Tag: self-doubt

For Young Women Who Feel Awful And Alone

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary3 Comments

It’s excruciatingly hard for some young women to breathe. Anxiety, self-doubt, sadness. Comparisons to others. Fear. Depression. Pictures of other people’s superiority. Hurtful words echoing in your head. Cringing at yourself and what you did wrong, if only I had. Thoughts, threats, or actions that you can’t believe are really yours. Fear that you’ll never feel joy again; that it will always be this way.

This is for young women having a hard time, and I will keep this short:

You are unique. You are worthy. You are important.

Your brain is playing tricks on you, and it’s not your fault. You can get better.

There’s nothing shameful about therapy or mental health support. Accessing professional help does not make you a failure or a weirdo; it is a step forward to the triumph you deserve. Please, do the things with your head held high.

You are worth it. Your life is worth it. It can get better. It is a hard road. It is worth it.

I am grateful for people with depression who choose to keep going. I am especially empathetic to young women who feel awful and alone, and I want you to know that your dignity, self-worth, and liberation is at the core of what I am fighting for as a feminist.

I see you. I believe in you. You sticking up for yourself is my favorite thing.

Let This Be The Year Your Internal Bully Dies

On By erintothemaxIn Your Activism Guide3 Comments

Your internal bully is an asshole. It is not an internal voice that is helping you. It is designed to destroy you. Let this be the year your internal bully dies.

Here are some things your internal bully might tell you:

– You are not good enough.
– You’re going to be alone.
– You didn’t get invited to a thing because there is something wrong with you.
– That thing you said that sounded dumb? People are still talking about it.
– Your body shape isn’t good for that outfit.
– You need to go on a diet.
– You’re no good at fitness anymore because you are lazy.
– If you admitted you needed help, they’d laugh.
– The terrible thing you have done means you should go away.
– No matter what you do or how hard you try, you can’t do that.
– It’s not your turn yet and you need more credentials.

There is no point to continue; chances are, your internal bully has told you things that are worse and more cruelly personal. Often, internal bullies masquerade as a ‘voice of reason’ that are helping you to ‘improve.’ That’s poppycock. An internal bully exists solely to shut you down. The internal bully is not here to help, unless if by help you mean feel crappy and miss out on opportunities you deserve.

Internal bullies manifest in a variety of ways. Sometimes they are quiet bursts of self doubt in an otherwise clear head. Sometimes they are addictions or mental illnesses that ebb at times and take over at others. Other internal bullies are encouraged and planted by mainstream “self-improvement” programs or advertising, or abusive bosses, family members, frenemies, or romantic partners.

Internal bullies are absolutely a gendered phenomenon that impact some people more frequently and severely on the basis of many intersecting identity-based oppressions including racism, heterosexism, and ableism, although they can strike anyone.

If you are a woman who identifies as feminist it’s basically your patriotic duty to tell your internal bully to fuck off. Not to say that discarding internal bullies is easier for feminists; in my experience it can be harder to admit you have negative feelings about yourself. But, I suspect the reward for shucking internal bullies is explosively rewarding for feminists. The personal is political indeed.

Seeing your internal bully as an internal bully strips it of its power. Naming it out loud and continuing to live your life anyway does the same. We are not weak because we have thoughts of self-doubt. We are strong when we recognize the thoughts for the unhelpful bullies they are, and choose to ignore them.

You don’t need self-improvement. You deserve to live and enjoy your life. That doesn’t mean you need to stay the same. You can make changes you want and do the hard work to become the person you want to be without beating yourself up for being the person you are now. Self-love is revolutionary. Self-honesty is not self-badgering. If you wouldn’t say it to someone you love you definitely shouldn’t say it to yourself. Let this be the year your internal bully dies.

PSA: I’m Not Pregnant — My Stomach Sticks Out

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary5 Comments

I’m not pregnant. My stomach sticks out. This is my body. I have survived anorexia and now, your question.

A few years ago I was asked if I was pregnant when I wasn’t, and I cried. I am open about my recovery from eating disorders, and while most of the time I can smile and tell anorexia and negative self-image to go shoe-shopping in hell, I think it’s important to acknowledge that recovery can come with bad days.

I don’t think I looked pregnant two years ago. This time, it is more likely I do. In recent weeks I’ve been asked several times if I’m pregnant by a variety of people who mean well (all of whom apologized profusely).

The reality is that my stomach protrudes. Compared to some pregnant people, I probably do look pregnant.

It’s not practical to walk around sucking in all the time. I’m not particularly interested in giving up my cute, form-fitting clothes. Most important, I don’t want to go on a diet. I know that, for me, the words diet and death are too close for comfort. And so, I’ve had to learn how to deal with people thinking I’m pregnant without turning knives into myself.

I’m not pregnant. My stomach sticks out. This is my body. It takes up space. My body takes up space in ways that some people do not readily understand.

Loving yourself is a radical act. You can hate oppressive systems and the self-doubt and presumed right to question that comes with them. You can forgive the people who push the buttons that are supposed to hurt you (though refusing to forgive can be righteous, too). You can find transcendence. I am choosing to forgive others and myself, while working to change the culture. I am finding transcendence.

The best gift I can give to myself, my activism, and the people who love me is to move on. The radical gift I have for all of us is to share this information without shame.

When Your Brain Tells You Dumb Things

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary1 Comment

For a week, I’ve been convinced my scale is broken. I think I weigh five to 10 pounds more than I do. I’ve weighed myself first thing in the morning maybe three times. Each time, I think the scale has stopped working. I have not lost weight; I’ve been consistent around my current weight, shape, and size for the past few years.

My brain has started telling me I’m 10 pounds heavier.

I’m wearing the newest undies I have. They are hot pink and and adorable, and yet they are too big. I bought the size I believed I was. When I put them on, I told myself they needed to shrink. The next time I wore them, I decided the manufacturer must be marketed to older people and practice vanity size inflation.

It turns out I am smaller than I earnestly believe I am.

This isn’t new. It just that I’ve learned to recognize it, interrogate it, and work around it. I remember the first time I was hospitalized for anorexia, literally half my life ago, and a nurse had me put a string in a circle on my hospital bed to represent how big I thought my waist was. She then used another string to measure my waist, cutting it, and placing it inside my circle, which was probably four times as big.

I have learned to identify and not align my behavior to my conquered loser of an eating disorder. It doesn’t mean the thoughts have gone away. Often, they are gone (and thank goodness, because the rest of the world is vastly more interesting than dieting). But even in the strangest of times, they get the best of me — like my latest reaction that the scale is broken, and these undies that are hot and a little bit floppy.

There appears to be a misconception, and in some cases a tremendous pressure on eating disorder survivors to foster the misconception, that folks who have recovered from anorexia, bulimia, and more simply love ourselves all the time and it’s fucking fabulous with a unicorn giving us a hug on our non-obsessive, all-foods-can-fit way to the cupcake boutique. I think it’s important to break through that misconception.

My brain is a weird place. Recovering from this eating disorder has made me one of the toughest people I know. And yet it — real recovery — also means acknowledging the shitty parts of yourself that exist to defeat you. My self-conception of my shape and size is unreliable. I know that.

I don’t think this means I am not fully past my eating disorder. I do believe I am. I am a survivor. Yet, I negotiate this thing sometimes. I’m doing it with this size nonsense right now, and I’m grateful for it. It’s making me think about other areas in my life where I am afraid I am taking up too much space. That fear is probably unreliable, too.