As much as I hate to admit it, I can be really mean to myself. Like, so much so that I had a dream one night that my boyfriend said some really unkind things to me, and upon waking up realized that the things my brain made come out his mouth in my dreamland were the same things that I had been saying to myself that week. (ouch)

It started when I was looking back over photos from before Covid, and the more I looked the more I began focusing on my body. Then those negative thoughts started creeping in… I wish I had that body back, I wish I still looked like that. Why can’t I still look like that? What can I do to get back to looking like that? I would be so much happier if my body still looked like that. I need to lose 20 lbs. How much did I weigh in that photo? yadda yadda yadda forever and ever until I’ve spiraled myself into feeling like absolute shit.

Why do we do these things to ourselves?

I don’t want to feel like shit. I don’t want to have those negative thoughts about my body. I mean, I’d prefer to have no thoughts about my body, but it can be so hard to turn it off and turn it around when you’re down that rabbit hole. For me, my body image can change day to day, or even hour to hour. That’s just the way it goes! In listening to The Papaya Podcast, I realized that even when I had that body that I was so desperately wishing for, I wasn’t happy with it. There were still things that I wanted to change even then; I know that to be true because I remembered photoshopping my body to be what I think it should’ve been as I was thinking about the body I had then. So why do I think in the body that I have now that weighing what I did in those photos would make me aaaany happier? Spoiler alert: it won’t!

Following accounts on social media that put messages out into the world about body acceptance and body confidence, following people of all shapes and sizes normalizing all bodies in media, and processing through my own thoughts regarding my body image has helped immensely, along with seeing photos of myself as I am. Though I want to appreciate my body for what it does for me, at the end of the day my body is just a body. I know for certain that my worthiness doesn’t come from my physical form. That I am enough regardless of how many pounds I weigh. And so are you.

It’s so important to see our bodies and identities represented so that we know we’re not alone, and so we can see those things that are beautiful about others reflected in ourselves.

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