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Happy Monday, welcome to the central line of my life. Ugh, let me just get this off my chest... having an instagram account is one of the most stressful things I have done. I know some people will think, wow she must have no life, but if you do then you’re not seeing this how I do… so let me help you out. So I hope now you can see how this is a big stressor for me. Not only is there a massive amount of thought that goes into making an instagram post, but there is also the stress of how people will react to it.
What is a “like?” It is an endorsement of your life. It is a visual representation of social acceptance by anyone that has an instagram. We pride ourselves on how much exposure and acceptance our public life gets. Am I wrong? But wait; can we actually say that our instagram accounts are completely transparent? I don’t think so… at least, it’s not for me. Everyone posts what they think will be the most widely “liked.” Social media is a platform for editing how people perceive your life. Nobody realistically has a single-themed-beautifully-edited-problem-free-life. And that is the biggest problem with it, especially for people we follow that we view as role models. One of my biggest triggers was looking through my explore page and seeing super skinny, beautifully posed women with zero flaws. Everyone idolizes and endorses these women as a norm. In reality, very few people exist that look like this. It’s a very false representation of a “normal” woman, companies like Victoria’s Secret promote this, while companies like Dove have a “natural beauty” campaign. While I was struggling with my eating disorder, being able to accept my body as “normal” was my biggest problem because I viewed an ideal body as a Victoria’s Secret model’s body. The pressure that girls, boys, men and women face on a day to day basis to conform to these highly publicized norms is so high. My personal goal, is to make my social media, ie: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook more transparent. I know that saying I’m not going to worry about what people think at all isn’t true, because realistically, I will. But I’m working towards total transparency, starting with my blog. XOXO, Em If anyone has anything they would like me to write about, or would want to write and for me to share, feel free to email me : [email protected] “This is me” is not just a Demi lovato song, it is the title of my blog. It will contain my day-to-day struggles and experiences. So… here we go, this is me.
Hi, I’m Emily Insana. I am, paper due later- mental note, I have to drink more water today- mental note. Clean your room-mental note. Lose weight, eat better, be better, why can’t I be better?! Sorry. My mind kind of went rogue. What I meant to say is, I’m 19, I am in college, I go to George Washington University and I do NOT have a quiet mind. What you just experienced was a small example of what is constantly going on in my head. I most frequently find myself in this state while I am laying in bed. 1 am is my brain’s witching hour. I replay every event from the day and make it play out in 50 different ways, positively and negatively until my heart is racing. These are the most stressful hours of my day. I think of how I could have done something differently- better. Then I play that scenario in my head to put my mind at ease. I am constantly organizing and reorganizing my thoughts into a hierarchy of importance. I have always loved making lists, they create order in my life. I will make, remake lists about everything, especially things I cannot control. Sometimes I feel like I cannot control how I feel- like I’m riding on an emotional roller coaster that takes me from euphoria to sadness and back up. If I don’t try and rationalize it in my head it puts a lot of stress on my body. The way I have learned to deal with this best, is by making lists because it makes me feel like I have control of my life. Food lists, specifically, were one of my favorites. I have been afraid of becoming, “fat, like I was when I was 12.” Since freshman year of highschool my entire experience revolved around eating and not eating. When I would eat, I would, of course, write it down. The constant compliments of “ how good I look now,” would negatively reinforce how I functioned. Junior year was the worst of this. I stuck to a diet of special K bars, one for each meal, with an occasional fiber bar, if I got hungry. This was also paired with running, spinning, and body weight exercises. But no matter what I did, I was never satisfied with how I looked. I hated the person I saw in the mirror. I remember my lowest point so vividly. I was running, over the summer of my junior year, before the start of senior fall. I was only eating kale salad, once a day and drinking Bai energy drink to function during the day without eating a lot of food. I was going on 3 runs a day. I was on a 6 mile run one day and I almost passed out. I sat down on the side of the road and I started crying because I knew I didn’t have enough energy to finish my run but I felt like I hadn’t burned enough calories for the day. That was when I had my, “what are you doing to yourself,” moment. I was deathly afraid of eating, but I knew that if I wanted to keep running I needed to eat. I started adding things back into my diet, still healthy, but more food. My senior year I had created a healthy balance between food and workouts. These problems I still carry with me today as baggage, but I have gotten significantly better. Reflecting on everything I have been through, it has made me a stronger person. I am constantly reflecting on my actions and how I feel, and while this sometimes drives me to my mania of over thinking things, I have learned to control it better than it was in the past. This is the first time I have acknowledged what I suffer with on a day to day basis. It’s not something I like to talk about, or have talked about with anyone except my best friend, Sophia. She is the reason I have made it through all of this and still get through my, list- making- over thinking, tendencies. In the future, it is my goal to meditate more to calm my mind, and continue to use lists as a way to organize things without letting it get out of hand. I also plan to journal and write more, as a creative outlet to take what is in my mind and put it somewhere, rather than letting it build up and stress my body. |