WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
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Honestly, HOW DOES SHE KNOW HOW TO EXPRESS THIS SHIT SO BRILLIANTLY.
I know depression has been a hot topic lately, and Since it’s national Anxiety and Depression Awareness week, I’m dedicating this evening to raising awareness through fabulous reblogs. Because caring for one’s Mental Health is a critical part of a multifaceted approach to health and wellness, and because working towards mental wellness is an important step in Redefining Body Image.
but mostly because I’m too depressed to write anything….
Depression and anxiety can be humiliating illnesses to live with. Due to a wide variety of social factors, the way we’re raised, the media, having an ongoing condition that constantly undermines you but has no outward showing symptoms is something that is still not properly understood and accepted.
Sometimes I feel having depression and anxiety is about learning to live with constant humiliation.
It is humiliating to have to ask for more time on an assignment or project because you’ve suffered a low, or an attack, and have been left unable to concentrate for hours, days, weeks on end.
It’s humiliating to have to quit your job, or get fired from your job, because you have called in sick too many times, or have been late because it has taken you two hours to get out of bed.
It’s humiliating to have to justify what seems, to many, to just be laziness.
It’s humiliating to see the resignation on an employer, or teacher’s face when you approach them and you can see ‘what excuse is it this time’ written all over their face.
It’s humiliating to constantly have to justify yourself to others when you struggle to justify you to yourself.
It’s humiliating to sit in your pajamas and stare at your clothes and wonder if you can manage to pull on a pair of jeans, or wash your hair, or brush your teeth, or cook yourself something for dinner rather than just get take out.
And that humiliation that we inflict on ourselves is unfair. I think it’s really important people understand that. If I had cancer, and was unable to work, or if I was in a wheel chair, and was struggling, if I had broken my wrist and so was struggling to type and do work, this would be considered more acceptable then someone with depression or anxiety in the same situation. People would understand; they are struggling but they can see why.
It’s humiliating when people think that you are your sickness, and that this is something you are controlling.
But that’s not my fault, or yours, if you suffer from the same illness.
Because that’s what it is; it is an illness. And it is not your fault you are sick, and that this sickness affects your life.
And it should not be humiliating, because it is not. Your. fault. If you are sick, and you manage, against every damn thing your mind and body throw at you, to get out of bed, then you are winning.
If you are sick, and you stay in bed and watch tv or go on the internet all day because you need to feel safe so you do not hurt yourself, then you are winning.
If you are sick, and you are struggling with an assignment and you ask for more time, knowing that you may have to explain something that you find embarrassing, but asking anyway, then you. Are. Still. Winning.
And I don’t know you, but I love you for that.
I don’t know, I was curious.
If you’re ever feeling desperately low, like your brains could seep out of your ears from the pressure of your thoughts and you’re thoroughly sick of yourself, seek inspiration in the things you love. Avert your attention. Transform something in your appearance - anything - just to be able to look at yourself differently.
Get creative and imagine yourself as someone else, even if it means pain-stakingly painting your eyes with liquid liner whilst sitting cross-legged on your bed listening to Sonic Youth at 1 in the morning.
It helped me. Maybe it will help you.
Why do I feel this sudden urge to try a fucking ‘cleanse’? Why does it sound so appealing to me when I know it will make me insane?
Like, I have owned the fact that I am not a normal person. I can barely feed myself properly day to day without making it more difficult than it needs to be. I can’t afford the expense of a ‘cleanse’ (literally and metaphorically) nor do I think it would even really benefit me in any way at all. I can rationally acknowledge this, at least.
But I see cleanses EVERYWHERE, SO OFTEN - all these thin, glowy-looking, able-bodied, mentally-sound motherfuckers keep preaching on about HOW AMAZING THEY ARE where ever I look. And because my feeds are so inundated, I think the bullshit has finally seeped into my brain.
I’ve got people in my life who dedicate hours and hours of their day to cooking, packing perfect little lunches in bento boxes, going on and on about “natural” and “non-processed” and “organic” everything under the sun.
It must be so simple, right? To do all the right things, eat such virtuously “healthy” foods and nothing else, spending weeks drinking designated shakes and foods to “remove the toxins” in our bodies.
If it’s so easy, then why does even the thought of pursuing it break me?
Will I ever be able to eat something without feeling guilt or shame?
Must our diets be so tied to our morality and sense of worth?
Must it really be so fucking complex?
You know when life throws things at you like death and hate and the sorts of things you can’t control and you find yourself back in the land of disordered eating and anxiety and depression and you don’t ever want to come out from under your blankets? Or is that just me?
I’ve been in that space for a while. Visibility is a challenge, taking care of myself is a challenge, owning my body is a challenge. But I continue to dare myself and accept the discomfort, because it means I’m not giving up. I am in control.
“Mental illness is a myth.”
To give you an idea of how ignorant people are, and how taboo discussion of mental illness remains, here are some screenshots I took just now.
If any of you wondered why I still continue to talk about mental illness and mental health reform…wonder no more.
Depression, anxiety, and mental illness are all 100% real. I speak from experience. For people to still think that people who suffer from mental illness are making it up, they are despicable.
Republicans add to the stigmatization of mental illness as well. Hence why I am not one.
