49: Healing Body Image Issues: Advice for Body Image Acceptance and Healing Negative Self-Talk

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Jan 25

Body image issues negatively impact so many people in today’s world. Healing your relationship with your body and learning to love and accept your body often takes time and patience. In today’s episode, I discuss my own healing journey with body image issues, three ways I recommend for beginning to heal and love your body, and I answer a listener question about how to stop the negative thought spirals about body image.

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Journal Prompts:

Write down all the negative, critical, or judgemental thoughts you have about your body. Then take each thought and spend time on reflecting where this thought originated. Is this a new or old thought? Is this something you started telling yourself or is it something someone has said to you? Begin to bring awareness and curiosity to each of these thoughts/feelings.
When you think of accepting your body and loving your body, how do you feel in your body? Do you feel light and open? Or does this bring up anxiety? Resistance? Explore what feelings, emotions, and sensations arise when you think about loving and accepting your body exactly as it is today.
When did you first have negative feelings towards your body? This often happens in childhood or as a teenager. Explore what arises for you, and how this feels.
Download the full list of FREE journal prompts!

Book Suggestions:

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

Similar Episodes:

Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction (0:00-2:15)
Three factors that helped me heal my relationship with my body (2:15-15:45)
Three Practices to Assist with Healing Body Image Issues (15:45-25:30)
Listener Question (25:30-38:58)

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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. Hi, there beautiful souls. My name is Amanda. And this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast. And what I mean by that is that it is my intention to guide you along the healing journey. It is not my intention to give you all the answers, I believe you have all the answers you seek, you just may need a little guidance and a new view along the way. Today's topic is advice for body image issues and healing our relationships with our bodies. Today, I will be talking about different ways that we can start to heal our relationships with our bodies and start to come into communion with our bodies and start to learn to love our bodies. And I'll be answering one question today from a listener whose new year's resolution is to stay fit and to get healthy, but has found themselves falling into many negative self talk spirals. And what can they do when their mind starts to spiral. I thought this was a great topic for January because I think so many people set new year's resolutions to get in shape and to get healthy. And when they venture into their health journey. They themselves can be their biggest obstacles. I know that was true. In my case, I want to be upfront and honest that I'm still healing my own relationship with my body. This is one of my goals for this year as well. I'm hoping to really lean into loving my body this year. To be honest, this has been a goal of mine for many years, I think since 2019 different versions of being healthy being fit and learning to love my body have been new year's resolutions of mine. And each year I continue to unpack more and more layers around why it has been so hard for me to look in the mirror and love what I see, I have unpacked a lot of trauma in my body. And I find it so much easier to love all of me at this point. But I can still catch myself a negative thought patterns around the way my body looks and moves. today.
Amanda Durocher (Three factors that helped me heal my relationship with my body) 2:15
Before we jump in, I wanted to just talk a bit about my own journey with my body because I wanted to talk about three main factors of healing my own relationship with my body, and how each of these factors have affected me each year as I've made this New Year's resolution. And I wanted to give this example because I often talk about about self awareness and how we want to heal the layers. And this is going to be an example of how for me, my body image issues had many layers, it was not just one thing I had to look at and heal. There were many different layers, many different beliefs, many different patterns that I was playing out, that had to be witnessed before I could heal my relationship with my body. I think that healing journey is like an onion. And we constantly peel back layers of this onion and at the center of the onion is you and who you truly are. But as we live life, and the longer we live life, more and more layers get packed on to the center of this onion, and the onion can become very, very large. And it's not until we start to heal that we begin to unpack the layers. And we often stop putting on more layers when we begin to heal. Which is one of the great things about starting our healing journey is that those are the layers we have to work with. We don't usually continue to pack new ones on, we tend to just start to unravel the spiral we've created or unpack the onion layers. So three main factors of healing my relationship with my body were one healing my trauma, specifically healing the trauma from being sexually assaulted for anyone new here. I was raised in my childhood in my teens. So this has been such a big part of my healing journey. And is it something I talked about very often on the podcast. The second big factor was my mother and her relationship with her body, and how that unconsciously affected me. And the third main factor for me was societal expectations of what beauty is and what beauty looks like. So for the first layer of healing my trauma and how that's affected my relationship with my body. By looking at the layers one by one, I was able to unpack how being sexually assaulted