Therapy for Body Image Dissatisfaction
Body dissatisfaction is a common struggle that affects approximately 70 percent of people. If left untreated, body image dissatisfaction can turn into a mental illness like body dysmorphia, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder and can lead individuals to develop eating disorders or seek expensive surgeries.
People experiencing body image dissatisfaction have a distorted visual perception of how they look, which leads them to have a negative body image. Often, these people fail to mention these problems, even if they do seek therapy for concurrent mental health concerns. However, there are ways to connect your mind and body to break the vicious cycle of body image dissatisfaction.
How Therapy Can Change Your View
Cognitive behavioral therapy is capable of changing patterns of thoughts and behaviors. With body image dissatisfaction, the focus is to change a patient’s self-perception. This treatment involves identifying negative thoughts and replacing them with healthy ones. The person is encouraged to rethink their body and what it means to them beyond appearance.
Certain negative behaviors that coincide with body image dissatisfaction can slowly be reduced with the assistance of a therapist. The counselor can identify these behaviors, discuss them with the patient, and encourage alternative behaviors to minimize the behaviors and the discomfort that accompanies them.
The distorted perception of one’s body can be corrected by helping patients recognize a more realistic impression of their appearance, and through breaking patterns, break the vicious cycle.
Other Forms of Therapy
In combination with traditional therapy, studies have shown that alternative therapies like mindfulness, art, exercise, and movement therapies can help address and prevent body image dissatisfaction.
How Does It Work?
Therapy can change thought patterns and behaviors, and those changes result in structural changes in the brain. Changing how we perceive our bodies can also mean changing habits, how we interact, and how we think of ourselves beyond our perceptions of our bodies.
Some patients who begin therapy fail to discuss their body image dissatisfaction, but it is important to include it in your therapy. Body image dissatisfaction has roots that run deep, and your counselor needs to know how it is affecting your life as it could very well be affecting more aspects than you realize.
Many of us scroll past a bombardment of images daily that often fail to capture reality, and when we compare ourselves, we can begin to develop body image dissatisfaction. It is important to recognize that images we see in social media, entertainment, and advertisements, usually aren’t an accurate depiction of human bodies and may be heavily edited or completely Photoshopped.
If you find yourself unable to stop obsessing or comparing yourself, consider taking a break from social media and talking to a professional so you can break out of that cycle and reconnect your beautiful mind and body.
The counselors at the Jacksonville Center for Counseling can help those suffering from negative body impression recognize patterns of thoughts and behaviors that need to be replaced with healthier alternatives and let you know how to make that switch.
It can be difficult to stop negative thoughts and behavior patterns associated with body image dissatisfaction but telling a counselor how you are feeling is the right start to begin seeing yourself for how wonderful and unique you are, and you deserve to get to know the real you. For more information about counseling services in Jacksonville, FL, contact us today!