Today we will talk about how our body image can affect our mental health.
When we look at ourselves we may not be satisfied, maybe we are not happy with our body, perhaps we want to exercise, we wish we were slimmer or want to eat better, or we wish we had no scars, for example if we’ve had cancer we may have parts of our body removed to get rid of the cancer and this can affect how we perceive ourselves, giving birth can change our bodies too.
The media such as newspapers, instagram and facebook doesn’t help when it portrays people as being perfect, but they don’t show the real person.
If you aren’t happy with your body image it can affect your mental health. So it’s worth thinking about how to change your perception. How?
It starts with acceptance; accept who you are, what you have. We all have our ideal bodies, someone we wish to be like, however what we may not realise is that they probably wish they were like us.
We tend to focus on the negative parts of our body, but we have things to be proud of, perhaps we have strong arms, or good legs, we could be proud giving birth, or proud of surviving cancer. We need to look at our bodies and think about how we change our thinking to look for the positives, this is really important.
This vlog has been created as part of Mental Health Awareness Week. To find out more about the campaign and to watch our other vlogs on body image please go to this page.