has affected me and my relationship with my body. There were many layers to unpack here. I still may be unpacking these layers. But some of the examples of layers that have helped me to heal my relationship with my body were one for a long time, I felt like it was unsafe to be beautiful. I felt like something bad could happen like somebody could attack me or that I could attract unwanted attention which felt very unsafe to me. If I was beautiful if I was thin, if I was healthy. Another belief I took on was that ugly girls got raped and beautiful girls had boyfriends. So I was raped in my teens. And this was a really formative time for me and when I was raped I was 14 and 14-15. And this is when you're just coming into your sexuality when you're first getting those feelings. At least that was the age it was for me. And because I was raped at this age, I took on some really unhealthy beliefs about myself about the situation and about why it happened to me. And I took them on as truth. And I viewed the world through this lens. So for me at the time, a lot of my friends had boyfriends, some of the boys who raped me ended up dating my friends. And I created the belief that beautiful girls got boyfriends ugly girls got raped. So that really affected my relationship with my body, it made me continually punish my body, and it made me continually look in the mirror and hate what I saw. Because I blamed my body for what happened to me. A third trauma layer that I've had to heal is that the body holds the trauma. And a great book, if anybody's looking for a good read, it's actually a very packed read, but very impactful read and a very deep dive into trauma would be the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Vander Kolk. And I recommend this a lot, because I think it's a great book that goes into the studies and the science behind trauma and how it affects us. And I know that that was a great book for me on my healing journey, because it was one of the first books I read that talked about disassociation, which is something that I experienced through my trauma. And since the trauma lives in the body, what I've learned through my healing journey, and what I was greatly reminded of over the past few months is that this energy gets stuck in the body, and it needs to exit the body. And I mentioned that because I found that as I was moving through reliving this trauma and moving it out of my body, I actually didn't want to move my body. Because anytime I moved my body, there was an emotion on the surface that wanted to be moved. So anytime I ran, I would feel angry, or I'd start crying or yoga and stretching would make me start sobbing. And it wasn't really enjoyable to move my body. So I just didn't move it. And I just mentioned that for anybody else who might be going through that process that it's normal, it is uncomfortable. And there is another side. And now that I've really moved through that, I'm so grateful to myself for doing it. But the truth is, it was a painful process. And it's a reason that I haven't been the healthiest version of myself is that all this trauma was living in my body. And when I would move it too much, it would stir up the trauma. And so that would keep me oftentimes from moving. So for anybody who's experienced extreme trauma, I think everybody's experienced some level of trauma in their lives. But on whatever scale, I don't really think trauma is comparable. I think everybody's trauma affects them differently. But just for anybody who's experienced trauma, and if you find that that affects you, and the way you move your body, I see you, I feel you and it's a process, it's a process to start to come into good relations with your body. It doesn't happen overnight. And that's okay. And it's just like I mentioned in the beginning, it's an onion, and we're peeling back the layers one at a time to as I mentioned, my mother and her relationship with her body unconsciously affected me. And this is something I've had to look at throughout my own healing journey. This is what I've been unpacking for years, as many of you know, or for anyone at the beginning of their healing journey. When when we begin to unravel the layers of healing in the layers of wounding that needs to be unpacked, we find that the layers are not chronological, or even just one person or topic. So a few years ago, I went out with the mission to heal from sexual assault and rape. I knew that I wouldn't have to live with this trauma forever. I refuse to believe I would. Everyone I talked to at the time was like, oh, it's something you just get used to. I refused to accept that answer. So I deep dove for years into healing. And what I found throughout the healing journey is that so much arose during that journey, I was not just focused on sexual assault and rape for years. It was sexual assault, rape, my mother wound my father wound my relationship with my partner, friendship wounds, childhood wounds, inner child wounds, my relationship with creativity, my relationship with my job, my relationship with the world, my relationship with alcohol, it all came up when I set the intention to heal from rape. And I mentioned that because when we heal, it's not chronological, the layers will arise one at a time. And you'll know what's arising because it will be what's present for you to or it'll be what's triggering you. And so that's why we have to be patient with ourselves while healing because the layers really only arise one at a time. So we're not able to look at everything at once. And that's our body trying to keep us safe. So it can be a frustrating journey to think, Oh, I'm over that and then the next layer will arise. But just be patient with yourself. And so I mentioned this because I've been like I said been healing how my mother's relationship with her body affected me for years, and this has been a big part of healing my relationship with my body. My mother has not always been kind to her it so I learned negative self talk through her. My mother also is someone who tried so many different diets, and different