23: Body Image Advice: Healing Our Relationships with our Bodies, Body Size, & Weight
Unfortunately in today’s world, having an unhealthy relationship with our body can be all too common. I, for one, have felt like I am at war with my body for many years. Today I talk openly about my own struggles with body image. I also answer 2 questions: one from someone who has always felt like the “fat friend” and one from someone who has stopped eating due to anxiety.
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If you feel like you need help with an eating disorder, please reach out to the National Eating Disorder Hotline at (800) 931-2237 or visit their website here.
Episode References:
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
CONNECTING TO YOUR BODY MEDITATIONS
Or sign up for a free-trial of Headspace! Headspace has many different meditations, including meditations to help with mindfulness, stress, and sleep.
Resource Round Up
Become curious about your relationship with your body.
Write down the beliefs and criticisms you have about your body.
Tell your body that you love it every day.
Become curious about the feelings arising. Anxiety, etc.
Ground into your body through yoga, weights, and meditation.
*Listen to the episode for more specifics about each suggestion.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
5:13 Teaching
18:18 Listener Question 1
29:19 Listener Question 2
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NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher (Intro) 0:00
Welcome to New View Advice, a safe place for you to ask your most vulnerable questions about life, relationships, healing, and so much more. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I believe our fears and traumas are often what holds us back from living life to the fullest. Join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever is holding you back from being your best self. Let's get started. Hey, they're beautiful. My name is Amanda Durocher. And this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast. So what that means is, I am here to answer your questions for you along your healing journey. I am here to be transparent with you about my own healing journey and to have these tough conversations. And for us to help each other heal and to grow. Along my own healing journey, I found that doing the inner work was the best gift I ever gave myself, but at times it can feel really lonely. So my intention is to create a safe space where we can do this together and to feel less alone. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode, today we are going to be talking about body image and how complicated our relationship with our bodies can be, and how important it is to heal our relationships with our bodies, we only have one body. So it's so important to learn to love our bodies. So not only do we have to learn to love the inner children with us, and our emotions, and every aspect of us, even parts be considered bad, we have to learn to love all of ourselves. And part of that is learning to love our bodies. We live in a culture and a world that really teaches us to punish our bodies, or is constantly advertising, why our body is bad, and things that can fix it. And we live in a world with so many people who have complicated relationships with their body, and we're fed body images that all kind of look the same through movies. I know that's starting to change. But if Ron is we still turn on the TV and see a hell of a lot of skinny people and a certain type of skinny people, like a size zero skinny. And it creates subliminal messages for us about our own relationships with our body. And I know for me, somebody who was raped. In my past that created a very complicated relationship with my body for a very long time, I punished my body for what I had experienced and what I have gone through. And that is very common for sexual assault victims, to punish themselves and to punish their bodies for what they have experienced. People also punish their bodies who have experienced other types of physical abuse. People also punish their bodies, if other people have punished their bodies emotionally or physically. So even if somebody was called fat, that can cause them to punish their bodies, and continue to punish themselves for that pain that was inflicted upon them. People also punish their bodies if they're complimented for being skinny, right, we're going to talk about somebody who feels overweight and struggles with that. And somebody who struggles with not eating, we're going to talk about both sides of this coin today, this body image issue, we're going to talk about how complicated this is. And we live in a culture where you're either too big or too skinny. And it's so complicated. And it's our job to learn to love ourselves where we're at. And with the body we have, and to create a healthy relationship with our bodies, and to love our bodies. So I know that this is something I've struggled with, and I still struggle with. I'll be transparent at the beginning here, that I am still working on my relationship with my body. And I'm really excited to have this conversation. So I just wanted to mention quickly before I jump into talking about things I've learned from my own healing journey with my body, I just wanted to quickly mention that I am planning on doing a sober course this January. So that might sound intimidating, but it's really just going to be about healing our relationships with alcohol. So it's for somebody sober, curious, all the way to somebody who has been sober for X amount of years. And we're going to walk through our relationships with alcohol, and how alcohol may be a way that we're using to cope and to numb out from our feelings, our mental thoughts, a way we punish our bodies. I'll bring that up today in my healing journey with my body, and how alcohol can affect our spiritual connection, our connection to Source and to our higher selves and to our souls. So I just believe that so many people can heal their relationship with alcohol, and can develop a healthier relationship with it. And for a lot of people that may be disconnecting from alcohol. And for a lot of people that may be just becoming aware of why and when they drink, and becoming aware of the thoughts around alcohol in the feelings that they may be numbing when they pick up a drink so that they can maybe pick up something else next time and create a healthier relationship with alcohol. So I'm just very passionate about healing our relationships with alcohol, I think that there can be a lot of shame around quote unquote, being alcoholic or having a drinking problem. And this course is just about bringing awareness to our relationship with alcohol and creating healing together in a collective so I'm super excited about that. So if you're interested, feel free to sign up for my newsletter at www.newviewadvice.com So that's all I wanted to say here at the beginning. So let's jump into talking about body image and how we can heal our relationships with our bodies.
