The average amount of thoughts a person has every day is about fifty-thousand. It's a little scary to think of how many of those thoughts - good and bad - are under our control. Too often and so easily our perceptions of what we think about ourselves when we glance at ourselves in the mirror, interact with other people, or see in the media puts our brains on automatic. How much of our daily responses to our environments, past, and relationships come from having a healthy or unhealthy outlook on ourselves? It's hard to tell.

When I was fifteen, my self image was absolutely horrible, but it's gotten better over the years. Yet as I reach 30 in three or four years, or look at myself compared to what I see on social media, I can't help feel what everyone probably does at some time: highly self-criticizing and unkind. It doesn't help that I was literally born a perfectionist, people-pleaser and has loads of anxiety especially social.

When I found The Woman in the Mirror, it was a nice revelation. The first part of the book breaks down the social and personal barriers that creates self-image and body esteem specifically with eating disorders and how critical self-judgement from toddler to adult morphs over the years. The second part of the book gives insight in how to be your own coach and talk to yourself, create fat-free zones, and stop the automatic responses our brains have in falling for rude criticisms or overly-obsessing what we think other people might think of us. Cynthia specifically makes a point to address eating disorders throughout this book, but it's also about body image, how we see ourselves in the mirror, and what to do when things trigger us to think about ourselves or play the comparison game.

Even though I had eating disorders when I was a teenager, and those type of thought patterns aren't ever truly cured, I'm not sure I quite connected with the first half of the book as the author went through the ages and how each stage (typically for women but she does bring up boys and men too) is affected by their social and personal environments in how they think about themselves. I identified much more with the second half of the book dedicated to, honestly, how to be nicer to yourself with your thoughts. Cynthia walks readers through identifying areas in your life that make you feel bad about yourself, how to prepare for moments when you might feel yourself comparing your body to someone else, or dealing with people and environments that criticize you. It was illuminating to see that some of the things I've done in the past but given up on (coaching and motivating yourself through stressful situations) doesn't make me as crazy as I thought was. And, there are tools I want to continue on with in the future.

I still think I have long way to go in terms of how judge myself, but after reading this, I'm more receptive to ideas that "HEY maybe the way you're reacting to seeing photoshopped images doesn't equate to who you are as a person". If I could, I would've given the second half of the book to a younger version of myself. I gave this a three out of five stars because I feel, as some others pointed out, a lot of the book's tone fits for parents needing assistance with identifying how their self-worth might affect their kids negatively and what to look out for, while the angle for individual women changing their body esteem is weaved throughout.