ways of eating and giving up different foods in order to lose weight. So I picked up this pattern from her as well. And I found myself for a really long time and a pattern of depriving myself and then indulging and then feeling guilty about it, I think many people, but women specifically pick up these patterns from their mothers, and specifically patterns around body image. This is often passed down through our lineage, and I do a whole episode about the mother wound. And that was episode 47. If you want to go back and listen to that, and you may find that your mother mimics some of the patterns your grandmother has, because oftentimes this is passed down the way women talk about their bodies and the way we perceive our bodies. And often it's passed down by either witnessing our mothers and we mimic what they do. Or it's by our mothers saying things to us being critical of our bodies or putting us on diets or telling us certain ways to lose weight or repeating back to us things they tell themselves about their bodies. This is a very common pattern that many people will have to heal is looking at how their parents relationships with their body has affected them. And I focus on my mother, because that's been the big one for me. But my father also has a way he talks about food that I took on, and that was something I also had to heal as I was healing my relationship with my body. The third thing I mentioned, that was a huge thing for me and healing my relationship with my body was looking at the societal expectations of what beauty is, and the ones that I took on. I have been greatly affected by society, specifically the way women are portrayed in TV and movies. And what Hollywood has decided beauty looks like, this affected me so much in my teen years. In my teen years, I didn't know how to act, and I didn't know who to trust. So I oftentimes mimicked what TV did, and oftentimes got me in trouble. TV is not written to be portrayed in real life. I'm sure everybody knows that. But my teenage self would try to play out these scenarios from TV shows and they never went in my favor. But I also was really affected by the way these teens quote unquote teens looked, I put it in quotes, because when I'm 14 watching this, these women are like in their 20s. And I want to look like them. So I want to look much more adult, but they're not even like the same decade as me. But I didn't know that at the time. And it just really affected me how these women looked. For example, I watched the OSI, wintry Hill, the original Gossip Girl, I have not watched the new Gossip Girl. I think one Gossip Girl was enough for me. And what I really wanted at this time was to look like the women in these shows the really thin women that Hollywood was telling me were beautiful, because in the shows, these were the women who got the guys, these are the women who are popular. These are the women who moved to town. And everybody was like, Oh my God, you don't know that you're beautiful. And they were like, oh my god, I had no idea. And I was like, that's what I want. I want that. Because if I'm beautiful, that equals I'm worthy. If I'm beautiful, it'll mean I'm loved. If I'm beautiful, some guy will come save me from this hellhole that was my life in the teens. And I created all these beliefs around how beauty would bring me happiness from watching that on TV. So this is something I've really had to unpack as I've been healing. And I look back now and my heart just breaks for my teenage self and the unrealistic standard that was shown to her. I also feel so sad that we have forgotten what true beauty is, and that it's not something we talk about very often. And that we're oftentimes shown commercials and advertisements for things that can make our lives better, or make us more beautiful and true beauty comes from within. And I know that sounds so cheesy. And I just wanted to remind you in case you're having a hard day with your body, that you are beautiful just the way you are. And what's going to make you feel beautiful, is remembering that and healing your relationship with your body. I can tell you that when I was my lightest or my thinnest. And when I was my heaviest, I was saying the same critical self talk to myself, I saw the same exact person in the mirror. I looked at myself in the mirror now and I see the same version of myself as when I was 20 pounds thinner. And that really solidified to me that it had absolutely nothing to do with my weight, and everything to do with my relationship with myself. So as I mentioned, there were many layers involved with healing my relationship with my body and continuing to heal my relationship with my body. There are more layers with friendships and women I went to school with, I also had a dependency on food and alcohol. And I use those as a coping strategy. So that had to be healed throughout my journey with healing. And social media affects the way I look at my body, I can still find myself falling into comparison syndrome. And I just wanted to give these examples to show you how complex our relationships with our body images. And I wanted to break down these three examples in case you were wondering where to start in your own journey with healing your relationship with your body. Maybe you heard some One thing that resonated with you, or maybe you now see how complex it is. But I wanted to break that down because I often talk about the layers of healing. And I try to give examples so you can see what I'm talking about when I'm referring to layers. And I also wanted to talk about the complexity because I think when we realize that it's not so black and white, or like turning on and off a switch like on I'm healthy off, I'm not healthy, we can bring more compassion to ourselves as we enter our healing journey with our body image. So that was just a quick intro, I'm also going to offer three ways I recommend to start loving your body, for when you're at the beginning of healing your relationship with your body and body image, and then I'm going to answer one question. So let's get started.
