Mental Health: Looking Past Appearances
Mental health is something that not many people care about. Most people have gotten so used to putting up a facade for the world that they’ve begun to assume that it’s real and that other people also have everything they are written on the surface rather than deep within. We don’t care about what happens below the surface but instead, we enjoy focusing on the shallow part of their personality. It’s too easy to disregard everything else because sometimes, digging deeper means venturing into some dark and unwanted territories so the safest option is to entertain the farce. Compliment a person and try their best to not dig up anything unsavoury even at the risk of hurting them.
I once became depressed and lost a lot of weight. I didn’t like myself so I began to starve myself for a while. And after that period of time ended, my anxiety got worse and I started doing cardio everyday to get my mind off of it. It was a way for me to literally run away from my own feelings and sense of incompetence. I didn’t do it for my body. That was the last thing I thought about but my body naturally slimmed down.
I then went to meet my friends one day and one of them complimented me for having gotten thinner but I felt no accomplishment. It wasn’t his fault. It’s only natural to look only at the surface and not dig any deeper otherwise it would have brought up things that would make the conversation awkward. But at the same time, I think that the overvalue of a person's physical appearance is going a little too far. I think that the moment you see someone that has undergone a change in their physical appearance over a short period of time, the reaction shouldn’t be to commend them but to ask them if everything was ok and to find out if they managed to get their current body in a healthy manner or not.
One of the symptoms of depression is a sudden increase or decrease in weight so instead of congratulating somebody for losing weight as a knee jerk reaction, it might be better to try to understand their mental state. Beauty standards mean little when you’re actively damaging your mental health. This also brings up people with anorexia and bulimia. There are those that have used unhealthy methods to stay in shape and to maintain their self-image so it’s necessary to not make them think that what they’re doing is right. Not congratulating them is one way to do this. In the end, your mental health should be prioritised over some beauty standards and you shouldn’t listen to those that try to bully you for your weight. You can try to lose weight later but your mental health may never recover if it’s prioritised over.
