In a new video for SELF, Lana Condor, star of Netflix’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before movies series, shared some details about her experience with body dysmorphia and the work she’s doing now to heal her relationship with her body.
Condor said that childhood ballet classes were a major factor in shaping the way she saw her body. “When you see yourself in a mirror constantly, and you’re, like, wearing nothing, you can really just nitpick yourself to death, which is so unhealthy,” she told SELF. (Principal dancer Isabella Boylston also recently spoke to SELF about the intense body scrutiny that young dancers face and the toll that can take on their mental health.)
Body dysmorphia, technically known as body dysmorphic disorder, is a disorder that comes with persistent and intrusive negative thoughts about your body, SELF explained previously. Although it’s very common to occasionally have negative thoughts about your body or to have some insecurities, body dysmorphic disorder is different.
For people who have this disorder, those thoughts about their bodies become so overwhelming that they affect the person’s ability to live their life and, in certain circumstances, can lead to skin picking or other attempts to change their appearance, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) explains.
“When I stopped doing ballet and classes, I felt like that was the beginning of where I could start working on the body dysmorphia…[that] was the beginning of, Okay, I definitely need to heal because the way that I thought about myself when I was dancing was not healthy,” Condor told SELF. But she also acknowledged that the process is ongoing—and takes consistent effort. “I’m not in a place where I can say, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s over.’ I have to work on it every single day,” she said.
That work includes therapy and leaning on her support system. (In her February cover story for SELF, Condor explained how her parents and boyfriend, Anthony De La Torre, have been especially integral to her mental health journey.) That work also includes finding a way to exercise that encourages her to have a healthier relationship with her body. “Working out in a healthy way has helped a lot because it makes me feel good. It makes me feel stronger,” Condor said in her SELF video. “I used to work out constantly… And that was so unhealthy for me. So now I’m trying to do things that I just genuinely love and not in an overt, burnout way.”
Condor said she now works out (virtually) with a personal trainer, focusing mainly on high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and cardio. Although it may seem like an intense regimen, Condor told SELF in a story about her workout routine that she and her trainer have a particularly communicative relationship. That communication allows her to be more gentle or take a day off when needed, so she can still do the workouts she enjoys but without the pressure that could be tough on her mental health.
“If someone were to come to me asking for advice about body dysmorphia and any sort of mental health, I would just say you have to treat yourself like your best friend,” Condor said in her SELF video. “You would never tell your best friend the things that you say to yourself in your darkest times. You would never in a million years. I think that we have to talk to ourselves kindly and gently.”
Related:
- Lana Condor Says Goodbye to Lara Jean
- For Lana Condor, Movement Is All About Joy
- How to Show Up for Someone You Love With Body Dysmorphic Disorder