Amanda Durocher (Three Practices to Assist with Healing Body Image Issues) 15:47
Okay, so today for anyone at the beginning of their journey, healing their relationship with their body and body image, and healing from body image issues and learning to love their bodies. I wanted to offer these three practices to assist you, I think that sometimes it can be overwhelming, not knowing where to start. And so these are three ways I've used throughout my journey to assist me in healing our relationship with my body. So the first one I wanted to mention is self awareness. So for anyone who is new to the podcast, self awareness is bringing awareness to your inner world. It's bringing awareness and consciousness and curiosity to why you do the things you do. So I believe there is a route to every thought pattern we have. And if you are critical about your body, or you find yourself falling into negative thought patterns about your body, I want you to start becoming aware of these, our body holds so much information. And that's why I think it's so important to heal our relationships with our body, you are meant to be in love with your body, your body is here to assist you in this journey of being human. And it also holds so much wisdom. And the more we bring awareness are able to heal these layers of trauma and wounding, we're able to actually access our intuition and that voice of our heart easier. So that's why self awareness is a great place to start on your healing journey. So as I mentioned, if you have a negative thought pattern, I invite you to write that down. That's my first piece of advice, write it down, either right in your phone in the Notes app, or you can journal about your negative thoughts at the end of the day, but start to just get them out of your head onto paper. That's a really great first step, because when we take it from our head, and we put it out, so sometimes talking to a therapist can be really helpful too. Because when we say these things out loud, or we write them, we often can see how untrue they are by removing them from our head. When we read it back. We're like, Huh, that's not necessarily true, or, well, that's a really hard thing to say about myself. So then once you get these thoughts out, and you start to bring awareness to your thoughts, I want you to then start asking yourself, when did you first have this thought? How often do you have this thought? Is this something you started telling yourself? Or is this something someone else has told you? Many times, the thoughts in our head are actually the voices of someone else. They're the criticisms and judgments that others have said to us throughout our lives. And then we take them on and repeat them to ourselves and berate ourselves and criticize ourselves every day. Oftentimes, somebody can say something once that hurts us, and then we're the ones who punish ourselves daily after that. So it's important for you to begin bringing awareness to the thoughts you have about your body, your relationship with your body, and what you say about your body on a regular basis. I've created some journal prompts to assist you with this, and you'll be able to find these on my website at newviewadvice.com/49. The second way I recommend to start loving your body and healing your relationship with your body is that I invite you to practice this exercise where you sit with your body. So if you choose to do this, what you're going to do is you're going to choose an area of your body that you struggle with, or that you feel insecure about. And I invite you to sit with this area of your body and begin talking to it. This may feel odd at first. But many times we ignore the things we don't like about ourselves that can bring up shame, which causes us to shut down. But by just beginning to acknowledge these areas, and to talk to these areas, we can create healing in that simple act. So I want you to pick an area of your body that you feel insecure about, or that you struggle with. And I invite you to create time to be with this area. So let's say you pick your stomach and you choose to sit with your stomach for five minutes. I want you to sit or lie down whatever is comfortable for you and to place your hands on this area of your body. So in this example, it's your stomach. And I just want you to breathe into this area of your body, creating intention and feeling your hands connected to this area of your body. Just breathe and then I invite you to begin to ask yourself what does it feel like to touch this area of your Your body, I stress your body. Because so many of us aren't even familiar with our own bodies. This is your body and it is searching for your love. So take time to just be with this area of your body. Does it bring up emotions to touch and hold and just sit with this area of your body? And then I invite you to tell this area of your body that you love it, that you're thankful for it? Does this elicit any emotions? Does this feel uncomfortable? Does it make you sad? Does it feel like connection, become curious about what's arising in this present moment as you connect back into your body, I then invite you to apologize to this area of your body. You can do this in your mind by talking to it in your head. Or you can say these things out loud, but apologize to this area of of your body for how you have punished it, for how you have criticized it, for how you are uncomfortable by it for how it makes you feel insecure, but apologize to this area for the negative ways you have talked to it. Allow yourself to sit and be with this area for at least five minutes. After this experience, I invite you to see if this is something you want to do everyday for a week, or something you feel inspired to journal about, but spend time just being in communion with your body. Again, feel what your body feels like. Also, while you're doing this exercise, you may feel