Red Herring
Have you ever stopped to think that maybe your weight is not the problem? Have you ever noticed that you feel worse about your body when you’re stressed out or frustrated? Maybe the real issue is not your body.
Glamour conducted a survey of more than 300 women of all sizes. They found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily. Some women even attest to having 50 or 100 hateful thoughts about their bodies each day. Cultural ideals about weight and beauty certainly play a part. But we’ve also trained ourselves to think this way. Neuroscience has actually shown that whatever we focus on shapes our brain. Neural pathways form according to what we habitually think about. Unfortunately, this training begins very early. A study conducted at the University of Central Florida shows that, of three to six year old girls, nearly half were already worried about being fat and about a third stated that they wanted to change something about their body.
When Glamour went to analyze their data in efforts to find a cause for these negative thoughts, an interesting trend emerged: They found that participants who were unsatisfied with their career or relationship tended to report more negative body thoughts than women who were content in those areas. In fact, uncomfortable emotions of any kind, such as stress, l0neliness, or even boredom, influenced women to start berating their bodies.
I often talk with my patients about “fat attacks”. This is what I call that sudden, out of the blue fear and panic associated with feeling incredibly huge. It can seem to come out of nowhere. One minute, you’re feeling fine, and the next, you can feel as big as a blimp. Nothing changed in the last few moments about your body. It’s the same one you had when you feeling fine about it. The only thing that changed was an emotional state. Perhaps you’re feeling overwhelmed about all of the things you have to do that day. Or perhaps you’re angry with your boss, or frustrated with the mess the dog has made in the living room. These emotions can come so quickly, and people with eating disorders are so disconnected from their emotions, that all of this gets channeled into body image. However, all the dieting in the world won’t make you feel better, because the issue was never about that in the first place.
In her article “Body Talk: The Use of Metaphor and Storytelling in Body Image Treatment”, Anita Johnston writes, ” A woman who struggles with body image issues tells herself a story (“I’m too fat” or “I am ugly”) but fails to question what is real and true. She is not conscious of the inner stories that are causing her great suffering… Because her physical appearance is the first thing that appears to her when she looks at herself, the first thing she sees when she senses something is wrong, she turns the full force of her fear, disgust, and rage against it.” As Anita so powerfully articulates, a woman who does not pause to examine the full picture of her life responds instead to the initial thought that comes into her mind. For example, “He doesn’t like me because I’m too fat.” She immediately assumes that the culprit is her body, which houses her appetites and desires, which has now become the enemy that has caused her all of her pain and anguish.
If we would pause long enough to assess the real issues and concerns in our lives, we would realize that the problem is not our bodies. It’s our inner critic. Our bodies are nearly messengers alerting us to the real issues: pain of divorce, loneliness of being rejected, worry about being our of a job etc. Negative body image is merely a red herring, convincing us that the problem is that we’re too fat, and deterring us from the real issues causing the pain. As long as we persistently focus on changing our bodies, the real underlying issues never get addressed and resolved. I ran across a quote somewhere that has stuck with me: “In order to see the moon, you must allow your gaze to go beyond the finger pointing to it.”
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