The Foreword of Our Book

The Beginning

People often ask us “What does it mean to specialize 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 is filled with many people's stories, but we are going to start with the one that lies at the heart of the BodySelf philosophy: the story of the Fat Temp and Crazy Raisin. This story reveals the qualities we hope that this book embodies: connection, curiosity and compassion. 

Almost 20 years ago, a bright-eyed young woman, who recently finished her masters degree in mental health counseling, sought out a well-known psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders and body image for an informational interview. This young woman was considering focusing on these professional areas herself. The psychotherapist found her to be earnest and energetic and her curious spirit inspiring. 

If you haven’t guessed it yet, this is our story.

We, Whitney and Deb, became fast friends, bonding over our mutual love of art and the outdoors, and the deep passion we shared for healing work, both inside ourselves and with our clients. We talked about our own eating disorder recoveries and our ongoing pursuit of an easier relationship with our bodies. As our friendship deepened, we discovered we were developing  our own language for talking about body image. 

Because of the safety of our friendship, we were able to expand our body image lens from the well-worn paths of shame and judgment to a curious, creative and more lighthearted frame that had been impossible to access on our own. By borrowing one another’s curiosity and compassion and directing them towards the critical parts of ourselves, we created a new perspective on our negative body image. We weren’t just talking about body image anymore, but the interconnected relationship between our stories, our pain and our longings and the way we felt about our bodies. 

We realized what we had been calling “body image” was a multi dimensional experience. We discovered that our body image was not just about our size or what we saw in the mirror, but actually influenced by what we came to call the BodySelf; our stories, our traumas, our temperament, our longings and our desires. We found that by developing a relationship with our BodySelf, we were moving the dial on our body image work in ways we never thought was possible.  

Over time, we started to weave this new language and way of thinking into our clinical work. It resonated so much with our clients that we decided to create BodySelf workshops, to change the conversation people were having about body image; from one of shame and suffering to one of discovery and freedom. 

Meanwhile, we continued on our own BodySelf journeys, and developed a habit of giving endearing names to our various body image self-perceptions. These names brought a lighthearted acceptance to our most vulnerable body image sensitivities. By creating characters based on our negative body image thoughts, we felt less ashamed of the harsh ways we saw ourselves. We came to especially appreciate two of these endearing characters, Fat Temp and Crazy Raisin. 

The Fat Temp 

Two years after returning from the Olympics as an alternative for the US Lightweight Rowing team, Whitney sat in the basement of a university financial service department, working as a temp. While she felt some relief at having a task with a beginning, an end, and a paycheck, overall her spirits were quite low. In her mind, her Olympic dream had failed, as had the marriage to another rower that had ended after only one year. Not only that, while her work consulting on team dynamics and wellness to college athletic teams was energizing, it didn’t pay the bills. Overall she felt lost, defeated, and, as usual, fat.

On the outside she presented as confident and energetic. Her bio reflected a great education and impressive athletic accomplishments. Her supervisor came down to her small, dimly lit office cubicle one day to check on her progress, he put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Why are you here?” he asked gently. Clearly, he didn’t know how her resume had led her to this particular job in this particular basement. If Whitney had added a line on her resume that stated, “spent a lot of time reeling and healing from an entrenched eating disorder and a divorce, looking for something stable and predictable with a paycheck,” perhaps it might have made more sense to him.  

Even though Whitney knew taking this temp job was a positive step for a variety of emotional and practical reasons, she felt great shame about it. Her body communicated its shame through a particularly raw self consciousness and desire for physical change. Being at peak fitness and the intense training that supported that goal had been a huge part of her life and identity for a long time. She had also been a “lightweight rower,” so now she was constantly comparing her current body to a weight and fitness level that used to be a full-time endeavor. Now, as she transitioned out of her rowing career, these unattainable weight and fitness goals served as an orienting focus that temporarily freed her from feelings of grief and confusion. The one-two punch of feeling “fat” and ashamed about her temp status helped distract her from looking at the bigger issues: the loss of her rowing career and marriage, and overwhelming uncertainty about how to move through the world. Focusing on her body and weight loss gave her direction and created a simple pathway to gain a sense of control, distracting her from these daunting life questions.  

Whitney called Deb to talk about the conversation with her boss. At the time, she felt like she was best summed up as: someone who had just had her “15 minutes of fame” as an alternate in the Olympics and despite all her privilege and hard work, was unable to reach her potential. Together, through giggles, they named that confused and sad girl in the basement, “Fat Temp.”  

Seen through Deb’s eyes, “Fat Temp” was a loveable hero in transition. With Deb, Whitney could cry about how Fat Temp felt like a big fat failure. Once the shame abated, Whitney was freed up to have a broader perspective. She felt some relief in having a job where she just needed to do what she was told and recognized, as the title implied, this job was temporary.

The Crazy Raisin

Meanwhile on the other side of town, Deb was 35, single, and watching her friends get engaged and married. Fresh from a breakup, Deb felt further away than ever from finding her life partner. She was committed to finding the right match and took dating very seriously. After a parade of laughably mismatched blind dates set up by her friends, she waded into the online dating pool. It was crazy making. Long text-only relationships that led to nowhere, great first dates that faded into oblivion and far too many coffee dates that had no spark. She felt like she couldn’t do it anymore: that her heart didn’t have the fortitude to tolerate the ups and downs of the dating world.  

At the same time, Deb started noticing ways that both her body and face were aging. Having grown up as a suntanned California girl, she observed the little creases at the edge of her eyes that she swore hadn’t been there the month before. Aware of the sun’s impact on her skin, she put on a hat and slathered herself in sunscreen. She felt pasty, pale and disconnected from her old self.  She was trying so hard to do the right things with her skin and men, and yet, still she felt like she was shriveling like a raisin. After each ridiculously incompatible date or “mini -relationship,” Deb would call Whitney, feeling discouraged, hopeless and a million miles from sexy. She’d find herself wondering, “Am I crazy, or are they?” It felt easier to worry about her wrinkles and her aging body than it did to feel the confusion, vulnerability and fear surrounding her search for a partner. They affectionately named this part of Deb, “Crazy Raisin.”  Through Whitney’s eyes, Deb was a highly successful, independent, youthful woman bravely searching for what she really wanted and having a hard time finding it. By recognizing the ways that Deb was channeling her angst about dating into her body image, she was able to see it wasn’t her skin that needed her attention but her heart. 

The BodySelf Workshops

Time and time again, we could offer one another safety and neutrality to explore self-hating and negative body image thoughts; creating a new mirror for one another. We offered one another a mirror unlike any we had ever had before. We designed exercises, prompts and discussion to share the BodySelf perspective. The first workshops took place in Deb’s office, where 18 people crammed into a room built for 8. As attendance grew, we became more adventurous and held the workshops 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 hone the BodySelf approach and the best ways to help participants develop a relationship with their body image. 

We saw eyes light up, shoulders relax, and conversations kindle as attendees 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 about their bodies started to shift. Participants now had a language and a framework for how to be in relationship with their bodies in a new way. They were relieved to find out that the BodySelf approach 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 people to reject negative body image, the workshops gave them permission to lean into it. It gave them the ability to translate the language of their body image into valuable information about themselves and the kinds of lives that they wanted to lead. Conversations that began with a focus on stomachs, butts, and thighs evolved into dialogues about self expression, grief, passion, trauma and the pursuit of a more satisfying and aligned life. 

After two decades of seeing the BodySelf  approach help people transcend the glass ceiling of negative body image, we wanted to expand the reach of our message.