How can I develop a healthier relationship with my body?

You compare your body to edited images all day, and the mirror becomes a place where you criticize yourself.

• Social media shows filtered, posed, and often altered bodies as if they're normal.
• Puberty changes bodies unevenly and on nobody's schedule but their own.
• Comments from family, peers, or coaches can stick for years.

Before you decide anything, take four slow breaths — in for 4, out for 6. You think more clearly on the other side of a calm breath than in the middle of a fast feeling.

1. 1Shift from appearance goals to function goals: what can your body do, carry, learn, recover from?
2. 2Curate your feed. Unfollow accounts that make you feel worse — that's maintenance, not weakness.
3. 3Speak to yourself the way you'd speak to a younger sibling in the same body.

Unfollow or mute two accounts that consistently make you feel bad about yourself.

Play it forward. If you take this step, what happens tomorrow? Next week? What does it protect — your peace, your grades, your relationships, your future? Leaders think one move ahead.

• One-Minute BreathingSlow your body down in 60 seconds with a longer exhale.
• 5-4-3-2-1 GroundingBring your body back to the present moment.
• Get HelpCrisis resources and a personal safety plan.