“I’m just so sick of struggling… how long is it going to take to feel better??”
My private coaching client, who I’ll call Rachel here, struggles with severe body dysmorphia and chronic anxiety.
Rachel has been working her butt off over the last few months to feel better, and can sometimes get pretty down on herself for not seeing progress fast enough. (For the record, this particular client has enthusiastically encouraged me to share her story, and I think her story will feel familiar for a lot of you, so I’m very happy to do so!)
Whenever I start working with a new client, my goal is to help them identify the deeper underlying reasons for their struggles, because even when it seems irrational and is making us miserable, our patterns of chronic suffering are always trying to help or protect us in some way.
When Rachel came to me, I had her take the Body Image Avatar Self-Assessment Quiz, and start exploring the first steps of my Body Neutrality Blueprint (the system I outline in my book BODY NEUTRAL), to help us quickly gain insight into the specific and unique underlying reasons that her body dysmorphia and anxiety might exist; the specific subconscious strategy to help/protect her that they might be a part of.
Rachel identified with the Self-Objectifier and the High Achiever body image avatars, and soon after realized her body anxiety was based around an underlying belief that the only way to have worth and value in the world is to successfully meet certain social ideals, and be the best at everything society says is important.
This powerful insight offered Rachel a lot of clarity and a deep sense of relief, because it was the first time she understood why she cared so damn much about how she looked and what people thought about her all the time! It gave her a way of understanding her own suffering, and the hope that she could finally fix the “problem” and start feeling better.
A few weeks later, however, Rachel started feeling hopeless again, and when I asked her why she said it was because her big breakthrough wasn’t making her feel any better yet!
This is the hard part of any healing journey, which you probably know if you’ve ever struggled with mental health or body image issues. Insight and clarity are powerful and helpful, but they only point you in the right direction– it’s what you do with that information that actually helps you feel better! It’s the doing part that really matters, and the doing part takes time.
After a lifetime of believing your worth is dependent on how closely you conform to beauty ideals and dominate in your relevant social hierarchies, it’s not like you can just magically convince yourself that actually— nevermind, none of that is true after all!
You wouldn’t come to believe you needed to earn or prove your worthiness to others, if you already felt worthy, and you wouldn’t be obsessing over (or trying to manage) how people perceived you if you believed you could get your needs for love, respect, connection, and belonging met without changing yourself.
Once you’ve identified the underlying purpose or reason for your suffering is when the real work of healing can begin. The work of understanding, dismantling, and breaking patterns. The work of gaining and improving various skills and tools. The work of learning to trust yourself, getting your needs met, and rewriting your beliefs.
The truth is that the body neutrality process I developed works, but the process is rarely fast or easy. And when you’re struggling with the intense pain of body dysmorphia anxiety on a daily basis, even seeing small improvements can feel like failure.
Since her first big “breakthrough,” Rachel has been courageously experimenting with different strategies for self-care, self-acceptance, and self-advocacy, as well as working to cultivate rejection-resilience, more intimate and nourishing relationships, and a stronger connection with her own body and self. She’s been completely kicking ass, and will readily admit that things are getting better, but sometimes she’s so focused on wanting to be at the end of this process that she can’t fully appreciate how far she’s come.
And here’s the thing– being miserable really sucks, and it’s normal to wish we could just wave a magic wand, skip to the end, and be done. Unfortunately, desperately wishing for things to go faster doesn’t make it so! In fact, more often than not, this kind of wishing for things to be different actually makes us feel worse and slows the whole process down!
So today I want to share what I recently said to Rachel, and what I often say to my clients when they’ve been working hard on deep, complex issues, and are frustrated that it’s taking so long.
Remember that healing is a journey, not a destination.You will have a relationship with yourself (and your body) for your whole entire life, and like all relationships, that relationship requires ongoing attention, care, and effort. There really is no end point at which the work is just “done,” and spending your time comparing your current self to an imaginary future self who has it all figured out (or who feels calm, confident, and happy) is a great way to make you feel worse, not better. Whenever you catch yourself wishing you could be at the end, or thinking about how far you still are from where you want to be, bring yourself back to the present moment, remind yourself that the journey is all we have, and pay attention to how far you’ve come.
Look for the “green lights.”Sometimes it can be hard to tell if you’re on the right path for healing and changing, because the payoff can be non-linear and slow. Luckily, there will be signs! I call these signs “green lights,” and paying attention to them can make you feel a little lighter and stick to the process, even when you’re in a part of the process that still sucks. A “green light” moment might be the first time you break a pattern, find yourself able to make a different choice than usual, or feel something different during a triggering or stressful situation. Rachel has had many of these green light moments over the last few months, including the first time she ate dessert without spiraling into a binge, the first time she opened up to her friends about her body insecurities, and the first time she forgot to weigh herself before bed. Keep an eye out for these “green light” moments, and when you notice them, think of them as affirmations that you’re on the right path and just need to keep going! It’s a lot easier to tolerate, accept, and embrace the dark moments when you know you’re moving toward the light.
Redefine success.If your definition of “success” when it comes to things like body image, self-worth, or mental health requires a complete absence of suffering, I have bad news for you. Nothing makes you feel more like a failure than comparing yourself against an unrealistic ideal, and nobody feels 100% calm, happy, and confident all the time. There is no such thing as a life free of pain or stress, and when shit hits the fan, our ingrained patterns of self-protection will always sweep in to try to rescue or project us… so odds are pretty good that your “stuff” will never disappear completely. Luckily, the frequency and intensity of that stuff can change pretty dramatically, as well as your relationship to it when it shows up! In order to come up with a more realistic definition of “success” on this journey, look for these changes:
A decrease in frequency of “lows.” Whether your “lows” are experienced as body dysmorphia episodes, panic attacks, binges, fights with your partner, an inability to perform daily tasks, or self-sabotaging behaviors, you’ll know your work is working if you start to notice these dark and painful moments are happening less often, or you find yourself going longer in between them.
A decrease in impact/intensity of “lows.”Improvement can sometimes be measured by how much these low moments impact your life, and how quickly you’re able to recover from them. If your low moments are less debilitating now than they used to be, or you notice yourself bouncing back from them faster than you used to, those are big green lights!
An increase in “highs.”Sometimes before your low moments start changing, success can be felt in other places! Is your “normal” state a bit calmer, safer, easier, or more positive than it used to be overall? Are your good moments feeling a little better, more frequent, or higher/deeper than they used to? These are all definite signs of success!
Your relationship to your suffering feels less adversarial.The more negative your relationship is to your own suffering, the more power it has to make you miserable. You can decrease the power it has over you by understanding its deeper reason for existing, stripping it of undue moral significance, and working to truly accept and integrate it. Try thinking of your suffering as an overprotective friend who is just trying to help you, rather than an enemy who is out to get you, and see if you can start relating to your issues in a way that feels less stressful, hostile, scary, or overwhelming when they show up. If so, this is a huge win!
I know the process of improving body image, self-worth, and mental health issues can be slow, but it is possible to feel better, so get the support you need and keep going!
And if you’re looking for high-level guidance on exactly how to get where you want to go (or just want to feel supported on the journey), I encourage you to apply for private coaching with me here!
This is what I do, and I’m looking to take on a few new private clients starting in December or January.
As always, feel free to hit reply to ask questions or let me know what you’re struggling with lately.
Big hug,
Jessi
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