yogamaris

It's hard to pick a "most important" thing, but one of the biggest I'd say is to focus on curiosity.

When I was really sick, I'd get a lot of people saying things like, "Just be happy!" or "You just gotta keep smiling!" But at the time, I was really depressed...and, well, that makes "just being happy" really difficult.

Instead, what really helped me was being curious about the future. I wasn't even necessarily feeling hopeful that someday my life would be incredible (whatever that means), but it was more like, "If I stay alive, who knows who I'll be one day?" Being curious about who I could one day be, and who I would one day meet, made me want to do the work necessary to stick around for another sunrise.

nothing would make me happier

Thanks for clarifying. :)

Something I'm really passionate about is not defining health by appearance-based body metrics. I think we already live in a very image-based society, and by focusing too much on what we look like, we can lose sight of more effective markers of well-being (your doctor or general health practitioner would be a good resource for what those are).

For example: for awhile when I was really sick, I was constantly told how healthy I looked, because I was slim. In actuality, my heart rate was dangerously low, I'd lost my period, and my organs didn't have enough energy to function properly. Those things are hard to see in the mirror, but are signs that medical intervention/lifestyle changes are necessary.

If we focus on markers of health unrelated to how we look (in the sense of, how well we compare to society's beauty standards), I think body dysmorphia would play a much smaller role in what you described. However, body dysmorphia itself generates stress/anxiety that is incongruous with well-being, and should be addressed with a therapist or other professional as well, in my unprofessional opinion.

Hope that helps!

I'm on the internet a lot (social media/blogging) and honestly get more offensive objectification (creepy DMs) than criticism about how my body looks. The internet can be so anonymous and brash, and I grew up in a world where that was a known reality: I think I've been able to use that information to not let hurtful comments online get to me.

In person, I've faced rude comments about how my body looks or how I looked better when I was underweight and literally dying. Those are harder to shove aside, but the longer I put effort into recovery, the easier that gets.

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Thank you so much for watching!

I actually talk about this a lot towards the end of the film. Navigating disordered thoughts gets much, much easier with time, and full recovery is definitely possible. What that recovery looks like, though, is different for everyone.

Where I'm at right now in my journey is that sometimes, disordered thoughts creep up (around stressful times, like you mentioned). But I now know how to identify them as disordered, and what actions to take to prevent them from spiraling.

I only found reddit like two years ago, after my boyfriend showed me /r/yoga. I wrote an article about online eating disorder communities that you might be interested in here though!