Amanda Durocher (Teaching) 5:13
I just want to start this episode with a little conversation about my relationship with my body, I want to be really transparent here about how much I've struggled with my own relationship with my body, and how I've honestly felt like I've been at war with my body for a very long time. And it was only recently that I really became aware of how much I've been punishing my body. It was really through the last year through my sober journey that I realized, I've been punishing my body for a very long time. And so I have been working to change this relationship. But I'm not perfect. And I still use food as a coping strategy. So that's not the healthiest relationship I can have with food. And I'm not perfect, but the less I judge myself, the easier it becomes, and the less self judgment I add on, then it creates a better relationship for me in my body, which as I've mentioned, I'm still healing. So for me, I went sober February 1. And it was in the first couple months of my sober journey, that I really saw how much I had been punishing myself with alcohol. And I had been punishing my body. And that alcohol was a way I was using to numb some feelings and some thoughts and some anger I had. And it also was punishing, my body hangovers didn't feel good. And I would punish my body with drinking. And then with feeling awful the next day, and with the food and the health choices I was making, and that I was punishing my body for some repressed trauma. So I'm not gonna go too much into that today. But if you've listened to any of my episodes, you know that I was raped in my past. And I talk about that a lot on these episodes. So if you're somebody who has experienced sexual assault, or rape, feel free to listen to really any episode. And I oftentimes go into that and how being raped and sexually assaulted has affected so many areas of my life, one of them being my body. So I believe when we're raped, it affects us an emotional level, a mental level, a spiritual level, and a physical level. And so I punished my body for the trauma that was living in it, this trauma I experienced, lived in my body, that's how trauma works. And it could be a big T, like rape or even little tease. So the criticisms people say to us over and over again, live in our bodies, if we don't release it, and let it go, if it stings and it gets stuck. And so that lives on our bodies to so many of us can feel that uncomfortability in our bodies, and find ways to numb it. So mine was alcohol. And I know other people numb with food or with disconnecting from our bodies. So our relationships with our bodies are very complicated. So one, our bodies hold the trauma. And a great book that discusses this as the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Vander Kolk. It's a great book that goes into the science and the research behind how the body keeps the trauma stored in it. And this can be a major reason why people punish their body subconsciously. And for me, I know this was true that I was punishing my body for so much trauma had experienced and a lot of my coping strategies were things that punish my body, such as poor diet and alcohol. And again, I'm not saying you should only eat a salad, I'm just saying that you should become aware of your relationship with food, because it can often be a way we punish ourselves. So we can either withhold food, withhold the nutrients, we need to be healthy and strong. Or we can over indulge in things that aren't good for us as a way to punish ourselves. I invite you to explore your relationship with food, because that can oftentimes be very eye opening to our relationships with our bodies. So trauma has obviously affected my relationship with my body, but also society. You know, as a woman, I am flabbergasted by the messages. We are sending young women, children and adult women on a regular basis. So I recently turned 30. I turned 30 Over the weekend, and I found myself having these thoughts about being old. Right leading up to my 30th birthday. I've been having these thoughts about Am I old when I'm 30 because there's so much messaging about Yes, you are like you're talking to a woman who's 40 and she laughs at you at 30 for saying you're old, but it's the messaging of our society that makes me feel that way. We are thrown images of 22 year olds and of women getting Botox in their 20s and 30s at such young ages, and women having plastic surgery and women looking a certain way and young beauty being praised. Right so it's not that I'm crazy. are wrong for having these thoughts about being old. It's about becoming aware of where this messaging is coming from. These laws aren't true. But these thoughts aren't coming from nowhere. And I have noticed that and for a long time, as somebody who aspires to have their movies on the big screen, I'm very aware of the programming from movies, and the subliminal messaging for movies. And when you turn on the TV, when you turn on the TV, you see a lot of skinny people. And the larger people, you notice, because they're surrounded by size zeros, the TV in the movies does not reflect the real world, it doesn't reflect the body sizes we see on an everyday basis. But those messages start to sink in. What is beauty, you know, like this TV character is praised for their beauty. I know that I took these messages