At 19 Lauren Roman went along with an abortion, despite knowing it was wrong, in an effort to appease authority figures. The pressure Lauren felt from those around her has been felt by many other women. It’s this pressure that oftentimes leads to abortions, depression, and eating disorders.
Now a successful actress and passionate advocate of Pregnancy Resource Centers, Lauren shares how impactful body image issues can be, and how they can be overcome.
“I think one thing that’s really important to recognize is that food and body image issues can be life-controlling issues even if they don’t rise to the level of a clinical disorder.”
Women who fall into the perfectionism trap feel as though they need to live up to unrealistic expectations, not realizing that their goals cannot be feasibly obtained.
“An overwhelming majority of women have food and body image issues. I think because our culture and our society is so diet, exercise, health food obsessed it is easy for people to stumble along and think that it is normal and not realize how it’s affecting their lives.”
Lauren goes on to explain that there are different root causes that fuel poor body image issues.
“There’s so many things wrapped up in various forms of eating disorders. I actually facilitated a group for two years that was focused on Christ-centered recovery for food and body image issues, and there was an anorexic who came into the group who basically admitted she was trying to commit suicide slowly…It’s just terrifying how those things can be expressed; whether we’re punishing our body, punishing ourselves, trying to put on weight… there’s a variety [of reasons].”
But the good news is that there is hope, no matter how caught up in the trap we may be, God can set us free.
For anyone who feels as though these issues and pressures are impacting their life, looking inside yourself to discover the root cause is the first step to healing. When we resolve the underlying issue and bring it to God, we are healed from the inside out and He helps us to break free from the pressures. He loves us unconditionally, and knowing that we don’t have to be perfect to go to Him can help us realize that we shouldn’t hold ourselves to perfection; it’s simply not possible to be perfect.
