Wouldn’t it be great if we could just go to Wal Mart and buy a positive body image with a side order of self esteem?

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.  As we all know, there are a million influences out there that make it really difficult for many people to figure out who they in the middle of everything they think they should be.  Finding a sense of self and feeling good about who you are can be a daily challenge.

There are many internet sites out there that are pro thin and pro ana and pro dieting, places that emphasize changing how you look in order to make you feel better about yourself.  It is my personal belief, shared by the National Eating Disorders Information Center, that such sites can influence people to pursue dangerous methods of changing their body size.  While some “pro-ana” sites do attempt to educate and many have disclaimers that they are not encouraging eating disorders, any that I researched still had an underlying theme of encouraging a less than healthy approach to feeling good about yourself.

When I was young and struggling, I felt very isolated.  No one understood me.   In a strange way, looking back now, perhaps that wasn’t a bad thing.  It made me wonder if maybe people were right, that what I was doing was not “normal”.   The wrong kind of support from peers could have sent me further down the path of losing weight and the end to my personal story could have turned out quite differently.

 I think young people need support and understanding, especially surrounding this tough issue of body image, but that support needs to be positive and with an emphasis on healthy choices.

This blog is about being PRO-SELF…sharing ways of feeling good about who you are as a person.

  But how do we get there..?

My goal for this page is to create a place where I can share ideas gathered on how to build self confidence.   Most importantly, I would like the ideas to come from the readers of this blog.  I would like to hear from teens out there who have ideas of their own or have some good resources that have helped them.   These can be shared either through the comment feature or sent to me in an email at liane_shaw@yahoo.ca and I will post them on this page.

 Thanks for your help…we are all in this together!