How Body Image Leads to Complacency in Life

In a society that is so focused on, to the point of obsessed with, body image and unreal expectations of perfect beauty it isn’t that surprising that even the smallest wavering’s from that ideal would attract our mirth and downright hatred. We feel unattractive, undesirable, like a fake, undeserving and yet yearning for our needs to be met; you get the idea. In a way these external quarks about our bodies become our only focus for these internal feeling states. Like if only I didn’t have … then I could have… We pour all our feelings into them believing and associating them with why we aren’t getting what we want and why we are stuck where we our. There are some benefits to this symbiosis if you will of body hatred. It allows us to step away from the uncomfortable feelings until we look into the mirror or focus on what we can’t seem to have which puts us face first with our target of hate. Unless of course it has come to a point where the body hatred is all pervasive and never relenting.

The Emotional Origins 

It allows us from realizing that these feelings of lack or disgust originate from inside ourselves because we bought into what society tells us about ourselves. It isn’t our extra weight that makes us feel like shit, don’t forget only a few hundred years ago extra weight was seen as the height of beauty and a status icon for higher class citizens. It is that we were told at some point to feel bad about who were inherently were, often times based on the most ridiculous measurements. The other thing it allows us to avoid is that we can simply choose to stop feeling this way. I can sense your anger at that statement, none the less it is true regardless of all the arguments your mind is shouting at you right now.

The Payoffs To This Behaviour

The other benefit that we receive from continuing our external based hatred is that it allows us to completely avoid taking risks. Well if I can’t get… because of… then why even bother. In this way we can insulate ourselves from having to reach out and be vulnerable, from having to try and maybe fail. It keeps us from having to dust ourselves of and try again, and maybe again, and maybe again learning along the way until we become successful by getting what we want. This body shaming and body hating is our ticket to complacency. In which ways does your body faux pas allow you to avoid taking risks, avoid taking responsibility for the fact that you can create the things in your life that you believe you can’t because of it? What are your body faux pas, when did they start and why? How have they benefited you up until now?

Behaviours That Are Out Of Alignment  

            It doesn’t just stop there; it can even be certain behaviors that we do that give us the same hatred focal point and the same outcome. Which behaviors that you do, or that you have begun to do make you feel the same way, like you will never have something in your life that you really want? When did it start and why? How do you feel about it? How has this pattern benefited you up until now? In the case of behaviors in some instances they aren’t actually in line with whom we are as healthy individuals; like my OCD, or smoking as examples. This doesn’t mean that we can’t create what we truly want as long as we have these behaviors, quite the opposite. But with both body and behaviors if we are out of balance then we can choose to work to get back into balance. What we need to do is hold the intention that it is for self-love that we are doing the work to get back into balance rather then because it will lead to us attaining the external outcome that we desire.

The Beginning of Letting Go

There also comes the point where you have to analyze where these judgments and baselines are coming from. Trying to bring the unhealthy teachings to light has been taken on by many individuals raising the call to question and heal. Yet we still go on buying into what is being churned out for us as beliefs and views about ourselves. Media, society as a whole it doesn’t matter. The people setting the standards are no different, no wiser, no smarter then you. They also represent a very small minority that is very out of touch with what real people actually find attractive. So it begs the question when will we stop letting others guide our views and finally ask ourselves what we find beautiful. What we find sexy? When we will stop allowing others to create our world, our reality, when will we own our own power to choose and to create? When will we let go and move forward? 

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Cheers,

Charlotte Brammer