Let's talk about something that we all have…
Our Bodies.
Yep, from our heads to our toes and everything in between- whether you have all the parts or extra parts or different parts than you would like, we all have bodies.
And when we have our bodies, we also have our body image.
The way that we feel about ourselves and the way that we view our bodies are important, especially in this society. So if you are struggling with your own body image, for whatever reason or factor, you are in the right spot.
In this video post, I'm sharing five of my favorite therapist-approved coping strategies when you are struggling with your body image.
If you prefer to watch the video, click this image here:
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Acknowledge Your Body
You have to acknowledge and notice your body before you can change the way that you view and feel about your body.
A really, really great strategy that I highly recommend, I actually share this with my own therapy clients, and I do this for myself as well, is to practice some gentle mindfulness throughout your body.
So when you are doing something like a body scan meditation, or when you are naturally moving your body throughout the day. When you are interacting with your body, whether that is washing your hand, eating food, smelling flowers, or a certain perfume or scent around, just take a moment and notice your body and what is doing at that moment.
Don't try to judge it. *Though if you do judge it, don't worry about that. We are created in a way that we are supposed to make snap judgments.
Just because you have an automatic snap judgment does not mean that you have to roll with it.
But if you do have a snap judgment just notice that too and go, “oh, okay. That was a thought, that was a judgment. I don't have to roll with that.”
So just taking some time throughout your day and just noting or acknowledging your body and what it is doing every single day is a key first step in coping with your body image.
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Positive Affirmations
So positive affirmations have definitely been having a moment for like, longer than a moment now, which is pretty cool to see as a mental health therapist. But they're not always used in a healthy way.
The reason why that I say this is because there's the manifesting community and the positive self-talk/thinking CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) community has kind of like morphed together to create some sort of like magical thinking when it comes to positive affirmations.
We do tend to believe what we tell ourselves. That is very true, though…
Just because you think it does not always make it accurate.
Positive affirmations can be used in a healthy way to transform or adapt or adjust your automatic negative thoughts.
Remember when I talked about how when you acknowledge your body, sometimes you're gonna have automatic negative, snap judgments that pop up? That's okay.
When you notice that, I want you to pause, and think about a way that you could adjust that into a more positive affirmation or thought for yourself. And then repeat it.
It can take five positive thoughts to counteract one negative thought.
So when you come up with your more positive affirmation or a new positive thought that you would rather believe about yourself or your body, I want you to repeat that five times. Even better if you could say it out loud. Try looking at yourself, too.
If that's not doable, say it in your head, write it out, whatever works for you.
Okay, so here is a really, really cool strategy when it comes to positive affirmations…
so you don’t try to go so hard, so positive, so fast, that it doesn't feel believable. Because sometimes we try to jump too far ahead.
When you need to make your positive affirmation feel more believable, you have to also validate your automatic negative thought, because quite possibly, there is some truth in that automatic negative thought.
The feeling behind it might be aggravating or irritating you, or making it difficult to move on from that.
I want you to take the negative automatic thought that you're having and put the words “even though” in front of it. So you say:
“Even though (insert your automatic negative thought about yourself or your body image)”, and then you say, “I am working towards (insert that more positive affirmation)”.
I would love to hear the way that you are transforming your automatic negative thoughts into more positive ones and who knows? It may inspire others. So leave it in the comments on the YouTube video if you feel comfortable with that.
Self-Soothe
When it comes to our bodies and our body image, our bodies give us a lot of physical feelings and responses. It tends to give us a little more information about how we feel physically and emotionally about a situation or a circumstance.
Sometimes it can get a little haywiry and a little extra. It can really kind of like shout at us. If you've ever had a panic attack, a stressful anger attack, or something like that, you definitely have felt that physical discomfort that comes with those extreme emotional experiences.
So that's where coping strategy number three comes in, and that is to self-soothe.
When your body is physically distressed or uncomfortable I want you to make use of self-soothing strategies. So use one or more of your five physical senses (sight, smell, sound, taste, or physical touch) to physically soothe, calm, or relax the distress that your physical body is experiencing at that moment.
One of the ways that I really recommend doing this is using some lotion or cream to rub on your different body parts or skin, one that feels and smells good to you. You don't want it to be aggravating. If you have sensitive skin, obviously honor that.
→ It could be something like wearing clothing that feels really good and comfortable for you.
→ It could be drinking a drink that feels great for you. I really, really love hot cocoa.
I would highly recommend that you make it a healthy drink. So you can use a whole bunch of different strategies to physically soothe your body's physical responses to stress.
Express Gratitude
This is really, really cool because you can actually combine all of the first four coping skills for this next strategy.
When you are acknowledging your body parts, transforming your automatic negative thoughts into more positive ones, and self-soothing, you can actually go through your different body part areas and express gratitude for the work and effort that that body is doing to help you live the life that you are living.
This may be something as simple as when you're washing the different areas of your body, expressing gratitude and gratefulness for that body part doing a good job at keeping you in this world.
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Some examples include expressing gratitude for your:
🦶 feet being able to support your body and move your body to different locations.
💪 forearms give you the arm strength to be able to carry and lift things or help boost yourself up from a sitting to a standing position if that is something that you're able to do.
You can get creative and express gratitude for what your body is already doing, can help transform your relationship with your body.
Check Your Surroundings
We are constantly surrounded by different information sources and people and other bodies around us if you just take a moment and just look around in your actual physical environment.
❌ Not on your screens
❌ Not in your movies
❌ Not on your social media feeds
✅ but actually look out around the world
and you will see there are so many beautiful people.
You will see there are SO many different shapes and sizes, colors, and different aspects of bodies, and like, gosh, everybody just has such beauty within themselves.
It's really, really easy to forget this when your social media feed is only showing you a certain type of body, or a certain aspect of bodies, and not being open to the fact that we are all made of different shapes and sizes.
When you can check in with what you are surrounding yourself with, and make a conscientious effort to surround yourself with diverse body experiences, it will absolutely help transform your own relationship with your own body image so you can improve your self-esteem.
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