YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I'm curious if this happens to anyone else....
After insane amounts of self-talk, trying to convince myself "I look good", I'm not fat", I finally start to believe it and it feels great! Then I see a picture of myself and how good I DON'T look and how fat I REALLY am, and I spiral down further and further, until all I can think about it how gross and ugly I am and why would anyone like me cause I'm so hideous! My does my boyfriend even stay with me!?! I hate camera's and mirrors because they show me exactly what I don't want to see... the truth of what I actually look like. Why can't I just look like what the image in my head shows me before I look into mirrors? It makes me so sad. Sometimes, I just want to disappear.

This happens to me all the time! I try to forget what I look like and build confidence in myself through my interactions with people and my personality...but then I see myself in a picture and I shut down completely. I go into a full depression, isolate so no one can see the fat person I've become, and lose all sense of self-worth. I then spiral down the dark hole of "no one will ever want me and no one will ever love me." It's so sad how much body image can cripple us...I know logically that doesn't define me as a person...but emotionally I'm a slave to my body image.