How i learned to silence my inner critic

Jessica Barrett 10 January 2021 6:00am GMT Stella magazine promotion Feeling confident in your own skin had always seemed to me the kind of cynical concept used in adverts to sell women

probiotic yogurts, deodorant or slimline sanitary towels. It was something I hadn’t really given much thought to in my teens or my 20s. I felt reasonably confident in how I looked. There had

also been times when I had felt less so; perhaps if I’d gained a little bit of weight, was having a bad skin month or had taken a photo of Sienna Miller to the hairdresser and got my hair

feathered so badly I had curtains. In summer 2019, however, at the age of 35, I hit rock bottom. Although at that time body positivity was at the forefront of social media, I don’t think my

self-esteem could have been any lower. I would go to work and feel physically in pain just from being in my own body, constantly thinking how fat and ugly I looked, or that my outfit was

unflattering and disgusting. I would spend hours (and hundreds of pounds) online shopping in the hope that if I found the perfect dress or pair of trousers, I would magically feel better

about myself. And all that negativity wasn’t confined to my looks. None of this may have made any sense to people who knew me or followed me on social media; I suppose I always seemed happy.

I was always laughing, had loads of friends and I had never been shy. There is a lot of talk about perfect ‘Instagram lives’, and accounts that peddle dreamy existences to their followers.

I guess, in retrospect, I may have seemed as if I was living one. But in the year leading up to that point, I had been putting myself under a huge amount of pressure. In spring 2018, my

husband Ollie and I got married. On my wedding day in Somerset I felt beautiful, and totally confident in the perfect dress I had chosen, made by a New York designer I loved. Soon

afterwards, we moved from London to my home town of Bath, and a lot changed very quickly. Within a year, I’d swapped my job at a national newspaper for freelance journalism, and the stress

of the move, buying a house, being self-employed and commuting to London for work had a profound physical effect. My stomach swelled to three times its normal size and my weight ballooned:

within four months, I gained two stone, even though nothing had changed in my eating and exercise habits. My GP identified that I was under severe stress, and took blood which showed that my

thyroid had become underactive. It was then that I started struggling with terrible anxiety. A voice in my head would tell me I looked disgusting, that everything I wore made me look awful,

or that I had terrible, blemished skin. I’d also have whirring thoughts that I wasn’t getting good enough commissions, I should be doing more with my career, that I had said the wrong

things during a dinner with friends and everyone was annoyed with me. I was constantly depriving myself of food and booking exercise classes in an attempt to look better and erase the

negativity, but it was a permanent screensaver in my brain. One evening in September 2019 I came home, tore off the clothes I had spent all day wishing I hadn’t worn and sat sobbing on my

bed, exhausted with the toxicity of my own thoughts. I had done a good job of keeping my composure on the surface, even around my husband. But as I told Ollie everything, it dawned on me

just how tired I was of setting myself impossible standards. ‘The root of low self-confidence lies in how we treat ourselves: whether we are being kind to ourselves or not,’ says Jo Emerson,

the Bath-based confidence coach who helped me back to normality when, in January last year, I finally sought professional help. ‘Your vulnerability is your fear,’ she told me. ‘Whether it’s

fear that people don’t think you’re good enough, a fear of not keeping up with everyone, or fear of what people might think of you.’ It’s like, she says, ‘a radio being tuned to Toxic FM –

and we often don’t realise we can change the channel. But you can.’ I was given tools that I could use to try to stop myself following damaging patterns of behaviour. One of them was to stop

judging – not just myself, but everyone around me. (I had to write down all the judgments I’d made in one day: if you’ve judged everyone else, of course you’re going to be hard on yourself

too.) Another was to ask myself: ‘Is what I have said to myself true, and even if it is, does it really matter?’ As with most things, there is no quick fix but it felt a relief to realise

that how I’d been treating myself wasn’t unusual, and hear ways that I could use to grasp back my own headspace. Since the first lockdown began in March, low self-esteem has affected even

more of us than normal. There was the so-called ‘Zoom boom’: the reported spike in enquiries about cosmetic ‘tweakments’ from women looking at their faces during endless virtual meetings. In

July, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons revealed that surgeons were seeing unprecedented amounts of enquiries. Reports have suggested that more of us than ever are using

apps like FaceTune and FaceApp, as well as beautifying filters on social media. Throughout 2020, I saw low self-esteem become a major topic of conversation, yet I have been grateful to find

my thoughts far less haunted. I have thought a lot about why: it’s partly because I began to break my cycle at the start of the year, and after opening up to others about my issues, I felt

a shift. While I’ve been stressed and concerned about the state of the world, I am finding myself more content in my bubble at home for now. I have little time to compare myself with others

because I’m seeing people less and have cut down on social media. While others have felt more self-conscious sitting in front of a screen, I find it more comfortable because I don’t feel

like my body is on show. I’m no longer commuting, and life has slowed. I go on country walks most days and have been working out twice a week with a friend who’s a personal trainer. She has

taught me to be kinder to myself, and appreciate that my body is strong and capable rather than criticising it. And I no longer have a full-length mirror in the house. I have begun to let

myself love who I am again. And with everything that’s going on, I have to appreciate that I am lucky rather than unlucky. Although my thyroid levels are back to normal, losing weight is

still a very slow process for me. I’ve had time to make peace with my new body, though, and Ollie makes me feel so loved no matter what. Somehow 2020 taught me to be kind to myself: and I’ve

silenced my worst critic. HOW TO SILENCE YOUR ‘CRITICAL VOICE’ By confidence coach Jo Emerson * IF YOU ARE SUFFERING WITH BODY IMAGE ISSUES… ‘If this is manifesting itself in illness then

seek professional help. If you are terrorising yourself, cleanse your social media: follow accounts that uplift you rather than cause you to have negative thoughts. Write a letter to

yourself listing what you appreciate about your body: it keeps you moving, it allows you to exercise. Catch yourself before falling into negative comparisons. * IF YOUR SELF-ESTEEM IS

SUFFERING AFTER A PAINFUL DIVORCE OR BREAK-UP… ‘When we base our self-esteem on the approval or the love of others, that isn’t genuine self-esteem or confidence. Another person isn’t

responsible for your own self-worth. Devastating as it is to lose someone you love, your job is to find genuine self-esteem. Don’t get into another relationship until you’ve found it.’ * IF

YOUR CAREER HAS SUFFERED A SETBACK AND IT’S BEEN A BLOW TO YOUR CONFIDENCE… ‘I work with a lot of people who have lost their jobs and often there has been a long, slow route to this outcome.

If it was a job you loved, then take stock, take a couple of weeks, then start reapplying: you’ll take the positive energy you had from your old job to the next one. Often it turns out

people weren’t that happy in their job anyway. If so, this is a great opportunity for something else. Fear will tell you it’s a disaster. But the cards of your life have just been shuffled

and it’s time for change.’ FOLLOW OUR STELLA FACEBOOK PAGE FOR THE LATEST FROM STELLA MAGAZINE, AND JOIN THE TELEGRAPH WOMEN FACEBOOK GROUP, A PLACE TO DISCUSS OUR STORIES. HOW DO YOU

SILENCE YOUR INNER CRITIC? TELL US IN THE COMMENTS BELOW