Feeling ashamed of our body
Hello …. How are you today?
One subscriber told me with total honesty “please, talk about how traumatic it is to think about putting on bikinis and swimsuits in the summer”. The idea behind this blog is to bring relief to the feelings that we aren’t enough or that we never meet the cultural standard, and especially to the hardest emotion of all, which is becoming our body’s enemy.
You can listen to the podcast with this player, or if you prefer reading you have a written version below. Enjoy it!
Let me tell you what I endured because it might resonate with you and because it makes it easier for me to illustrate my point. My parents were quite obsessed about the importance of being thin. At a very young age, I overheard my father telling my mother she shouldn’t eat this or that because she was going to gain weight or because she already looked a little chubbier. My father simply repeated what he’d learned at home since he grew up in a family where having a few extra pounds was synonymous of lack of class, a fact which was never questioned. My mother, of course, was tormented by this. As I’m writing this, I can see that my mum felt pretty before dating my dad but upon meeting him, her self-esteem in this particular subject just plummeted. It may sound crazy but my father never said anything like this to me. Nevertheless, my mother did torture me with the thinness fixation. I don’t blame her as she bought into the idea that to be good looking and stylish you had to be lean. Her nightmare was that I wouldn’t fit into that mold as I turned into an adolescent. She never questioned my father, she never realized that culture was taking advantage of her weakness selling her fad diets, treatments, and a thousand other things.
I’d like to make a pause here and talk about the concept of "trauma", which comes from the Greek "wound". We could say that trauma is a psychological wound that was triggered by disasters, abuse and also pain and stress. Trauma can be treated but the wound we mentioned earlier is perpetuated if it’s not dealt with and eventually healed. As a result, let me be honest here and suggest that you seek professional help to heal. This guidance should be empathetic and serve as a safe container for you during the process. Imagine me as a little girl observing my father, who at that early age was my idol, and noticing how he criticized my mother’s body. How do you think my little me reacted? With absolute terror of being fat. The very idea of not living up to my dad’s expectations filled me with a lot of anxiety. Now let me invite you to imagine the adolescent that I was with a mother who whipped herself with the most terrible diets and who told me that being attractive was synonymous of being skinny. What do you think I did then? I stopped eating. If the price to fit in, be liked, and accepted was being stick thin, I was going to pay it at all costs. I was a teenager with the typical insecurities of that vital moment and who hadn’t managed to create my identity and differentiate from my parents yet. When I look back, I feel so much compassion for the slender and beautiful young woman that I was but that I was unable to see. Could I solve my problem? Yes. Did I do it alone? No, I got the help of a coach. Did I heal quickly? Not so much. Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Totally.
Now, let’s look back at the vicious circle I was talking about earlier:
Trigger: toxic ideas about body image in my home while I was growing up, body’s rejection and criticism if it wasn’t skinny.
Reaction: feelings of shame and isolation, food deprivation.
Result: discomfort, stress, and anxiety. Nothing was enough and those reactions from above were unsustainable.
I had to experience it directly at home. Who or what hurt you? What made you feel that you were not beautiful? Who lied to you making you believe that you were far from the circle of the beautiful? Maybe a classmate, friend, neighbor or coach laughed at you or referred to your body with a painful comment that changed the perception that you had. Perhaps the key to fitting into a group was to be a small size and you contorted to be accepted. Maybe you were attacked on another plane but you channeled it into your body. You probably compared yourself to supermodels and superstars, and ignorant of their own sufferings, you started yours. You are the one who knows and remembers what happened. I hope it becomes clear now that there was an event that triggered us in such a way that it left a big wound within. The first step here is to separate what happened from our reaction. In my example, my parents sought validation outside of themselves by following social and cultural models. My response was over adapting to their standards. Only when I managed to see that those values were theirs and not mine, could I begin to feel what was important to me.
Start rewiring yourself by saying “that was my misinterpretation of who I thought I had to be based on what I saw/heard (fill in the gaps). My worth is invaluable and it has nothing to do with my weight”. Also, ask yourself "what would the wisest and most loving adult in the world would have said to me if (s)he’d been by my side during those times of self-rejection?" Perhaps you will start to hear the truth once and for all: "you are beautiful, you shine, you have so much to give, your body is where your gems lie, look for them, you are a soul with this body" I wouldn’t like to overlook the fact that the most ruthless judge is one looking at oneself in the mirror. We need to start over; we have to fall in love with ourselves as a whole and stop micro analyzing everything. We must give our bodies a treat, we must be mindful of what we say to ourselves, we must be grateful for everything our body is capable of doing. If you decide to go on a clean diet and have a more active life from a place of complete love for your body and not from self-hatred, do it but beware of where you’re standing. I'm going to round off with something I read about singer Lizzo that I loved. The artist’s body was criticised by a hater on social media. She replied that she actually takes care of herself and exercises, but she doesn’t do it to have the type of body that people with no inner life expect from her. She does it to have the body that is ideal for her and her alone. Cheers to Lizzo, that's the attitude.
If you know someone who is suffering from this, forward this article to them and invite them to subscribe to the blog. The idea is to help each other to align mind and heart. Thanks!
A big hug ❤