How My Trauma Taught Me To Love Myself
Tags: Eating Disorder Awareness, Anorexia Recovery, Trauma Recovery, Mental Health Awareness, Self Love

How My Trauma Taught Me To Love Myself

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Trauma happens. It can destroy you, mold you into a completely new person. Personally, it almost killed me. I went through a vicious cycle of self-loathing, completely unaware of the damage I’m causing myself. But then it shaped me to a person I’ve now fallen in love with. Let me explain.

At the age of 16, I had two best friends: Bo and Laura (those aren’t their real names, but rather masked ones to hide their identity). Bo and Laura were my only best friends for 3 years, at some point during the summer break we went through troubling times that made them stop taking my calls. I was horrified. I was confused. Did I do something wrong? What’s wrong with ME that they decided to let me go?

I got extremely depressed and dreaded waking up in the morning just to see a new day. A day that I would spend distracting my thoughts away by chores, and anything that came in the way to forget how awful I felt about myself. So, I decided to go see a therapist. I still had hope in getting back up again. I was put on medication that would supposedly stop my depression from going any further.

A couple of months have passed and I moved to a new city around 2 hours away from home. I thought I was back to being okay again. I had just started studying again, made new friends, and life was at its finest. I started waking up with no self-destructive thoughts, I stopped checking my phone from any calls or texts from Bo & Laura, and was invested in my new life. The keyword here is “invested”.

After a few weeks passed in my new life, I started going to the gym to innocently lose some weight. That, however, changed drastically when I decided it’s great going to the gym 5 days a week, and then every day, and then taking any opportunity I have to go workout. It turned to a complete obsession that I thought was perfectly okay because it was only aiming towards one good goal. Right? Wrong. The idea of me going to the gym and being in control of my body was a life-threatening coping mechanism I used to numb my thoughts and feelings caused by my trauma.

In no time, I developed an eating disorder that I didn’t know of until I lost my menstrual cycle 7 months later and couldn’t get it back for quite some time. I was completely oblivious to the fact that I didn’t care much about anything in my life but to keep shrinking my body size. I had a rough time trying to digest all of this. It took me months to be able to say what I can say today.

At first I didn’t like the idea of recovering from anorexia. I didn’t want to stop exercising. I didn’t want to eat properly. I physically and mentally couldn’t. But why couldn’t I? Why did I develop an eating disorder in the first place? Why can’t I get over it? Why can’t I live with a healthy mind, not a mind that wants to destroy me every minute of the day?

The answer is simple: Trauma. It sounds like something that happens to everyone at least once in their life, but which you eventually get over with by time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Trauma is sneaky. It stays within you, but camouflages itself in forms of mental disorders, depression, addictions, or many other mental health issues.

The answer wasn’t moving to a new city, or meeting new people, or going to the gym to say the least. The answer was to heal from the trauma that caused my eating disorder. To stop distracting and numbing how I felt about myself when the incident with my friends happened, and instead face them with therapy and, as cheesy as it sounds, active self-love.

It took a long time for me to realize this, but you can be fully convinced you are a piece of shit while still being kind to yourself, until that thought goes away. And trust me, it does. Going to therapy consistently changed my life, because it taught me that intrusive thoughts that go through your head aren’t facts. You can hear them out but you don’t have to listen to them.

I cannot stress how important it is to face your own enemy. To show up for yourself every day, no matter what you face. Because life will never stop throwing problems at you, but your future self can either thank or hate you for the decisions you take every day. I would’ve never been able to tackle the problems I face today with a good state of mind without my trauma. In a way, I’m thankful it happened to teach me that a life spent despising myself is a life wasted.

This is my story. Were you ever a bully to yourself? Are you still a bully? What is something that you told yourself this week that you’d go back and change to a kinder comment?