Telea Bloomfield shares how healing from negative body image required honesty, therapy and patience
Self-love is often framed as confidence, affirmations or simply feeling good about one’s appearance, BYU–Hawaii student Talea Bloomfield said. But for her, the process was far more difficult and far less immediate.
The hidden weight of comparison
Bloomfield said her struggles with body image began young and became more serious when she was around 14. What started as insecurity eventually developed into an eating disorder marked by food restriction, excessive exercise and constant dissatisfaction.
“I was just never enough,” Bloomfield said. Over time, she said, the obsession affected nearly every part of her life. She lost energy, distanced herself from relationships and no longer found joy in things that once made her happy.
Bloomfield said comparison played a major role in intensifying those feelings. As a teenager involved in sports, she became especially self-conscious in locker rooms and other social settings. She also internalized comments from adults, she said, often holding onto negative remarks far longer than positive ones.
Bloomfield continued all of that happened during COVID-19 made the experience worse. She said staying home for school and spending less time around others fed the loneliness she was already feeling.
Recovery that was not linear
Bloomfield said her recovery began with difficult conversations with her parents and later with a therapist, who helped her examine the thoughts behind her habits. Instead of trying to jump straight into self-love, she said, she first had to confront harmful routines and thought patterns.
Bloomfield said one of the hardest parts of recovery was relapse. On bad days, she said slipping back into old patterns made her feel guilty, as if she were undoing everyone’s efforts to help her. But she eventually learned that progress was not linear and that setbacks did not erase healing.
She said her habits changed before her mindset did. Therapy encouraged her to stop when negative thoughts surfaced and ask why they held so much power. Over time, those moments of reflection helped her challenge the obsession with how others perceived her.
Her relationship with herself and people that care about her is more important, she said. “People who care about me know me more than just my body. We’re so much more than just our bodies.” She continued, “I just would rather be a good person and be remembered for being a good person than being remembered for being super hot.”
What self-love actually looked like
For Bloomfield, self-love no longer means always appearing beautiful. Instead, she said, it means building a relationship with herself that is not conditional on appearance.
“It can’t be, ‘I only love myself if I look this way,’” she said.
She said self-care on difficult days often looks simple: taking a long hot shower, reading, resting or doing small physical things that help her feel grounded. Bloomfield also said she learned a powerful exercise in therapy—imagining she was speaking to her younger self whenever she criticized her body. It helped her realize she was holding herself to standards she would never place on anyone else.
By the end of the episode, Bloomfield said the biggest change was not in how she looked, but in how she thought. If she could speak to her 14-year-old self now, she said, she would not try to explain everything. She said she would simply offer comfort.