Start with being neutral about your body. You don’t have to 💖 love the way you look 💖 at first. You can acknowledge and appreciate that your body gets you from point A to point B, that it keeps you alive. Your body performs functions that allows you to experience life. You can feel sunshine and rain and wind on your skin. You can hear laughter and bugs and music. You can taste sweet and sour and salty and savory. You can see sunsets and stars and animals. You can smell sweet and earthy and tangy.
There’s all kinds of way to be neutral about your body. For example, you can observe that your body is good at having clothes on it, so that you stay dry and warm and keep stuff off your skin. Or you could go one step further and say your body looks cute in [ favorite article of clothing ] or that it’s comfortable/a pleasant sensation to wear that one [ article of clothing ]. You can observe that your body is good at processing food and sleeping and physically healing itself. You can observe that your body communicates to you through physical sensations and emotions. You can observe that your body allows you to do the things you do during the day/night.
Basically it’s about taking your attention away from the ways you perceive your body failing you, and instead focusing your attention on what it’s able to do for you. From there, you can move on to feeling more positive feelings towards your body. But you start with neutrality first to stop the automatic pattern of self hate and shame towards your body 🙂↕️
(Of course, this is MUCH easier said than done and takes actual effort. Stopping a thought process that’s a habit so ingrained in your psyche that it’s like breathing does take a lot of effort to first notice, then actively change. It’s fine if you have days when the body dysmorphia comes back. Picking up a new skill is like exercising and building muscle. The more you practice it, the longer you’ll go between relapses/episodes/etc).
Therapy and self help books (ie “Self-Compassion” by Kristin Neff) can also help you identify the source of your body dysmorphia, which can help you recontextualize where the hate and shame about your body comes from, and how to combat it, which can make maintaining body neutrality and body positivity easier 🙂↕️
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