High-Functioning Anxiety is a complex and often misunderstood experience. The iceberg metaphor serves as a visual representation of the layers of emotions and pressures that people with HFA typically navigate beneath the surface.
Most of us have heard of the body positivity movement, and while its intentions are good, unconditionally loving one’s body and appearance can seem unrealistic to a lot of people, especially when we consider that 80% of women and 34% of men reported being dissatisfied with their bodies That’s why we want to share a middle ground with you, body neutrality, a place where liking your body isn’t a prerequisite for feeling good about yourself.
We’ve found a few helpful ways to manage social media and we’d love to share them with you! Remember that we can choose to make social media a safe place full of inspiration, joy and useful content. We can change our consumption by switching from an algorithm of content that’s draining, triggering, or pushes unattainable body standards to one that promotes and prioritizes our self-care. And we also have the option to opt out of our online worlds to be happier in the present too.
Self care doesn’t have to be a face mask and a glass of red wine (although those sound great too) it can also be as simple as learning how to say no, asking your body what it needs, saying goodbye to a toxic relationship, or just taking a moment to sit outside.
Let’s use this Valentine’s Day as a reminder to nurture ourselves and to reconnect with who we are. We’ve picked 5 self care tips to help you reconnect with yourself this Valentine’s Day (and any day).
We’ve talked before about how powerful positive affirmations are in our blog post You Are Not Your Appearance. They are used to help us decrease negative self-talk and improve self-esteem. There is even MRI evidence that suggests certain neural pathways are positively activated during self-affirmative tasks. (Cascio et al., 2016) The benefits of affirmations are abundant but how can we use them in our day-to-day life?
It’s recommended to be consistent when practicing positive affirmations. It’s important to recite them often and biggest of all: believe them! A great way to use affirmations is by creating your own affirmation deck of cards. Conveniently sized, the cards can serve as pocket-book sized reminders of your worth wherever you are. Gift them to friends, leave them on a stranger’s car, or use your whole deck by shuffling them and choosing one card to focus on each day, week, or month.
It can be painful, tricky, misleading, and complicated. It’s only natural to look to others to determine our place in the world. Many of us have grown used to defining our worth through our job title, the amount of likes we receive, grades, age, etc. And oftentimes we find ourselves looking to our appearance and comparing it to that of other people in order to place ourselves.
Self worth is how we view ourselves and the value that we believe we have. How we measure our worth is the important part.
The tradition of making and sticking to New Year’s Resolutions is daunting for many of us. Surveys show that resolutions are often abandoned by the second week of January and many of us are left feeling discouraged and frustrated. Here we our 5 tips on how to follow through and really stick to your new year goals and intentions.
