I Hate my Under-Eye Bags.
By: Fayren Chaerunnissa
Tags: Mental Health, Cognitive Distortion, Confidence, Self Esteem, Beauty

“You look tired. What time did you sleep last night?”

My under eye-bags and I.

I come to class every day looking like a zombie, but I’m pretty damn sure I was the one who got the most sleep the night before because I already finished that final paper days ago.

It’s all because of my stupid under-eye bags. Those pesky little things. No matter how much concealer I apply, or how much sleep I get, they’re still pretty conspicuous. I hated them throughout my teen years. It really brought down my self-esteem (it still does sometimes). The dream was to remove them with surgery when I’m in my 20s (lo and behold, I’m 20 now).

The eyelid surgery procedure is known as blepharoplasty (BLEF-uh-roe-plas-tee), where the surgeon removes excess fat inside the lower lid through an incision. As a teen, I was super excited about it. I can finally end the era of looking like an extra for The Walking Dead!

But after doing some research about this procedure, I decided that it just wasn’t for me. The idea of having a really sharp scalpel so close to my eyeballs was just too terrifying. You see, I have a weak stomach. I can’t even bring myself to watch videos of the procedure on YouTube. And I thought, “well if I don’t even have the balls to watch the procedure, do I really want the procedure to be done on me?”.

Oh, and it’s super expensive. And I’m not rich. That’s another factor to consider.

So I guess my eye bags are going to stay with me forever. Either I let my insecurities consume me like Pacman, or I could simply embrace it and move on with my awesome life.

But embracing something you’ve loathed for so long can be quite a challenge. After all, it has ruined so much for you, right? Wrong.

My eye bags didn’t do anything to me. They’re just there. They have been since… forever! It’s not a disease or anything. It’s not doing anything to damage my health. I was the one damaging my own health. My mental health.

The thoughts in my head were telling me that I was ugly and unworthy of taking selfies under the sun because my eye bags would be very visible. They tell me that I will never be beautiful because beautiful girls don’t have heavy under-eye bags. For years, I listened to those thoughts. I let them dictate my actions and even my emotions. Every time I looked in the mirror, the only thought in my head I listened to was “see, look how ugly you are. You are ruined because of those eye bags”.

Irrational thoughts like this are known as cognitive distortions. They are exaggerated negative thought patterns that convince us of something that isn’t really true, and they can have a major negative impact on your emotions and bring down your self-esteem. According to David Burns, a pioneer in the field of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), there are 10 main types of cognitive distortions. One of them is known as mental filtering, in which an individual focuses on one negative detail of a situation while filtering out all the positive aspects.

There was a lot of mental filtering happening in my thoughts. I only focused on how my eye bags were getting in the way of a good shot. I didn’t really take people’s compliments about how I looked because, in the back of my mind, I was always thinking that I actually look terrible because my eye bags make me look half dead. I didn’t see the other positive parts of myself.

“You are not a thing; that’s why any label is constricting, highly inaccurate, and global. Abstract levels such as “worthless” or “inferior” communicate nothing and mean nothing.” David Burns

For so long, I thought that my heavy under-eye bags defined who I was. But they don’t. The irrational, distorted thinking patterns I had as a teen were wrong. They did not reflect who I really was, or what I was capable of. Those thoughts were only conjured up because of my feelings of dejection. Those feelings only came out when I was feeling particularly self-conscious or insecure. Therefore, those negative feelings are temporary and don’t represent how I actually feel in every waking moment. So, why should I let those irrational thinking patterns define who I really am?

It’s time for me to turn off the toxic voices. They don’t define me anymore. They’ll simply become white noise in the background, that will one day, hopefully, disappear completely.

If you want to know more about the 10 cognitive distortions, I recommend reading Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns.