From Self Harm to Harmony – Kat Boxall Case Study

Transcript

Kat: My journey sort of started (or started to go wrong) when I was a teenager. I think, like so many of us, through school I was a very high achiever, I looked like a Barbie doll, very beautiful.

When I was about 14 or 15 I had a lot of family problems . And I think like a lot of women: “I don’t want to be a burden to anyone so I just won’t say anything. I’ll just go inside myself and just keep my feelings to myself. I don’t want to be a pain in anyone’s ass. My parents have got enough problems, I won’t go to them.”

Sadness feeds sadness.

When I was probably 16 or 17 I started to have what we would now call depression, although most of the time when we’ve got it we don’t know. As I sort of grew up, I got sadder and sadder and stopped talking about it even more… you know, on the inside. Of course on the outside I was fine, I was perfect. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. Thanks, I’m fine.” Sadness feeds sadness.

When I left school, I went to university, and I ended up dropping out of university because I just wanted to go sleep all day and… I guess just things that happens to everyone. I was like, “We’ve got family troubles, my boyfriend cheated on me. Those aren’t bad problems. I don’t want to be a pain in anyone’s ass. That’s not bad enough to talk about or anything like that.”

When I was about 20 or 21 I started self-harming. You see my armful of warrior woman scars I have now. That went on for quite a number of years. I guess on the outside I was like, “No, no, nothing’s wrong. I’m really confident,” and then underneath as I would find out later, I wasn’t confident. I felt like a failure. I dropped out of uni, I would sleep all day and have a lot problems with my eating.

I’d go from “I need to be thinner, I need to be thinner, so I can get a boyfriend and no one would cheat on me if I’m thin.” Going through phases of eating tins of tuna – and you know those Heinz baby custard? My friends were like, “Why are you eating that?” I was like, “i really love it. It’s just really nice. It’s just the right portion size.”

I still didn’t value myself at all and I thought I was a failure and I thought I was hopeless.

And then on the other side of it, of course it was really hard and I get really #%^* hungry. I’d be like, “Oh no, actually, I’m just going to love myself the way I am. Who cares?” Then I just eat everything under the sun because I was starving. My weight fluctuated by 25 kilos. I’d put that on and I’d be like, “Oh, this is horrendous. I’m going go back to my baby custard.” I go back down the other end. And obviously because either side of that, the same thing is still underneath, and I still didn’t value myself at all and I thought I was a failure and I thought I was hopeless.

I guess through the depression and the sadness and the exhaustion, not having the ability or resources to achieve anything, because I wasn’t achieving anything, then what was I? Because I’ve been brought up, “Oh, Kathryn, she’s the smart one, she does this stuff.” And I was like “Now I do nothing, I’m a waitress. What a disappointment.”

Then I moved to Sydney and I was like, “Oh, great, everyone’s healthy here. I can lose weight and it’ll be normal. Join the gym…” and everyone’s like, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll all eat healthy and go on food plans. And I was like, “Oh, yes! A food plan. I can be healthy. And then no one will ask me why i’m eating green vegetables all the time. It’ll be fun.”

So I moved to sydney about 4 years ago. I tell a little story about, I guess, a lightbulb moment for me which is sometimes what I love about people coming to these things, because it’s like a point in which you go, “This is the time for me to change.”

I was at work. I worked for Caltex. Petrol is fun, isn’t it? This was in the midst of Lindsay Lohan when she’s gone a bit loopy. A Lindsay Lohan song comes on the radio, and it’s this song called a beautiful life, which is ironic because her life wasn’t that beautiful at the time.

The lyric of the song goes:

This is my beautiful life.

And I would say “Ah, #%^*.” Just like yesterday I was at my bed thinking about whether I had enough energy to keep living or whether it might be better if I died. I didn’t want to kill myself but I was just like, “This is really hard, I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen here.”

Because I think, like many of us, I just had these two bits of me. This bit of me which was like, “Yes! Do this! Be happy!” and this other bit which was like, “No, you don’t really care enough.” Whoever has that voice where you just tell yourself that you don’t care so much because if you cared it would be overwhelming

This song comes on the radio and I was like, “Ugh, well my life’s not very beautiful.” But it was the way she puts this emphasis on the word my. And I was like, “Yeah, this is my life. That’s a really good point.” I’m like, okay, now i’m going to do something. I’m going to change. What do i do? What’s next?”

And it was a funny series of events because that day I had a call booked in with my trainer, and he was like, “How are you going?” He meant to talk about whether you’re making your bed or you binged on pizza. I was like, “Yeah, look, I’m going to be honest with you… It’s really hard.” He’s like, “What’s hard?” I was like, “I’m trying to be happy and I can’t. Everyday I battle against this voice in my head that says, ‘No, you are just one of those people that it will always be hard for. Like depression as a diagnosis… I’ll always be there. That’s just me. I’m not one of those people that gets good things. I’m not one of those people that gets to be happy. I will be just one of those people that gets to have a battle everyday.”

