Body Image in the Dumps? It Might Have Something to Do With Your Business
Whenever I speak to my coaching clients who profess a sudden frustration with their body, my usual first response is “How is your business doing right now?” and they look at me as though I have 3 heads. However, they usually follow up with something like:
”Yah, it’s super slow right now and I don’t have as many clients as I’d like.” By the 20th time I heard this, I realized that for many entrepreneurs our bodies become the scapegoat for our feelings of inferiority in other areas of our lives. So, in today’s blog post I’d like to break down a few theories I have about this and give you some redirection techniques to move through it if you find that this resonates with you.
First and foremost, as humans we have learned to tie our value to our material success & productivity and our looks - these 2 things become highly intertwined - a type of psychological coupling, if you will. When our stress & anxiety goes up as a result of our lack of productivity or success, it may feel the same way as when we experience stress & anxiety due to our feelings about our bodies - but in that situation it may not be your thoughts about your body actually causing it. Because our brains are meaning making machines, when I experience anxiety (for me I get a tight chest, tightening of my jaw, and jittery energy through my body) my brain will come up with a thought to make sense of the feeling and because our brains love to be efficient, it will search for a thought that I’ve had most frequently associated with that same feeling. Therefore,. because I experienced that same feeling (chest tightness, tight jaw, jittery energy) when I thought/knew people were judging my body in the past my brain will reach for the thought “I FEEL THIS WAY BECAUSE MY BODY IS UGLY”. In both situations, my body was primed for inevitable humiliation because my value was attached to my productivity/success and it was attached to my looks (before). Now, one of the best antidotes for body image insecurity is found in searching for context BEYOND the thought - asking yourself “What else is not going right in my world right now? What else is causing me to feel anxious?” to see if the thought your brain reached for is actually the correct thought to diagnose. This is incredibly important because if that feeling was brought on because of your business being in a slump and you instead try to “fix” your body through the traditional means of under/overeating, overexercising or hyperfocusing on your body the real issue will never be worked through and you will continue to feel the way that you do, if not worse. If we can suss out the real issue, then we can approach it strategically and effectively, realizing that our bodies are the machines that allow us to show up to our businesses day in and day out and need to be fueled and well rested to do their jobs.
So, the next theory comes from the fact that when our businesses are struggling, our stress and anxiety gets higher (which we already talked about above) and what happens when we get stressed out is that we tend to lean on the fear center of our brain more - the ol’ amygdala. Because of this, our brain is on the lookout for negativity, anything it perceives to be risky and what have been told our whole lives is risky? Our appearance. It’s like when stress increases, our natural defenses and ability to critically think goes to the wayside and all of the negative things we’ve been taught about what it means to be a person with a body comes riiiiiising to the surface. Then, because we’ve been force fed this idea that we can control our bodies, we turn to fix them instead of working through the natural dips of a business that tend to make us feel out of control. The best thing to do here is to remove yourself from being IN the business to working ON the business - I would remove myself from my usual spaces and take myself out to nature and off the grid to recalibrate and see my business and the entire context. Plus, being in nature reduces stress hormones by 33% - so, go hug a tree!
The last point I want to make about why your poor body image may not be due to your body is that when we are experiencing intense stress and anxiety from external circumstances we tend to lean into our less than healthy coping behaviors. For me, that looked like shopping & eating. I would eat until I was painfully full. I would spend money that I didn’t have which further fueled the stress. I would opt for food and beverage choices that would be less than desireable for my body and at some point, I would disengage entirely from work & routines - finding myself sitting on the couch for hours, binge watching shows or doom scrolling on my phone in an effort to feel better - yet, all of those things would result in me feeling worse both physically and emotionally. In addition to that, the shame that I would feel as a result of engaging in these activities would just pile on even more stress/frustration/lack of self esteem. It got to the point where I would have to have a come to jesus moment with myself and use my activator strength to get me moving again. However, not everyone has activator as a strength and so, many people get “stuck” in these experiences and victim hood. One thing I started to do was to have a list of “cup fillers”. I made a physical list of coping methods that actually HELP me instead of keep me stuck. My list includes things like: going for a walk sans phone, digital detox, journalling, hot shower, talking to someone, meeting up with a friend, dancing/shaking, screaming into a pillow, asking for a hug or back rub, gardening, cooking, art journalling, self portraits, etc. These things get me out of my head and into my hands AND they bring my critical thinking back online to help me strategize and move forward.
