How to heal your negative body image

Don’t you think it’s kinda funny?

 

How are we afraid of how others will see us and judge us?

For how we look, for what we do, for the choices we are making?

 

We think we are afraid of failure and judgment of others yet the truth is that there is most probably no worse critic than the one you are carrying inside of you. 

 

The one who cringes when you look into a mirror when you are not having the best day. 

 

The one who is whispering that you are a loser, not good enough and is keeping you close to the ground. 

 

Because when you are close to the ground the fall won’t hurt that much, right?

 

FALSE….

 

You can rise in love with life only when you rise in love with yourself. 

 

When you accept all the stages of life. When you find the things to appreciate about yourself. 

 

When you embrace your uniqueness. 

 

I am writing this from my heart…

 

Almost 20 years of bulimia in my youth (I became bulimic when I was 11 years old!), competing fitness competitions and being judged on a daily basis…. shows me the dark side of what self-judgment can truly do to our health and esteem. 

 

And when I thought I healed that wound…life brought it back last year. 

 

I quit birth control and faced stressful events in just a few months (two deaths of my grandparents a month apart and then wedding and unexpectedly moving from the country) and it showed in my health and body. 

 

It took me months to soothe this wound while healing Hashimoto and seeing my weight pop up almost 20 pounds in a year.

 

Body image can be a serious wound, my love. 

 

If you are healing through it please know, that you are not alone. 

 

And even when you are healing there will be deeper and deeper layers. 

 

Here is what helps:
Find someone who can listen to you about how you feel 

Be open to getting help from someone who experienced this and is a couple of steps ahead of you 

Invest time into disconnecting from the world and BE in nature (nature is so deeply healing) 

Start celebrating your body for its functions not only for how it looks (celebrating movement, your senses, even the ability to go to the bathroom) 

Be gentle and compassionate with yourself and know it will get better 

 

You are so loved!

 

AND please remember…

 

You are loved not for your body but for what you embody!