in hardcore. As a teenager, I used to love shows like The OSI and wintry hell, and I would try to imitate these people. And so I would do some of the weird things that people do on TV shows, and I would find that they weren't cool. But I also had a lot of body image issues, because the show's had really skinny women who a lot of them are actually in their 20s. But I felt like I looked like a child, which I was. And I really internalized a lot of this messaging that my body wasn't beautiful, that I was fat, that society wanted me to be smaller. I think a lot of women internalize that message. That to be beautiful, you have to be small, that as a woman, you should be small. Well, that was hard for me, because I wasn't as small as all the other girls in my school, and I look back, and I'm like, I was teeny tiny. I wasn't fat at all. But I told myself, I was sat like every day. And this carried throughout college and into my 20s. And when I moved to LA, I became my smallest. And I always wanted to be smaller, I would hit my goal weight, and I would just want to be smaller. And what I now see is that it was never about size, it was about having a bad relationship with my body. And then for me, as I've mentioned in previous episodes of again, I'm not gonna go too much into this, but I had repressed trauma come up. So I had disassociated from being raped in my childhood. And this came up in my 20s. And I ended up gaining a lot of weight when these memories came up, because I really dived into unhealthy coping strategies. So eating and drinking, I did a lot of that when my memories first came up. And then this made my self esteem even worse, you know, I gained weight I wasn't small, even though I always considered myself that it was so complicated. And I only talk about all this because I'm hoping people out there can relate to feeling like your body's never good enough. So today, the healing isn't about changing what you eat, stopping drinking, or whatever going on a diet. No today is about healing your relationship with your body. And becoming aware of your relationship with your body are aware of your relationship around food, aware of your relationship around substances. And it's about bringing awareness and intention and love to your body. We are taught to punish our bodies in this world. And so many people have unhealthy relationships with their bodies and self sabotage their bodies and hurt their bodies. For me, I am still healing my relationship with my body. It's not perfect, but I have brought a lot of awareness. And that's really the first step. And I've become aware of why I was punishing my body. And I've had to do a lot of healing around that. I also for a long time was very disconnected from my body. So a lot of people are disconnected from their bodies. And so it's important to start grounding, jumping into our bodies. Sometimes our bodies hold so much trauma, and so many hard feelings that we check out of them. And we live in like the top half of our body and we don't fully ground into our body because maybe we live with an anxious stomach. So we check out. And it's important to check into your body, to be in your body and to move those feelings that might be keeping you out of your body move that trauma. And what I've started to do is question the messages I've internalized, like 30 is old 30 is not old. I do not want to go back to 22 I am so grateful to be 30 I am so grateful to be done with my 20s if anybody's in their 20s on their roof, I swear it gets better. Life gets better. I am so grateful to not be 22 yet there's so much of society that praises that beauty, and would want me to stay 22 forever. I'm so glad I survived my 20s A lot of my 20s felt like holy shit. Is this ever gonna end? Am I ever going to feel like I'm stepping into myself and that's what my 20s were my 20s were for healing and my 20s were learning who I really am. And I think that's a lifelong question but really becoming more in tune with myself and connecting back to myself. So I'm so grateful for my 20s but don't want to be 20 And another thing That has helped me along my healing journey is to be really loving to my body. So, to incorporate into meditation, I love you body, really looking at your body, knowing that you only have one body in this life. This is the body that you came here to live. Don't you want to love it? Aren't you grateful for it? This is the body that allows you to hug your loved ones that allows you to speak your truth that allows you to see what's true in this life that allows you to watch your kids grow up, that allows you to see and feel the beach to feel nature. That's your body's gift to you. Wow, that makes me love my body. Getting in tune with that. All these things I love to do. Writing, the hand I write with is my body's hand. The mouth I speak to you with through this podcast is the mouth of the body I have I have one of them to show up in this life. How much love can you have for your body? How much gratitude? Can you love it no matter what size you are? Can you nourish it? And can you remind yourself of how grateful you are for this life. And this body is what allows you to live this life. Like I've said, our relationships with our bodies are complicated. And I've had to do a lot of healing, I have stored a lot of trauma in the lower half of my