My first press release! As featured on Health & Wellbeing Online Magazine on 4th of June, 2024. See it following line HERE.
The Super-Secret (Which Is Not REALLY a Secret) How To Change Your Body Image Forever
I want to share an idea about our body with you, an idea that might change your life. But first – allow me to introduce myself to you. Again. This time, in the context of body image.
My Background
I’m someone who has been suffering with extreme self-hate, extreme self-rejection. I had three plastic surgeries. I was suicidal. I had clinical depression.
I also had bulimia. I would eat food and throw up. So I had this constant feeling of guilt, shame, self-hate. And I found my diaries from 15, 17 years ago where I was writing every day, “I hate myself. I hate myself. How can I do this to myself? How can I do this to myself? I hate myself.”
So just so you know, I know what self-rejection and what shame feels like. I know it’s a bit intense, but I just wanted to put that out there so you know that I’m actually talking from my own experience and I actually have gone through this.
I was in constant psychotherapy for over a year until I found the trauma (otherwise called shadow) work. And that’s when things started shifting for me.
The Shift
So let’s talk about body image, and how I feel about my body now.
For example, if I look at myself then and I look at myself now, now I actually love myself.
Now I actually love my body.
Yes, there is maybe five kilos I gain now and then and I would like to get rid of them.
But at no point do I feel extreme hate towards myself.
At no point do I feel, ”oh my God, I’m bad, I’m somehow shameful. I should get rid of myself.”
And I’ll tell you a secret – but it’s really not a secret – what was the one thing that changed my relationship with my body.
Our bodies are actually something that we live in.
The SECRET
And the body is from an energetic and metaphysical perspective is actually an entity.So lots of things that we might be struggling with is because we don’t have a good relationship with our body.
<…> that non-secret secret is me understanding that we have a relationship with our bodies.
You And Your Why
So, if I ask you, what is your relationship with your body?
Do you talk to your body?
How do you see your body?
Do you see it as an entity, as your friend?
Or do you just see it as the thing that you wake up in?
Take a minute – answer these questions.
Negative regard towards your body is why we have a bad relationship with our body.
It is why we don’t have any relationship with our body.
Why is that?
First of all, nobody teaches us to.
Most of our moms didn’t teach us how to have relationships with our body. If you are anything like me, you may have had a mom who had three kids and she was always complaining about how bad she looks, how she needs to go on a diet.
For example, my mom, she was in constant body rejection all the time that I remember.
At no point was she proud of herself looking at herself in the mirror with confidence…
She was always looking for clothes to cover herself up, to hide herself. Her hips are too big, her stomach is too big.
Although I realise that these things were done subconsciously and my mum did best she could that time, the memory stayed.
Therefore, growing up, I thought that the only way you have a right to be proud of your body if you look like a model. And then later, when healing my relationship with my body, I realized that this is nonsense.
No, you don't have to look like a model to have a good relationship with your body.<...> We're not going to get another body. So, it's up to us to actually how we going to live in our bodies.
No, you don’t have to look like a model to have a good relationship with your body. Your body, our body is the only body that we have. We’re not going to get another body. So, it’s up to us to actually how we going to live in our bodies.
And we cannot escape our body unless we die.
So, we have a choice. We can improve our relationship or even to start having relationships with our body, or we can just drag this body around our life and act as it is something that is a problem for us.
When we think about it, defines our relationship with it.
Imagine if our body is another human who has feelings and we start treating them like we now treat our body. How would it feel if we say “I hate you if you don’t look good”. So if we have a friend and to our friend we are saying: “if you don’t look good, I’m going to hate you, I’m not going to be friends with you.” What kind of relationship is that?
The same as with our bodies. The only difference with our bodies, we cannot stop talking to each other. We cannot cut off connection.
Well, we can cut off connection. If things that were happening to the body (for example weight gain) get so much out of control that we can say “ah, that’s it, I’m divorcing you. I’m throwing away all of my mirrors.”
That can happen and has happen to some of us.
But this is more pretending that we have cut connection with the body.
Because we live in it still. We just pretend we don’t have that connection. And that is pretty hostile environment for our bodies to be at the receiving end of.
The Biggest Need
So this brings me to the point that we need to feel safe in and with our bodies just as much as we need to feel safe at our home. And the thing that ruins our relationship with our bodies and creates body shame is rejection of our bodies.
<…> whatever you feel, it’s absolutely accurate reflection of what has happened to you.<…>
A side note here: whenever you feel shame about the body, don’t think that you shouldn’t feel shame. You feel what you feel. You have a right to feel whatever you feel.
Because when you feel something bad about yourself, and then you feel bad for feeling that bad thing, it’s like a double trouble.
You feel bad, and on the top of feeling bad, you feel bad towards yourself.
“Why do I feel about my body? Shame, I shouldn’t be feeling this way.”
And then you feel double shame.
You feel shame, and then you feel shame about feeling it.
So whatever you feel is valid.
Whatever you feel, you have a right to feel.
Because whatever you feel, it’s absolutely accurate reflection of what has happened to you.
It’s not about how badly you managed.
It’s not about the things that you could have done that you didn’t do.
It’s given the circumstances that each of us have been in and where we are right now, we couldn’t feel about ourselves any other way.
So number one point in having a relationship with your body is first of all, admitting where you are.
When we force ourselves to skip a step, it doesn’t feel real. It feels like I’m faking this right now.
For example, if right now what’s going on,
“I’m actually not having a good relationship with my body. Right now, I actually feel in rejection with my body.”
That’s where we should start.
We say
“okay, that’s my reality right now. I’m feeling in rejection with my body.”
That’s where we can start.
The Deeper Layer
Then the next thing is to start digging deeper.
