I’d probably have been the poster-child for body dysmorphia disease, if it hadn’t been for inner enlightenment, floodlighting this mental disease. The behind the scenes gremlins, tinkering with my perception, were finally exposed. A rude awakening to say the least.

What does BDD look like? According to google, “the symptoms of BDD include compulsively checking the perceived flaw, attempting to minimize the appearance of the perceived flaw by covering it with makeup or clothing, & social isolation in order to keep the flaw or the symptomatic behavior a secret from others.” 

I have probably spoken negatively to my body more times than I can count in the hopes that the negative reinforcements will coerce my physique into the figure that I wanted. Boy was I wrong. Until I learnt what real self-love was, this notion was a beacon of truth that I swore by. When you’re young & coming up, your social learning teaches you how to fear & that fear becomes the catalyst to running in the opposite direction of said fear. What do I mean by this? “Don’t touch that hot plate, you’re gonna burn your hand”, so I don’t, out of fear & so I am taught what fear is. We are not born with fear, we learn how to fear. Our parents & guardians unbeknownst to them, actually cause more harm by robbing us of a learning opportunity here, & so, we apply this fear strategy to many if not most aspects of our lives. “How does this tie into BDD though?” Well, it’s a simple concept really, simple but not easy to navigate or manage! I think my attempts at explaining myself would be better depicted by tearing a page out of my own book of life. I’m 1.57cm in height (not tall at all) & at my heaviest I weighed round 75kgs. I was round & to me that wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t attractive & I started loathing my body, to the point that I hid away within myself. My clothes became bigger & my nails got longer. All in the subconscious attempt to distract from what was happening on the inside. There was a fear at play, driving my behavior from the cockpit of my psyche which I had no idea about.  My coping mechanisms were so steadfastly ingrained that they automatically sprung to action as if on high alert, ready to fire. Implicitly sending a message to my body that if I instilled enough fear by speaking negatively to my body, and internalizing the expression, the “fat” would run in the other direction as I was taught as a kid through the hot plate situation. What was I afraid of though? I still couldn’t get to the crux of this conundrum, but was I actually even searching for the answer or was I just hoping to patch solution this baby? These are questions only the enlightened version of myself could ascertain but the unenlightened Can, being caught in that vortex, couldn’t even fathom a concept of this nature, I didn’t even know what the meaning of self-discovery was, let alone ask myself pertinent questions or challenge my own beliefs. 

Looking back now, I realise how much time I wasted OBJECTIFYING my body, only loving it when it looked a certain way which I thought desirable. And to me being slender & petite meant being healthy, sexy even; the hogwash social media indoctrinates us with on the daily. The ideal body, & if you didn’t meet those unattainable standards, you’d feel dejected & be rejected, cast out from the in-group. Oh, my goodness – I found my fear! I wanted to be accepted & loved & desired & part of the “cool kids click”. It was like high school all over again. If I wasn’t down to doing certain things I would be classed as UN-cool or weird. I was also afraid of change & surprisingly, of aging which from an opposing position, is actually such a beautiful thing. In some religions you’d be considered blessed when advancing chronologically as a result of the conscientious utilization of the time you’ve been graced with. You receive honor which is bestowed on you, extending your aging. It’s kinda like the God’s conferred onto you the gift of extending life & agreed “Let’s keep him around another few decades, his a good-guy.”

FEAR OF REJECTION! So, I did every kind of fitness regime imaginable, ate the most boring, bland meals in order to maintain the weight achieved & then soon after I’d binge, loath myself & the cycle started all over again. IT’S A TRAP!! 