body. So for me, diving into a yoga practice has really helped me to release a lot of that trauma. But it also can be hard. Right? You know, I can do yoga, and I can cry the whole time because emotions are releasing. And that's not easy. But the more we release from our bodies, the more grounded we can be in them, and the more peaceful they can feel. And that can be really healing. So as I've mentioned, the body holds the trauma. So I think all these episodes we've done really are important. And it's important to heal from so much because that trauma is held in your body. And it's important to release that from your body, so that your body is free of that trauma and your body feels more comfortable for you. Because it can be uncomfortable to hold on to all that baggage, it can be like having a weight on your back. That gets piled on heavier and heavier and heavier, until we start releasing it. That's just an intro about my relationship with my body. And how by bringing it back to gratitude and seeing how important my body is for this life, is helping me to show up better for my life and to have a better relationship with my body. So I hope that that was helpful for someone that was a little vulnerable for me. So I hope that that transparency helps someone and I just want you to know that whatever size your body is, it's perfect. You are perfect. You are loved. And I believe that the more we love our bodies, the more we feel better in our bodies, right? I feel better in my body when I look at it with love than when I look at it with hate. You know, our bodies reflect back to us how we feel about ourselves. So I think it's so important to heal our relationships with our bodies. Let's jump into two questions.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 18:18
Dear New View Advice I've struggled with self esteem and body image issues my whole life. I feel like I've always been the fat friend. I've never been the prettiest, the skinniest or the sexiest. This has led me to really hate my body. I constantly wish I looked different. And find myself very critical of the way I look. This has amplified in the past year because I've gained more weight. And I'm the heaviest I've ever been. What can I do to shift this relationship with my body? Thank you so much for this question. I think that a lot of people can relate to this question. And I know I can relate to this question. And there's been times I really hate my body. And I think that this is a great conversation for us to have. And I think a lot of people have gained weight in the past year. Your question talks about gaining weight and the next question actually talks about losing a lot of weight over the pandemic. But both questions have a similarity of A unhealthy relationship with our bodies. And what I mean by unhealthy is a unloving relationship with our bodies. That is not healthy, it is not healthy to hate our bodies. So I will be talking about this from a healing perspective. This is not medical advice. I am not a doctor, but I am going to talk to you about healing your relationship with your body, which oftentimes when we heal our wounds around our body, we are able to show up differently in our lives and create new choices and more loving choices towards our body. And that is different for everyone. So first, I want to say that it sounds like you're really hard on yourself, calling yourself the fat friend and saying that you've never been the prettiest, the skinniest or the sexiest. I'm so sorry. You feel this way about yourself. I'm so sorry that our society has made it that beauty is a competition. I believe beauty is an inside job. I believe that we can all be equally the pretty Just, we can all be beautiful, we can all be beautiful, and sexy. And I'm sorry that you've put the skinniest on this list, like being the skinniest would bring you happiness. Because what I found, as I mentioned that when I'm at my skinniest, and when I'm at my heaviest, I still have had a bad relationship with my body. And I always felt like wherever I was at still wasn't good enough, I still could be thinner, I could still be prettier, I could still be whatever external thing I was putting on my body. But our relationships with our bodies are often very critical. As you've mentioned, you're very critical of the way you look. And this is just more negative self talk. So having a negative relationship with our bodies, or a hard relationship with our bodies, or critical relationship with our bodies, it's not good for our self esteem, it's not good for that self talk. So I want to help you to heal from this in the first thing I recommend is to start looking at where this pattern started from. When did you start identifying as the fat friend? When did you start identifying as not pretty, not sexy? Not skinny? When did you start identifying this way? Because I don't think the word fat has to be a negative thing, either. You know, we're not all skinny. So that's not necessarily a bad thing. Somebody can be fat. You know, I hear people talk about it on Tik Tok all the time. And I love the conversation around it. It's like, Yes, I am fat. But I still love myself. So fat doesn't have to be a negative word. But here, it sounds like you're using it like a negative word. So I want you to start asking yourself, when did you start identifying