Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

(On Body Image, Socialisation and External Shame)

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”

(Buddha)

I was looking for an inspiring quote about body confidence on the internet. Something to make me feel slightly better about my aging, wobbly, carcass. What I wasn’t expecting to find was this:

“Dimples are cute on your face (not on your thighs)”

It was an advertising campaign from Avon gone wrong. An attempt to lure women into buying a cellulite cream with insensitive body shaming. My curiosity piqued, I read several articles about it, which all seemed roughly the same – Anger on Twitter, blah, blah, blah. Avon apologises blah, blah, blah. “Pull down the ad!” women had cried in their indignation. “Cellulite is normal! We should be proud of our bodies!”.

But in all the articles I read, I noticed something was missing. Why wasn’t the product itself under scrutiny? If cellulite is so normal, why wasn’t the fact that such a cream existed in the first place being explored? Wasn’t it completely possible that despite the discussion on cellulite being ‘normal’, people would still buy the product anyway?

The though niggled in the back of my mind… Until I did one day when I was doing my mirror work…

Mirror work is not a new concept, but I was using it for a specific purpose – becoming more comfortable with my body. Trying to shake off the negative feelings I had about my humanoid meat-sack, which had plagued my entire life. For all the work I had put into fixing my head and my heart over the last couple of years, I still despised my body with a vehement passion. Detested it. Loathed it. To the point where the simple act of getting naked to take a shower would often leave me in tears. As Emperor Palpatine would say, the hate flowed strongly through me.

“How bad could your body be?” I hear you ask. In truth, considering I don’t work out and I’m in my mid-forties, not that bad. But for some reason, my emotions like to over-ride my logic in this specific arena, and leave me wallowing in vast flood of self-pity, and toxic insecurity. That’s why I needed to work on this issue – not only was it the last real bastion of irrational insecurity left for me to conquer within myself, but it was damaging and unnecessary.

Hence the mirror work…

The ideal way to conduct mirror work for this particular purpose would be to stand naked in front of a full-length mirror, and speak affirmations to my whole body, acknowledging each part, and recognising its contribution to my life. However, not having access to a full-length mirror, I decided my best play was to modify the process to suit my needs.

I wrote to my body in my journal, capturing my affirmations. Reminding me of what ‘we’ (me and my body) have been through, what we had accomplished, and the positives we still have today. I wrote sincerely, and honestly, but also with compassion, and without negativity. Ensuring not one ‘but’, ‘however’, caveat, or negative existed. It was difficult to say positive things about my body, but it was very insightful and rewarding.

I use touch, instead of sight, to help me talk through these statements. Instead of standing naked in front of a mirror to acknowledge my various parts visually, I lie naked on my bed. Working my way up from the bottom of my body, I speak my affirmations out loud, and touch each part. For example, I start by reaching down to touch my feet, saying… “My tiny feet have carried me far in life, and recovered from many injuries… Thank you, feet…”

Practice makes perfect, and personal realisations can take time to really sink in. My head understands things first, but often it takes a fair bit of repetition and practice for my heart to follow suit, and truly believe. I had read through my journal entry repeatedly, learning the affirmations. I had been practicing the touch therapy, lying naked on the bed, acknowledging and thanking my body, and letting go of the toxic hate. Then, one day, the belief component finally happened…

Because the Avon ad about dimpled thighs popped into my head…

The image of a thousand tweets angrily declaring that cellulite was normal, and my knowledge that cellulite is normal, suddenly juxtaposed with the realisation that despite what we know to be normal, we can still be shamed by the world into wanting to purchase that cream. We can still be shamed into thinking that was is ‘normal’ needs fixing.

All that negative self-talk and self-loathing didn’t originate within me. It sprang from shame. Shame which society had taught me to feel. Memories flooded back from childhood of all the times I was told how I should look. How I should dress. I realised all my ideas of ‘what is feminine’ were taught to me, and not discovered by me. How I had allowed family, peer pressure, media, and bullies, to shape my image, and along with it, my sense of self-worth.

