What Are Your Body Image Challenges Somatically Trying To Tell You?

Welcome to a month long focus on body image. I've got some amazing interviews lined up over this next month exploring all things body image healing and I'm kicking it off today with a few of my initial somatic perspectives on relationship with your body's appearance. With summer here, I know how difficult this time of year can be when the temperatures are guiding you to wear less clothing and you may feel exposed and uncomfortable. The warm weather may be calling to you to get outside where you might be more seen and your body doesn't know if that's safe. 

​About 80% of communication comes from the body up to the brain.

The brain relies heavily on information from the body's sensory systems such as vision, hearing, touch, sight, and sound, and internal physiological signals from organs, muscles, and skin. ​From a Somatic Eating® perspective, with all of this information being communicated to the brain and the brain interpreting what it is receiving, your thoughts about your body and its appearance arise for a reason. Your body is trying to communicate something by having you worry about and focus on a specific body part.

Body image concerns don’t have to do with the body’s appearance. Worrying about your body’s look can somatically come from how a certain body part is perceived as threatening to your survival. Changing your body won’t produce more safety. It will only create more fear of the danger lurking around the corner if your body changes again.

​For example, wearing shorts during the summer months may increase feeling your thighs more than you normally do. This sensation can be interpreted by your body as something is wrong and then sends this information up to your brain where your brain tells you that your thighs are too big and need to change. The felt sense of this body part is being perceived as dangerous (one reason can be because of past trauma that either occurred in relation to this body part or in general it does not feel safe to come into contact with your body because you learned that dissociation equaled safety) and the answer your brain comes up with to try to get away from the danger is that you have to change this body part. 

This is all to avoid the sensation of your thighs touching that may feel initially uncomfortable but your thighs are not a tiger and them being whatever shape or size they are is not threatening to your survival, although your body can perceive that it is. And if you do change your thighs through exercising and strict diets, that fear doesn't go away. Your thighs will continue to be perceived as threatening if they perhaps change again. Feeling safer to inhabit your body needs to include getting comfortable with the sensations you feel being in a body.

So take a moment to reflect on what body part gets most of your attention.

When you feel like you're having a "bad body image day" often this is a difficult stomach day, or thigh day, or arms day, or butt day. Usually on these days, you're probably not focusing on your entire body. You may not hear a critical voice picking on your knees or your toes or your fingernails. There is usually a focus on one or two specific body parts. These body parts have been associated with something.

I'll provide another personal example that I have recently shared. As many of you know, I struggled with digestive pain and severe bloating in my early 20s. My attention was heavily focused on my belly much of the time and what it was doing. This part of my body received the most criticism and judgment of any other body part. I heard thoughts like this part of me needs to be smaller, flatter, stronger, or more toned. 

When I dug a little deeper, there was an underlying belief that if I could just get this part of my body under my control, then maybe I wouldn't be in so much pain. It never had to do with the way my belly looked. It was much more about trying to find some way to cultivate safety in this body and the only answer my brain could come up with was to change the part of me that felt so threatening to be in relationship with. Of course, that never worked and only led to feeling less and less safe in this body regardless of how my belly ever shifted and changed. What do you sense that the body part you focus on so much is protecting you from feeling?

Something I teach in my programs and you will hear me say in future interviews is that if you attach your sense of safety to something that is ever changing you never get to feel a consistent experience of safety. The answer to your body image worries and concerns is not to change your body. If the potential root of your body image challenges is a lack of safety then your body needs you to come into a closer connection with it not further away by trying to alter it. When you hear that familiar inner dialogue about how your body needs to change, that is an opportunity to pause and get curious about what your body is trying to relay to you about the nervous system states you're predominantly living in.

And to bring in a moment of compassion, sometimes on your healing journey it may feel way too intense to come into a closer relationship with your body so focusing on your body's appearance keeps you at a safe distance from your body. If this is where you currently are, that is alright and you can meet yourself with gentleness that you're doing the best you can with everything you're trying to navigate inside of you.

Now all that being said, where does wanting your body to look a certain way fall into all of this? I deeply believe in your autonomy to choose for yourself. You want to lift weights and build muscle, go for it. You want to get botox, go for it. You want to wear makeup, go for it. Overall, you get to choose. Here's what you need to look out for though. 

If you're choosing consistently not to go out with friends to dinner because you need to wake up early in the morning to workout, that's a red flag. If you're bringing your own food to family gatherings because you're afraid of overeating and how that's going to maybe produce weight gain, that's a red flag. If you're hiding away at home because you feel unworthy of being seen until you get your body to where you think it should be, that's a red flag. Something that often starts out with the greatest of intentions can spin out where an exploration turns into a rigid rule. So you want to be aware of when these intentions start to impact the quality of your life.

A question you can start asking yourself is, if what you're thinking of doing didn't guarantee a body change, would you still be doing it?

So if any workout that you're doing, didn't guarantee that it would produce that body you think you should have, would you still be doing that workout? If the answer is no, then you can start to explore your underlying reasons and intentions. This can be a broad question and sometimes a moment by moment decision. Sometimes I still catch myself hearing a voice inside that says I should take a long walk at the end of the day and when I get there I check in and explore within myself if this walk is something that truly resonates with my body and is going to support it in feeling how it wants to feel or is this another part of me pushing me to do something that my body is actually too tired to do. 

This is an ongoing exploration and somatic check in that needs to occur again and again. That is why I will be offering a workshop focused on body image called Befriending Your Body Image Challenges with Somatic Eating® Practices Workshop on Saturday, July 13th at 12:30 pm ET. This will be a live two hour workshop where you will learn the somatic wisdom behind your body image concerns, discover a nervous system and trauma lens to body image challenges, and somatic practices to navigate difficult body image days, the scale, comparing yourself to past body expressions, and seeing pictures of yourself.

We will explore the wisdom in your body image challenges and what they’re trying to support you with to feel safe and secure in your body. You will walk away with new insights into what your body may be trying to relay by having you worry about your body’s appearance. And I will be offering time for Q&A to get personalized support for your body image challenges. If you can't attend live, the call will be recorded to watch the replay later. To sign up, click HERE and if you have any questions about the workshop, email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime.

Excited to spend this month together exploring your relationship with your body image!