as the fat friend? And start identifying with that being negative? How old were you? Was this something your mother criticized you for? Was this something that you learned in school? I find with a lot of these type of wounds, there's a moment where we go from not knowing it, to identifying with it. So a moment when we start realizing that we are different, or we start identifying as different. As I've been through my healing journey with my body, I can think of a few times when I felt that way. When I felt like the fat friend or I felt like the ugly friend, or I felt like I wasn't pretty but my friends were. And I've had to sit with that. And for me that started around age seven. How sad is that? That as a young girl, at age seven, I felt ugly. It could be younger for you. But these are societal programs that are really inherent in our culture, and external beauty. And what that means is ingrained in our society, especially here in the United States. And it's not true. As I go through my healing journey, beauty is an inside job. If you feel beautiful and confident people will feel that too. There are people I know who aren't the quote unquote, traditional version of beautiful, and they walk in a room and I'm like God, she's so beautiful. God, he is so attractive. And it's that competence and that self love. They're exuding that we're actually attracted to, yes, there are people who are just undeniably beautiful. But like I said, when somebody is confident, it's also undeniable. It's undeniable. When somebody loves themselves when they walk in a room, it is contagious. And many people can also be really jealous of it. So a lot of people can go, Oh my God, that person loves themselves. I want some of that, or people can be like, Can you believe how full of themselves that person is. But the more you embody that self love, the more you won't care about the haters. There's always going to be somebody to put you down no matter how much you weigh. I watched the Taylor Swift documentary on Netflix about a year ago. And she talks about it, that she struggles with body image issues that she felt like she was too fat or too thin. She was never felt good enough in her body. And she's Taylor Swift. She's gorgeous. She's successful. So many people love her. But so many people tear her down too. So it doesn't matter who you are. So many people in our society struggle with body image issues. So as I mentioned, I want you to start identifying when you first started to feel this way, and to really sit with that. And what I mean by that is to start becoming aware of your feelings, the feelings that are arising does this make you anxious? sad, angry? Is it hard to look at, stay with it? Stay with it. It is something you already experienced. It is not happening in the present moment. But these feelings live in our bodies as if we're experiencing it again. But I promise you are safe. You are safe. It is safe for you to go there, too. I invite you to start writing down all the self critical things you say about yourself. So make a note in your phone. carry around a journal but notice all the times you say something critical about yourself. Start bringing awareness to how cruel you are to yourself. Because sometimes we need to start seeing these things outside of our heads to become really aware of how bad the problem is. So for you to start loving your body, you need to take an inventory of how much you hate your body. And that might be really hard to look at. So I just want you to know that this is something I have done, but in pieces. So for me, I didn't write down everything at once. But you could try that as well. But for me, I usually become aware of one or two criticisms. And I'll start to become aware of those. Because usually, it's like the thoughts we catch will catch one thought, and then we'll catch it all the time when it starts to pop up, because we already caught it. And I'll become aware of one or two thoughts, and then I'll start becoming curious about this thought, is this thought true? Where did this come from, bring curiosity to your journey with your body, bring curiosity to yourself. And the third thing I want you to do is I want you to start looking in the mirror, and telling yourself how much you love your body, and complimenting every part of your body. So I want you to stand in front of the mirror naked, a lot of us are actually really uncomfortable looking at our own naked bodies. It is your body, there is nothing shameful there. Your body is sacred. Your body is a temple, your body deserves to be praised by you loved by you, not shamed by you. So I want you to start loving your body, I want you to, after you take a shower, stand in front of the mirror, become aware of this is uncomfortable for you. I know when I started doing this, I was really uncomfortable with actually looking at my body. So many times when I would look in the mirror, I wouldn't look below my head, I wouldn't actually look at my body, become in relationship with your body. My guess is you are disconnected from your body. Because you feel so much shame and hatred around it. So I want you to start connecting with it, I want you to look in the mirror. And again naked. I don't want you to wear clothes. And I want you to tell yourself how much you love your body, from your toes to the top of your