Trigger warning: disordered eating
“I’d be pinching my waist to try and find out how I looked. In my mind I was squeezing handfuls of fat.”
For Tess Herbert, being blind didn’t rid her of negative body image.
“I was feeling like I wasn’t fitting into my clothes,” she tells the Nothing’s Off Limits podcast.
Listen to the full interview on Nothing’s Off Limits in the player below.
“It was hard because I couldn’t look in a mirror and see what I looked like.
“If I was brave enough to stand on the scales even though I was average weight, it didn’t seem enough.”
For Tess, that turned into skipping meals, making herself sick and exercising excessively.
Body image and appearance isn’t exclusively an issue for sighted people.
Psychologist Courtney McKee, who also has low vision, says it is more common than people would expect.
“We’re all getting messages that we’re not good enough, through society and through the media and corporate advertising,” she told the podcast.
“But people with disabilities are particularly getting those messages.
“We all fall for the lie that everybody is supposed to be the same.”
Thankfully, Tess received help to overcome her demons and learned to finally love her body for what it is. She enrolled in counselling, and surrounding herself with allies after finding the courage to speak about her issues around food and body image.
Ms McKee says positive social connections that validate our feelings are imperative to forming a healthier body image. She says showing gratitude to your body, nurturing positive emotions is important.
“Embrace the fact that everyone is different and that’s a good thing,” she says.
If this article has brought up any issues, please contact:
Lifeline: 13 11 14, lifeline.org.au
Suicide Callback Service: 1300 659 467 suicidecallbackservice.org.au/
Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636 https://www.beyondblue.org.au/
Butterfly Foundation: 1800 33 4673 https://butterfly.org.au/
Nothing’s Off Limits is a 10-episode series and aims to tackle life’s more awkward, embarrassing and uncomfortable topics from a blindness and low vision perspective.
Episodes are available as podcasts from the Vision Australia website, Podbean, and Spotify.