Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 17 Why "Just Loving Your Body" Feels So Hard (And the Biology of Change)
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: How many times have you heard the advice, just love your body, and wanted to scream? It's well-intentioned, but for most of us, it can feel like an impossible ask. I mean, it's certainly not for lack of trying, but it doesn't seem to stick. You might have a moment or two of feeling positive towards your body, but then you see yourself in a photo, and those familiar thoughts of criticism come rushing back. So... If you've grown allergic to the idea of body positivity because you haven't been able to feel very positive, I want you to know you're not doing anything wrong. You're up against biology. Today, we're diving into the biology of why it can feel so hard to stop the self-criticism and how to actually break the cycle. Let's dive in. Welcome to Unlearning Beautiful, a podcast for women tired of trying to look good enough and ready to feel good from within. I'm your host, Christina Bruce, here to help you let go of the pressure to look right or do it all right and reconnect with your inner guidance, your natural worth, and what truly makes you feel fulfilled. Because the freedom you're craving was never in how you look. A very common statistic that's quoted is that we think roughly 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day. And of those thoughts, 90 % of them are pretty much the exact same as they were the day before. Now, if a lot of those thoughts are positive, well, we don't really have a problem. They're working for us. But let's be honest, a lot of the thoughts that we're thinking are negative, especially when it comes to our body and our appearance. If we're only used to hearing those familiar critical thoughts, it definitely can feel like we want to change them to positive ones. And so making those efforts to try to swap out the thoughts or think more positively about your body can be helpful. I mean, it's why I write my body piece mantra emails and send them to my email list every Monday, because it can be really helpful to be reminded of thoughts that are positive about your body when all we hear in our head is negative ones. If we just stop there, you've probably noticed it doesn't really work long-term. We can start to seed it into our mind, it starts to feel good, but it may not stick. Or we may know that thought to be true intellectually, like, yes, I am enough as I am. It is okay to feel peace in my body. And we know it intellectually, but we don't really feel it in our bones. And that's where we might try to think, okay, I've just got to be more vigilant with my thoughts. I just got to watch the ones and swap them out for positive ones when they come in. And you can do it and it can work, but I know in my own experience, it's pretty tiring because well, if we're having 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day, then that's pretty much a full-time job to be watching those thoughts all the time. So instead, I want to offer you something more simply. I want you to imagine for a moment that I could wave a magic wand and take away all of those negative critical thoughts. You could look in the mirror, you can see yourself in a photo, and you don't have a critical thought about yourself. Just take a moment to think, how would that feel? How would I feel if I didn't have that critical story about my body running in the background all the time? You probably feel a lot better. And usually when I bring clients through this exercise, it's really quite startling to notice how much lighter, how much more open, how much they even like themselves. and they notice that there's inherent sense of worthiness right there within them. Because the truth is is that our natural state of how we feel about ourselves is positive. All we need to do is look at little children, look at the two and three year olds and they're brimming with joy, they're brimming with confidence, they're looking in the mirror, they're dancing around, they're not self-conscious about their body because They haven't had experiences and they haven't absorbed yet messages from our culture or maybe from their family that they might receive that says how my body is wrong, how I look is not okay, how I am is not okay. It's only when that happens later in life that we start to lose that natural sense of confidence, that natural sense of feeling secure and safe in our bodies. And so when you don't have those negative critical thoughts, That's why your default state is feeling good. You don't actually have to do anything to achieve that. See, when we have those negative thoughts, the mind says, well, the only way you can feel good is if you lose the weight, you smooth your wrinkles, you cover your grays, whatever it may be. And yet, if you really sit in a moment of stillness and notice how you feel without a critical thought, your natural state feels good. So, What we're all really yearning for is to get back to that. We want that state of peace because the truth is most of us have a lot of chatter in our minds that is stressful. Some, it may be more intense than others, but most of us could say that we have a low level of anxiety or stress that's always running in the background. And even if it isn't related directly to our bodies, it might be related to something else. And the truth is that for most people in our culture, this is totally normal, except I'm actually going to posit that there is a different way that we can live. It's that we've all just been living in survival mode. And it's become kind of our default setting. But we absolutely can return and meet life, meet our bodies and ourselves from a different place. But we have to be able to switch our state. We have to