Body Beautiful

From the first moment we looked into our mother's eyes we started forming opinions about ourselves. Soon afterwards we started hearing the overt and covert messages about how we 'should' be from family, from school friends, from society.

By the time we reached puberty we were being told we were wrong by the media over 500 times per day.

So you won’t be surprised to hear that the issue my clients bring more than any other is unhappiness with their weight. Assuming we are talking here about maintaining a healthy BMI as opposed to an unrealistic airbrushed size 0 body, there are many reasons we carry extra pounds and none of them have anything to do with being sinful, weak-willed, stupid or lazy.

Dr Denise Ratcliffe, a clinical psychologist who supports patients through bariatric surgery says that many of the people she sees have experienced trauma, abuse or neglect."I think there's something about the psychological experiences people have, and the relationships that they start to form with foods, that becomes almost like a perfect storm."

When we set up systemic constellations for the body many deeply profound reasons for the existence of excess body fat come to light. They explain the complicated relationship so many people have with their physicality. A few of the unconscious reasons for carrying weight which have emerged include:

• A deep need to be invisible - perhaps as a result of early trauma or abuse

• A way of staying faithful to a beloved partner; the shame of their ‘fat’ protecting them self from making inappropriate sexual advances to another.

• A result of repeated pre-pubescent misgendering and wanting to look voluptuous and womanly
  

• A need to feel stronger in the face of overwhelming physical threat in childhood
  

• Intergenerational trauma following famine or starvation.
  

These underlying themes make sense of the fallacy that dieting is a solution. Bariatric weight loss surgeon Shaw Somers says ‘"The number of people I've encountered in my 30-year career who've been able to go from morbid obesity, to normal weight, and sustain it by dieting alone - well I don't think I've ever met one. It's so hard to do."

If you struggle with you relationship to food and you body and have made an unconscious vow or deal with yourself (that in adult life has caused you to hate your body), the solution is in finding compassionate support to the fragile inner child. This is the kindest and most helpful way to avoid years of self-loathing and harmful yo-yo dieting.

The Mirror Course helps you lovingly reconnect with all the disowned parts of yourself and bring them home. If you'd like to talk more about this please get in touch.