Haven't really been active on here lately, sorry about that. With the current regiment of medication, meditation, and therapy working for depression and anxiety, I'm going to branch off into other topics related to mental health. I kinda started that with the self image posts. What I didn't mention was the personal reasons why self image therapy speaks to me.
For a good number of years, I've looked at all the people around me; my extended circle of friends and partners, and I wondered how someone like me ended up surrounded by so many beautiful people. Until recently, I spent the time from my mid teens into my late 30s looking in the mirror and being disgusted by what I saw. I only saw the flaws. For most of my teenage years I was the short, skinny, pimple faced geek. My early 20s I lost even more weight and was a walking skeleton wearing unfashionable clothes. Then in my mid 20s, my metabolism did a full 180 and I ended up gaining a lot of weight in a very short amount of time. I was never good enough in my own mind. Too skinny, too fat, too pimply, too nerdy, too awkward, too unaware of any kind of fashion sense, too autistic, too different. I never saw any of the good in myself. I was just an ugly weirdo. So why did I have all these beautiful and inspirational people in my life? What did they see in me that I didn't see in myself? Everything, it turns out. And to my amazement, I discovered that a lot of them also struggled with self image issues! How could that be possible? How could the people I look at as gorgeous, not see their own beauty...
Of course a bit of reflection should have made the answer obvious, but reflection tends to take looking in the mirror, and as I mentioned above, that was something I didn't like to do. It's taken a long time, but I finally did that reflecting, and I finally saw myself through new eyes. For a large percentage of people, we are our own worst critics, and we see ourselves through a lense that's become caked in self doubt, internalized prejudice, and general negativity. Starting the process of cleaning those lenses is difficult, and the cleaning process isn't going to be overnight, but it can be done. Now when I look in the mirror, I see someone who is working to better himself, and that makes me smile. This ended up being a lot longer than I'd planned. Sorry, I'll try to be more brief next time. Good night all you beautiful people!
Check out all of The Rollercoaster FB posts:
- Collections of posts
- Standalone posts
- Self-Image Realisation
- Body Shaming (WTF‽)
- Pandemic Mental Health