Introduction
I’m callin’ a LOUD BS on the incessant “body positivity” messages and I’m more than a bit curious about when body positivity turned so toxic! I’m all for whole-self acceptance (it’s part of my healing and coaching services), and the genuine and difficult process of debunking the Thin Ideal. But to act like it’s just a “mindset shift,” or that we must have 100% positivity toward ourselves is just plain ridiculous at best, dangerous at worst.
What’s So Bad About Positivity?
What I’m talking about with ‘body positivity’ is the damage that toxic positivity can have on one’s sense of self, in the body. Messages that say, “You just have to love your whole body in order to have any confidence” are really missing the mark.
What would be more helpful, is learning how to move through the very challenging process of accepting one’s body for the magnificent system it is, realizing we are more than our physical body, and that no one is ‘always’ 100% positive. True power comes when the body and mind work together.
The damage is these trends cause you wondering what you’re doing “wrong” because you don’t ‘fully love yourself’, or all parts of your physical body.
What is realistic, or “normal” is realizing that it’s okay to not love every aspect of your body, it’s learning how to accept, with more neutrality, the parts of our physical body we don’t like and not letting that stop us from fully living.
What is Toxic Positivity?
Toxic Positivity involves bypassing. Bypassing is the process of avoiding feelings, particularly difficult feelings. It’s a terrible process that leads to chronic emotional suppression which can then lead to highly ineffective and unhealthy patterns.
Examples of toxic positivity are: “Good vibes only,” “No Negative Nellies here” “There’s always a silver lining,” “Don’t worry, tomorrow’s a new day.”
Relative to body image, toxic “body positivity” is about minimizing the real challenges of self-acceptance and oversimplifying achieving a body aesthetic or athletic capacity that is largely unattainable. “All you have to do is love your body!” or “With this mindset, you, too, can totally accept your body,” or “If you love your body, anything is possible!”
My Story with Toxic Body Positivity
For many years, I struggled with my own view of my body which I equated to self-worth because of the toxic positivity messages like these. I really believed I was doing something wrong. And let’s face it, the messages tell you that you’ll be more loved, more liked, prettier, smarter, and overall more confident if you listen to them so who doesn’t want that? Unfortunately, they are alongside Thin Ideal messages that just break you.
What this did produce was a LOT of confusion, shame, and disordered behaviors like chronic dieting, compulsive exercising and severe food restriction to change my body. I also developed a deep mistrust of my body, and self-loathing beliefs.
By the time I was a precious 17 year old, I’d been put on Scarsdale, Pritikin, South Coast, Herbalife, NutriSystem and some others I can’t recall the names of. My parents bought standard gym memberships, workout videos, and boutique gym memberships to “help me.” Keep in mind that when I was a freshman in high school I weighed 135# and was 5’6”. By the time I was a 17yo senior, same height, I was about 165#. Granted, it’s not what one considered svelte, necessarily, but it absolutely didn’t warrant the amount of expense, attention, and exertion that was expended.
Body Acceptance v. Body Positivity
Instead, what helped me heal this wasn’t dieting or trying to change the shape of my body. What repaired my relationship to my body was developing ‘body acceptance,’ appreiation or neutrality instead of “positivity.”
As a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist, I found this was also healing for the clients I served with eating disorders. It’s more achievable and fosters more balance in life. Over time, this approach will help you find peace, or make peace, between your body and your mind.
Body acceptance is developed through cultivating a deep internal sense of body awareness. However, when you’re trained to bypass these feelings – this will be very difficult. Body acceptance is about recognizing what the body can do with appreciation, and objectively acknowledging your body the way it is.
This might sound like, “I’m so grateful my body can move,” or “I’m thankful my body can restore itself when it’s tired.” or “My mid-section is doing a great job storing my organs, it doesn’t need to ‘be flat.’”
Body awareness is based on the knowledge that the body is always communicating feedback and for the mind to value that feedback. When you connect with that awareness of what your body needs, or what function it’s providing for you, acceptance is more likely. This could sound like, “My back is really aching right now, maybe I could do some stretches to help it out.” or “I’m more tired than I realized, I think I’ll go to bed early tonight.”
