Video Transcription

Talking about confidence and body image

I think confidence probably has the most to do with my emotions out of everything—it has the most impact on how I’m feeling at any point. I feel like the whole world is just looking down on you. I feel like whatever you say, whatever you do, it’s just going to end badly.

I struggled in high school because I didn’t really fit the kind of super-skinny mold. That just caused me a lot of stress because I felt like I didn’t look good, I didn’t fit in, and I had a different body shape to the people around me.

With someone with low self-esteem, like myself, you constantly think the world is judging you, but that’s not always the case. I guess when I’m not feeling confident, you kind of walk into a room and feel like you almost want to hide away a little bit, and you’re not really comfortable talking to people.

My mom has also struggled with her own body image, and so she put a lot of her own issues around food and her body image onto me. Her solution was, like, “Oh, well, you know, if you could lose some weight, then maybe you’d feel a bit better about it.” That probably wasn’t the best advice to give me because then I ended up feeling just inadequate, like my body wasn’t good enough.

They just complimented me, they reassured me, they—yeah, they just said, “It doesn’t matter, it’s okay. Everyone’s different.” My dad helped me because he was like, “You’ve got a curvy body; you’ve just got to learn to love it. Once you get to uni and get into the real world, you’ll see that’s not everyone.”

Just knowing I have such good friends that I can talk to—such a good family, good brother and sister—just the support network. I always know that they love me and they like me for who I am as a person.

Video by Reach Out