Ep. 72: An Important Chat About Struggling With Body Image & Our Inner Critics

Triumph After Trauma

Welcome back to Triumph After Trauma, friends!
If you're new here, I'm so glad you found my podcast and we're connected!
In my late teens/early 20's when my mental health was at its worst, I heavily struggled with having respect for, liking, or appreciating my body. I didn't like any of me including the body I had, and I didn't see myself through my own eyes. It has taken years of work, struggle, effort, patience, tears, and trial and error, and personal growth to get to a place of feeling healthy and good in my body. Honestly, my late 20's was the first time in my adulthood I had true self respect, love, and confidence.
I'm 32 and have been lucky enough to have no issues with body image for about four or five years now. However, through 2023 I unexpectedly experienced a few health issues. Debilitating migraines were the worst of my health issues. They got so bad that the last half of 2023 every time one migraine attack (a few days to a week long) ended, another attack would start within a day or two.
Chronic migraines are no freaking joke. While I'm grateful I've finally found a medication that is preventing them, this past year of dealing with migraines constantly has changed my body/strength and I'm struggling a lit bit with body image right now. It's a common thing (for a wide variety of reasons, and at all different levels of severity) unfortunately for people to struggle with body image.
Since it's something I have struggled with and am having trouble with again now, I felt like this is the right time for me to bring this topic up on my podcast. I share my experiences struggling with body image, some of the work I've done (and still do) to work through these issues with how I see/treat my body, and how I'm dealing with my inner critic/chatty mind when they creep in on me now.
If this episode was at all helpful to you or you resonate with my story, send me a DM on Instagram (@thisiskaitey is my handle) so we can connect more! If you know someone who needs to hear this, share the episode on social media and tag me so I can thank you for spreading the word about Triumph After Trauma! I'm so glad we're connected <3