head. Toes, I love you. Legs, I love you. Knees, I love you and go up your body. I want you to compliment your genital area. If you're a man or a woman, your vagina, your penis, we can say those words, they are not shameful. I want you to compliment your butt, I want you to tell yourself, you have the cutest butter round, you have the hottest, but whatever word feels good for you, I want you to look at your body and to tell it you love it. And this might be hard at first, you might be thinking when you're doing this, I don't really believe any of this. Keep doing it. Keep practicing it. I know when I practice affirmations, and some of this self love practice where I'm trying to retrain my brain. It can be really hard for me at first, and I don't believe it. But the more I do it, the more I do believe it. And the more I see how truthful it is. Honor your body, love your body, and move up your entire body. I invite you to hug yourself. Give yourself a big hug every day. And say I love you. I love you, buddy. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to live here and to be on Earth. Thank you. Thank you, buddy. So I invite you to practice that as well. That self love that loving your body practice. Again, I know it sounds maybe silly, or even scary. That is a beautiful practice. And that is a great way to start loving yourself telling every inch of your body how much you love it. So I hope something in that answer helps. And I hope one of those practices really resonates for you. And I just want you to know that what you're going through is so common. It doesn't make it any less unfortunate, and any less sad to hear. Because I know your body is amazing. Your body allowed you to write in this question. Your body has the ears that allows you to listen to this episode. Your body is a gift to the earth. And all the gifts you're going to bring to this earth will be manifested through that beautiful body of yours. So I'm sending you so much love today. Thank you for this question.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 29:19
Dear New View Advice over the past year, I've lost a lot of weight. I find that I don't eat when I'm stressed and anxious. And I have had a lot of anxiety recently. I know I should be eating but I'm just not hungry. This has been a pattern that I've picked up in childhood. I know it's a problem, but I don't know what to do. Any advice? Thank you for this question. I think that this is a great question. And I know other people who have had a similar question. So I think that this question is helpful for a lot of people. And I am really sorry that you've had a lot of stress and anxiety. And I'm sorry that you are seeing this taken out on your body and I want to To help you become more connected with your body, because what I think is happening here is that you're very disconnected with your body. You're not eating because you think you're not hungry, but our bodies need food to feel nourished. And I want to help you ground into your body because I think that could really help you. I also just wanna start this question with I am not a doctor, I do not have a medical degree. So I can't help you with the nourishment you may need. I don't know where you're at with not eating. I know, friends who have struggled with extreme anorexia and have had to do inpatient treatment. And friends who use not eating as a coping strategy, and talk about it in therapy, but don't need that inpatient step. So I just want to invite you, depending on where you're at, to really explore if you need more help than what I can offer you. Okay, so I want to start this question with talking about how I think you're really disconnected from your body, and how we can ground into your body. Because I found on my journey, that I actually didn't know what hunger felt like in my body until I started grounding into my body. So for like, the first 25 years of my life, I actually didn't know what hunger felt like. And I just always thought I was hungry, or I assumed I was hungry, but I was really disconnected. And I would get really hangry, which is a term that people use for people when they get angry, because they're so hungry. So I was so disconnected from my body, that anger would be the sign that told me I was hungry, not pings in my body. And that's because I wasn't in my body. I don't think you are in your body, you need to drop in your body. But a lot of people who struggle from constant anxiety don't want to drop into their body because anxiety is a very uncomfortable emotion. Anxiety is very uncomfortable. So for you, I think you need to drop into your body. And how you can do this is through a meditation practice, becoming really in tune with your body and visualizing your chakras. So I talked about the chakras on one of the episodes. So I'm just going to just talk about them coming up the spine, but I want you to visualize yourself grounding or visualize a white column of energy dropping into your root chakra. So the base of your spine, and become really in tune with feeling that base of your spine, feel your butt sitting on the seat, or lying down. And there's a lot of body meditations out there, I'll link some in the show notes. become in tune with your sacral chakra that's right below your belly button, feel into that become in tune with that while you are sitting