Just Me Being Me: How Do You Handle a Compliment That Makes You Feel Bad?
Compliments aren't meant to hurt, but sometimes they do.
Just Me Being Me is literally just me being me, living my life outside my comfort zone when it happens as it happens. Since I’m a dedicated introvert, this doesn’t happen much, which makes it doubly interesting when it does.
Before we begin: It’s gonna be a long walk to the punchline, so skip ahead if you’re less interested in the back story and just want an answer to the title question. Cool? Cool.
I’ve been on a journey of self-improvement for quite some time now.
When I left the Philippines, I was the heaviest and the unhealthiest I’d ever been. In 2019, I was 188 lbs and taking heart medication prescribed in 2010. I hadn’t been to a doctor for more than a cursory checkup in 10 years.
Poor mental health and a dismal outlook probably had something to do with my resistance to healthy living, too. At that point, we’d been waiting for so long for this next chapter of our lives to begin. It was too easy to say “I’ll start watching what I eat when we move” or “I’ll try exercising when we’re finally settled in the U.S.”—like the change in location would magically rid me of my commitment issues.
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Dust Yourself Off and Try Again
About a month after we landed in Nevada, I started exercising. Walking started as a way to stave off boredom and also a way to explore the neighborhood we were in. Raf tried intermittent fasting, so I joined him, too.
I kept these good habits in place until autumn—when it became too cold to continue walking with the clothes I had. I started feeling tired more often, which I now know was a symptom of my then-undiagnosed anemia. It’s also difficult to stick to healthy choices when you’re poor and/or dependent on other people’s schedules and whims, so that played a part in falling off, as well.
But enough with the excuses, right? The truth is that I just wasn’t motivated enough, because I didn’t love myself enough to push past my comfort zone. Walking was getting hard, so I quit. Watching what I ate was getting hard, so I quit that, too—even though my appetite was naturally getting smaller because of the anemia.
It was always my plan to get back into walking and counting calories, but I got sidetracked by the pandemic. Or was COVID-19 the wakeup call I needed?
I realized that even though I thought about dying all the time—thanks, grief and depression—I didn’t actually want it to happen, because I was so adamant about staying home and wearing a mask.
In July, I went to a doctor and got a new prescription for hypertension meds, along with a surprising anemia diagnosis. The doctor also warned me that I needed to make changes to my diet if I didn’t want to add cholesterol medication to my maintenance routine.
That’s when I knew I had to reignite that initial fire in me—hopefully for good.
When You Start Taking Care of Yourself, Everything Changes
I was late to the party, all things considered. People I knew were blossoming during quarantine—learning new skills, exercising more, launching new businesses, reading more books. I was envious of their progress and productivity but inspired at the same time.
Even before I went to the doctor, I had already started on some self-work in the form of confronting bad mental habits and behavioral cues. That’s just what happens when you spend so much time by yourself, I guess. It was painful but necessary, particularly in terms of getting my grief due to losing my dad to a more manageable place.
But when I added daily walking, calorie counting, and intermittent fasting to the mix? Magic poured into my life—and by this, I mean a sense of wonder that curiosity that had been missing for so long. It filled a space in me that I didn’t even know what empty and aching.
Everything started to come alive. After a long drought, I began exploring the worlds in my mind by writing both fiction and nonfiction in prose and poetry. I found joy in big things and little things. I rekindled my respect and reverence for history and nature and all things ancient. I felt more connected than ever to the earth and the sky and the Great Unknowable that I believe in but cannot quantify or qualify.
What Happens When You Change So Much That Others Start to Notice?
Ah, here we are: On to the main point after a long tangential story.
Compliments happen! Not unwarranted ones, either.
I admit that like an average person, I talked about weight loss and showed typical progress photos. Naturally, people commented on them and mentioned how great I look in the “after” images.
That’s when things went downhill for me, mental health-wise. (I was already feeling not that great, to begin with, so it was a slippery slope.) I don’t have the best personal history when it comes to weight loss. There’s a lot of binging, purging, and disordered eating in my past that I don’t really like revisiting. I didn’t anticipate innocent compliments to trigger memories of me starving myself and feeling like absolute shit in my twenties.
I know people mean well when they tell me how beautiful I am now. But what about me 25 lbs ago? Was she a trash heap that should have been set on fire or ignored? Was she not deserving of the same love and respect and cheering on?
I want to tell people how much it hurts to realize that for most of them, “fat” is a bad word. Fat people, to the average person, are automatically unhealthy and ugly. I know this because I live this reality every day. I was fat and I’m still fat—by BMI standards I’m still obese. The opposite of “fat” is “thin”—not “pretty.” So why do people only compliment me on my looks when I’m losing weight?
How I Handle Compliments That Aren’t the Best for My Mental Health
I put myself in the shoes of my well-meaning friends—and I say thank you. Then I move on.
Is this avoidant? Maybe. Is this better for everyone involved? Maybe, maybe not. I tend to think of this as more my problem than anyone else’s, but deep down I know that’s not entirely true. It’s a systemic thing to see being fat as a problem, and while I don’t completely disagree with the “as long as it’s healthy” way of thinking, I do think that fat people deserve basic respect no matter what their health status is.
I’m not doing my part as a member of society when I don’t speak up and go “well, actually…” each time someone praises me for losing weight. But these days, I feel like it’s enough that I’m taking care of myself. To get into an argument because of this—I don’t have enough spoons for that right now.
Maybe one day I’ll confront problematic complimenters directly. For now, though, I’m choosing to process my feelings—as always—by oversharing here.
How do you handle compliments that aren’t the best for your mental health?
Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash
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