Book Introduction

An Invitation

People often ask Deb, “What does it mean to be a therapist who specializes in body image?” What do you actually DO? “Can people really improve their body image and if so, HOW?” This book is our answer. It will be filled with people's stories, but I am going to start by telling you the one that is the heart and the foundation of our philosophy. The origin of the BodySelf approach reveals the qualities it embodies; love, non-judgment, curiosity and compassion. 

Over 20 years ago, a bright-eyed young woman who recently finished her masters came into my office for an informational interview. She was considering specializing in the field of eating disorders and wanted to learn more about what a private practice looked like. She was earnest and though a bit naive, I really enjoyed our conversation and found her curiosity and spirit inspiring to be around. We became fast friends, bonding over our love of art and the outdoors, and the deep passion we shared for the healing work we were doing, both inside ourselves and with our clients. We talked a lot about our own eating disorder recoveries and our ongoing pursuit of a more easeful relationship with our bodies. 

There was an openness and freedom that we found together and without much effort, discovered we were developing our own language for talking about body image. We quickly realized that what was most powerful about how we were approaching it, was that we were doing it together; co-creating the stories of our bodies and how we saw them. We helped one another to shift our gaze from our internalized image, to the layers of self that live beneath it. Because of the space and safety that our friendship offered, we were able to expand our body image lens from the well worn paths of shame and judgment to a curious, creative and even silly one that had been impossible to find on our own. 

We discovered that by borrowing the other’s curiosity and compassion and directing it towards the critical parts of ourselves, we were able to create an entirely different perspective. We realized that we weren’t just talking about body image, but what we called the BodySelf: the interconnected relationship between our stories and the way we saw our bodies. We felt how this shift changed the way we experienced working on our body image and over time, we started to weave this new language and way of thinking into our clinical work. It so resonated with our clients that we decided to design and run a BodySelf workshop, deeply hoping that this new way of exploring body image could change the conversation from one of shame and suffering to one of discovery and freedom. 

 Our first workshops were small and took place in my office, cramming 18 people in a room built for 8. As our attendance grew, we got more adventurous and held them in borrowed yoga and tai chi studios, YMCA event rooms (once with a spirited African drumming session going on next door), church basements and college classrooms. In these rooms, we continued to build on our notion of what the BodySelf meant and experimented with the best ways to help people explore what it meant to them. 

We saw eyes light up, shoulders drop down, and most of all, lightbulbs go on as these men and women realized that there was so much more to talk about than how much they hated their bodies. Shame was swapped out for curiosity, connections were made internally and externally, and the daily, relentless negativity of their attitudes towards their bodies started to shift. Participants now had a language and a framework for HOW to be in relationship to their bodies in a new way. They were relieved to find out it didn’t require them to dance like a leaf, stand naked in front of a mirror, or feel like they should let go of wanting to feel beautiful and powerful in their bodies. Instead of encouraging them to have body image matter less, we gave them the language to translate the meaning of their body image and turn it into valuable information about themselves and the kinds of lives that they wanted to lead. Our conversations started out by talking about stomachs and butts, arms and thighs and led us to dialogues about values, passion, alignment and most of all having a more satisfying and zesty life. 

We decided it was time to articulate the BodySelf language on paper; to capture the exercises we have led people through, the metaphors that have landed and the questions that have helped shift perspectives. This workbook is an invitation to explore your relationship with your body image in a new way. It is intended to help you develop more clarity about how you hold your history, beliefs, sadness, fears, wisdom and dreams in your body and in turn, your body image. We hope it will create a new paradigm for seeing your body as your teacher, not your tormenter. This will lead you to interpret and deconstruct the unique story your body has to tell; so you can start to see it not simply as a flat two dimensional image, but as multidimensional and dynamic. It is our belief that there are beautiful and integral parts of you held in that mirror image you so often criticize, and we want to help you let them speak.

Author’s Note

This book was conceived over many years but it was written during the Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter of 2020 and beyond (the Covid Pandemic). Whitney and I met together on Zoom on Sundays at 3 p.m. every week regardless of how sad, tired, lost, confused or completely bonkers we felt. We tried diligently to write as much as we could, at the same time sharing our stories of this strange and deeply complex time. There were days we didn’t even get to the writing, because it felt so important to first give our bodies a chance to speak. Sunday afternoons became our sacred place to both write and unpack all that our bodies were carrying. We worked to articulate what the BodySelf was and how to work with it, and sometimes just let our BodySelves share what they needed to.

Because of the challenging landscape of the Pandemic, and all that came with it, we found ourselves asking each other, “Do we still write this book? Is what we have to say still as important as we thought it was a few years ago?” At the same time, in my therapy practice and in Whitney’s coaching practice, we found people’s pain expressed in so many of the same ways we had always seen, just greater. In holding the space for our clients, their relationships with themselves and their bodies were never more layered and complex. With so much to hold, process, navigate and express, we found peoples bodies and body images stepping in to try and help in so many different ways. This made us want to write this book even more. Because when overwhelm hits, directing our suffering onto our body and body image is accessible, familiar and often unconscious. There has never been a greater time to be more curious about the function of body obsession and in doing so, to discover the layers of self beneath it.