This must be it!

In the last session with my support group on Wednesday I did have a couple of "light bulb moments". Some of the things seem like an obvious kind of thing, which you never think about...

For instance, I never made the connection between body dissatisfaction and self-esteem issues. Hm.. seems like an obvious kind of thing, but I never thought that it applies to me. Here's the paragraph from the handouts that made it clear for me:

"Many people take some degree of body dissatisfaction in stride, so it doesn't have a major impact on their lives. For people with an eating.disorder, it is a different story. Feeling badly about your body plays a central role in your life and crowds out other interests and activities. Why is body image much more important to some people than it is to others? One big factor to determining the importance of your body image, as you have probably guessed, is your self-esteem. If you feel good or worthwhile about yourself overall, you will be less concerned with negative feelings that you may have about your body because your body does not define who you are as a person."

This makes so much sense to me! I've always suspected that the obsession that I have with loosing weight is not how all people deal with their dissatisfaction of their body. I have some friends that are overweight, but are very confident in themselves, and never talk about 'dieting', or weight-related issues, even though they are much more overweight than I am. And I don't think of them less because of their weight, but somehow I do that towards myself.

It is really hard to admit that you have self-esteem issues. It is especially hard to explain to your significant other, since they see you totally differently. That's why I'm glad I'm going somewhere else to talk about these issues, because I don't want to talk about this with my DH (of course I'm affraid that he will see me differently then too... I know, it's probably silly).

They also say that feeling badly about your body or wanting to lose weight is usually never just about your body, there are probably other issues involved. The challenge, of course, is to figure out what they are... As our councilor said, for someone who was, for example, abused. as a child, focusing on their body could be a way that they are dealing with it. But, for me, I don't see any major traumas that I had... although, I never really looked close at the past... that is why I need someone to help me to figure out what influenced my behaviour, and what I will work for me to fix it.

I have to say, all of my family members that know that I've started doing this therapy thing think that I don't have a problem, and I shouldn't be doing this. But I think I should, since I'm recognizing a lot of things that are talked about in the support group... and there are so many things to think about! I bought a brand new journal to record my feelings/thoughts, so hopefully that will help me as well.