Coping with yourself

[BrokenGurl]

How do you learn to cope with who your are?....like that you have faults and imperfections....

[joetennis]

I'm an activist and a feminist, and one of the ways I overcame anorexia was by educating myself on how the need for skinniness is a cultural, social disease. I made it political. "Take up space." "Start a revolution: love your body."

Looking like a waif is giving in.

Eating is sticking it to the man.



A physical way of learning to cope with what I hate(d) about mysefl was to recognize what triggers that self-hate, and then to find a way to remove the trigger. For me that meant taking away full-length mirrors, fitted clothes (I only wear baggy clothes I buy in the boys section or from thrift stores where I can't find size tags), sexiness, clothes shopping, makeup, scales, television, and socializing where or when attractiveness is the conversation.

I hope these ideas are of some help.

[plantt]

for me it's been pretty much the opposite clothing-wise. i grew up being taught basically that showing much skin was wrong. showing curves. liking my body. etcetc.
like joetennis... i accepted by doing. i stopped wearing baggy clothes so much. i don't wear boys clothes so often. i've learned by telling myself repeatedly & being told(well not with these exact words ) that it's *ok* that i'm a woman. it's *ok* that i have a womans body. it's *ok* that i have curves.
i don't cringe ashamedly anymore when i wonder if my bra straps might be noticed. or if my collarbone shows.

with other things... it's kind of the same concept. doing it over & over & over. finding out that even though it might seem like an awful thing to me.. it might not seem so bad to others.
like... letting people know i have mental disorders. knowing that some people will take it matter-of-factly... is a good thing. it's not something that *everyone* will take badly. sure... some people will. yet knowing that some people also will take me for who i am... helps *me* to do the same.
the same with grades i think are less than acceptable. knowing that others don't see those quite as badly as i do... can be helpful

while i definitely can't say that it's a sudden 'well my gosh. i might be an alright person ' thing.. it can help. it's more of a process than an instant cure unfortunately

[red umbrellas]

Hmm, I'm not sure entirely, and Plantt's right...it's a very gradual process. But to me, simply watching other people reminds you that everyone's different, and everyone's flawed, whether they can recognise that or not.

I also found that finding something else I could focus on really helped. Being a bit of a nerd, throwing myself into my uni work was good, reading was good, music was good. Took my into a different world for a bit, when I didn't have to focus on my flaws.

Finding a really positive role model/aim can be good too...for me, like joetennis, it was sort of political. I focussed on finding out things in the world, joining politcal forums and so on, where there was a lot of arguing, but a lot of respect of different ideas. That way, it was less how I looked, and more how I thought (other than about myself) that was important.

I don't know if this entirely makes sense But I hope that it's in some way helpful.