Therapy for Body Image in Los Angeles, CA
Getting dressed every morning feels like a dreadful task that somehow dredges up every insecurity about your body that you've ever had. You're staring in the mirror hearing your inner critic just rip you apart, and you're spiraling into feelings of disgust and shame. You open your social media app of choice to find people talking about GLP-1s, the latest fad diet, and their multi-hour, multi-day per week exercise routine that seems incompatible with having a full-time job and you're wondering if you just need more "discipline". The shame spirals even further. You find yourself avoiding mirrors or even taking pictures with friends and loved ones, and you wish you could access even half the confidence it feels like other people have. That might just be enough to quiet the disgust and shame and free you from constantly focusing on your body.
How does therapy help improve body image?
Our relationship with our body is often first influenced by how relationships to body are modeled by those around us. If our caregivers were hypercritical of their features, when we see those same features in ourselves we can adopt their voice as our own inner critic. And to make things more complicated, we live in a culture that is obsessed with thinness and hyperfixated on the next product or procedure that promises to fix whatever the new identified "problem" is. Part of the work in therapy then becomes identifying the specific social and cultural influences that inform your feelings toward your body and create your unique inner critic. We explore how weight-focused comments from family members, diet talk at work, Western beauty standards, and trending content on social media may all be contributing to poor body image, and we work on reducing the impact of these factors. This work may involve setting boundaries, reducing screen time, or finding ways to align with your values.
Body image focused work in therapy also involves processing the pain you're holding onto in your relationship with our body. We discuss pain points from the past and worries about the future. We explore the passing but critical comment an aunt made about how our preteen body was beginning to change that's etched into our brain, or our conviction that everyone is noticing each time our weight fluctuates, producing a sense of embarrassment that's already making us feel hot in the face. We work together on taking the bite out of these experiences and fears. Over the course of therapy, you learn to offer yourself compassion that a younger version of you needed to hear, and you begin to deconstruct the idea that the how your body looks is what gives it its value, developing a sense of body neutrality. Body image's grip on your life and sense of self begins to loosen.
Let's chat more about how I can support you with body image.
My name is Gabby Collins, LCSW and I am a licensed therapist who has spent over five years helping teens and adults develop strategies to improve their body image. I see folks in-person in Los Angeles, CA and virtually throughout California.