in meditation, drop into your solar plexus right above your belly button. How does that feel? Do any of these feelings feel tight, or uncomfortable, just become aware, but send this white light to these parts of your body. And now visualize a white light reaching your heart. And you know where that is the center of your chest, visualize a white light reaching your throat. So the center of your throat, your third eye in the middle of your forehead and your crown chakra at the top of your head. And really spend time in each of these major energy centers. And feel what it feels like in your body breathe into these spots. But this could be a great way for you to ground to I invite you to start doing yoga, and to start dropping into your body through a yoga practice, or an exercise practice. So I don't recommend cardio for you for grounding into your body because cardio can keep us in fight or flight actually, and can keep us out of our bodies, because it activates the part of our nervous system that keeps us in fight or flight with cardio. So you want to drop into your body. So I recommend strength training, weights, or a yoga practice. This can be really good about getting in touch with your body and seeing what parts of you are tight. I think for a second thing you need to start looking at your anxiety. You need to start becoming in relationship with why you're anxious, why you are worried why you're living in the future and fears of the future. So anxiety is living in the future depression is living in the past. So it sounds like you have a lot of fears of the future. The fear of what's going to happen is keeping you out of the present moment, which is keeping you ungrounded which is keeping you disconnected from your body. What are you so worried about? Write it down journal about it? Did somebody teach you to worry about everything. I know that this is often a familial pattern. So oftentimes people who have worried parents create worried patterns or children who were forced to take care of their parents. So we're very codependent children take on all the worries for the household because they had irresponsible parents. So then they grow up and continue to caretake and worry about everybody except for themselves. So that could be what's happening here is that you're not taking enough time to take care of yourself, but you're not eating is a sign that there is something wrong. You are out of connection with your body, you're out of alignment. You are not in good relationship with yourself. It is not a nonchalant thing. Again, you have one body, please take care of it. Please get in relationship with it. Please learn to love it. It's hard, but it is worth it. And it is work we all need to do. I also invite you to ask yourself if you have subconscious messaging around being thin, a lot of women, I don't know if you're a woman, or if you're a man or if you are non gender specific. But I know for women, we are taught to stay small. And one way we do this is with our bodies. One thing is that society complements us when we lose weight. I don't know if you've ever noticed that. But if you go on a diet and you lose weight, you'll be like, Oh my God, you look so great. Why? Why do I look better now than I did then, too. We're just taught to be little like I said, if you look on the TV, it's skinny women, thin men. You do see different size men, but people are thin on TV. People are thin and we program it into our minds to stay little Glennon Doyle has talked a lot about this through her books. So I invite you to take a look at maybe some of her readings. My favorite Glennon Doyle book is untamed. I think that that is an amazing book for everyone to read. And she talks about how she really believes she was supposed to be small and teeny, tiny. And you know, I believe this about myself, I'll finally feel worthy. Once I'm hit a certain weight, I'll finally feel worthy when I'm small. And I've had people compliment me when I'm skinny. And that feels good. That's external validation, though. And then that reinforces when I gain weight, that I'm no longer worthy of that praise. So I think as a society, we really need to stop commenting on other people's weight, we need to stop just assuming it's a good thing when people lose weight. And it's bad thing when people gain weight. Because for you, it doesn't sound like you've lost weight in in a healthy way. Or for health reasons. It sounds like you're disconnected from your body. So you're losing weight. And so if you're getting reinforced compliments, that that's a good thing. That's not sending your subconscious, healthy messaging. So I invite you to become really curious about your messages around being skinny. And if this has something to do with your relationship with your body, who has told you, it's good to be skinny, who has told you it's important to be small, who has reinforced to you the importance of being thin? Become very curious with yourself. This is something that, as I mentioned, is so ingrained in our society. So your answer could just be TV? Your answer could be I have a very thin mother, and she made me believe being thin was important. It could be that people have complimented you, the thinner you get, and you'd like that external validation. And so if this ends up being the case, that there's an external part