self worth.........

Self worth is not based on personal success or your desires

　
After reading a book called Victory over the Darkness, by Neil Anderson, I am beginning to see things more clearly about why I am doing the things I do. I spoke earlier about being a Christian, and lately my faith had dwindled. I was really doubting there was a God. I couldn’t figure out why I had to suffer this eating disorder. Through reading this book though I understand that it is not God who is making me suffer with this. It is myself! I am believing lies about myself that are not true. I struggle to understand a lot of the evil verses good, so if you are a non-believer reading this I just ask you to read on anyway and try to appreciate what my experience is with this. I can be a bit apprehensive about a lot of this stuff myself too, and what really struck me about this book was the honesty about how people get caught in thinking they are so unworthy, and how they form wrong perceptions about themselves.
I have only started realising that my self worth as a person, as me, is not based on how skinny I am, or how I can or can not control my eating. If it were then really I would have no self worth at all. I have blinded myself into thinking that if I can stay skinny people will think I am successful and a great achiever. It was also my way of getting people to care. It was my desire to get as skinny and as sick as I could so people would notice me, so they would talk about me. My desire was so unrealistic and faulty, that it’s no wonder I sank in to a depression whenever that desire was crushed. Neil Anderson writes himself (p129)

“depression often signals that you are desperately

clinging to a goal you have little or no chance of

achieving.”

My desires weren’t met, and I therefore believed I am a failure. Anderson states that a desire depends on the co-operation of other people, or on events and circumstance beyond one’s control. When something or someone gets in the way of that desire, there is instant disappointment and sense of failure. In another book I have read recently (Motherless Daughters, by Hope Edelmann) it even says how the motherless daughter is always looking for someone to take over and care for them. They try to master their environment with achievement and success. Their self worth is dependent on ATTENTION. I was blown away when reading that. Firstly I had a wrong desire to find a mother figure. I placed any person old enough to be my mother on a pedestal, and poured my heart out to them about my eating disorder. I wanted their ATTENTION and their care. When they didn’t meet that desire of mine to look after me and be like a mother to me I thought it was my fault. I then attempted to get skinnier, so maybe they would notice then. I wanted their pity, because I believed it was the only way to get their love and attention. I wasn’t willing to let go of the eating disorder because I didn’t know what it would be about me that people may actually like or think about.