By looking at my body with more neutrality and becoming more aware of my body and its needs, I found it easier to care for myself in healthier ways. I discovered a healthy body mindset is about finding balance, not some external all/nothing view of what was defined as desirable or beautiful. By tuning in to find that balance of the body, mind, and soul, being healthy and balanced started to come naturally.
Frankly, if you think about loving relationships – they’re quite messy, including flaws and missteps, and changes over time; that’s what makes lasting love so beautiful. And so it is with our bodies
Cultivating Body Acceptance
I invite you to consider that the answers to your journey of finding your own acceptance already lie within you. Using tools like guided meditations or journaling for self-reflection, you can identify actions that feel healthy, soulful, and balanced to you. Healing your body image isn’t just about you, either; it’s actually about the collective healing of all the women around you (and after you) whom you care about.
If you’re anything like me, the societal, family, cultural and religious messages absolutely reinforced body mistrust and body-shaming experiences. It might feel discouraging identifying each of these, yet the ‘good news’ of this process is that as an adult, you’re now empowered to change your own narrative.
Because I care deeply about this, here are some evidence-based tools to help you:
- Thought Defusion can be a powerful tool in helping you think about your own thoughts (and feelings) differently. Within Thought Defusion, Acceptance & Commitment Therapy provides two fantastic metaphors as tools to help you. One is called ‘Passengers on the Bus’ and can be found here: and another is ‘The Unwanted Party Guest’ found here.
- Double-Standard technique: What do I tell myself about my body? Write down that statement as if you were telling it to a friend (it’s okay, I know you wouldn’t ever actually say this, but humor me here!). Now write down what you’d really say to that friend. Now change that statement to one about yourself, changing the pronouns from “you” to “I”. Notice how this changes things inside of you?
- Write a love letter to your body. Journaling exercises like this are research-based. Narrative therapy is founded in the process of externalizing thoughts and feelings through writing. Hand writing entries have demonstrated effectiveness at reducing emotional distress and allowing emotions to process. Identify the following areas in the letter by formulating at least 3 statements in each area: anger, sadness, fear, guilt and shame, appreciation, joy, and love toward the body.
- Body-based experiences: yoga, mindful walking or stretching, somatic tracking, EFT, etc.
- Create bodymind dialogues: How do the body and the mind work together? What does the mind think of the body? What does the body think of the mind? Does the body feel respected? What’s the body’s story that the mind is missing? Does the mind feel hijacked by the body? What’s the mind’s story that the body doesn’t know?
If you’d like a free PDF on Self-Holds/Massage and BodyMind Dialogues to help with this process, click here to receive it.
The Cost of Non-Acceptance
Stressing and worrying about your body will most certainly worsen almost anything else you’re struggling with: self-trust, personal goals, relationships, social activities, physical health. When I was really stuck in negative beliefs about my weight, size and appearance, I remember being told by a wise mentor, “The thing is, you can’t wait until your body is ‘the way you want it,’ in order to treat it well. You’ve got to begin treating it well now, as it is. The rest will come.” And she wasn’t wrong.
Someone else introduced the idea of how toxic “anti-aging” messages are, much along the same lines as body positivity. Cuz seriously, friends, the opposite of aging is death. You catch that? Aging can be reframed as a privilege when we realize the alternative is dying.
Our body is working to create balance and wellness in ALL it does – what’s not to be grateful for with that?
Conclusion
Engaging in bypassing through toxic body positivity will, in the end, actually do more harm than good. You don’t have to engage in all/nothing thinking that you “must love every part of your body to be truly happy.” It’s okay to be real and have the thought, “I don’t love my butt,” or “My arms are not my most attractive body part,” and learn to not let those feelings/beliefs stop you from fully living.
Body acceptance is healthier and more adaptive than positivity. It’s normal to not like some parts of yourself and your body. The key is learning to acknowledge that without being overly influenced by it.
Work with Me
If you feel this resonates with you, and want some individualized support and guidance on this type of healing, contact me at sbmftservices.com/schedule for a free consultation. I am a somatic psychotherapist and coach, and offer integrative & holistic coaching services within my Kairos Transformational Method. For more information click here or follow me on IG/FB/TT @shannanblummft
In Health & Wholeness,
Shannan
