Cultivating Self-Compassion to Heal Your Body Image
By Katherine Metzelaar, MSN, RDN, CD
What does it mean to heal your body image?
This is a very common question that I get asked a lot with a not so straight forward answer. The path toward healing your body image is not linear. It’s got winding paths that split and rejoin. It’s got questions that beget questions. It’s got new things waiting that are yet for you to know and explore about yourself.
Changing your relationship to your body, or what some call “body image,” is a journey that is challenging, complex and multi-faceted. It’s also peaceful at times, empowering and liberating. Because of this, doing body image work requires patience, acceptance, mindfulness and most importantly: self-compassion.
How self-compassion can change your body image: the three tenants of self-compassion.
Self-kindness vs. Self-judgment.
Self-judgement is often a significant part of having a negative body image. Think about how many times in a day you judge or criticize yourself or how many times in a week. For most people, it happens so often that they don’t realize how frequently it’s occurring. It becomes almost like a hum in the background that you get used to after some time and then stop hearing it. And then, it’s only when you turn it off that you realized how loud it was and how much it was impacting you.
Self compassion is helpful when you notice judgement, hatred, criticism or dislike with your body or your body parts because it invites you to be kind to yourself. This is not self-pity, which is a common misconception, but rather an opportunity to be warm and understanding toward the difficult time you are having. In the case of body judgements, when applying self-compassion to your experience you would offer kindness when you notice the judgemental thoughts. This would look like instead of saying “I hate my belly” when you see yourself in the mirror, you instead might say, “I am noticing negative thoughts about my belly right now and that feels really hard. I wonder what else could be going on for me?” It’s an offering of kindness toward your judgements and your inner-dialogue in a way that communicates that it’s ok that it feels hard and that you are listening without getting stuck in cycles of self-punishment and shame.
Common humanity vs. Isolation
Feeling like you are not where you want to be with your relationship to your body often leads to a profound sense of loneliness and isolation (it’s also the reason why I created the group Body Image Badass). When you feel frustrated at feeling like no one else can relate to how you feel about your body you feel even more alone and often even more shame, ie “there must be something wrong with me.” The frustration begets the loneliness, the loneliness begets the isolation, which all only further perpetuates the negative body image thoughts and feelings that you have.
Self-compassion allows you to shift your body image because it invites you to recognize that you are not alone in your suffering. Self-compassion reminds you that feeling inadequate is part of the human shared experience, something that everyone goes though all the time rather than something that happens to you alone. It provides you the opportunity to practice reminding yourself when you catch yourself in negative body image talk that just because you have a thought doesn’t mean it’s true or that you need to act on it, but rather that you can remind yourself that how you are feeling makes a lot of sense and that you are not alone in how you are feeling.
Mindfulness vs. Over-identification
Mindfulness is a critical part of healing your body image and cultivating a more compassionate relationship with yourself. This is because changing your body image is less about “doing to” and more about “being with.” It’s a process of reconnecting to yourself after years of disconnection and hatred. Healing your body image means paying attention to and inviting a soft, gentle awareness to bodily sensations. It invites you through mindfulness to ask questions like, “what is here and can I be with this?”
Mindfulness is nonjudgmental and allows you to witness your thoughts without getting pulled into them or “over identifying” with them. And while often it can feel like, “why would I pay attention to something that hurts?” this is often what is needed to shift your body image. Paying attention mindfully to what is there is first most important step that allows you to make a choice about how you want to respond. To shift your body image, through self-compassion you get to practice the art of noticing and being present to the experience rather than having it take over. For example, you notice that when you see yourself in the mirror that you say a very critical thing about your thighs. Instead of allowing that to take over (over-identification) which might lead to exercise as punishment or restrictive food patterns, with self-compassion you would notice what is happening, be present to the pain of having criticized yourself, and not engage in behaviors that only cause further suffering.
By applying the three tenants of self-compassion to shift your body image to be more kind and accepting, you will be able to work with the difficulty and pain of healing your relationship to your body rather than work against it. Body image work is not about shifting or changing how you look but rather how you receive yourself, how you respond to yourself, how you care for yourself, how you appreciate yourself and how you maintain an active relationship that will continue to change over time. Through self-compassion you can tap-into the deeper parts of doing body image work that require you to be mindful, present and kind.
You’ll also love…
Are you struggling with food or body image?
Feeling consumed with body image concerns can feel lonely and like it’s distracting you from living your most authentic life. Body image can also be a major obstacle for people in healing their relationships with food. At Bravespace Nutrition we work with clients virtually helping people who are struggling with food and body image. It’s possible to change your relationship with food and your body, free up headspace, and live your life with more presence, abundance and peace. Learn more about Bravespace Nutrition, our philosophy, and the services we offer.