[Part 3] negative self-image, body dysmorphia, and battling feelings of unworthiness

Artist depiction of God creating humankind from the Earth

From what I understand, people who struggle with body dysmorphia and people who

become anorexic, bulimic, or engage in certain types of self-harm behavior frequently have pressures on them which make them feel as if they have little control over their lives. In a way, psychologically, they give themselves a problem which is within their own control rather than everyone else’s. Many people who endure parents divorcing, for example, have some of the same struggled behaviors. A disproportionately large amount of people in the LGBT+ community have similar body issues and self-harm behavior because of guilt and pressure from other people to change. (Check out the Trevor Project articles on this!)

I tried so hard to control the things about myself that I could not control that I harmed my body attempting to become someone I could never be. I couldn’t control my sexuality, so I controlled my weight. Badly.

For people who don’t know the difference between anorexia nervosa and anorexia athletica, there are two different types of this well-known and oftern-misunderstood eating disorder: Anorexia nervosa is the form that most people are familiar with. It is when somebody restricts their caloric intake far past the deficit it takes to lose weight into a space that is considered self-harm. Anorexia athletica is when people obsess over having a low body fat percentage in a way that includes compulsive and excessive working out, also to the point of self-harm. I can’t say for sure that I was technically either by medical definition, because I think there may be a level of severity that makes either of these a clinically and technically diagnosable disorder. However, I made the attempts, whether I was "diagnoable" or not. (If a doctor ends up reading this, please tell me if I need to make edits or notes.)

I don’t want to give my specific height and weight numbers from that or this time, because I do not want anyone to compare themselves to a body which is not their own and feel like what I have or had was better or worse than anyone else’s. My unhealthy may be your healthy and vice versa. The difference between when I tried to lose hard and when I tried to gain hard was about a third of my weight at the same height within a few months. When you have body dysmorphia to a particular degree, you can look in the mirror at an emaciated self and believe you are seeing fat rolls. You can look at a ripped, muscular physique and believe you are looking at bare bones. I have done both.

I think I can trace back a lot of my feelings of bodily inadequacy to masculine societal archetypes and ideals. This kind of thing is only getting worse, and I can’t help but feel sorry for teenage boys right now seeing what social media has to offer as far as male beauty standards. I think it's a similar pressure girls must have felt in the 90's when every female movie star had to be under a hundred pounds. It's a real struggle when your society decides on a single standard of beauty. I had a friend in college ask me in the cafeteria once if I was eating salad because I wanted to keep my "girlish figure." As hard as I have worked out for my health and for my vanity, I have never had someone ask me if I were eating steak to try to keep my "giant muscles." Just saying.

I never really got the chance to come out to most people. I was outed to most everyone I knew at the time. Everyone who knew me knew that I wanted to go into ministry, too. One of the first things some people said when they found out was, “I guess you’re not going into ministry anymore.” To be honest, I love defying stereotypes, so when that was suggested, I probably would have decided to go into ministry at that point if I hadn’t already. But again, I was told that I could not be the things that I was on the inside—this time, meaning a minister.

I found it lonely being a gay person in church as well as being a Christian in the gay community. I get it—many people along the spectra of sexuality and gender identity and expression have been very hurt by Christians. So, unintentionally I’m sure, I was very hurt at times in the gay community. At the time, I lived in Birmingham, Alabama. I’m really not sure how I missed all of the accepting congregations I know about now while I was there, but I’m a bit glad that I didn’t find them at the time, because it shocked me into realizing that...

I want to help change that perception of the church from the inside. Not just for people like me, but I wanted to be a part of fighting the stigma around women in leadership, people of color and immigrants being treated as equals, and other people in the LGBT+ community being loved as equal children of God.

I have a theory that if all the people who are considered some kind of "minority" stood up for the rights of all other people who were considered a type of "minority"; if all sexual minorities, racial minorities, women in male-dominated professions, etc., got together to fight for each other, we would be the majority already, together. How about it? Let's celebrate all walks of life. I mean, the first evangel Jesus ever called was a woman, a person of color, a person of a different kind of skin, socio-political-economic status and different religion. So, how do we justify our biases and perpetuation of inequality?

-Rev. Gavin Warren, Pastor

Please continue in parts 4-5 of this blog series.