be able to essentially get out of survival mode in order to do that. Now, we have built in an internal emotional guidance system. So when we feel bad, that's actually our body alerting to us that we have thinking going on in our mind. We have beliefs, we have ideas about ourselves, about other people in the world that actually isn't 100 % true. And if we were to really notice those thoughts and take them and investigate them, we would find that out to be the case. One of my favorite teachers is Byron Katie, and her first book, Loving What Is, goes through this process beautifully. And she'll say, when a thought hurts, it's not true. So those barrage of critical thoughts that you may have about your body, well, they hurt, which means that they're not true. But why can it feel so hard to get rid of them? Why with all the good intentions that you want to think better about yourself, it just feels like you can't? Well, that's because our bodies have become addicted to this stressful thinking. It's become addicted to living in a state of survival. So growing up, when we have these moments, maybe it's somebody was critical about your body, or you even just witnessed other people talking negatively about their bodies or making criticisms of other people's bodies. and you start to absorb that. You start to become a bit more aware, a little bit vigilant about how you look. And you start to think, hmm, maybe it's not okay for me to be just as I am. Maybe I'm supposed to be different. Depending on the way that our family has viewed bodies, we might have very directly received the message. Note, you have to look a certain way. careful what you eat. How much do you weigh today? And so we start to feel insecure and this message comes in comes in that says, uh-oh, there's a problem here. I might not receive the love that I need in order to survive. Because as children, we need the approval and the love of our caregivers to survive. And when we don't get that, when we don't get that unconditional love, it feels like a threat. So when it comes to our appearance, we start to learn, if I look a certain way, I'm going to get approval. And if I don't, I might be abandoned. I might be rejected. and that feels like a threat to our nervous system. So that locks in, that belief gets implanted in there and the mind then goes on alert. It's always saying, hey, watch out how you look. You don't wanna get rejected. You don't wanna be abandoned. It feels truly threatening to our nervous system. Even though logically we know that that's not the case, we're not actually gonna die right now, it feels that way in our nervous system. And so we're on alert all the time and we think I've got to change myself. I've got to change my body. I've got to look different. I got to be different in order to feel safe. And so then the body becomes conditioned to that. The body becomes conditioned to the habitual mind. Dr. Joe Dispenza has done a lot of work and research in this area. And he explains that when we repeat a thought and feeling loop long enough that the body knows that emotion. better than the conscious mind. So we might not be consciously aware that the thoughts are happening, but those emotions become what we experience daily. They become really familiar, those subtle feelings of insecurity, of fear, of not good enoughness, this contractive feeling, this heavy feeling. And so our body gets addicted to the hormones of stress, which is a result of the survival state. And so What ends up happening is that even though we have the best of intentions to change to the body, that feels like we're going out of balance. It feels like something is wrong. It's saying, wait a minute, I'm used to feeling stressed most of the time. I'm used to feeling some level of anxiousness or worry or upset. And now you're trying to tell me to feel good and positive? It's like red alert, we're out of balance here. And so then the body will signal to the mind, hey, I need some stress chemicals right now to get us back into balance. I need to get us back into homeostasis. And so then in come the thoughts that criticize you, that make you feel fearful and the body's like, whoo, okay, we're back in balance again. And that's what ends up happening. It's why it can feel so hard. It's why you can feel a moment of relief, of feeling positive. And then those critical thoughts come rushing back in because to the body, it's simply not used to that. And also what happens is we end up creating this identity, this idea of who we are based on the story of our past, based on the beliefs and ideas that we made and accumulated about ourselves. And we say, well, this is who I am now. I am the person who's worried about my body. I am the person who's not good enough. I am the person who fill in the blank. And we think that it's us. And so what ends up happening is that When we start to threaten that identity, it can feel like a death to that identity. And it doesn't want to die. It wants to stay in control. We literally have this biological response that's trying to keep everything in place. And that's why, even though you may want to change, that you don't want to feel miserable most of the time or some low level amount of stress that it's so easy for the mind to say, well, you know, it's not that important or we've been feeling like this for so long. There's other things that matter more. You can't really change. That's actually the way that the mind tricks us into staying the same. It tries to convince you this is this is normal. Lots of people feel bad and anxious and insecure. Why bother trying to feel better? The mind's like, perfect, I'm in control. Identity is in place. Story stays the same. Body gets the same fix of stress chemicals. And that's this pattern that so many of us live in, whether it's related to our