inspired to move your hands to another area of your body and feel the connections of your hands on different areas of your body. Allow yourself to move your hands anywhere where it feels good for you or where your body may be asking for love and attention. This is really about creating a time for you to be in communion with your body. So allow yourself to move and be with what arises. And just feel the connection of your hands on your body. Does it feel warm? Does it bring up heart ache longing, it's all about creating space for you in your body. So this is an exercise I invite you to try with yourself. Because I think it's a great way to come back into your body. Many of us live in fight or flight which keeps us out of our bodies. And this exercise will help you to start come back into your body and to be kind to your body. The third thing I recommend for beginning a journey of loving your body is if you find social media to be a trigger for you, which I know it is for so many people, including me, I invite you to begin becoming very intentional about the content you're consuming. If you find that somebody triggers you on social media, I give you permission to stop following them, mute them, block them, whatever you need to do, you need to create a feed that makes you feel good about yourself. And if there is no way for you to do this, then I invite you to explore taking a social media break or a social media detox. This could be for a weekend for a week or even a month. And noticing if it feels better for you to be off social media. Because if your intention for the year, or your intention right now is to heal your relationship with your body, then it's important for you to prioritize that. And so taking some time off social media might be just what you need to get out of that comparison mindset and to stop seeing images that may trigger you. So I invite you to become really conscious about the messages you're taking in right now. Because as we heal, it's important to create a safe space to heal. And if social media feels triggering, or it makes you sad, or it makes you compare yourself to others are it makes you feel insecure, it creates that negative self talk, I would say all those things is creating unsafety within you. So if it's creating an unsafe space, then I invite you to either take a break, get rid of it altogether, or begin muting, blocking and unfollowing people. I unfollow people all the time. Sometimes somebody's good for me the next day, they're not. I'm constantly following unfollowing I'm constantly catering my feed to what feels good for me each and every day. And I personally don't feel bad about it. It's not personal. If I unfollow you, it's all about me catering where I'm at that day. And there's nothing wrong with that I prioritize my inner world and feeling good on a daily basis. And so it's my responsibility to create a social media that feels good for me, especially because I use it for my business. So it's not something I can completely get rid of. So it's important for me to create an environment that feels good for me. I also want to mention that social media can cause us to compare ourselves to others. And this can create comparison syndrome, which is the obsession with comparing ourselves to others, and finding constant fault with ourselves compared to others. And this is not healthy. Everyone's journey with their body is different. We cannot compare our bodies and we cannot compare our health. You don't know what it's like to be in my body and I don't know what it's like to be in yours. It's a personal journey, and especially since the body holds the trauma as I've mentioned body image and body issues are complicated. Be kind to yourself. So if you're at the beginning of this journey, I advise you to lower your social media intake if you find it to be a trigger for you. So those are three ideas I have for ways you can begin healing body image insecurities and becoming intentional about your body and the way you speak to your body. So I hope something in there was helpful for you. And now I'm going to answer one question about body image and negative self talk.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 25:31
Dear New View Advice, reasonably body image issues have been at the top of my mind, but right now specifically, I've been struggling with my body image while being in a fitness class surrounded by women, my goal sighs and being the largest in the room, I find it really motivating some days. But days like today, I literally got home and cried because I feel so defeated that my goal is so so far away. I set a new year's resolution to get in shape and be healthier this year. But I found it to be incredibly difficult. I started off the new year strong, but I found myself being extremely hard on myself. Any advice for not letting the negative self talk get the best of you? Thank you for this question. First, I'd like to honor how you're feeling. I'm so sorry that you've been struggling with your body image. I know how hard this can be. I also know so many people can relate to this question. So I wanted to thank you for your vulnerability with asking this. I know I can relate to this question. I also want to say that I think it's great that your New Year's resolution is to get in shape and be healthier. I think it's the first step to even want to take care of your body. To everyone out there looking to be healthier this year, I want to honor you. And I think it's a beautiful first step to set the intention to be healthier this year. I know that there's a lot of people who don't like dears solutions. And I think it's a personal thing. Some people like them, some people hate them, and there's no pressure to have one. But if you do have one, and you want to be healthier, I think it's beautiful that you want to take care of yourself. And I think it's a beautiful way to honor