Tag: anxiety

Body Image: My Story – The Good, the Bad, and, of course, the Ugly (pt. 1)

Erica2 Comments

Can you remember when you first realized that what you looked like mattered? Or when you first became aware that people are quick to judge someone based on how they look? How old were you? When was the first time you ever felt self-conscious about your physical appearance?

I say “when” and not “if” because I think this is something everyone has gone through or struggles with at one time or another. Or perhaps all the time.

I would say it happened for me around 6th or 7th grade, you know, the junior high years. Weren’t those just the best?

FullSizeRender (14)
Here’s an awkward junior high picture of me when I was in 7th grade and visited Japan.

One of my first memories of starting to question if I was pretty enough happened while I was with my best friend from school at the time. We were in my room and I told her that I thought I could be considered attractive – and she burst out laughing, like, fall over on the floor laughing. This was my BEST friend mind you…

Another time at school, we had taken school pictures and our photos were getting passed back to us. I got mine in the envelope that has the clear plastic on it so you can see the photo underneath. And the girl sitting behind me yelled, “oh my gosh, RETAKE!,” while pointing at my picture. And you know what, I did get retakes. All because one person had made fun of how I looked.

I’m sure you all have stories from your childhood like this that you could share. It’s so sad for me to think about because I know how much it hurt at the time. And I was so young, maybe 10 or 11. My son is almost 2 years old, so how many more years does he have before he experiences something like this? How long can I protect him from the false idea that appearance matters? And not only that it matters, but that it’s what gives a person value?

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Imposter Syndrome X 3

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I just had a live community call of librarians – it is a once a month thing for new librarians to get together and talk about their successes and struggles, and to support each other in their new careers. After hearing people share some of their failures, I spoke up on the call and told everyone that I actually felt really encouraged to hear that people were brave enough to try something they might fail at.

I personally find myself avoiding being put into situations where I feel I might fail, as if failure would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to me. Anyone else out there like that?

Another librarian responded to my comment, sharing a failure she had experienced during a presentation, and she mentioned the idea of Imposter syndrome. There are a lot of definitions of imposter syndrome that you can find online, but the general idea is that you believe most of your achievements are a fluke, despite evidence that you are skilled and competent. You feel you don’t deserve recognition for the things you achieve, and you continually feel pressure to prove yourself to others.

It’s like a lightbulb went off in my head – I feel like I’ve been experiencing this in my job. And the more I thought about it, the more it makes absolute sense. I got hired for my job without having the required degree listed in the job posting, or even any library experience. I’m working on my degree now, and have about 8 months of experience at this point –  but I’m kind of doing it “backwards” so to speak. There are many times I don’t know exactly how to do something, and I start to worry that maybe someone made a mistake somewhere…

At the end of the call, it was mentioned that another upcoming call is happening later this month, specifically on the topic of Imposter Syndrome. (What a coincidence!) To me, this caused more lightbulbs to go off in my head – okay, I feel like someone’s trying to get my attention.

After the call, I went downstairs for my noon shift at the research desk. There are typically many college students milling around on this floor, and as two students were walking by, I overheard one of them say to another, “Have you ever heard of Imposter Syndrome?” (I’M NOT EVEN KIDDING, THIS REALLY HAPPENED!) At this point, I was like, “I have got to research Imposter Syndrome!”

Is it too bold to say that God wants me to think about this today? I’m gonna say that He does – I had it mentioned to me three different times today in the span of about 30 minutes.

I found an article online that recommended a book called, “The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Imposter Syndrome and how to Thrive in Spite of It.” The book identifies five types of people who may commonly suffer from Imposter Syndrome, and two of the types I immediately identified with:

  • The Perfectionist
  • The Natural Genius

It’s easy to understand why a perfectionist would have Imposter Syndrome – they set excessively high goals for themselves and if they don’t meet those goals 100%, they can feel like a failure. No matter how good they are at something, they always think about how they could be better.

The natural genius is the type of person who if they have to work hard at something, may feel like they are automatically bad at it. This is a person for whom many things have come easy, for example, maybe they always got straight A’s in school. So the minute they realize something doesn’t come naturally, they assume they should avoid it because they aren’t already good at it, and probably never will be.

