Aesthetically Balanced - Elle Edwards, FNP-C

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and should it boost your self-esteem even more? Should you strut your stuff a little harder for that moment or that day or that date? Absolutely! But realize you need to be whole beforehand to be able to appreciate it for what it is, and that is simply the icing on the cake.

      To say that mental health and medical aesthetics don't go hand in hand is to turn a blind eye and completely neglect the facts of relating internal and external completeness, and balanced aesthetics in general. It would be negligent to not realize the correlation between one's drive for perfection and where that truly stems from inside. I will tell you this, in my experience, the drive from the inside is not simply to enhance something. Typically, it goes much deeper, and more times than not, it's to change many things typically nothing to do with looks. Is part of that our job and responsibility as aesthetic providers to pick up on and decide whether we want to continue with treatment or not? Absolutely. But if we say no, someone else will always say yes, so speaking to every patient, woman, man, and reader, you must take it upon yourselves to seek out that aesthetic balance and completeness within yourself first. And yes, it starts with the internal.

      The point of this book is not to detour you from continuing your journey with medical aesthetics. It is rather to take you back to the intended purposes of it. It is to give you your own power back and to align you with a self-love, self-worth, and overall contentment that you are whole to begin with. If you find that you may not be at that point quite yet, it is to provide pathways to help you get there. We can all get there, and we all deserve to. This book is also here to help guide you in a way of healing for those areas of need that may be hindering you. Not only hindering you from stepping into that healing and perspective, but more importantly, in believing it.

      I encourage you to take notes, highlight areas that resonate with you, be open and honest with what you may discover about yourself. Be vulnerable and transparent, but above all be kind to yourself. This is something every person on earth struggles with and though it may be to different degrees, one thing you will learn is that it doesn’t matter, because struggle is struggle, pain is pain, and the need for healing is universal. This book was written to get down to the nitty gritty, to be raw, and to provide a passageway to your next step forward in your journey of life. Whatever that may be. Utilize the tools at the end of the chapters, open your heart to resonate with the poems chosen for them, and give yourself the opportunity to meet yourself again with a blank slate and with the unbounding innocence, hope, and grace we all need and deserve.

      We are all born so beautiful.

      The greatest tragedy is being convinced we are not

      -Rupi Kaur

      CHAPTER TWO

      Self-Esteem

       Debunking the “if _____ then ____” way of thinking

      Aesthetics in general is a game of balance, of shadow control, of replacing what is lost, and adding what we need to see as completion. If we add “this,” then “that” will go away. If we take away this shadow, then this appears this way. It’s all a balancing act. But what if we started looking at the way we are comparing internal and external, or having the expectations of such? If I get lip filler, then I will be more desirable to him. If I get Botox, then other people will think I am younger. If I get a new face, I won’t be who I once was. This way of thinking sends you down a rabbit hole of misery. The external and internal both need to be balanced but they cannot balance each other out. Your internal needs to be healed by your internal and external can be enhanced by external. Combining the two as sisters when they are more like cousins once removed will only leave you feeling incomplete, unbalanced, and searching for the next thing to make it all better.

      Injectables and the world of aesthetics is my passion. I love what I do, and I love enhancing the beauty in people, or even correcting the beautifully imperfect. Let me make clear one more time, this book is not to talk you out of enjoying self-care through aesthetics! Rather, to look at is as intended. For enjoyment of a relaxing facial or spa day, enhancement of deficits or small tweaks through treatments, adding to your confidence (not giving it to you), and assisting in making you happier with yourself (not others happier with you). Your external cannot fix, heal, or give your internal any completeness that is not already there. It simply can marry well with an already whole foundation and though it is something that is beautiful when you see brought to life, and so exciting to be able to create someone's dream aesthetic, not everyone has that whole foundation quite yet. Which means, not everyone is the best candidate and when I say that I don't mean because of anything on the external.

      When it comes to consultations and procedures, I have probably turned away about 25% of the people who are seeking treatment. Why? Because ethically I cannot fulfill their request. There is a large mental health component to aesthetics. There is also a very interesting medical explanation for it, or rather for some. When we treat ourselves to something positive, our body releases endorphins which then triggers a positive feeling in the body similar to that of morphine. These endorphins interact with the receptors in your brain that reduce your perception of pain momentarily. Pain can be many things. You have physical pain or emotional pain. You can have constant pain or dull pain. All of which could be emotional or physical. Some of it may even overlap. Another interesting point is your body can only handle addressing one pain at a time. That's why we use distraction methods for needles such as tapping on the opposite shoulder or squeezing as hard as you can on a ball. This helps distract your mind into focusing on the new touch, or pain, no matter how dull it is verse what is truly happening and the true cause of it.

      Much of what we do is a process and when you are going through this wonderful process, it can overshadow an unhealthy drive or pain or untreated wound, but they will always come back. This is why, when the healing process is done from any aesthetic treatment there's a sense of relief and then a period of elation and enjoyment and then inevitably either wanting more, thinking it was not enough, or finding something new to fixate on. You cannot fill, freeze, massage out, or cover internal turmoil, lack of self-esteem, trauma, or just plain and simple unhappiness. I assure you, it is a battle already lost as well as resources and time that could have been spent working towards the enhancement of soul and of treatment of the root issue that was truly needed in the first place.

      Would you consider yourself the ideal candidate or patient for aesthetic treatments? Do you have a friend or family member that you think would be the worst? What, in your mind, do you feel distinguishes one from another? In my opinion, the best patients, or rather the best candidates for treatment, are the ones who truly are whole and who are coming in understanding that what they are doing is elective and that they are completely enough and whole without it but simply want to treat themselves by doing it for them. Not to give them happiness not to give them confidence not to give them a fill for a void, but rather to enhance all of those areas for themselves and themselves alone. What is interesting, is those are typically the patients who request less treatment and are more satisfied.

       How Can You Learn to Break this Thinking?

      How do you know if you are choosing to do something for the right reasons? How do you truly know if your decisions are being influenced by others or influenced by something deeper rooted within yourself? You are the best person to answer that. I am a big fan of lists. I make lists of things to do, things that need to get done, things I want to happen in the future, the lists of the lists continue on and on. Though I may take it to the extreme, when I need to check in with myself, I always resort to writing in some way. To me, writing it out is a way I can see it, touch it, hold it and reflect on it. It is a way I cannot hide from it; I cannot change the words that I'm seeing, it is a truth that is looking at me right in the face and one that I have to choose to face head on or not at all. A lot of times, we will ask ourselves questions, and then proceed to manipulate ourselves into giving us the answers we want. We can talk ourselves in or out of the exact same situation if we are not strongly planted in our own foundation. Especially if we don't truly know who we are and have healed ourselves from possible toxic ways of thinking or manipulations from the past either internally or with others. Learn to check in with your gut. If a decision is not easy, or does not seem 100% transparent with you, make sure you're asking

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