yourself to even begin to bring awareness to yourself and become intentional about your relationship with your body. And now with that said, part of being healthy is also having a healthy relationship with your mind, the mind does live in the body. And I believe that we'll never feel healthy. If we're braiding or criticizing ourselves. I've noticed this in my own life. As I mentioned, when I was my dentist, and when I was my heaviest, I was saying the same negative things to myself. And that's when it really clicked for me that it was never about my weight, by weight wasn't going to change my relationship with my body, I was going to have to go deeper than that. So I think self talk is a great place to start in healing your body image issues and healing your relationship with your body. So the first thing I invite you to do is to bring awareness to these thoughts you're having. As I mentioned previously, I want you to become really aware about what you tell yourself and where these thoughts originated. As your negative self talk starts, I invite you to bring awareness by writing these down, you can jot them down at the end of the day in your journal, or you can write them in your notes app. But we can only change our thoughts after we become aware of them. So after you write them down, ask yourself when did the start? Is this something someone said to you? Maybe a parent, how are these thoughts assisting you become a witness to your own inner dialogue, as I already talked about when it comes to self awareness. Many of these thoughts originated a long, long time ago. And they're just thoughts we continue to tell ourselves today. And by bringing awareness to the roots of these thoughts where they began, we can begin to heal our relationships with our bodies. I know for me, throughout my journey, I have alleviated many of the negative things that I used to say about my body. And so I talked a bit about self awareness in the first section. So I'm not gonna go too deep into it, but I really invite you to start becoming aware of those thoughts. And as I mentioned, I have some journal prompts on my website to assist you with journeying deeper into your relationship with your body through self awareness. A second thing I recommend for helping with the negative self talk and helping with these spirals that can happen when we just allow our minds to go crazy is to think of a mantra that can assist you when your thoughts start to spiral. What I think is important for creating helpful mantras and affirmations is to use phrases that we believe are true. If you chose to start saying I'm the thinnest person in my workout class, that probably wouldn't work for you. Because your trigger is that you see people who you perceive are thinner than you in this class. And so that one probably wouldn't work for you. So it's really important when creating mantras to create something that feels good to you really feel like in this example, it's important to create something that feels good when you say it and can anchor you because what this mantra is going to do is it's going to ground you back into the present moment. Oftentimes when our minds begin to spiral and we begin to go down a crazy train of negative self talk, we move into the future, right? So you were saying that you feel so so far away from your goal. So that means you're focused more on the future than you are on right here right now. What can you control right here right now. It's being grounded in the present moment is learning to love your body as it is right now. You're learning to take care of your body and learning to love your body. And maybe that will require you losing some weight, maybe you won't. But what I think is important is that you want to ground yourself here. And now, because those spirals, like I said, take us into the future oftentimes. So what you want to do is create a mantra that can ground you hear, and that feels good for you. So some examples I thought of are, I'm getting healthier every day, I'm learning to listen to my body. I am learning to love my body. I am grateful for the ways that my body supports me each day. I accept my body as it is right now. My body is healing each and every day. I honor my body and all it has been through. I am befriending my body. I accept myself exactly as I am today. My body is a gift from God. My body is sacred. I love my body. So these are just a few examples. But I invite you to write down your own or think of one that's good for you. For me, in my life, I find Aker statements really helpful, especially when I feel myself moving into fight or flight, aka stress mode, which oftentimes can include those negative spirals that you talked about. Another piece of advice I have is that I actually did an episode last week on a four step process on how to let go of expectations. So if you haven't already listened, you may find this helpful. I think it's a great episode for anyone who's feeling a bit down on themselves for their New Year's resolutions. We're human. And we often set big goals and unrealistic expectations for ourselves. So learning to let go of these expectations can be very helpful along the healing journey. And we also do have to learn to let go of these expectations along the healing journey. Because as I mentioned, we're human and not everything goes according to plan. There are always things that throw a wrench in our plans. Because oftentimes, as humans, we're trying to control everything, and we're trying to control the future. So life will throw little bumps in the road for us in order to remind us that we are not in control, we are not in control of the bigger picture, we are not actually in control of our lives, ladies, honestly about learning how to sit in the back seat, not about driving the car. That's the example that came to mind. But life is driving the car. And we're a passenger in life. And it's