Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 30 Why It's So Hard to Accept Your Body
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: Children don't have to learn to accept their bodies. They simply live in them. So what changes? At what point does our body become something we judge, criticize, and spend years trying to fix? In this episode, I want to explore why accepting our bodies feels so difficult and why I don't think it's actually our bodies that we're struggling to accept, but something much deeper. Let's get into it. 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. Why it's so hard to accept our bodies, I believe comes down to one thing attachment. If we look at little children, they don't have to accept their bodies. They just do. It's not even really a thing. They're probably not even super aware of their bodies as being anything separate from them. It's just this vehicle that they're in. I don't know if you can remember back to when you were a child. You weren't really thinking about your body. You were just immersed in whatever it was that you were doing. And in fact, you may even forget those moments because they weren't significant. You were just living life. You might remember more the moments where you started to become self-conscious of your body. They tend to stand out more. Those negative ones have more of an impact on us. But I can remember being a kid doing cartwheels, running around, playing. My body wasn't a Thought. It's not like I was thinking, well, this is my body, it looks like this, it's doing that. I was just immersed in play, immersed in the world. And all children come into this world doing that. It's not until we learn concepts and ideas and that they have some kind of meaning attached to them. It's not the same in every culture or in every household. This is why, over the course of history and time, There have been different beauty ideals and different standards because the meaning that was given to how a body looked or how a body was changed. So if it's a positive meaning and we attach to it, we identify with it, we feel good about ourselves. But if it's a bad meaning, a negative meaning, and in our culture right now, it's pretty black and white, it's thin, good, fat, bad, when we have that meaning attached to it. And we identify our body with that, this means something about me, then we're either gonna feel good or suffer. So it's the attachment to the ideas about what it means about ourselves dependent on how our body looks. But those are learned. Again, we don't come into this world with them. And they live in the mind. So that's another key distinction here about attachment. When we come into this world, we're embodied. We just are. We are ourselves. But then we learn ideas. ⁓ you should be like this. You shouldn't be like that. If you look this way, that's good. If you look that way, that's bad. Those are ideas. Those are concepts. And we believe them. Because when we're young, they are often associated with getting some kind of approval, love, attention. So we're either trying to avoid things that are negative or we're trying to get the things that are positive. We essentially become conditioned. And we can see this really clearly in the way that we are taught to look at bodies and how we make these associations about what it means about ourselves. I've used this analogy before. Let's look at rain. Rain in and of itself is neutral. But we can attach different meanings to it that make it either positive or negative. If it's raining outside and you had a picnic plan that day, you're not gonna like the rain. But if there's been a drought, we really need the rain. So you see rain and you're happy. But rain is just rain. It's the context, it's the meaning. And that's exactly what's going on with our bodies. If we have negative meaning, Attached to how we view our bodies, it's going to be really difficult to accept it because we believe then that we have to accept the negative meaning about ourselves. So if there's this idea that fat is bad, it means I'm gross, it means I'm lazy, it means I'm unattractive, it means I'm not good enough, I'm not valuable or not worthy. Those are basically all meanings that are commonly in our culture attached to fatness, then When we make it mean something about ourselves, that I'm lazy, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, who wants to accept that? That feels terrible. It's like an existential threat, essentially. Like it can really send you down a very dark rabbit hole if you start believing that. So, of course, we're gonna reject it. Why on earth would I want to accept my body if it means? All of these terrible things about me, but it doesn't. That's the misunderstanding. That's where we go wrong, is we just believe these concepts. And because other people in our lives believe them too, we don't question them. We just take them as truth. But if they in any way are causing us stress, they are worth investigating. Because it's the idea and the concept and our attachment to it that causes the suffering, not our body itself. Think about it for a minute. If you were to let go of any idea about what your body means, notice how you feel. Is there a change? If you let go of the idea that because you've gained some weight is bad and it means something negative about you, how would you feel? You're gonna feel better, right? I'm gonna guarantee you already are starting to feel lighter, a bit more openness. Well, that's showing you the power of the concept. And if it was really true that that concept was real, then you shouldn't be able to get rid of it. Like it shouldn't go away. It should always kind of stick to you because, well, that's just the truth. That's how it is. You can't do anything about it, but you can. So we're dealing in the level of thought and mind. And that's not actually the truth, that's changeable. On the flip side of that, if there is positive attachment to our bodies, we think how I look is good. It means I'm beautiful and worthy and fit. And these are all values that are regarded in our culture. You also don't want to get rid of that. So you're attached to the positive. Well, I can't let go because I am going to lose. What makes me feel good about myself? I'm going to lose my worth. I'm going to lose my value. I'm going to lose the approval and appreciation from other people. And that feels scary, but the root of it is that we attached our sense of self-worth and value and who we are to a body, to a thought, to an identity. And that's when you suffer. The freedom from all of this is