Working with Body Relationship: How do I work with body image concerns?!?!
A question that keeps coming up in my supervision sessions is “how do I work with body image concerns?”
It makes sense that people feel confused about this. Most of the resources available ignore systemic oppressions and body politics, entities that can not be ignored in this work for it to be effective.
Most of the resources out there fall short of providing a context, and end up gaslighting our clients in their experiences of grief and isolation. This is why I moved away from “Body image” language all together. I found that when we start to take image, and the ideas of objectification, out of the conversation and focus on relationship, we can start to look at things outside of the false narrative of a body ideal. We can explore questions like how do you want to feel in your body, what kind of pleasure and or senses are possible to experience with your body, how can you treat your body with neutrality or kindness, and what does it look like to care for your body.
We never want to pressure our clients into loving their bodies through a toxic positivity model, this is othering and dismisses the complexity of living in a body, a body that might experience chronic pain or illness, internal chaos related to trauma or neurodivergence, or falls outside of the privileges offered to cis, white, thin, able bodied ideals. It ignores that perhaps our client has a body that didn’t give them a much wanted baby. A body that experiences bullying or deathly violence for how it shows up in the world. A body that is denied care and access.
“Of course you hate your body, look at this world we live in! What a normal response.” Validation. You can see a person relax into this when you offer it. So often clients feel trapped because they want to recover, but they feel shame because they still struggle with body hatred.
Sitting with the grief and complexity of these painful experiences is paramount. Our fragility, our fix-it mentality and perfectionism can get in the way of this crucial holding space labour.
It is our work to, where appropriate, point out the lies of whiteness that promote ableism, classism, anti-fatness, and standards of beauty that are based on nothing but ever shifting ideas from a small minority. That fester and produce shame and blame narratives that show up every time our client has the opportunity to objectify themselves, as has been modeled to them as the way to be in relationship to their body.
A resource that I find helpful to support in this work is the infographic created by Bobbie Harro, the Cycle of Socialization. I will walk clients through this to provide the context for the vicious narratives in their heads. It helps to show where the ideas of fatness come from, and that none of us were born thinking these lies were truth. None of us were born with body shame and the ideas around control and restriction. We were shown that. These ideas of body objectification were socialized into us. This is context.
I also find it helpful to get curious about the personal narratives of my clients. You say this about your body, where did that idea come from? Often times they can identify a caregiver, partner, friend’s voice that has become their inner critic shame narrative.
Being in a body is hard. Maybe harder than ever? Don’t give your client another to do (look in the mirror and find one thing you like? WTF?) Give them a soft affirming place to land amidst the chaos. Validate their experiences of pain and grief. Offer them another way forward, away from the viciousness they were taught.