there, that means that you need to start an internal dialogue with yourself, and you need to start giving yourself Self Love that has nothing to do with your weight. So I invite you to try the naked practice, I recommend it in the previous question where you start telling yourself you love your body, where you're at how much you love your body. And I invite you to get in tune with how you're feeling in your body. Is your body tired? Is your body feeling good? Do you feel strong? You feel strong and capable to go throughout the day? How are you feeling in your body. But I think that connecting with that anxiety will help you to become more aware of how you're actually feeling in your body. And it sounds like there might be some tough feelings that you have to start dealing with. Anxiety can feel overwhelming. But as somebody who went from having constant anxiety, to no longer suffering from anxiety, and not even realizing how anxious I was until the anxiety was gone. What I can tell you is that healing is what got rid of my anxiety. The more I looked at, the more fears I healed the more trauma I healed the more of my past I looked at. And I realized how much of my past I was playing out today how many fears from my past I was still carrying around with me, the more I healed that the more my anxiety healed and left. Now I don't live with anxiety. Now if I become anxious, it's information for myself. I'm like I'm anxious what's going on. So I invite you to become really curious with yourself through I feel like I threw a lot at you here. So I want you to become curious about your messaging around being skinny. I want you to become curious about your anxiety. I want you to become curious about how you feel in your body. I invite you to become really curious. So I hope something in this answer helped. And I just want you to know that you are lovable no matter what weight you are. And it is so important for you to drop into your body because your body is not there to punish you. That's another thing I want us all to remember here. Our body is there to give us information. Our body does not want to be punished for being the messenger. Right? that anxiety is a message to you. And it's either anxiety about something in your present or it's anxiety about a fear of the future. But it's just information and the trauma your body holds your body is not punishing you If your body's holding that, so you can heal it and move through it and become the best version of yourself. So we all need to start loving our bodies, thanking our bodies, and no longer punishing our bodies for being the messengers of our soul. So I am sending you so much love today. Thank you for this question.
Amanda Durocher (Outro) 40:24
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. I hope you enjoyed today's episode about body image. I know that this is such a huge topic that we could talk about for a month. So I want you to know that this is an intro to this topic. And this is an intro into healing. And if you have more questions on body image, I am here to answer those. So I wanted to do a quick research Roundup. So the first thing I recommend, and I recommend this to everyone is to become curious about your relationship with your body. And ask yourself questions about why you feel the way you do about your body become curious about the criticisms write down the criticisms. And that was another thing I recommended today. But start becoming aware of the messages you tell your body and where these came from, to as I mentioned, I invite you to write these down. Three, I invite you to love your body and to look in front of the mirror everyday naked. This is beautiful for everyone. Because we are programmed that our bodies are shameful. There is nothing shameful about your body. There's nothing shameful about your desires with your body. There's nothing shameful about your sexuality. There's nothing shameful about your gender, or your non gender. There's nothing shameful about that beautiful body of yours. So I want you to start telling it that you love it. And for I invite you to come curious about your anxiety and any feelings that might be in your body. And I also invite you to another resource is grounding into your body through meditation, yoga, and a weight practice. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode, I wanted to take a moment to just say that if you are struggling with an eating disorder, I wanted to give a hotline number. So there is a eating disorder helpline. And this is for people who struggle with binge eating, overeating and under eating. And the number for this hotline is 1-800-931-2237. As I've mentioned, I'm not a doctor. And if you feel like the advice I gave here is just not hitting it for you and you really feel like you're struggling with an eating disorder. I invite you to call that helpline and to talk to a professional and to get some help. As I've mentioned, I've felt like I'm at war with my body. And I just want us all to start becoming in relationship and in love with our bodies. Thank you again for joining me Amanda Durocher for another episode of New View Advice. As always, I'm so grateful to be here with you and to offer a new view on whatever you may be going through. sending you all my love. See you next time
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
