A client of TEDS poignant reflection of being a dancer alongside struggling with body dysmorphia & an eating disorder
“As a training dancer, for the past year and a half I have struggled with body dysmorphia, of which was so severe that it led to a restrictive eating disorder, specifically anorexia. After around 8 months of therapy, even though I would say I am still in the depths of my eating disorder and struggles that subside with this, I feel as if encouraging conversations (particularly within the dance industry) is something that must happen. In my time training so far, i have realised how common these thoughts and feelings are – and it should not be something that we avoid talking about.
At the time in which I was suffering in silence, did I feel the most alone and as if I was invisible to everyone, including my family and friends. my body dysmorphia stemmed from the ‘perfect storm’ of personality traits, the hours I spent looking at myself in a mirror during class, social media – and many more, which all combined lead me to develop such awful body image. After around 6 months of suffering with bd, I decided to act and change myself in order to feel more confident (this doesn’t work, wouldn’t recommend). At this time, I falsely saw particular parts of my body as ‘overweight’, including my thighs (the desire to have a thigh gap, thanks to social media), my stomach (abs, abs, abs), my upper arms, chest and even my face. (This is the illness, none of this was reality). After restricting for around 6 months and getting myself into an extremely dangerous physical and mental state I started therapy in March and have been in recovery ever since, going through the struggles of making progress and letting go, but equally learning so much about myself and my true values away from my eating disorder.
I was connecting the other week with my passion for helping others and making a change, and my aim of changing the stigma around the mental health of dancers – it is NOT a trend to have mental health issues of any kind, it is not ‘cool’ to have anorexia – it ruins your life, your happiness and it will kill you. I’m hoping that by having more people open up about how much mental health issues suck, the more people strive to be healthy dancers, not mentally ill dancers”.
