So, let’s be honest about something. Everyone struggles with feeling self-conscious about an aspect of their body or appearance at some point in their lives. Sometimes it’s pervasive and creates dysfunction, and other times it’s just annoying. And, for the sake of being honest, I have recently struggled with feeling self-conscious about an aspect of my appearance lately. It’s hard to be a human with a body and not feel the darkness of diet culture creeping in every once in a while. So, I decided to take control and do something to manage this part of my body to make it more in alignment with society standards. Now, dear reader, I’m not going to tell you what I did, because it really doesn’t matter. There are so many different things that we as humans do to manage our bodies and appearance and the specifics of what I did don’t matter to this story. What matters is what happened next.
After I had managed said body part and paid homage to the diet culture voice in my head, I found myself riding along in the car with my youngest daughter. This is a thing we do on the daily, but this day hit different. We are just riding along, she’s looking out the window at the world passing by, and I look over at her and thought, “She is the most glorious thing I have ever seen.” If you’re a parent, you know this feeling. I think she is the “bomb.com”, “all that and a bag of chips”, “the whole kit and kaboodle”. And in that same moment of basking in her gloriousness, I also notice that she has the same aspect of her body, that I just deemed unworthy on my own. Now lovely reader, you should know, this is not a surprise. I have known that we share this genetic trait since the day she was born. It’s a trait passed down to myself and my siblings from our mother and her mother before. But it’s the first time I was so uncomfortable with this trait, that I decided to manage it and make changes. And my next thought was, “I never want her to look at herself this same way.” It was a wave of sadness for myself and for her.
I wish I could say this moment made me stop struggling with this thought I have about my body, but it didnt. It did, however, help me to change my approach and offer myself kindness and compassion. OF COURSE, I am struggling with body image. I have a body and live in the digital age of America. OF COURSE. The most helpful thing I can offer myself is gentle understanding and the knowledge that changing this thing about myself is not going to help me feel better about myself in the long run. And its definitely not going to be a great model of body acceptance for my children and those around me. What I learned is that I need to bulk up my defenses against all the negative messages that are swirling about me, telling me all the ways I need to improve how I look. I don’t need to spend any time changing my body to feel better about myself. Because, as I always say to my clients, “changing how you feel about your body is an inside job”. And sometimes I need to listen to my own advice!
Warmly,
Whitney Russell MS, LPC-S, CEDS-C, MMHPC, EMDR Trained
To learn more about Whitney and the services she offers in both Texas and Colorado, check out her page.