Your value does not lie in the way you perform
My story, your story
You know when it feels like life is collapsing. You've lost a love, lost a friend. You've betrayed, been betrayed. Performed poorly. Lost your footing and lost your way. Lost yourself. Who are you? Who are you really? Lost control, the ability to control. You're used to controlling, used to have the power. The feeling that uncontrollability and powerlessness are crushing. Creates panic. You're trying to find a way to regain control. Some form of control - to alleviate the panic and anxiety that the loss creates.
It starts with a little more training than usual. Control over your body. More exercise in combination with reduced appetite affects your appearance. Food becomes important. The amount of food becomes smaller, the amount of focus on the food becomes greater. More control. Society says that narrow is nice. Everyone knows that it's easier to be slim. You look good. And you perform again. Everything will be easier. When you otherwise feel that you have lost control, you will find areas where you can take control again. Performs. It will be an obsession. And every time someone confirms you in your training or your weight loss, you know you have done something good, you are in control and you are performing. For those of you who are constantly looking to be confirmed and associate yourself with your achievements, this becomes music and will be easier to maintain.
This is my story but I think it could be yours too. We who are used to performing high and suddenly may not succeed in doing so in any context (according to ourselves). Maybe it's at school, at work, in sports or in a relationship. For someone with a performance-based self-esteem, this becomes incredibly difficult. We are our achievements. We place high demands on ourselves and expect that we will always perform at the top. When we perform, what we think is bad, we are also bad. We need to take control of something again. And get well. For many, food and exercise become a way to restore order and chaos in our brains. Here we can perform well. Get well again.
I've never been diagnosed for my relationship with food and exercise, and you may not have either. But we have put so much time and focus on it. Energy that we could put on something else. Something more fun. Someone more fun ... For us, it is important to work with our self-esteem and understand that we are not our achievements. We have to practice practice practice. And get stronger. Put less focus on things that are not really important. Put more focus on us and what makes us feel good. Right into the soul.
I am convinced that a strong feeling gives a greater resilience to be drawn into the vicious circle when we face our adversity. For them we will meet. This is important. To work with it early, to work with it at all, we want to work for. I want to suggest some good exercises to train your self-esteem that I have compiled in our forum, click here to see the latest! If you do not know exactly what self-esteem is, then you can read here.
Lots of hugs❤️
// Stina from Progress Me