To be Enough.

I’ve been thinking about self worth lately and what it truly means. I myself have no doubt had many previous battles with this concept and a lot of the time, have not truly understood that it was at the heart of so many of my personal battles. I’ve shared previously that I battled an eating disorder for a long time in my past. It’s taken years to fully understand that at the core of this was a part of myself that wouldn’t give up the belief that I just wasn’t good enough and that I didn’t deserve to love myself and treat my body and my mind with respect and gratitude.

Lately, I’ve had an ongoing situation in my life in which is so out of my control and has upset me so much that my brain instinctively goes to the place where it searches for something else that it can control. It usually finds the place in which I project my lack of control and sadness on wanting to distort my body for a few cheap compliments that somehow equate to acceptance. I wonder why it is that feeling this way always leads to the same will of action.

That feeling of being unable to stand up for myself and being ongoingly subjected to the same treatment of being made to feel less than human has somehow seeped its way of doubt into my psyche. It’s subconsciously made me question who I am or if I deserve to be stood up for. Is it me being too emotional or expecting a certain level of respect that makes me somehow unworthy of it? Have I played it all wrong and stood silent for too long? Is that what this questioning is?

All of this has somehow deep down made me feel inadequate once again, it’s made me question my self worth and it’s brought me back to a place within my own psyche that I don’t want to find myself in. Being made to feel the way I have has led my mind down that path again of doubting myself, of not feeling good enough. It’s making me want to control my body again, in order to trick my mind into thinking that if I just lost weight and looked a certain way then that would make me worthy; surely it would. Those thoughts have been creeping back into my head making me think that it would be so easy to just rid myself of all those unwanted calories so I that I can be some sort of a perverted ‘whole’ again.

I often tell people when I speak to them about eating disorders that the battle never truly ends. Your brain has been rewired for life and when you find yourself doubting who you are or feeling any certain way about your sense of self, those triggers become almost impossible to stop or not act on. We live in a society today that places so much emphasis on how we look on the outside that when we feel things deeply which we can’t control or make go away on the inside we just attempt to control this outer shell. These deep seated insecurities are triggered by the smallest of things and instead of working on our mental health, we are too easily led astray to believe that a quick fix on the outside is the better way to go.

I’ve found as the years have gone on within my recovery that I’ve deceived myself into believing that I am fully recovered and I would never go down that path again. But every time I trip and stumble, I have to remind myself that recovery is a lifelong process. That emotional triggers will always occur; they are a given in life. But I also have to remember that my sense of self worth, of belonging, goes beyond someone else’s validation. It doesn’t matter if they ignore me or treat me like an object; that doesn’t define who I am. I am worthy of respect and kindness and love. What I look like doesn’t define me and my strength of character is not dictated by a lack of relapses on the road to recovery.

I have to keep reminding myself that I am worthy, that I am strong, and that I am enough. And I will continue to do this every single day of my life, come what may and regardless of others thoughts or actions.