different would somehow make my life better.
As I became more conscious of what was happening I started to realize that it wasn’t actually about my body or the way that I looked. I was just going through an emotionally tough time and had subconsciously moved into a space where I was using my body, food and exercise as a coping mechanism instead of dealing with how I actually felt. Realizing that it wasn’t about my body was a pivotal moment in helping me to stop fighting against myself and care for myself the way I was needing.
Not only have I been through my own personal struggles in my relationship with my body but I have also been witness to the struggles of people that I love. Although it’s not something often spoken about easily, whether it’s a big struggle or a little one, I think most women especially have things that they’re battling with when it comes to their body.
And in all of the struggles I have seen and been fortunate enough to be confided in about, including my own, it is never about the body – it’s about the mind.
Our mindset and the thoughts that we think literally colour our worlds and dictate our experience of life. We don’t see or feel the world around us as it actually is – we see and feel the world according to how our minds narrate it. When something happens, or say, when we look at ourselves in the mirror, we don’t just see a body. We take what we see and without even realizing it we attach our insecurities, self-judgements, fears, hopes, wounds and personal ideas to what we see. This becomes how we experience our body – it lies completely in the thoughts that we think.
Often our struggles with our body image stems from something within us that we may not notice because our minds have made it about the physical sides of us instead of the emotional. Past traumas create insecurities within us that we believe can be healed by the way that we look. We talk to ourselves unkindly and with such judgement that we land up feeling unworthy and inferior, and we think this will be healed by looking different. We fail to connect and explore ourselves on a deeper and more meaningful level, rather associating who we are with the way that we look. And so our image becomes increasingly important to our self-worth.
Our bodies have stopped being life-giving things that allow us to live and have rather become the physical solution to our emotional wounds. We think that we can heal ourselves, live the lives we want to live and be happier people…by looking different. Like our internal worlds are a result of our external appearance and not the other way around.
When we can move into a space where we’re willing to explore what emotional disconnect is powering our difficult relationship with our bodies, we take the focus off of how we look, and put it back onto how we feel. Our bodies are not something to be fixed or changed or judged, but the way we see ourselves can give us clues as to what’s lying beneath the surface that requires our attention.
What is requiring your attention? What emotional wound have you attached to your body image? What external battle are you fighting that’s really an internal one? I hope that the next time we judge our bodies or think that looking a different way will help us feel better we can all stop. And breathe. And ask ourselves what the issue really is. Ask ourselves what it is we actually need. And give our bodies a little more love and appreciation of just how perfect they really are.
xx