Watch your mouth!!
“Be careful what you tell yourself, you’re always listening!”
I heard this so long ago I don’t even remember where! But it struck a chord and has stuck with me for many years…
As someone who has anxiety and also suffers from being a perfectionist - remembering to keep an ear (?!) to what I am telling myself is important. Even the little mutterings when you are doing some shitty excel job, like ‘I’m so stupid,’ or ‘oh god, I can never do these right’ etc. all have an impact and an increasingly bigger impact if you are saying them often enough to yourself.
Our brains are funny things - if your brain hears something positive and something negative about yourself, your brain is conditioned to believe the negative. I have read a lot of the science and while nothing seems to be accepted as fact yet, the gist is that your brain focuses on the negative as a way to keep you safe… this might have worked back in the Stone Ages when surviving every day was a mission, but is working against you when being bombarded with fake images daily of impossibly perfect people living perfect lives and trying to figure out why our mirrors don’t reflect the same… or just me who hears that voice telling me ‘I’m hideous and in desperate need of a nose-job/ lipo/ Brazilian bum lift…’ And it becomes difficult to become self-love when self loathing is more believable for your brain, and easier/ better to latch on to (again from this survival point of view).
So what can we do! Well becoming aware of your self talk is critical! If the voice is so insidious that you don’t even notice it (or think you don’t have it) then this part may take some practice. Some people like to give their voice a name and a persona, it can be something that you totally make up yourself or a character from a book or a movie. This really helps because if you can visualise it as a specific character saying the words then you (as yourself) can correct it. Like ‘ok, i hear what you are saying Miss Trunchbull - I know I haven’t done it before, but I know I can do this!’ or ‘I am not hideous, thanks for your opinion but I think my nose and face are perfectly me.’
The other really important thing to remember when you are comparing yourself to pictures online is no one is perfect. Not even the people in those pictures look like that! I have been doing some therapy for my ‘perfectionism’ and something she said to me recently was really beautiful - ‘Imperfection exists in the land of possibility.’ And she went on to explain that doing something imperfect allows us to have learning opportunities and opportunities to grow personally. While also what we consider to be an imperfect feature or a flaw is often considered an endearing or beautiful flaw to someone else. My boyfriend was devastated when I got braces to correct my front teeth! He loved that they were not straight, and thought it was very cute. He also thinks stretch marks are super sexy! So those features you hate or think are ugly may be what makes another person find you irresistible and gorgeous!
We have to try and start to appreciate the imperfections that make us who we are - these are what make us unique and different, and beautiful in our own right! And you don’t have to love it all at once, just start small - what are your favorite features about yourself? And the bits you don’t yet love - focus on what it actually does, and allows you to do ie.
If you hate how your legs look, you can learn to love your legs as they allow you to be mobile, they get you up in the morning, allow you to walk, run…
or your teeth - allow you to eat your favorite foods, they help you to talk clearly and they give the bottom half of your face some shape and structure…
and my nose - yes it’s not symmetrical but it allows me to smell, my face would look weird without it, it is a key part of my respiratory system which keeps me breathing - and therefore alive! So thank you to my nose - I appreciate you!
I am not saying it will happen overnight but eventually your brain will start to believe it!
I will leave you with this quote that I have written out and stuck to my laptop to remind me daily to watch my mouth!
Watch your thoughts for they become words!
Watch your words for they become actions!
Watch your actions for they become habits!
Watch your habits for they become your character!
Watch your character for that becomes your destiny!
Sho xxx