For almost all of us, it is too easy to get into a thought that our body is not good enough. It feels inadequate, and you might feel like you need to constantly change what you are and what you look like, just to appear beautiful to others.
Some people get stressed over this thought and work on it much more than what is needed. It stops us from recognizing what we naturally are and how amazing we are. The way we see ourselves is the only important thing.
Negative body image refers to the unrealistic view in which someone sees themselves. It begins with a comparison of one’s body with the others. Both women and men face such issues, and it results in various mental and physical health problems.
We do not choose our body image, but when you look at yourself in a mirror, how you look at yourself and what you think about you matters.
Therapy might be an excellent way to overcome these kinds of issues. Here are seven ways of how therapy helps you overcome body image issues.
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Contents
Negativity to positivity
Most people are usually depressed about how they look, and they feel bad when they could do nothing about it. People face a lot of other problems just because they get depressed about body image issues.
Therapy helps you to look into reality and makes you love and accept yourself the way you are. It makes you understand your misconceptions and helps you in getting yourself some good vibrations.
Training your brain to think good things about yourself is very much essential. A therapist can help you discover who you are and educate you on how you can make yourself and your happiness a priority in a very practical way. Therapy enables you to overcome your body image issues positively and smoothly.
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Therapy Addresses Root Issues
Knowing the problem is essential, but what causes it is more important. When an unwanted plant grows in your garden, you cannot stop it from growing when you just cut down its stems. You need to pluck the root and throw it away to stop it from growing or spreading. Likewise, when you know an issue, just treating it doesn’t help.
Finding what causes it and trying to stop it helps you heal better and faster. Therapy addresses the root and finds why the issue exists in the first place because it is very challenging when you don’t know the reason behind your body image issue.
So, find a therapist who is trustworthy and who can help you find the source of your problems and help you suggest good ways to overcome negative body image.
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Long-lasting benefits
Generally, therapy works with the mentality of a person. A person who believes in something has it in their mind forever. Giving therapy to a person is like handling a three-year-old. They might have a lot of questions. But when we make them believe something is good, they catch up on that, and their minds adapt to the change.
When you are led towards a positive approach for more than once or twice, your brain is trained to view everything positively. Therapy might teach you to face your insecurities about body image or any other mental health issue, with a big smile on your face.
Your problems are broken down into small parts and solved one by one. This method of looking into a problem will stay with you until the end.
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Serves as a safe place
You might have good and trustworthy people as a part of your friends and family circle. But are they reliable enough to share the problems that you feel are intense? You might fear that they might take advantage of your weakness. You might worry that they might judge you when you share your problems. You would feel so naïve about this.
A therapist is a person who would never judge you. They provide you with a welcoming environment and make you feel free to open up. They wouldn’t scold you for how you are and blame you for the same, just like anybody else does. Instead, they would think of what can be done to fix what has happened. They would care for you and your future.
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Challenges negative thoughts
Clearing negative thoughts out of your mind is not simple, and it definitely cannot be done overnight. It needs time, and therapists take time. But they make sure that you get better day by day. It is just like bringing a person out of some addiction. Negative thoughts are worked upon day by day. As days grow, you start challenging negative thoughts and start falling more into becoming strong. You don’t do it intentionally, but it happens gradually.
Reducing negativity and getting into positivity happens simultaneously. When it comes to body image issues, challenging negativity helps you to do the best for yourself. Therapists help you in avoiding black and white thinking (thinking things in an extreme polarized way), blaming yourself for everything, stops you from seeing the negative aspect of any situation, and catastrophizing, which is imagining the worst possible outcomes of a situation.
Therapists help you take the breaks from negative thoughts and also make you put some logic into your own thoughts.
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Changes your behavior
Therapy increases your level of knowledge and awareness around the issue so that you make the right decisions on the “dealing with it” process. It is more like researching a house, knowing its benefits and disadvantages before taking a big step in buying it. Similarly, in therapy, you examine yourself and act accordingly.
Therapists make you know what you are. They help you with social liberation. They try to change your environment just for your positive behavior. When it comes to body image issues, you might be a person who is drinking, and you are surrounded by people who drink regularly. Think of the difficulty for you to quit drinking in such a scenario. So, they bring a change in your social environment to make changes easily. It helps you in self-revaluation, more like a clear focus on what you want to be and what you are. This makes you mentally stable and strong.
When days go by, you will end up in helping people come out of their worst situations. Who knows? You might even give motivational speeches and share your experiences.
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Relieves from self-criticism
Self-criticism is good when it helps you to motivate yourself and makes you believe that your performance could be better. But self-criticism becomes worst when people start considering themselves a failure and fit for nothing. This is a symptom of negative thinking. Negative thinking ends up in mental problems.
Physical health and mental health are interconnected. When you are mentally unwell, you lose concentration on your physical health, and it gets affected. When you are physically not well, your mental state gets weak and tired.
Self-criticism starts when you are unable to finish something. You might plan to reduce your weight, but you might get tired or be unable to make progress. At that time, when you visit a therapist, they will enlighten you on ways to deal with the barricades. So, this wouldn’t make you feel like a failure. They would never ignore your thoughts. They help you pay attention to your thoughts, change the channels, examine the intuition and gut feelings (which are not true always), replace the exaggeratedly negative thoughts with more realistic views and balance acceptance and self-improvements.
The Takeaway
Therapy might be a step to make your views on yourself healthier. It is not that you are beautiful only when you are slim, young, and have clear skin. Everybody is beautiful in their own ways. It is only that we need somebody to validate us to accept that. That somebody might be a therapist. Therapy is the best way for people who overthink, suffer from mental illness regarding body image issues.
Isn’t beauty all about becoming comfortable in your skin and knowing and accepting who you are? Loving yourself is the biggest revolution of all. Every person should love their looks and body the way it is. Aiming to be the best, the therapist helps you achieve that. Therapists take responsibility for your goals also. They help you in guiding you to find your purpose. They help you figure out how to solve the issues. Therapy becomes quite helpful when you’re not sure how to deal with your problems.
More than everything, therapists educate you on how to look at yourself. They educate you on your uniqueness. When you want to be somebody else, they make you understand that everybody cannot be the same. So, if you are dealing with your body image issues, therapy might be your safest bet.
There is a huge demand for therapists, especially for those who are available online. If you think that your personality matches these traits of a therapist, you can consider a career in counseling, and to begin with, there are plenty of counseling or therapy jobs available online.