I know I may get some flack for saying I connect with the natural genius one, but I really do. I never struggled in school until I got to 8th grade math, and things did not come as easily to me – I wasn’t the “best” in the class anymore. I distinctly remember just deciding that I didn’t like math because I wasn’t good at it. This happened for me later in high school Chemistry, and I even decided I shouldn’t pursue becoming a veterinarian because I wasn’t good at science. (I had always thought I might be a vet, or an artist for Disney, I loved to draw!)

So I’ve definitely got some things to think about today – the main takeaways for me are:

  1. It’s okay to not be the best at something – and it doesn’t mean that you aren’t still very good at it.
  2. It’s okay to be a work in progress and still be learning.
  3. I don’t have to avoid something just because it is a challenge – there are a lot of things I’m naturally good at, but if I avoid the things that take a bit more work, I’ll never know how good I could have been at them if I’d only tried.
  4. It’s okay to try and fail. It doesn’t make me a failure.

 

Even though it puts me out of my comfort zone, I’m going to keep trying to do things I’m not always good at. This can be something as simple as playing a board game I know I’m going to lose, because I’m not good at it. (I’ll admit, I’m the type of person who only wants to play games I can win!) Or, it can look like coming to my job every day and being brave enough to try new things, and even fail at some.

P.S. I’m also a Ravenclaw, so I obviously take a lot of pride in being “smart” and feeling like I know what I’m doing… I assume Gryffindors are more comfortable with taking chances and failure…

 

 

Minimalism – A Cure for Anxiety?

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There’s a huge part of me that wants to be a full-out minimalist. CLUTTER is a huge problem for me – mentally and emotionally. I get overwhelmed by clutter – every flat surface of our house seems to be a magnet for gathering papers and all other forms of clutter.

http://alliecasazza.com/blog/husband-not-on-board-minimalism-decluttering

Life has ramped up for me a bit now that I’m back in school – this means my base level of anxiety has ramped up a bit too. My normal tolerance level for clutter has decreased because I’m already a bit more anxious than normal. I’ve shared a blog post (above) about a woman who mentions that her anxiety and depression got so much better when she discarded a lot of her things. She also gives good perspective on not forcing your significant other or family members to join you on your minimalist journey – rather you support their need to keep more things than you, and they support you in your need to free yourself of things – it’s a compromise (there’s that dreaded word!)

I also recently finished reading the book, “Goodbye, Things” by Fumio Sasaki, and I’m SO ready to just throw away everthing!

I’m really motivated to do this minimalist thing, but when I start going through my stuff, it’s actually a lot harder to get rid of things than I hoped it would be. Not to mention it takes TIME to do this. (Something we all have an abundance of, right?) It’s easier to just let things pile up and stuff things in the closet or garage. It’s easier to just buy a few more boxes or storage bins and call it quits.

The moments I have taken the time to go through my things, I’ve found it’s really easy to second-guess yourself and find a reason why you MIGHT need it someday, or you worry that you’ll regret getting rid of it.

A few helpful takeaways from the book:

  • If you’ve been wondering if you should keep something or not, that’s a sign you should just get rid of it.
  • The author claims 95% of the things he has gotten rid of, he has not regretted. And a few items he did regret, he could easily replace by going to the store or ordering online.

I try to keep these things in mind while going through my stuff – there’s a few items I passed over that I know I probably should put in the giveaway pile. I have things I have kept from my elementary teacher days, because I wonder if I’ll ever need them again. And I have more than a few boxes of purely “sentimental” items…

This is a post to mark the start of a journey – I’m hoping to have a garage sale in May with a ton of items! I’ll try to remember to take some before and after pictures along the way.

Any minimalists out there? Was there any impact on your mental health when you downsized and decluttered your space?

(Paraphrased from book) “Happiness is not a destination, like reaching the top of the mountain or crossing the finish line – it’s a choice you make daily to be thankful and grateful for what you have.” We fall into the lie that “if I only had ______, I would be happy.”

P.S. I also just (like literally a minute ago) got an email about a new book by Gretchen Rubin coming out in March 2019 called Outer Order Inner Calm. You can bet I will be reading that!