not in keeping your body looking a certain way. That's actually the opposite of freedom. That means you're trapped because you have to keep your body a certain way. Of course, you don't want to feel bad about yourself. So I better keep my body small. I better keep it fit. I better keep myself looking young because we have a belief that if you look old, you lose your value, especially for women. But it has nothing to do with that. It's that we are literally conditioned, brainwashed, like taken over by these thought patterns. And when we believe them, we lose our sense of self because we existed before these ideas were brought into our mind. When we believe them, it takes us away from our true sense of self. And here's the great news about this. Our worth and value in feeling okay exists prior to any concept or idea that we've taken on. By actually letting go, we return to what it is that we are hoping looking good and losing weight and having the best body or whatever will give us, which is a sense of security, value, and okayness. We have to let go of the ideas that we have attached to it. And then we get to actually experience what we really wanted all along, which is to feel good enough in our power, secure, open, loving, free. Another piece to this, why it can be so hard to accept our bodies, is because it may require a letting go of people's approval. So let's say accepting it means that we're gonna gain some weight or we're gonna have wrinkles or whatever it might be. We may lose the validation from other people. And I know that firsthand. When I let go of dieting and I stopped suppressing my weight, I rarely get a comment on my appearance now. Most people don't say anything to me. When I was thin, I routinely was complimented on my appearance. But because I've worked on letting go of the attachment to needing other people's approval, to the idea that. I'm only good enough if I'm in a thin body, that being attractive is necessary in order for me to feel okay about myself. It's much easier to be in a larger body and not need other people's approval. And another thing that's coming up to share too is that often we equate acceptance with giving up or resignation. I'm just gonna accept it and we begrudge it, but that's not what true acceptance means. Not really. Acceptance just means I'm okay with how things are in this moment. And when you are okay with your body and how it is, that feels good. The resistance to it is what creates the suffering and the stress and the feelings of not good enough. Anytime you let go of resistance, things open and things relax. So when you accept, then you actually open up to. Taking action and caring for your body from a completely different place. Because if we love something, if we're feeling good about something, we're gonna care for it, we're gonna pay attention to it, we're gonna give it what it needs. True acceptance means taking action from a totally different place. It's a lot more effortless, but it means that we have to become more embodied. Most of us are we're living in our heads, we're disconnected. From our bodies. We have a body, but our mind is constantly exerting control over it. It constantly has ideas about it. And it's usually fearful. It initiates a survival response. And so we get scared of acceptance because that doesn't feel safe. The concepts of our mind and our attachment to it is what is the most limiting. And it's what is making us feel not good in our bodies. Most of the time. Could be you have physical aches and pains. That's fine. You can attend to those from a place of acceptance. You're gonna likely have a better response than if you're coming from a place of non-acceptance or resistance. So I invite you to look at where did these beliefs come from? Do you have early memories of where you started to feel insecure in your body or where you can look back and say, yeah, I can see where I adopted this belief. A lot of it happened through osmosis from watching TV shows and just repeatedly seeing over and over again images of people in thin bodies and positive associations made to them, images of people in fat bodies and negative associations made for them, not seeing older women in prominent roles, only seeing younger women. These concepts and ideas. we all get conditioned with and then we believe it and then we suffer to try to keep it. So we constantly resist our naturally changing and aging bodies. And that's what causes the suffering. And we get confused thinking that our worth and value and our sense of okayness come from these concepts and ideas, but they don't. So also notice where do you feel like you can't let go of control. What do you think is going to happen? I guarantee you, if you like controlling, and most people do who have been on the path of dining really fear letting go of control. It's a scary feeling that can come up. But if you can realize that that's actually just fear, that you can let that move through your body, then that frees you to be able to. Make a choice from a different place and see I will be able to take action or I didn't need to control this in order to feel healthy in my body or to do something that was good for me. So imagine letting go of these concepts and ideas that you have been conditioned with about your body, letting go of the feeling that you need to control everything and see how that feels. Test it out, try it out. Because letting go of these concepts and ideas, being able to just accept your body as it is, is the most freeing, peaceful place. And it's a practice because our body is always changing. But here's the thing: all we ever need to do is let go of the concepts and ideas in order to feel okay. We don't actually have to change our bodies in order to feel good enough, worthy, and valuable. But we'll always be able to take those steps to feel good in our body. In our life situation right now as it is. And that's really, I think, living life because our bodies aren't supposed to be robotic. They're not supposed to stay the same forever. Life is meant to move and change. And it's a lot more easeful when we move and change with it. So if you're tired of constantly trying to fix your body and you're ready to build that different relationship with yourself, that's the work that we do together in coaching. You can learn more about it in the description below. And if you're not quite ready for that yet, you are welcome to download my free guide to body piece. That's a great place to begin. 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 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.