One of the things I struggle with the most in my journey to fully loving my body, is clothes. I find myself getting stuck in a very cyclical pattern:
-I get stuck in a rut of not liking the way my body looks/feels in the clothes I have.
-I go online and look at styles/trends that I wish I could wear.
-I go shop in person for these clothes.
-They don’t fit the way I want them too.
-I get depressed and start thinking that my body isn’t worth it.
-I buy more of the exact same kind of style/brand clothes I’ve always worn.
-Repeat.
This is how my husband and I get into the biggest fights. He always asks why I buy so much from showmeyourmumu.com. I used to just say that it was because I liked the prints (which is true) but it took me a long time to realize this cyclical pattern about myself and even longer to admit it to him. After he understood this pattern when he would see these packages start to show up again, he was able to recognize that I might not be in a healthy place. This realization was one of the things that kickstarted me seeking out therapy.
Hear me out: There’s nothing wrong with buying clothes that make you feel good. I had to recognize that for me – I wasn’t buying them because they made me feel good. I was buying them because they made my disorder less loud. I would see a new trend emerge and want to try it. Then I would hear the voice of the disorder in my head say, “You’ll never be skinny or pretty enough to wear that new trend that looks so good on all the other girls.” So in order to silence that voice I would just buy something that I knew already fit and made me feel good.
There’s a difference between buying clothes to make you feel confident in your own skin and what I was doing. It took me a lot of money, hidden packages, fights with my husband, and therapy sessions to figure out that what I was doing was just feeding my disorder. I may not have been physically making myself throw up to get skinny anymore, but I was still feeding my disorder.
This anxiety over clothes was extremely present when it came to packing for any sort of travel. It’s always a joke that girls overpack for things. But I always overpack because my anxiety is constantly feeding me the idea that I might look fat in something I’ve packed. I try to drown that feeling by adding backup “slimming” outfits, just in case. My disorder told me that when I traveled I was limited to the clothes I packed with me, and if I looked fat in something I had packed then I was out of options – I’d just look fat. I had to be prepared to not look fat, just in case. Packing for any trip was always a nightmare for me.
I’m pleased to say I’ve gotten a lot better about this issue. Partly because of therapy, partly because I travel a lot for work and it’s exhausting to think (and do laundry!) this way. I don’t have the time (or luggage space) to pack my entire wardrobe every time I go on a work trip. I recently took a work trip to Paris and was able to pack just what I needed for the week and it felt liberating.
I’m still working on overcoming a lot of these fears and anxieties. I would not say I have totally conquered this aspect of the disorder. But I am getting better about it; talking about it and telling you all about these issues helps. I want to share a few photos of my trip where I felt confident in what I was wearing. Packing for this trip was a small non-scale victory for me. For once it didn’t matter what I looked like in what I was wearing, it mattered that I was comfortable and in Paris living out a dream. And that’s what I focused on.
(If I could link an outfit/product, I did. Just click on the photo to get shopping details!)
Hope Floats 