And he was like, “Ah, that sounds a bit shit, doesn’t it?” I was like, “It’s very #%^* shit. He’s like, “Right.” For those of you that know my trainer, he’s very Australian, he goes, “Yeahhhhh, I think I might have someone for you.” I’m like, “Really?” He’s like, “Yeah, I know this chick, Kyles. She runs this program.”

Even within the first 3 or 4 months, I was just absolutely amazed at the person that I found again.

Yeah, it was this funny series of events. And literally straight after that call I went and looked on her website. I had a call and then I ended up enrolled for Kylie’s program, the Goddess Body Quest. It took me 8 or 9 months to finish, which I really liked because nobody pushed me to do anything, because I didn’t have any resources. And for me I guess after that … well, even within the first 3 or 4 months, I was just absolutely amazed at the person that I guess I found again. I guess the whole way through this I was like, “I’ve been like this for 12 years, how could I possibly untangle this? How could I possibly change?”

But deep underneath I was like, “I remember that person, who I was when I was 14.” After those few months I gradually began to feel like that person again and I was like, “Wow! Why isn’t everybody doing this? I thought I was going to be in therapy for 12 years.” That was the most amazing thing. And I think as soon as you start to feel a little bit better then you just remember what gives you the confidence to keep you moving forward.

After 9 months, I finished the course and I was no longer eating baby custard. But I would be at the heaviest weight that I’ve ever been and I just am the most confident that I’ve ever been, and now I’m that annoying person that … I’d go out to dinner with my friends and they’re all like, “Oh no, that’s bad.” I was like, “Hey guys, how about we all just love ourselves how we are?” and they’re like, “Shut up, Boxy.”

All my friends are very avid worker outerers. We do this very intense workout program. We’d get up at 5:00 and we workout really hard. And in the end you get tested to see if you’re good. I got to a point where i was like, “I don’t think I really like working out at 5:00 in the morning and I don’t really like being tested.” And so i just kind of stopped.

I go about once a week now just to keep on moving, and I go walking. And one of them said, “Have you been eating?” I’m like, “Yes.” She’s like, “What are you doing? Why have you lost so much weight?” I was like “Oh, I’ve just been relaxing.” She’s like, “Well, what do you do?” And I said “You just eat.”

I just got into this phase eventually where none of my thoughts were taken up by what I eat or if I exercise enough.

I just got into this phase eventually where none of my thoughts were taken up by what I eat or if I exercise enough to eat this or… there’s none of that on a Sunday night anymore, going, “I’m so lonely, I’ll order a whole pizza and eat a bag chips.” I think you just get to that place where you just… I finally realized that it has nothing to do with the outside or the eating, it’s everything to do with the inside.

I was always like, “Who will love me with cellulite? Who will love me with scars and I’m broken?” And it’s that looking through the other side of like, “What man will love me like this?” Yeah, just getting to that point where I just lost weight by chilling the #%^* out. Chill the #%^* out, everyone!

Well, firstly, everyone told me I should be a coach. I’m like, “Everyone shut up. That’s not what I want to do. I want to be a project manager!” Then I was like, “Oh yeah, okay, coaching. Cool.”

You’re always living a perfect reflection of your filters.

I think I have to say, from the first part Kylie said to me during one of these things and it came from kind of a self-perspective, and she said, “Everything that you’ve gone through in life is learning.” Because I’ve had a lot of trouble reconciling this 10 years of me messing up. And she goes, “You’re always living a perfect reflection of your filters.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” She’s like, “Well, for 10 years you were the best sad person out there. You went to university and you studied how to be sad, and you are now the best at it, so you know everything about it. And I thought, “Oh yeah, that’s a good way to make use of those 10 years.”

And so I guess at the start it was that, but now NLP and I started my own business called The Self Harmony Project.

We all harm ourselves everyday in the way we speak to ourselves or the way we tell ourselves that we’re not good enough.

Obviously, for me self-harm has a very physical meaning – my harm’s on the outside and everyone can see it, but we all harm ourselves everyday in the way we speak to ourselves or the way we tell ourselves that we’re not good enough. And we need to be more… It’s really horrible and people shouldn’t have to live like that. And so now I have a way to help people through that, which is very exciting.

Don’t ever think that you’re too far down the rabbit hole to come back now because you’re just not. There’s my wisdom: You’re just not. And you’re in the best possible space to have change for yourself. I think asking for help was always a massive thing for me, that thing that we have to say that we’re fine and we don’t need any help and we’ll do it on our own. It made me realize that you can’t do it on your own, and so this is the best space to be and to do something with it.

Kat is a superstar graduate of both Goddess Body Quest and our Legacy Leaders NLP Certification. You can follow her hysterical, and inspiring posts on Facebook and Instagram.