Social media and body image

I want to tell you a story about social media and body image.

When I was in my first year of university, I was following a bunch of accounts on Instagram that were posting a lot of content about perfect bodies, weight loss, workout ideas and the like. 

While I didn’t realise it until later, the content I was consuming from these accounts was having a significant impact on my mental wellbeing and the way I saw myself. I remember starting to feel more self-conscious, less confident, and hyper-critical about the way I looked, and without recognising it, I started engaging in different behaviours with diet and exercise than I usually would. 

While things hadn’t gotten “bad” yet, I knew that I was heading down a dark path, and sought out help from a counsellor at headspace.

This was the most profound act of self-care that I have ever engaged in. 

I told my counsellor that I was feeling really low about my body image and was experiencing poor self esteem, and that it was starting to impact other areas of my life. 

One of the first things she told me to do was to go through Instagram and unfollow any account that contributed to these negative thoughts and behaviors… I basically culled half of the people I was following. 

The next thing she asked me to do was to go ahead and follow a bunch of accounts that made me feel good about myself, accounts that were diverse and didn't just talk about how you look. 

…Not going to lie, for a while, my feed was pretty much just quotes from mental health pages or cat pictures (there was literally no in between). 

Years later, I still do this - regularly clearing out accounts from my following list that no longer serve me, and replacing them with ones that bring me joy instead. 

In a more recent therapy session, I recognised a pretty harmful behaviour I had been engaging in for a long time, and finally began to realise just how deeply linked my eating and anxiety were. 

I recall in my first year of uni, feeling so conscious of how I would look and what people would think of me, that I would consistently and intentionally eat no food during the day in the lead up to any kind of event - like a uni ball, birthday party, or performance. 

I look back now, at all of those anxiety inducing social situations, and realise that I was so shaky, irritable and anxious because I wasn’t eating. But the reason I wasn’t eating was because I was so anxious about the way I “should” look, or what people around me would think or say about my body and appearance. 

It was a vicious cycle. 

I know that if nothing changed, and I hadn’t sought help when I did, I absolutely could have ended up with a more serious issue, such as an eating disorder. Going to therapy has helped me make huge changes to the way I see myself and my body, and while I don’t love the way I look every day (because let’s face it, who realistically does these days?!), I am in a much, much better place now.

And don’t get me wrong, I still have bad body image days, but I know that I have come so far from where I was all those years ago. 

This is why I am so passionate about helping people with body image - especially young girls. 

Because the bodies we see online are not real, not attainable, and certainly not healthy. A lot of the content we’re consuming is so toxic.

Social media is so influential on so many aspects of our lives, and it can have a huge impact on our mental wellbeing. If you’re noticing yourself think about the way you look in a more negative light, or if your thoughts and behaviors around food and exercise start to stray from your norm - please consider talking to someone. (Butterfly Foundation is a great start!)

I can assure you, reaching out will be the best thing you ever do.