Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 25 How to Stop Caring What Other People Think About Your Body
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: Have you ever wished that other people's comments about your body, your weight, your choices would just roll off your back? You tell yourself, I shouldn't care what they think. But the moment a family member makes a comment about what you're eating, or you imagine walking into a room after gaining weight, your stomach drops. You feel exposed, judged, and unsafe. That's you, you're definitely not alone. This is one of the most common challenges. my coaching clients struggle with. And today I'm going to talk about why it can feel so hard to not care what other people think, as well as three steps that you can take to help you reclaim your power, stand grounded in your truth, and be able to let those comments that are usually so sticky begin to roll off your back. 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. Something I noticed that's really common among women who have had a history of dieting or disordered eating is that they tend to be more sensitive people. And that's not a bad thing. They tend to be people who, as children, could really feel emotion more or could pick up the energy in the room, or just know if somebody was saying something, but they were really meaning something else. Maybe that was you. Do you feel like you were somebody that who would be called sensitive? Maybe that was used as a negative. I know it was used against me that way. You're being too sensitive. Why are you so sensitive? Well, sensitivity, I think, is a superpower. But we have grown up in a culture that, let's be honest, is pretty harsh. There's a lot of judgment and criticism and ideas of how people should or shouldn't be. And when we grew up, Depending on the environment and home that we were in and the beliefs that our caregivers held, we could have taken a lot of that on really personally, and it could felt like a threat. I want to give you an example. When I was a child, I grew up in a time when spanking was a thing. We were taught in order to get what we want, we need to do it through punishment. And that is still very active today. I mean, If you look at the very act of dieting and shrinking your body, it's a form of punishment. We're being very hard on our bodies, but we're doing it because we believe that we're going to get something out of it that's going to be of benefit. And so when that was used against me, I didn't really realize until older the impact that it had on me. I noticed how in those moments, my child mind had made this belief. You're bad, you're wrong, you're not good enough for just being who you are. That lives in our nervous system. And I was able to go back and do some forgiveness work with it. That initial trauma response, it doesn't have to come just from physical punishment. It can come from comments. Even something that was unintentionally taken ⁓ the wrong way, our little minds just can end up making meaning out of these things. As adults, what we want to do is start to notice. Where is the survival response negatively impacting our lives now? And curing what other people think is a survival response? This can show up a lot when we're exploring making peace with our bodies. Because essentially what we're doing is saying, I'm going to go against the grain of the culture. And we know that. And the survival instinct, we want to feel accepted by the tribe. We want to belong. And so making peace with your body could put you in a position where you're intentionally stepping outside of what everyone else is doing. That's going to trigger a survival response. It's why if we start to gain weight, we immediately start looking to other people and say, ⁓ my God, they're going to judge me. They're going to criticize me. And I care so much about what they think. It's why a lot of people are putting so much attention and time on their bodies to fit the societal standard because of the survival response that they're gonna have to deal with if they feel like they're going to get criticized or judged. It's a coping mechanism, trying to conform our body to look a certain way. That's really what's going on on a deeper level. If you're exploring body piece or you're on the path, you have gotten to a point or at least are maybe starting to realize. That's what you're doing to try to keep your body small, to try to conform your appearance in a certain way, is causing its own kind of pain. And ultimately, it's having you live out of alignment with your true self. So, what I want to do now is talk about three different ways that you can start to make a shift of letting go of caring so much about what other people think. And the very first thing is to get good at. feeling that nervous system response. We need to realize that first and foremost we're safe. Even though we might have that visceral response in the body, and for me it would come in this tightening of the stomach. I would feel this fear. At the worst of it, I could feel really hot. I might even get flush in my face and I would feel this freeze response. That's enough to make us want to run or well freeze, but do something to not feel it again. So what we have to do is realize that we can handle that response. That right here, right now, even in the face of someone judging, criticizing, disagreeing with us, we are okay and we are safe. We can feel that. I can feel this feeling. It's uncomfortable. I may not like it. But the more that we go towards the feeling and actually allow it to move through us, we build the capacity. Capacity to be able to handle it. And then we don't need to run away from it. So that's how we're going to actually stop going back to the dieting and the shrinking and the behaviors that we've used to conform our bodies to feel safe because we don't need it if we're okay to feel the response. So many coping mechanisms that we're doing, emotional eating, scrolling. If we are okay to sit in that feeling, we don't need to use that. Behavior to distract. That's how negative coping mechanisms can end up falling away on their own without us having to try to