As I had thought might happen, I did not reach the goal I had set for myself for my cut for my vacation. When writing this blog post I was going to tell you all the reasons as to why I did not reach my goal and the lessons I learned that I can apply to myself and my clients in the future. However, I decided I am going to save all the nuts and bolts of my cut for another day. Instead I felt it was best to share with you my feelings and mindset surrounding my body image as that is where I grew the most this time.
A few nights before we left on vacation, I was trying on bathing suits for my husband so I could decide which ones I wanted to bring with us on our trip. As I was looking at myself in the mirror, it took all that I had not to cry. The reflection I saw back at me was not what I was hoping to see by that time in my cut. I was left feeling an intense amount of sadness and shame surrounding what I saw. As you can guess I was sad I did not reach my goal since I am a very goal driven person. But even more than that, I felt a ton of shame around the fact that after all of these years of mindset work I’ve done around learning to love and accept my body, I still found myself falling back into old destructive thoughts and feelings about my body. It felt like at that moment all the work I’d done both physically and mentally for my body over the years, just went out the window and I was right back to where I used to be…..a place of hating my body and wanting to hide.
After I finished trying on the bathing suits, I felt I was able to somewhat keep it together for the rest of the night, but those intense feelings of sadness and shame did not leave. The next day I struggled to keep it together anymore and cried several times throughout the day. But this time, rather than keeping it all in, I did talk with a few friends who listened to how I felt and provided me with encouraging words. I loved what one friend said to me “Body image issues are hard to break. We need to be kinder to ourselves. Go have fun. Be silly. Laugh and be in the moment.” In addition to reaching out, I diligently worked on reframing my thoughts around my body. I started with reminding myself that on vacation my family isn’t going to remember how I looked in a bathing suit, but how the experience was. In addition, I did not want my family to not get the best of me because I was too concerned with what my body looked like in a bathing suit.
By the time we left to go on our trip, I was in a much better mood and mindset around my body. I was no longer focused on what my body looked like, but more on the experience we were about to have. While we were on our trip, I rarely thought about what my body looked like. If I did think something negative about my body, it was more of a fleeting thought than something that stayed with me. I’m so thankful I did not allow any negative thoughts about my body get in the way of me being with my family and enjoying our vacation.
Looking back, I’m thankful I had this experience regarding my body image. It was a great reminder that even though we may have worked hard to overcome some of our problems, they may come back at times when we least expect it, and that is okay! The longer we have been dealing with a problem or an issue, the longer it will take us to overcome it. However, that does not mean we have to fall right back into old patterns. We can learn from it and become even better than we were before!