Written May 25, 2014. Age 27. Fifteen years after eating disorder onset. Finishing internship year of my second university degree and struggling to accept my increased weight and my perfectionistic, people-pleasing tendencies.
It’s been a long time! Internship really sucked the inspirational energy out of me, and sometimes I felt in a really low, heavy, menacing place with no real inspiration coming forth that was worth writing about. But recently, it’s actually been my weight that’s been a window.
I feel bigger than I’m comfortable with, but it has been an opportunity to choose the path of self love instead of the road to self perfection. And in making that choice, other insights have come up:
- Of course I feel needy for approval and like I self-abandon around others because I have been putting my effort into creating my outer shell and meeting external criteria! If an artist is only painting based on a report card or external criteria and then the judge walks by, he wouldn’t all of a sudden not care about what the judge thought of his painting – he was painting for the external validation from the start! Really he wants to find inner peace and self love, but deep down he believes/was taught to believe that he was not inherently good enough or loveable and that it was conditional on his outer shell being perfect, and so he works tirelessly to perfect his outer shell so that someday he will be told it is good enough and that he has proven he is loveable, and then he hopes to feel peace and love inside. The problem is, none of it’s true.
- Self love, or love in general, is the greatest yearning of each person, of the heart and soul. Any action that brings us pain or feels maladaptive or not from the heart is born out of us trying to prove we are loveable or trying to become loveable (people-pleasing, perfectionism, hollow ambition, anorexia) or else is a way to numb the pain we feel when we believe we are not loveable. Maslow had it wrong, because many mothers would sacrifice their safety out of love for their child, and many people fast for causes they believe in in their hearts.
- Discomfort can come from two things: being pushed backwards, into a place of more fear and self-denial than where you are now (an abusive relationship that you know in your heart doesn’t feel right) or being pushed forwards to love yourself or another more than you currently do right now (overcoming an eating disorder or being vulnerable with someone you love).
- Our priorities in life are reflected in the questions we ask ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, in each moment:
- The road to self perfection: What can I say to be good enough here/to make him like me/to not betray how flawed and weird I am? What is wrong with me? What can I do to make sure I don’t fail or betray my inadequacy?
- The path of Self Love: How can I be true to myself in this moment? What would my heart guide me to do? What would be the most loving thing to do?
- Self Love is not a destination, it’s a different path you choose to travel, to step off the road of self-perfecting and walk instead the path of Self Love, where in each moment the questions you ask yourself and the goals you strive for are different, and the milestones and growth along the way are different (i.e. a beautiful lookout or viewpoint instead of a strip mall).
- I do not want a relationship until I have walked this path of Self Love long enough so that it is these questions of this path that automatically guide me. Otherwise I will self-abandon around him and it will be painful and feel inauthentic and make me feel worse about myself. The difference will look like, on a date for example:
- Road to self perfection: What kind of girl does he like/want me to be? What can I say and how can I say it to seem sexy and desirable and not weird or awkward? What would he be most attracted to right now? What can I say to make him like me more? What’s wrong with me?
- Path of Self Love: How am I feeling right now? How can I be my most authentic self? How does my heart feel and what would its guidance be?