How to Heal from Harmful Teachings about Your Body

Harmful teachings about the body come in many forms; what is said or not said about our body, what we are allowed and not allowed to talk about, how others treat or view our body, and cultural norms of what we are expected to look like. For those who grew up in the evangelical church around the 1990’s-2000’s, this will likely include the teachings of Purity Culture. (You can find my previous post about the most harmful teachings from Purity Culture here).

Regardless of where it came from, or how it happened, harmful teachings about our body negatively impact how we view and treat ourselves, which in turn negatively impacts all of our relationships.

To heal from harmful teachings about the body, we need to learn how to build a healthy relationship with our body again, or for the first time. The criteria for a healthy relationship with your own body follows the same criteria as any other relationship; there needs to be an acknowledgement of the other person, a belief in the desire of the other to connect, and communication that involves taking turns expressing and listening. When it comes to your relationship with your body, it requires the same things. You must acknowledge your body as your self, believe that your body is your friend, and communicate with your body by listening and responding. In this post, I am going to walk through these three steps and what they look like when you are using them to heal or improve your relationship with your body.

Acknowledge.

Believe.

Communicate.

1) Acknowledge

The beginning, or repair, of a relationship must start with the acknowledgement of the other. We focus on and talk about our bodies a lot, but there is a big difference between acknowledging your body as an object to criticize and acknowledging your body as a part of yourself. When we criticize our body as an object we create a war within ourselves, and that war does not cease by changing whatever it is we don’t like about our bodies. The war within ourselves can only cease when we “invite” our body back into our understanding of self. As Hillary McBride explains in her book The Wisdom of Your Body,

“Healing happens as we invite our bodies back into the narratives of our lives. Even if our body still feels somewhat separated from the self, this invitation can be the first act of acceptance and arrival to learn to say to ourselves ‘This is my body’” (McBride, 2021, p 16).

We must acknowledge our body as self in a way that avoids classifying different parts of it as good or bad. We can begin practicing this acknowledgement by looking at the parts of our bodies we would usually judge, and instead of thinking negative comments about ourselves, placing a hand on that area and declaring “This is my body”. Period. A declaration with no positive or negative descriptions attached.

This is the beginning step, and sometimes it can take a long time to say those words and have them feel sincere. That is to be expected, as it has likely been a lifetime of warring with your body, so it will take some time to build this new way of viewing and relating to your body as self.

2) Believe

Another part of ending that war with your body is to start believing that your body is your friend and not your foe. What we believe about another person will guide how we treat them, just like what we believe about our body guides how we treat it.

What we believe about our body is often the result of different teachings, comments, experiences and traumas. Our culture has trained us to think about our body based on how it looks, and functions, and whether the way it looks and functions attracts others to us.

We can begin to build up trust that our body is our friend by making a list of the ways our body has “been there for us” and continues to be.

For example:

*MY BODY… allowed me to receive care when I was a child, and helped me know that I was loved.

*MY BODY… allows me to show love and care to those around me.

*MY BODY… has worked hard to grow through every stage and transition of my life, giving me the ability to take part in life with those around me.

*MY BODY… protects me, heals me, and fights for me, every single moment, to the best of its ability.

The more that we know about how our body functions, the more we will be able to add to this list. No matter what age you are, it is always helpful to learn more about your body/brain and how or why it does what it does.

3) Communicate

Last but not least, how we communicate with our body will help us to end the war within our body, and help to maintain that peace. A healthy relationship with our body, just as a healthy relationship with anyone, requires an acknowledgement of the other, a belief in the sincere desire of the other to connect, and communication that involves both sides taking turns expressing and listening. For this last step of communication with our body to succeed, we must have the first two steps in place; the acknowledgement of “This is my body” and the belief that our body is our friend and not our foe. As with any relationship, we are going to listen most to the people that we trust and know truly care about us.

Research of the brain has proven that the only way to change how we feel is by learning to be aware of and befriend what is going on inside of ourselves. This means that when we notice certain emotions or physical sensations within ourselves we need to resist the urge to shove it down, drown it out, or ignore its existence. We also need to try to resist giving in to that emotion or sensation, letting it take over or control us without any attempt to understand it. We cannot ignore someone and expect to befriend them at the same time, nor can we allow those we care about to act out in harmful ways without addressing our concerns. This applies to your relationship ith your body as well.

The place to start in learning how to listen to and befriend what is going on in your body is curiosity.

For example:

“I wonder why I get this feeling in my chest when I think about ______”

“I wonder why I immediately responded in anger when ________ said that”

“I wonder why I seem to shut down emotionally when this conversation comes up”

“I wonder why my energy is so low in these scenarios”

“I wonder why doing ________ gives me so much energy”

“I wonder why I feel safe with ________ but not with __________”

“I wonder why my neck is so tense today”

Making observations and being curious about them is the place to start. The more this is practiced the more likely you will come up with some answers, or at least possibilities. The important thing is that you are acknowledging that there is a reason or causation, and that prevents us from ignoring what’s happening or making a quick remark that only criticizes ourselves or hurts someone else.

Dr. van der Kolk explains that “[t]rauma robs you of the feeling that you are in charge of yourself”, and so recovering that ownership of your own body and mind can only take place as you learn how to think and feel without shame or rage taking over (van der Kolk, 2014, p. 206). The technical term to describe the feeling of being in charge of your life is agency; those with agency know that they have a say in what happens to them and they have the ability to impact their circumstances (Kolk, 2014). By healing your relationship with your body, you are also building up your sense of agency. The more we learn about ourselves, the more agency we can have in our own lives.

It took many years to get to where you are now, and those habits don’t disappear overnight. Please, be kind to yourself.

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