body image and appearance or whether it's related to something else. When we are stressed, our heart rhythms are jagged and incoherent. And this shuts down the creative logical centers of the brain. So it's why when we're in that fight or flight state, we're not usually making clear, calm decisions. We're being reactive. ⁓ my gosh, I gotta start another diet. I'm not gonna eat today. We make these quick response decisions. We're not clear because we're in that fight or flight state, because it ends up dysregulating the rhythms of the heart, which affects the brain. And so one of the best things that we can do is start to come into what's called heart-brain coherence. The Heart Math Institute has done a lot of research on looking at the heart-brain connection. And they've put forth a breathing technique that's really simple, and I'm gonna share with you what it is, to help shift ourselves out of that state of survival and into a more rhythmic pattern with our heart to create that heart-brain coherence. All you have to do is take a hand and you can place it over your heart. And this is just a way to help you. physically connect more with your heart and bring your attention here. And with your hand on your heart, you're gonna breathe a slow and steady rhythmic breath. It's about a count of five or a count of six. Just breathe nice, slow, deep breaths. And you can almost imagine as if you're breathing in and out through your heart. And then as you're doing that, bring up a feeling of care. gratitude, compassion, one of those feelings. And if you find it challenging to bring up that feeling, you can think of somebody that you love, something you're grateful for, maybe an animal, even a plant, until you start to feel that feeling. And then just allow yourself to experience that feeling as you're breathing these slow and steady rhythmic breaths in and out through your heart. Really only takes a minute or two to be able to start to shift into a coherent brain and heart wave. So they actually start to regulate again through that breathing. If you were to do this several times a day, what's happening is then we're starting to train now the body and mind to come out of that addictive state to stress and survival. And we're telling the body and mind we're safe now. We're starting to recondition the body and mind into a new peaceful state. And it's not going to switch right away because again, when we switch into that state of more peace and calm, that feels like it's off balance to the body and mind. It's gonna start generating those thoughts again. But if you can now know, ⁓ that's what's going on. My mind and my body are trying to get me back into a survival state. Okay, good to know. So I'm gonna now again shift in to the heart coherent breathing to bring myself back into regulation. You start doing that over and over and over again, you're now starting to prune those old synaptic connections that were linked up for survival and start to create new synaptic connections that are linked up to safety, love, connection, peace. And the thing is that our thinking and our feelings are always connected. If you're thinking negative thoughts, you're going to be feeling negative feelings and vice versa. They kind of are like magnets towards each other. So that's why if you're in a negative state, you're thinking negative thoughts. And it's also easier to start to see everything as negative. A negative feeling state just ends up attracting negative thoughts. like like attracts like. So the same then if you start to switch your state. into more coherence, into more safety, into more lightness, into more peace. Then you're going to start attracting more positive thoughts. Start to see your body in a more positive way. And again, as I did in the beginning, just not having those negative thoughts there, automatically you're gonna start feeling better. It's about starting to make that shift in the body and the mind. And using that simple breathing technique is one way that you can start to make that shift. So instead of having to change every thought in your mind or really worry about it, you can just get a sense of what's going on. Okay, I'm in this thought pattern loop that I've been conditioned with that's linked up to my survival system. I'm going to start to shift out of that now. And with that intention and with that practice, you really can start to see a change. And that is the shift that I help my clients move through, through my body peace coaching. And if you haven't heard about it yet, I've recently started opening up a complimentary coaching session because I realized that the best way to share with you what body peace coaching is, is for you to experience it. If you've been curious about receiving some coaching so that you can make that shift, you can book a complimentary session. There's a link below in the description. And I just want to remind you that feeling good about your body is your birthright. It's how you were born. You didn't come into this world feeling negative about your body. And just because you've had years of conditioning does not mean that you can't change. And I know I've worked with some clients that change sometimes can happen a lot more quickly than we realize. You truly can live a life feeling more peaceful, more joyful, and liking yourself. I hope you found this episode helpful today. I'll see you in the next one. Thanks for listening to Unlearning Beautiful. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show and share it with another woman who's ready to see beauty and herself in a new way. And if you feel moved, leave a rating and review. It will help the show reach more women who need to hear it. Remember, you're already everything you've been trying to become, enough worthy and free. I'm Christina Bruce. Until next time.