It occurred to me that the only real worries I have about my body are related to how it functions – i.e., whether I’m in good health.  But those didn’t sting like the other thoughts. They weren’t loaded with hate and tears. Everything I had been obsessing about, that caused me to cry, that made me hate myself, was nothing more than garden variety shame and fear. I didn’t hate the way I looked, I hated the thought that other people would judge me, and it made me afraid and ashamed.

Within my soul, the message called loud and clear “None of that hate is truly yours. It had been pushed upon you.”…

It was an epiphany so powerful, part of it scared me. And I finally believed…

However, if you’ve been paying attention to the world, a lot of what I’ve just said isn’t exactly new. We know that body shaming happens all the time. The beauty industry, the fashion industry, the weight loss industry, the media, and social media, have all been under various levels of scrutiny for how they make people feel about themselves. The Avon ad itself was a clear-cut example of it.

So, what was so powerful about this epiphany that frightened me?…

I had finally looked deep down Dabrowski’s socialisation rabbit hole, and it was a dark, and seemingly endless, abyss. “None of this hate is truly yours” didn’t just refer to my body. It referred to everything. Every bit of negativity I possess about every aspect of my being.

It had taken work and practice to finally shake off my toxic body image woes, ones that had developed in a world where we are conscious of the external pressures which get foisted on us every day. We can see the body image traps and pitfalls, and yet they still grab us. We are still buying cellulite cream to fix something that we all agree is normal.

I had dealt with many of my insecurities and negative thoughts these past few years, but it occurred to me that I may have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Maybe I had only identified the most glaring and obvious ones? If I could be socialised to that extent, that deeply, in relation to my own body – to the point I could forget what I consciously know to be normal every single day as I get in the shower – what else had I forgotten? How else am I brainwashed? How many other socialisations were still romping around in my brain, masquerading as my own negative self-talk? How many would be as deep and hurtful as my loathing of my own body?

But the notion of fixing something which is normal, also applied to my overexcitabilities. It had been the exact same process of learning to forgive myself. I had spent a lifetime wondering why I was an oddball, and what was ‘wrong with me’, until I discovered overexcitabilities, and realised there was nothing wrong with me at all. I did not need fixing.

The forgiveness and transformation after finding out about OE, happened at blinding speed, so I know that processing each socialisation may not take as long as I might first assume. When I thought about my OE, my fear about the extent of my socialisation finally started to subside, because I started to realise I had the tools I needed at my disposal. All it would take was work.

After all, practice makes perfect, and the more you work on yourself, the quicker and easier it becomes. I have the confidence of knowing there is nothing wrong with me. And the more I learn about Dabrowski, and keep working on myself, the more of the iceberg emerges from the seas of my subconscious.

Importantly, I have the understanding that both my mind and my body are beautiful gifts of nature, unique treasures, and serve me to the best of their capabilities. I do not need fixing. I just need to deal with some of those pesky and invasive thoughts that have been planted in my psyche by external sources. These weeds in my mental garden will surface on their own – all I need is a little patience and persistence, and to keep pulling them out one by one as they emerge. If those weeds aren’t killing off the rest of the garden, then things are OK. They will continue to appear, and will probably never be eradicated fully, and that’s OK too.

This was doable. This was achievable. I may not be able to unwind all the socialisation. I may not be able to disintegrate everything I have learned. But I could probably do enough to live freely from the weight of the self-doubt, shame and negative thinking. For me, that will be enough. Freedom from the negative impact of socialisation, not perfect and total eradication of it, seems to be something I may be able to accomplish in my lifetime.

I know I’ll never reach Dabrowski’s level 5. I’ll never be the exemplar of humanity, and I’ll probably never achieve full authentic personality. I’m not born to be the perfect specimen or transform into the gold standard. There will always be weeds in my garden. But I really don’t care.

I do not need to be perfect. I just need to be free.