“Why? Why am I feeling in rejection with my body? Oh, because I see myself in the mirror and I don’t like what I see.”
Okay, so how about we start with that?
How about we start with looking at ourselves in the mirror and accepting what we see?
And I’m not talking about “oh my God, I see a pimple and I like it.”
No, I’m talking about the real acceptance of what we see in the mirror. It sounds a bit more like that:
”Okay, I see myself in the mirror, I don’t like what I see. That’s okay. “
So then you can do the second step.
You can say to yourself:
“I’m going to do this for six weeks. I’m going to look at myself in the mirror, and if I don’t like what I see – that’s okay. At least I will start looking at myself.”
Then the next thing could be what I call The Mirror Work. This is a practice where we use a mirror and talk to ourselves as if we would if there is a second person is standing in front of you.
The idea is to start having a dialogue to yourself. In this case specifically – to your body.
It might look something like this:
“Okay, I’m going to talk to my body.”
“Hey, body, how are you doing? Hey, legs, how are you doing? How are you feeling today?”
This practice starts developing a conversation with the body. And from there a relationship starts to develop.
At the end of the day, if we don’t have a conversation with the body, if we don’t have a relationship with the body, then what’s the point of us having the body?
Just to do things.
But I would argue that life experience can become way more enjoyable if we enjoy our bodies, if we have good relationship with our bodies.
But I would argue that life experience can become way more enjoyable if we enjoy our bodies, if we have good relationship with our bodies.
As we continue with this practice we can add more specific elements to it that would gives us insight into what our body needs.
For example, we might say:
“Okay, body, what do you need today?
Do you need food?
Do you need exercise?
Do you need to sleep?
What do you need me to do today?”
Lets say you get intuition that your body needs food.
Then we can feed the body something that makes it happy. We could tune in and check if our body wants something sour, something juicy, something with a lot of protein.
And just like that, step by step we start developing a a conversation, attunement and a relationship with our bodies.
If you haven’t tried this before, when we start doing it’s going to be a bit weird.
This is because that to have relationship with the body is not normal. By not normal I mean it is not something that we hear our friends and families talking about. It’s usually something along the lines “Oh, if I eat this, I’m going to gain weight. If I eat that, I’m going to gain weight.”
Quite often it is a love-hate relationship.
Unconscious relationship.
However as we stick with The Mirror Exercise or another type of dialogue with our body – we develop this relationship, it’s going to become normal.
And then it’s going to become actually fun.
The Place That Is More Yours Than Anywhere Else
The way I see our relationship with our body, the body is actually our home.
So if we don’t feel safe in our home, then where are we going to feel safe?
And if our body is not the place where we feel safe, then where are we going to feel safe?
So how about we start treating our body as our home?
Another good analogy is to start seeing our body as a friend. Imagine that you are going on the journey of life and you have a friend with you who you can actually talk with, who you can actually have a conversation with, who can make you laugh.
And who is always, always there for you.
The body is our friend.
And if you have a friend, you’re not going to be saying to your friend:
“oh, if you don’t do this, I’m not going to talk to you anymore. If you don’t look like this, I’m not going to talk to you anymore.”
So how about we start treating our bodies as a friend?
Because at the end of the day, the only relationship that we’re going to have until we die is with ourselves. And body is that one part that we cannot disown as long as we are in this physical form.
Because at the end of the day, the only relationship that we’re going to have until we die is with ourselves.
So it’s up to us how we’re going to treat ourselves. It’s up to us how we’re going to relate to ourselves. It’s up to us how we’re going to have a relationship with ourselves. It’s just a different way of looking at the body.
If our body is an entity, if our body has feelings, how we treat our body is the reflection of how we feel about ourselves.
Typically when we think about body image, we think about dieting. We think about eating disorders.
We think about exercise. But we never think about:
“oh, how about we actually start having a conversation with the body?
How about we start treating our body as our friend?”
Ultimately, this body is the only body that we have. We’re not going to get another body. So it’s up to us to improve the relationship with the body or to just have this body that is always going to be a problem for us.
The Next Level
A step further would be to go into the metaphysical realm.
If our body is an entity, if our body has feelings, how we treat our body is the reflection of how we feel about ourselves.
So if we hate ourselves, we’re going to hate our body. If we don’t have a good relationship with ourselves, we’re not going to have a good relationship with our body.
From this point of view we can consider that the relationship with our body is actually the relationship with ourselves.
So What Do We Do With This?
Good news is that when we start improving the relationship with our body, we’re also then automatically are improving the relationship with ourselves.
And you don’t have to wait for someone to come and save you.
You don’t have to wait for someone to come and fix you.
You don’t have to wait for someone to come and tell you: “
oh, you’re beautiful, you’re worthy.”
You don’t have to wait for any of this.
You can start doing this right now.
You can start improving your relationship with your body right now.
You can start treating your body as your friend right now.
You can start treating your body as your home right now.
You can start feeling safe in your body right now.
And the only thing that is stopping you is the belief that you’re not worthy of feeling safe. The belief that you’re not worthy of feeling good in your body. The belief that you’re not worthy of having a good relationship with your body.
And when we shift how we see our bodies and we start consciously to develop relationship with it we’ll see the change. We’re going to see that the relationship with our body is going to improve, the relationship with ourselves is going to improve, and then our relationship with other people is going to improve.
The longest relationship that we’re going to have in this life is with ourselves and our bodies. So it’s up to us how we’re going to treat ourselves in our longest-term relationships.
So if you have any questions or if you want to share anything, please let me know. If you want to reach out to me, if you want to share your experiences, if you want to share your thoughts, if you want to share your ideas, if you want to share your feelings, please let me know. I’m here to help. I’m here to support.
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