Everything hinged on my outward appearance. “I will go on that vacay if I lose 10kgs. She looks amazing in that dress, why can’t I look as good? AAAArgh I look horrible in these jeans, I’m staying home tonight instead. I hate my body.”  And, we’re off to the races!  BUT this couldn’t be it! This lifestyle was unsustainable. I wanted more out of life & I wanted to be happy & in love with my body, with my life, so I started digging. After some intense gleaning I arrived at an uncomfortable truth; pure happiness or joy & confidence were not things we picked out of our wardrobes as part of the ensemble to the outfit we chose to put on, rather, they were factory settings that we’re innately supposed to have. 1 John 4:18 screams & says: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out all fear, because fear has to do with severe punitive measures. The one who fears punishment has not been perfectly loved.” So, the antidote to fear is love?” HUH?? That couldn’t be right, could it?! I dug even deeper & discovered how embarrassingly, shallow I was! I only loved a specific version of myself. This version was skinny, small, petite, unintrusive, just like the pictures in the magazines & all over social media. There was ZERO self-love there, which meant more punishment & who would be on the receiving end of said discipline? My poor body, that’s who, for not doing what I wanted it to do & I was shameless in the way I inflicted those tongue lashings of aching pain & rejection onto myself. There was definite self-like yeah & hear me when I say that there is a distinguishable difference between self-love & self-like. To like something is to prefer it. eg: “I like flowers so I’ll pick them to beautify my home. I also like bananas every now & then but that’s not to say that I don’t like other fruits. But to love flowers or bananas or apples means to nurture them in their natural environment, to make space for them in a garden setting, to grow & nourish them with good energy & positive care.” LOVING SOMETHING IS A CHOICE WE MAKE TO EXECUTE CONCERTED EFFORTS OF CONSISTENCY AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN AN ATTEMPT TO SEE IT FLOURISH FAR BEYOND OUR LIMITATIONS. When you like something there is a frivolity involved. This lack of seriousness doesn’t mean that you no longer prefer to wear dresses for example, it just means that you like certain styles or cuts of dresses & you prefer to wear them on particular occasions. So, it was important for me to decipher this ideology as far as my body was concerned. Did I like my body or did I love it? I could finally differentiate between the two… “I prefer or like my body a certain way, BUT I LOVE MY BODY IN ALL ITS FORMS.” And this led me to start making some serious changes when it came to vocabulary used in conversation with myself. I learnt that my body & mind accepted & supported whatever I would tell it, because it wasn’t intelligent enough to discern whether something was said in gest or in all seriousness. So, whether in passing, midst catching a glimpse of my reflection I’d absentmindedly say to myself “Goodness, you’re a fatty” – my body & mind goes “Ok yeah, let’s support that” & in turn it corroborates the notion of me “being a fatty” by holding onto every bit of excess fat, in order to support my decision. It was just that loyal. I imagined my body as someone dear to me, like the little daughter that I never had, constantly deflated, languishing in a prison that was once my human body. I would express my disgust by lamenting about how horrible she looked or fat & ugly she was & this really made me feel so sad for my body. I would never speak to someone who meant so much to me in such a berating manner, so why was I doing this to myself? WHY?, because I didn’t know what true love of self was.  Today, I came to the realization that my body is the only ever-present constant in EEEEEEEVVVVVVVEEEERRRRYYYY single thing that I will ever encounter. If I go to the bathroom, it is with me, if I do a gym workout it says “OKAY, let’s do it” & does it with me without a murmur, if I am sad & alone, it is there with me, shedding tears to bring release of the pain, if I have the most amazing sex, it is there in the moment of elation, if I am tired & need sleep it goes with me & brings calm energy to drift me off into la la land, if I need to have a hard conversation with someone, it is right there supporting me, holding me up, sending messages to & from my brain, working so hard, all in the background. In fact, it is right here right now assisting me with this blogpost, keeping my mind sharp and taking care of business. When I gained weight, it helped me stay safe & alive by developing an extra layer of fat to serve as fuel proactively guarding against scarcity or famine. My body was the hardest working one out of the two of us, yet there I was, neglecting, lambasting, chiding it at every turn. I was ashamed at the way I treated myself. I was such a hypocrite. I made it pay by punishing it for things that I indirectly asked it for or instructed it to do. It’s like committing a crime & having someone else do the time. Of course, I was unknowingly doing this before, but now that I know better, I do better. Eventually, I learnt to thank my body every day for carrying me through all the hours of the day, every meeting, meal, gym rep, phone call, just everything & I learnt that my body was ready to forgive me & to start over. AGAIN, IT IS JUST THAT LOYAL. I know this because it’s never left even when things got tough, instead it pushed harder. Now, I feed it when it’s hungry (nourishment), I speak gracefully to it (nurture with positive care), I allow it to rest & recharge, & I allow it to evolve & grow. 

Now, I understand what my body needs. As a recovering self-loather, & loving caregiver of my beautiful body, I also understand that tough love is required sometimes. Medicine tastes yucky but when we were just bambinos our mommas made us ingest it knowing that it would be good for us in the long haul. This same analogy should be used in our daily practice of self-love. We know the right thing to do is to move during the day so as to get oxygenated blood ferried to all substations of the anatomy, so a little exercise is necessary (Not always nice to do) but we now base our decisions on SELF LOVE! We know that eating a balanced diet is good nutrition – SELF LOVE! We know that buckling down at work yields positive results, gains our financial freedom & frees up time for that much needed vacation. It costs hard work & trudging but we are now actuated by SELF LOVE! These consistencies inadvertently makes room for preferences & spontaneities every now & again. “Yeah we can do that soda because for the most part we do water as our staple form of hydration”. And all this speaks to how we view our bodies too.  Whether we drop or gain, lose hair or grow a mane, whether our skin is perfectly flawless or weathered with wrinkles, it’s ever-changing. We will look & take on different forms as we go through life. But the love we express through every season of change toward ourselves should be immutable.