make them when we can start to be okay with actually feeling the physical response that's going on in our bodies. In the beginning, you might just need to dip your toe in it. You might be like, okay, I'm gonna sit here for five seconds and that's all I've got. But eventually you can build. You can feel it more and you just keep reminding myself I'm safe. And the key is to not be in the story that your mind is telling you about it, because your mind is going to give you a commentary. Instead, to the best of your ability, stay with the physical sensations, stay with the feeling. You are designed to handle it. It's not going to hurt us to feel the emotion, to feel the physical feeling. You're retraining your mind to say, it's okay, we're we're safe. There's not a threat. We don't need to run away. We don't need to hide. I can feel this. And then you're actually letting go of the old energy of the past because that's what it is. It's not the perceived threat in front of you, the comment, the judgment, the disagreement. It's the old patterning. It's from when you were a child getting spanked or having somebody say that negative thing to you. That's what's coming up. We want to be able to let that. That of course is not something that's going to happen overnight, but it's something to explore over time. Now, the second thing to do is to start to realize that anything that somebody says about you, judges about you, criticizes about you is not actually about you. It's about them. I don't know if you've read the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. It's a really good one. He has, well, four different agreements. And the second agreement is take nothing personally. Because what he is explaining in the book is that when somebody is criticizing you or judging you, it's coming from their own mind and it's not actually about you. It's just a projection of their belief system, of how they are thinking. I often say this to my clients replace you with anybody else who looks like you or is behaving like you, and they're gonna judge you too. So they're judging. What their mind has said is not right or is incorrect or is wrong. This quote from the book says, nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind. They are in a completely different world from the one we live in. So if you can keep remembering that, then that can help to free you from the impact. Of that criticism or judgment. Now you can take what they're saying and check in with yourself to see if it's true. Is there a behavior that you're doing where you're thinking, yeah, actually I was attacking you with this comment or I wasn't doing this in my t integrity? That's fine. When it comes to a judgment about your body, your food, any of that, that's their mind. Now, if it feels true for you, then it matches your beliefs as well. If a thought hurts, it's not true. But just realize that. Everybody's walking around with their own minds and their own ideas of what's right or wrong or good or bad. Now we're in a culture right now where many people are believing the same thing. Many people are thinking fat bad, then good, but that belief is hurting them too. They're not free of it. So just because you're starting to step away from the crowd now and that feels unsafe, remember that you're stepping away because that belief has been hurting you. And just because they aren't stepping away yet. Doesn't mean that they're quote unquote right and you're wrong. It just means they're still believing something that you're now waking up to. And the third part of this, where you can start to let go of caring what other people think, is realizing that you're unintentionally giving away your power to the person when you're taking what they say personally. We don't realize that that's happening, but what we're essentially saying is, yes, you are the judge of me. You're right. You have the authority to tell me who I am to make a judgment about me. Well, who gave them that authority? We did. We don't mean to, but we do it. The truth is that we're equals. Your opinions, your ideas, the way that you're treating your body is just as valid as somebody else's. We're just seeing things differently. This is about being rooted in your own decisions and your own beliefs. And again, if we have grown up where we were constantly being told that how you're being is wrong and you need to be this certain way, then we've stopped trusting ourselves. We learned not to trust ourselves and to give our power and authority away to somebody else. So we need to start to reclaim that. If you're on the body peace path, that's what this journey is about. It's starting to reclaim your power from beliefs from other people, from Decisions from other people and to start to listen to yourself again and say, what makes sense to me? What feels right to me? And reclaim that power and reclaim that trust. If you are somebody who is sensitive or intuitive, then that is strong in you. But we've just learned to shut it down. We've learned to doubt it. So when doubt comes in, that is that wounded place that said, no, no, you can't trust yourself. Body piece isn't just about letting go of the stress of dieting. It's a much greater journey than that. It's really about a reclamation of your power, of your intuition, and of your deep trust in yourself. So you can live authentic to you in the best way that is going to support you, regardless of what other people think. It's freeing. You are free to live in a way that is going to make you feel good. And that's the journey. That is what I help my clients do because I know it's challenging. If you would like support on this, to be able to let go of caring what other people think and return to that trust in yourself, I'll drop the link below for both my private coaching and small group coaching. It is possible to be able to let go of what other people think. Use those three steps that I shared with you, start practicing them and see what difference they make for you. Thanks so much for listening. Look forward to seeing you in the next episode. 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 this 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.