The Connection Between Your Nervous System and Body Image Struggles

Welcome to a month long focus on body image. Every summer, I have noticed an uptick in body image conversation on social media and in my sessions and programs. So last summer, I started a little podcast tradition of offering a whole series focused and dedicated to supporting you in navigating body image during the months where more of your body is being seen, more vacation pictures are being taken, and you're potentially feeling some discomfort being in your body. 

To kick off this month, I wanted to share my somatic perspective on body image recovery. I have observed over the years that on any food recovery journey, even after you have stabilized your interactions with food, where you're eating consistently, worrying about food less, and feel safer to eat, body image concerns can continue long after the food coping mechanisms have decreased. 

This can occur for many reasons. One of those reasons is that even if your food recovery involved processing past trauma, where you now feel safer to connect with your body, we are all still living in a weight-stigmatized world where thin privilege exists. Food behaviors can change, but your body is still living in the same environment that continues to receive messages that it is not safe to be here as it is unless it looks a certain way. 

The whole idea of body image healing is not your sole responsibility.

There is a lot of work we need to do as a culture to treat bodies differently. This includes what we teach our children, the way different body shapes and sizes are talked about in movies and tv shows and books, the type of articles magazines write about moving away from talking about who gained or lost weight, and how the clothing industry dictates what style of clothes they will make based on the types of bodies they want to dress. This is not all on you. There is a much bigger picture here and that continuing to focus on the way our bodies look keeps us small and disempowered to not speak up about the other injustices we may be seeing in the world. It is hard to have the energy to fight when you're undernourished, 

Body image has also become a catch-all term. Like, what does body image healing even mean? There are many ways to perceive and experience your body. Body schema refers to the neurological representation of the body’s posture, position, and movement. Whereas body image describes the subjective feelings, thoughts, memories, evaluations, and attitudes of the body. When body image is talked about in media, magazines, and social media, it is often referring to what you can see. So we could define body image healing as updating and enhancing your overall interactions and relationship with your body, and that can include your perception of its appearance and how it functions and moves. 

From a somatic perspective, body image is not solely your perception of your body's look, but the felt sense of it. It's not just about your visual perception, but how you feel in your body shapes your experience of your body.

Body image struggles can be a form of body communication that you do not feel safe to be here.

Often, body image concerns increase when you're in a fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop state. This is because when you're in a survival response, your perception of the world, other people, and yourself changes. 

Think of it like a scared animal that feels like it is in danger and will see everything as a threat. When you're in a sympathetic nervous system response, everything becomes a cue of threat, including your own body. This can be why you wake up one day feeling well rested, look in the mirror and think, "ya know what, this body isn't so bad. I kinda like it." And then on another day where you didn't sleep well, you've had a fight with a loved one, you have too much on your plate, and you're feeling overwhelmed, and you look in the mirror and think, "Ugh. I look disgusting. Everything needs to change." 

Your body has not changed, but the nervous system state that you're viewing your body from has.

And, I find this is an important distinction when we're discussing body image healing because there can be this idea that you will arrive at this place where you unconditionally love your body, feel gratitude for it, and appreciate it every day for the rest of your life. This can feel like a lot of pressure to figure out how to get to this kind of relationship with your body, that doesn't exist for anyone, where you may find yourself engaging in familiar food coping mechanisms, because what's the point? If you can't figure out how to stop hating your body, then you might as well keep engaging in food behaviors that only make you feel short term safety and keep you at a distance from your body. 

So first, let's reframe that body image healing will look like still having days where you struggle to like the way your body looks, or moves, or functions. You will still experience days where you wish for a different body. There will still be parts of your body that no matter what you eat or how you move, you just don't like it. What will be different is the meaning you make out of these moments. Rather than getting panicked that you need to do something because of these body image concerns, you'll just observe the concern, acknowledge that you're having a difficult moment, and not have to react out or punish your body because of it. You will have a greater capacity to ebb and flow with your perception of your body and that some days you will absolutely like your body and appreciate the way it works and looks. 

Additionally, from the perspective of the work I do of Somatic Eating®, I teach others how to interpret body image concerns as body communication and what your body might be trying to say through worrying about your body's appearance. We will explore this at the end of this series in my Befriending Your Body Image Challenges with Somatic Eating® Practices Workshop, which I only teach once a year.

This will occur live on Wednesday, August 27th at 5:00 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 next month exploring all things body image with you, and I hope you all have a satiating and safety-producing rest of your day. Bye!