our job to learn to flow with life, to move with life, and to show up to each and every present moment, to the best of our human ability. My fourth piece of advice is I invite you to practice patience and self compassion. As I mentioned in the intro, for many of us, it's going to take time to heal our relationships with our bodies. And in a world that is constantly sending us messages on ways we can fix ourselves. It can be hard to ignore all this noise. I know for me, the noise I'm learning to ignore, and I'm learning to tune out and I'm learning to not take in is about my age. I know I'm 31 and I'm really not old, my life is just getting started. But at times I tune into the internet, especially that social media comparison. And I see these women who look so much younger than me, even though they're older than me, or people my age look so beautiful and young. And they've got these beautiful foreheads without lines. My forehead has lines in it. And I've learned to view these as my battle scars. I've lived a very stressful life, I put a lot of stress on my body. But sometimes it gets to me, sometimes I'm watching television, and I just stare at people's foreheads. And I'm like, oh my god, am I so old. And I only mentioned that because the world will tell you there's something wrong with you. The world will always tell you that there is an external fixed your problem? Well, I'm here to tell you that the only real fix for your problem is to go with them. And to learn to love yourself, to commune with yourself, and to connect to your heart, to your soul to your inner being. And that part of you will always have your answers. And that part of you knows you never need to be fixed. There is nothing wrong with you. It was never about fixing yourself. You are not on this healing journey to fix yourself. You're on this healing journey to remember who you really are you and die. And every human on this planet comes in and we forget who we really are. And it's all about just remembering who we are. And remembering who we are. Take self compassion and patients coming home to ourselves, coming home to our hearts. Remembering that there was never anything wrong with us. Remembering that we were born perfect. We may not be perfect, but we always are enough. We're always worthy and we're always loved and that we're always held and that there is a higher power always supporting us. And I don't know your relationship with faith. I don't know your relationship. With a higher power and with God, but I believe we're all an aspect of God, I believe that we're all an aspect of the universe, role and aspect of source, whatever you want to call it, I don't really care. I think all names, go back to the same thing. And it's that all loving presence of all that is, would breathe through you breeze through me, breeze through the trees, breeze through the seas, it can be so easy to forget the bigger picture that we came here to Earth for a blip in time, think about how long the Earth has existed and how long each one of us lives on it. Your life is short. And I want you to enjoy the time you have here. You get one shot in this moment. Don't spend it living in the future. And don't spend it criticizing yourself. You deserve to enjoy your life. You were born to enjoy your life. You were born to love yourself. I believe life is about learning to love yourself. So freaking deeply, that there is no separation within you. And that is a journey for each of us. So everybody's searching for love outside of themselves, when we're really searching for the love within ourselves. Because this life is about us communing with ourselves, and getting to know ourselves and falling madly in love with ourselves. And I mentioned that because a big part of healing my relationship with my body was remembering that because I'm human, it means that God created my body and that God is always supporting me and always loving me. I don't always talk about God in these episodes. But I'm mentioning it today. Because it's been such a big part of my healing journey. To get to the other side of some of these really hard things I've survived. I've had to come home. To that bigger perspective. I have to trust that there is a reason I'm here. I have to trust that there is a reason that everything in my life has happened the way it has. And more importantly, that there is something supporting me every step of the way. And that that all loving presence, which I sit with when I sit in meditation, and I tune into my heart, and I breathe in the present moment. That voice is always telling me that I am enough that I have always been enough that I'm always worthy. And then I'm always loved. And I know that's true for me. And I also know that's true for you. It can be so easy to forget who we really are. So here's your reminder that you're already enough. You're already worthy. And you're always loved. Thank you for this question.
Amanda Durocher (Outro) 38:07
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. I'm so grateful to have these conversations with you each week and to continue healing together. I think it's beautiful that you have chosen to be here and that you've chosen to heal and connect back to yourself. I think it's one of the most beautiful gifts you can give yourself is taking the time to get to know yourself and to heal the ways your heart may have broken over time. If you haven't already, I invite you to leave a rating and review for the podcast. Ratings and reviews are great way to support the podcast and they also help to bring new people to the podcast and help people to know that this is a safe space to have vulnerable conversations. So if you haven't already, I invite you to leave a five star rating and a review. Thank you again for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. sending you all my love. See you next time
Transcribed by https://otter.ai