I’m not happy with my body

I'm getting very personal today. It's something I've been struggling with for a while now, but have been too self-conscious and embarrassed to share. But it's about time I was brave and admitted I'm struggling and I'm not okay. Trigger warning: weight issues.

I wanted to let you know that I'm struggling with my body; my new healthy body. 

I don’t like the way I look.

When I’m out, in particular out in a dress, I feel self-conscious. And without meaning to, I compare my body size and shape with everyone else’s.

I wish I was thinner.

For the past year I’ve been struggling with my body confidence. It comes and goes. Some days I’m happy with how I look, how my curves fit into my clothes, the slight definition of muscle starting to form.

Other days I’m not. I hate how my tummy hangs out over my jeans, how my love handles are prominent under a tight t-shirt, how thick my thighs are. I feel fat and frumpy and big.
The word big sticks out in my mind.

I was out at the weekend in a pretty dress, bare legs and heels. And midday way through the night I realised I looked so much bigger than the other girls here. My legs looked so much bigger than my friends in photos. I couldn't stand how big I looked. And with that my night was ruined. I cried and called it a night.

But yet big feels unreasonable.

The average dress size in the UK is supposedly a size 16. I’m a size 10 and yet I still feel ‘too big’. My mind likes to defy reason, logic and argument.

When I was diagnosed with depression, I was 18 years old and I weighed 7.5 stone, which is 47kg. I was severely underweight. At first, the doctors thought I had an eating disorder, rather than just a lack of appetite because of my depression.

I was encouraged to eat and get to a ‘healthy’ 60kg. One of the side effects of the medication I was put on is weight gain. My mirtazapine stimulated my appetite. And over the years I started to put on and retain weight for the first time in my life.

Now I'm 25, and I've surpassed my 60kg prescribed goal.

And I've had comments about my weight gain for over a year.

'Zoe's put on a good bit of weight, hasn't she?'

'You are a little bit fat though, aren't you?' 

'You've a lot of meat on your bones.'

'A healthy 60kg' repeats in my head.

Too big. Too big. Too big.

I'm sick of feeling dissociated with my body. I'm sick of feeling like I don't belong in my own body. I'm sick of feeling awkward, ugly, BIG. And right now it's so hard to convince myself I'm healthy; that my body is worth cherishing - every roll, scar and stretch mark of it.

I wanted to let you know that I'm struggling with my body; my new healthy body. I don't know how to overcome it yet, but I'm trying. And I promise I'll keep trying.

Until next time,

I can’t take criticism

I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who can take criticism in their stride. You know the type, it seems to roll right off of them. They can take it on board, move on and get over it.

I am not one of those people. Critiques, comments and criticisms can play on my mind for not only days or weeks, but sometimes months after.

One personal failing of mine has haunted me for about 20 years. Me and my sister were at a fun fair, but our parents would only allow us to go on one ride. My sister wanted the bumper cars, but I wanted the ghost train. As the youngest sibling, my choice won out. But alas, the ghost train was the LEAST scary horror show ever put on and we ended the ride very disappointed. I’m guessing my sister voiced her dissatisfaction with my choice. Or maybe I just blamed myself. Either way, I’ve been replaying this incident for the past two decades as proof that I make bad choices every time I’m faced with a decision.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’m sensitive. And your critical opinion plays on my own insecurities.

Source

Spotted a typo in my blog post and pointed it out publicly? That’s a paddlin.

Asked me to repeat myself for a third time? That’s a paddlin.

It’s like I have to think of myself as perfect. And if you point out anything less than perfect, it’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.

I write by profession. Having a typo called out feels like a real personal failure. The fear hits me. Is my whole job jeopardized because I make typographical errors? What if I'm fired? If I'm not good at this, then  (because not perfect = total failure to me.)

As a kid (and still sometimes now as an adult-in-denial) I would get my r's and w's mixed up. I can specifically remember doing spellings in like my third year of primary school and two of the words to learn for that week were Jar and Jaw. And I could not say them for the life of me.

Anytime someone asks me to repeat myself, I get flashbacks of my angry school teacher asking me to repeat Jaw again and again. (I still can't say it today, and refer to it as 'the chin area').

I guess it's just a part of my sensitive personality. Yano? The reason I cry at films, TV shows, books, personal stories etc. The reason I was probably predisposed to depression to begin with. The way I feel about things.

I'm not over my past. I'm not over my insecurities. And I'm still wrapped up in feeling like a failure and being self-conscious.

But I do want to work on it. I want to not presume everything you say to me is actually an insult. I want to believe that when you point out an error, a mistake, or some make-up I forgot to blend in it's not a commentary on how I'm failing in my every day life. But it's not that simple.

I'm trying to remind myself that no one's perfect. That perfect is a myth. That I've been buying into this myth my whole life. That skinny celebs are also not perfect, because being skinny isn't all that great.
And I'm trying to learn to handle criticism more constructively. Like, I will carefully check I have blended my make-up correctly in better lighting.
And just to take criticism. Take it and not over think or over analyse it. Just take it and carry on with my life without having it weigh me down.

(Seriously, throw your criticism at me – I want to learn to take it.)

Until next time,

My self-belief

How can I start a whole month of self-belief before evaluating and measuring my own current levels of self-belief?

I know that my self-worth has improved over the past few years. At a snails pace albeit, but since getting treatment for my mental illness I have been able to make progress towards liking myself.

I don't hate who I am anymore. I know that I have good qualities. I am comfortable with my odd assortment of interests and likes.

At the beginning of the year as I faced turning 24, I knew I didn't want to plagued by self-doubt for another 15 years. I didn't want to just like myself. I wanted to start loving myself. And challenging self-doubt was a huge part of that. Every month of the Romeo Project was set up to embrace my true authentic self and find ways to practice acts of self-care. But could it improve my self-belief?

Do you believe in yourself?

Earlier this week I wrote about the four key ways to foster self-belief according to all the self-help literature I explored this year.

Self Esteem Journal

TherapistAid

For the past week I've been keeping a Self-Esteem Journal. It wasn't planned, but there I was browsing different online sites and I came across this.

With 3 daily questions, the worksheet is designed to help boost confidence by focusing on success and achievements.