new year, new resolutions

Welcome to 2024! When the calendar ticks over to a new year, an amazingly large amount of people try to change their mindsets. They want to start being healthier- going to eat right, exercise more or cut down on alcohol. Not many people think about all the other parts of their mindsets they could change: the reasons behind your unhappiness with your body.

I do not think eating disorders or body dysmorphia are something that you can just tell yourself to get over. I liken it to alcoholism or other drug dependencies. You cannot just decide not to have these problems and get healthy. Even if you reach that dream weight or exercise your way to the musculature you crave- it will not get rid of the cause. If you are what they call a yo-yo, your weight fluctuates up and down by large amounts over time, you might want to seek professional mental health help.

I have struggled with liking my body my entire life. I naturally grew really quickly. I was over a foot taller than the rest of the kids in my class and I was not the oldest. I have been my adult height since I was twelve. Puberty hit when I was 10. There was also just a real lack of adult supervision in my childhood and we were always towing the line of bankruptcy. My mom has always been a fan of quick fix crash diets. She encouraged me to go on them with her. She usually would not even follow the rules of the diet, while I would. This led to me getting sick many times in my childhood.

This all culminated in college, when I would go all week not eating because everyone I hung out with was busy with class and did not notice I skipped meals. Then on the weekend, I would binge eat because I was so hungry. By my junior year, my hair was falling out, my nails were ripped to shreds and I was on the verge of passing out all the time. I could also see my ribs. Even after I tried to be better and take care of myself more, thanks to my partner at the time, I would never be completely free of my bad habits.

To this day, I will still just skip eating if I am busy. I know I should not. I know my body is storing everything as fat because I am just not responsible enough to take care of myself in this way. I make sure my whole family eats well and eats often. Yet I neglect myself.

I have done therapy about this over the years. A lot of this is just the feeling of wanting to hide from the world, a huge feeling of unworthiness that probably stems from the neglect of my childhood. Another aspect is just having that early growth spurt in life which made me stick out among my peers. Then puberty added on to that stress with all the attention I would get from older men. All of these things were things I could not control, but I could control the amount of exercise I did and what I ate.

Every time my life gets out of control, the first thing I do is stop caring for myself. I skip all my daily self care tasks: eating, showering, etc. I never realize what I am doing until I am able to get myself back on track. Once I am back on track, I can see that I have regressed back to my old defenses for my very old trauma. The very basic fact of life, the growth of my body, led to the biggest traumas of my life.

If you have any resolutions centering around your body, and especially if it is a repeated resolution, please add improving your mental health to your resolutions. If you are in therapy, but have never talked about this subject, maybe bring it up and see what you discover about yourself. Take control of your trauma and then you can take control of your body.