Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered who the person looking back at you is? Show me a person who answers no to that question and I'll show you a liar. How we see ourselves is a big part of what makes us as a person and having a negative self image can be quite traumatic, not just for yourself and but others around you.
I am in a constant battle with myself over how I see myself. When I look in the mirror I see an overweight 30-something. In my head, I see my high school self. I don't feel any different on the inside to how I felt in high school. But it's not just about how you see yourself, it's how you think that others see you. I've always thought that people's opinion of how I look is very low. As a teenager I would take every little thing that everyone said to heart. Every insult said without thought cut like a knife. My self image plummeted to the point where I wondered who would ever want me.
At the time, I really didn't have anything to worry about. I wasn't stunning but I was normal. I had somethings about me which were beautiful and somethings which were not but overall I was your average teenager. In my head, though, I was this freak of a person and anyone who found me attractive must be desperate or taking the piss.
Over ten years later and I'd give anything to look like I did then. What annoys me now is that when I say to people that I do not look how I want to look they think I'm being negative and begin to tell me all the good things about myself. I'm not saying I don't want the compliments, they are awesome. I just think there is a difference between being realistic and being negative.
It is realistic to say "I need to lose weight" when you are 20kg overweight.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve how you look but the image you aim at has to be realistic. I don't want to be stick thing, I think I would look a bit strange being just skin and bones, but I don't want to look how I do now. I can understand how people develop eating disorders like anorexia when they see the models and actresses who are absolutely tiny. What they don't see is the enormous amount of work those people do to maintain that image, the personal trainers they employ, the cosmetic surgery they undergo, the photoshop they use and the simple fact that they may be one of those people who are genetically predisposed to being thin.
I know that for me, I will never be anything smaller than a size 10, and that getting to that will be a huge effort and take a lot of will power. But I am determined that one day I will look in the mirror and see the same image that is in my head.
But self image isn't just about how you look, or think you look, it is also about how you see yourself generally. Whether you think you're intelligent or talented or creative plays a part in how you see yourself. Wanting other people to recognise my ability has been a big part of why I was so negative about myself as a teenager and into my 20s.
From the time I went to high school, it seemed that it didn't matter what I did, I was always good but not the best at whatever I did. There was always someone (and usually someone who was a friend) who out-shone me. I know that's how it is in life but I was very conscious of the fact that I was not the best at anything except when someone else screwed up. I was never the best because of my own ability, it took someone else's mistakes to make me come out on top and that was something I was very aware of.
At school, I was bright but not incredibly smart. Having said that, I went to an academically selective school. Everyone is bright and a lot of people are incredibly smart. Had I gone to a mainstream school I may well have been in the top bracket but in my school I was pretty average across the board. I wanted to be the big fish in the small pond, not the small fish in the big pond.
In sports I was a bit of a jack of all trades. I was good at pretty much every sport but not excellent at any of them. People say to me when they find out I went to the World Championships for skating that I must have been awesome. I struggled to get there and I am fully aware that I was not the strongest person in that team. I'm still very proud of the fact I represented my country. I'm just aware that I was not the best in that team. And that is the story of my life, whether it was swimming, athletics, hockey, gymnastics or skating.
I was never the type of person of whom other people said, "We must go watch her, she's awesome" or "Wow, didn't she do well at that." It didn't matter what sport it was or what other activity it was, I was just there, somewhere in the middle, not sucking but not exceeding expectation either and always flying under the radar.
Occasionally I would get the praise of the teachers at school but it wasn't their approval I wanted necessarily. I wanted the other students to think I was fantastic at something. There's a lot to be said for peer acceptance and peer support.
These days, I still crave recognition of my work and effort. I want people to tell me I'm good at something, that they like something I've done. It still burns when they don't. There's still that teenager inside that doesn't think she's good enough. But the adult inside me knows not to expect people to shower me with praise and, in fact, when I do get praise I often don't know what to do with it as I am still not quite sure I deserve it.
Self image is a work in progress throughout our life and it can sometimes feel like it's one step forward, two steps back. It is often hard not to take things people say to heart but we have to remind ourselves that often people don't think before they speak (I know that I am guilty of this) especially if they are teenagers. Be yourself and be proud to be yourself, don't try to be something you're not to fit in with the crowd and don't try do crazy things in order to stand out from the crowd. The person you need to impress most in this life is not counted amoung your friends or your teachers or even your family. The only person you need to impress is yourself and if you aren't impressed you need to fix it, don't rely on others to prop you up, think of their contribution as a bonus, not the main prize.
No comments:
Post a Comment