I’ve been working with kids and families for a long time.
I’ve been a smoking cessation counselor, a middle school and high school
teacher, and most recently a child and family therapist. I have worked with
people from all walks of life, and I’ve come to realize something important, we
all bully ourselves.
That little voice inside my head tells me that I can’t speak
up in groups because someone will realize that I’m really not all that smart.
It tells me to look away when a cute guy looks at me because he will notice how
fat I am and I can’t bear to see how disgusted he will be. It tells me that I
have to push people away before they hurt me, that I shouldn’t eat when I’m out
with friends because they will think I am a pig, that I can’t wear tank tops or
show my arms, and that if I just lost a little weight I might be worth it to
someone somewhere. It tells me a lot. That mean voice inside my head didn’t
just show up one day… it’s always been there. It was there when my boyfriend of
three years (who never took me around his friends and only let me meet his mom
once) told me that he couldn’t imagine marrying me because he would be too
afraid that my health would be in jeopardy because of my weight. It was there
when all the girls at Girl Scout camp ostracized me and wouldn’t be my friend.
And it is still with me now… telling me that there’s no way anyone will believe
that what I have to say is really worth reading.
I bully myself.
And not too long ago, I realized that most likely you do
too.
So why? Why am I so hard on myself? Luckily all the time I
spent in school taught me something about belief structures and how messages we
hear growing up incorporate themselves into our psyche. So when my mom put me
on the Cambridge Diet (I’m only 36, and since it was pulled from the market and
reformulated after potential health issues arose in 1986, that means I wasn’t nine
years old and was on a diet that restricted my caloric intake to 440cal/day) it
permanently imprinted in my brain that my weight was a problem. When my
babysitter compared her weight to mine when I was ten and looked at me in
disgust, I knew I was disgusting. When every famous or cool woman I idolized as
a kid was a size two and so very overly sexualized by the media, I learned that
sex meant acceptance. When my grandma made fun of her arm fat, then compared it
to mine… well you get the picture.
So I’m stuck with this internal bully. Great. I’m stuck with
this belief that I’m not smart, or beautiful, or a leader. But then I had kids.
Two beautiful girls. Two wonderful, sweet, empathetic kids who shouldn’t
believe those same things about themselves. So I started working on ways to
make sure I am a good parent. I, of course, quickly realized that there’s no
way I can avoid every turn that might lead to their eventual lack of
self-esteem. My mom tried to protect me from bullies (because she believed that
if I was thin I wouldn’t be bullied), and her mom her, resulting in every
gimmick diet you can think of being tried by my family (my mom couldn’t name
one thing she liked about her body till very recently, but remembers taking
speed shots with her mom when she was a teenager). There’s just no way to
predict and avoid every wrong-turn… I think it’s just destiny for every
daughter to look at her mom and think of at least a dozen ways she screwed up.
That’s life. That’s normal. I’m okay with that.
So I started looking at strong people I know (or know of).
Why is their internal voice nicer than mine? It comes down to two things,
either they were raised in an environment where they were brought up to believe
in their unique place in this world… or they fought that inner voice and
treated it like the bully that it is… and sometimes both.
So that’s why I’m part of the Body Love Conference… because
I am fighting my inner bully, and I am raising two awesome kids who damn well
better know that they are beautiful, and because to change this world we can’t
sit back and wait- we have to make it change.
At the conference I am presenting “Raising Body Positive Kids: How to Raise Kids to Be Okay in a Society
that Isn’t.” I hope to see you there. You can also find me online… http://www.inonepeace.com/… and on
FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/Dr.Dorland
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