Everyone Has a Story
"I encounter many different people and when you meet them in the capacity of a psychologist, you’re putting aside all that judgement looking at that person in their raw form, accepting them as who they are. Therapy takes a very non-judgmental and compassionate approach, and when you do that people really start to shed their skin and open up about things they usually wouldn’t talk about and be vulnerable. We are quick to judge people or give them labels or say ‘she’s like that only’ or ‘oh, he’s so arrogant’, I don’t think we realize that every human being is shaped by their experiences and how they perceive things. So before we go put labels on people without thinking of how it affects them, that’s when this line really comes into play ‘Everyone has a story.’”
If I look at my personal journey, I’ve had my share of mental health struggles. I have had a very tumultuous relationship with weight and food, and it was on the disordered side of it. In school I had a very low self-worth, I did not really believe I was worthy of attention. It led to a lot of self-criticism and self-doubt, and somewhere it came out in the form of me thinking that if I look a certain way then everything will be okay which is where my struggle with food began. I felt like I had to fit a particular box of how people are supposed to look. So I did that in the form of not eating enough. It took a few years to really accept myself. It was a journey of being okay with who I was and with the fact that I can’t always adhere to societal standards of appearance, and I can’t let that be what determines my self- worth. There are other nuances of me as a person, that I always discounted. From my perspective, people only evaluated me based on appearance, and no other aspects of me. Through the support of friends, family and professionals, I came to realize those aspects of me which helped me become confident. Accepting yourself is a dynamic process as we are constantly putting a lot of judgement and pressure on ourselves. Resolving that is a constant journey.”