I think perhaps sometimes, people may find me strange for calling myself “mentally ill”.
“I’m a madwoman,” I say. “And I’m okay with that.” (Even though sometimes I’m really not, and that’s okay too.)
In my experience, those who deny and pretend as though they aren’t living with an illness are working against their own progress and potential.
Though I would certainly never blame those in denial - I have been there, said that, done nothing before. It’s what we’re taught to do.
Every time I succumb to denial and guilt myself into thinking I should be able to treat my mental illness as if by magic, I recall all those moments I’ve been told to in the past:
- “Just suck it up and snap out of it.”
- “You just need some self control.”
- “Why are you being so selfish and self-centered?”
- “Can’t you just try harder?”
- “Your life isn’t even that bad, so many people in this world are worse off that you are.”
- “You’re not REALLY sick.”
- “Yeah, I’ve had a panic attack once.”
- “Why are you making this into such a big deal.”
How fucked is it that writing all of these things out caused my chest to tighten and my airways to close before I focused on my breathing for long enough to find relief?
Anxieties seize me around the neck and sit on my chest, I just learn to live with them and stop denying that this shit exists. Admitting is a constant struggle that I have to work up to every day, especially when my life is turned up to 11.
Last week, after spending a day in bed feeling physically ill and debilitated by anxieties triggered by such things as life and death, I decided I needed to stop feeling guilty for needing to call in to work sick. I decided it was time I stop tell half-truths and start telling full-truths.
So in a burst of courage, I wrote an e-mail in which I essentially “came out” to my managers as anxious-depressive and in therapy and working very hard not to let my illness get in the way of my work but some days are hard and they just happen and there’s nothing I can do about them except try to work from home or take a break. And could they understand? Because that was all I really wanted - was to be understood.
And although I usually edit everything before I send it about fifty times over, this time I didn’t. I wrote it, and I hit send - then promptly agonized over it all weekend.
But one by one the following week, I began to talk with my coworkers. They called me things like “brave” and “talented” and expressed how much they understood and valued me. They accept and want to help me. Some have been touched by mental illness themselves. They acknowledge the stigma and nod reassuringly when I tell them, “I don’t want to be treated any differently, I just want to open up a dialogue and not be ashamed about it anymore.”
And they totally fucking get it.
We don’t have to be silent anymore. People want to understand. They have the capacity to change.
We are intelligent, worthwhile, beautiful human beings. We are mad, and we are living with it. We are working with and against it because we don’t have to fight it anymore.
Fucking own it. Scream it out loud.
Sometimes I am afraid to be too dismal.
Smile. Be positive. Set an example. Fuck you.
Because I’ve come to this place again, of questioning my body - and while most of the time I aim for acceptance and presence of mind, those things are hard to keep hold of, as a reality. As my reality.
So I keep asking myself over and over again, as if reminding myself will finally get me to accept that I am not always okay with my body, or my mental health, or my eating habits, and that it will pass. I just rather wish it would stop flipping like a goddamn switch.
Does my overwhelming love for spinach cancel out my overzealous gravitation to baked goods? Am I virtuously healthy enough yet, or will I surely die some vague future death that won’t stop haunting my mind?
You know the shit that surrounds you molds you. You know how to actively break it down. You know that aiming for good health rather than the slimness commonly (and incorrectly) associated with it is the better alternative.
But that slim figure, the one you’ve crafted in your brain from the moment you realized your fatness, is burned behind your retinas. And this perfected version has a tendency to want to block your view.
Why the fuck do I want to change my body? Because I was fine, until someone or something pulled the trigger - and I don’t have to sit here and take the fucking bullet.
Thin privilege is going to the doctor to get help for the suicidal thoughts and feelings you’ve been having and not having the doctor sit and shame you for being fat for twenty minutes before giving you a prescription for the same pills you were on last time you attempted suicide- all without so much as a glance at your charts.
Thin privilege is not being told that your depression/bipolar/BPD is all related to your weight and if you lost it you’d be a sane, normal person.
OH MY GOD
OH MY FUCKING GOD I AM SEETHING
Whoever submitted this…I hope you are okay and can find better help. Please do. Not all psychiatrists are fatphobic fartweasels.
This looks like a really wonderful worksheet/exercise to perform for those struggling with breaking down anxious or depressive thoughts. Definitely saving this for my own personal use, especially those panic situations that seem ENDLESS.
Asked atheologist
Yep, that is how I use the term as well.
I didn’t mean to imply that different terms apply to different people of different weights, but that often legit eating disorders in fat people are overlooked due to fatness.
Also, the “imminent danger” bit is subjective and hard to pinpoint.
Many of my own personal behaviors exist in gray areas, so it is hard to tell whether they surpass the point of “disordered eating” or not, or whether I’m actually dealing with aspects of my anxiety disorder and depression more than anything else.
Is it an eating disorder that keeps me from feeding myself all day, only to binge-eat a box of snack cakes for dinner?
Is it my anxiety disorder that makes it difficult for me to shop and prepare food for myself properly?
Is it my depression that keeps me in bed when I should be eating, washing and taking care of myself?
I don’t know why it’s important to me to label these things, but I am at least defining them.