Turn to the person on your left, and now the person on your right- do you think that this person would be suffering from any form of mood disorders? Who's to say the class clown is not the one with the heaviest heart? Depression can often go unnoticed especially when the sufferer chooses to conceal their troubles behind a facade of normality and in the case of Lim, the way she chose to express her dysphoria was far from ideal. Despite all the negativity that she has been through, she conquered it all by eventually slowly opening up to her friends and family.
"Being very image conscious, I would tend to act normal in public" (Lim, 2016). With her pride on the line, she did not want to be deemed as socially dysfunctional in the eyes of others. Stemming from her innate desire to have an "attractive" physical appearance, in the sense of socially approved attractiveness, her body image was very important to her. "There was this constant pressure to be perfect, which ultimately manifested into an eating disorder." (Lim, 2016) Her eating disorder was under the radar as she claimed, "why I could hide an eating disorder so well is also because I started out fat, I never really got to the point where I was so skinny that it would raise alarm bells." (Lim, 2016) When the end result came, most people were only proud of her weight loss rather than understanding how it came about. It was only her close friends and family who took a step further to analyze the situation and finally encouraged her to open up to us. An important thing to note is that when dealing with someone who has depression, we have to show them our understanding of why they did what they did as well as giving positive feedback that there are alternatives to solve the problem. (conclusion).
Her need to achieve "perfection" has been fuelled with external pressure from her mother as well, constantly praising her in front of their relatives.