Couldn't pay me to relive high school

Shanna_Inc86 · January 2012

I would never want to be a teenager again...you couldn't pay me to go back to the middle school and high school days.
Chatting back and forth with my step sister on facebook; she's 15 and hates her body, has no self esteem, and for whatever reason has always idolized me.
She's worried about her weight and just feels like crap about herself. "Shanna, I've worked so hard to be skinny and now I'm fat again" (she's not fat...she's 138lbs at 5'3"/5'4") Note the word skinny...I hate the word skinny. To me it makes me think of a skeleton with skin. I like the words healthy, fit, trim, toned, athletic
I'm trying to convey to her that if she's unhappy she has TWO things to work on. The physical and the mental.
Passing along the advice I WISH I had understood 10yrs ago.

Got me thinking...what words of advice would you give a high school girl who is struggling with her self esteem and weight?

Pocket_Pixi · January 2012

Say one nice thing about yourself everyday - and it doesn't have to be anything about the way you look. Just be nice "I love me because...." is always a good place to start.

It is the best thing I have ever done. I was picked on all through highschool, my self-esteem is beyond gone (it is getting better) had I been nice to myself in highschool, I really think I would be in a totally different place mentally now.

Shanna_Inc86 · January 2012

I like that...good thing for me to pass along :happy:

StarIsMoving · January 2012

The advice I gave my 15 yr old daughter is what I will say here:

When we look at ourselves, we are our worst critics. Look in the mirror... look at yourself... and now think of your qualities. If that were a friend you were looking at in the mirror, who possessed all your qualities, what would you say about her? Would you say her body wasn't right? Would you say she wasn't pretty? Smart?

Like all situations, it's a little easier once we learn 3rd party perspective. Not perspective of someone who wants to be spiteful/jealous/mean... and not ourselves (since we are so naturally hard on ourselves), but instead, someone on the outside who can truly see who we are

MamaLuvsDJ · January 2012

Hmmm....good one. I myself hated high school. I was always the butt of someone's joke....once I was told that people in school rather date a dog than me

.

Shees hard to say, you see she didn't just think that to herself; someone made her feel that way. What I can tell her is that high school is just a phase and that everything that seems so important is not important in the real world. I tell you what, do this....show her your FB high school friends....show her the popular ones and she can see for herself how the popular ones who were soooo "idolized" are overweight, divorced, miserable....or the ones who swear up and down they were going to be movie stars and they are joe schmoe from the postal service....lol.

Good luck

runnercheryl · January 2012

Mine's not specific to weight. I was a pretty scrawny teen until my later years, but had a lot of other stuff to deal with and a guy at school I barely knew told me to smile on my walk to school each day - just force myself even if I felt like my world was ending.

After a week of smiling on the walk to school, it became fairly natural. Life at both ends of the walk might have been hell, but if I could cheer myself up for the 20 minutes in the middle everything seemed a little more bearable. Won't even forget that piece of advice or what it did for me. There were two people at school who helped me more than they'll ever know with one sentence each, and I don't speak to them now, barely ever did. I think a lot about how those two had such an impact and won't ever be told.

Couldn't pay me to relive high school

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