“Tarini! At least have a sandwich beta!”, her mom almost screamed as she ran off without even turning back. Her skinny turned figure, with the heavy school bag weighing her shoulders down, disappeared in a jiffy as her mom stood staring with another clueless look, with her tiffin and a glass of milk in her hands. This had been a story of every morning now.
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| Source: http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics |
16 year old Tarini was battling severe anorexia. In fact, the only thing she had consumed in the last 48 hours was a packet of fruit juice. She had already lost 9 KGs in just four weeks. She often spent hours in her bedroom, trying all the clothes in her closet, putting heavy make-up to match the outfits, clicking selfies on her newly bought phone and probably sleeping off due to weariness. She almost never answered to the knocks on her door, leaving her mom more clueless than ever. Being the only child in her family, Tarini was unconditionally loved by her parents, but these days, seldom did she speak up of what was going on in her mind. Her mother constantly worried about her health after she had almost fainted once while climbing the stairs up.
When all the attempts at wooing Tarini into meaningful conversations went futile, her mother thought of seeking some professional help to hit the root of this problem. The counselor took quite a while to get familiar with Tarini and slowly made her speak. Her case had to be handled with vigilance, as she was a typical teenager, as it turned out, battling with low self-esteem. It didn’t take long thereafter to learn, how badly Tarini was affected by the concept of so-called ‘zero-figure’.
The counselor probed into further to learn that Tarini wasn’t very proud of her looks and apparently, decided to skip her meals to shed her pounds. All of this was triggered because she thought that one of her classmates, whom she was in love with, did not reciprocate her feelings and she blamed her ‘chubby looks’ for the same. He was the real reason she started losing weight, even though that had not changed their dynamic. She confessed that she sneaked into the sports-room every day during recess to stand on the weighing machine. Eating made her strangely unhappy.
The counselor worked with Tarini making her speak up just like a close friend. In fact, half the job was done when she finally lightened her heart by speaking out some of the darkest secrets. She was constantly motivated to work on her self and body image by explaining her the importance of being kind to oneself in order to achieve contentment. It slowly helped her gain her confidence back. After a few patient counselling sessions in the beginning and some light-headed tasks to immediately bring her back on track, finally she has started having healthy food and is now working out under the guidance of a skilled trainer. Less than a few weeks and she walks with a glint of confidence in her eyes now!
Sometimes, the fear of rejection is so high that we try to rationalize it through various ways. In Tarini’s case she had terrible body image and the only thing she felt she could control and change was her size. She shifted the blame of rejection to her body, rather than looking for the real reasons.
We often end up trying hard to change ourselves looking for happiness, but it leads to major disappointment since we realize that the situations have still not changed. At the end of the day, it’s the confidence that matters more than anything else. The change needs to come from within.
