February

WORKING TOGETHER TO CREATE AN ABUSE-FREE FUTURE
2/24/06
Publisher: Beverly Engel
www.beverlyengel.com

Hello everyone,

In last month’s issue I wrote about how difficult it can be to stick with our New Year’s resolutions to become more healthy and fit. I suggested that talking to yourself in a nurturing, encouraging voice helps a lot more than talking to ourselves in a harsh, critical voice. This is actually one of the strategies I write about in my newest book, Healing Your Emotional Self: A Powerful Program to Help You Raise Your Self-Esteem, Quiet Your Inner Critic and Overcome Your Shame coming out this month. In this month’s ezine I share with you some strategies for improving your body image.
 

In the News from Beverly segment I include announcements of upcoming events, workshops or conferences relevant to the treatment or prevention of abuse. Feel free to send me announcements you feel readers will find of interest. I cannot guarantee I can include them all but I will do my best to include what I feel is relevant. I will also announce my own upcoming workshops and books. I ask that you order books directly from Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com as I do not sell individual books directly to readers. If you would like to attend a workshop, feel free to email me directly at beverly@beverlyengel.com .

Please forward this ezine to anyone you know who is interested in preventing or healing childhood emotional, physical or sexual abuse or emotional, physical or sexual abuse in adult relationships. If you are receiving this issue as a forward, and would like your own no-cost subscription please follow the instructions at the end of this newsletter.

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YOUR BODY AS A MIRROR

“Self-contempt never inspires lasting change.”
Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter
When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies

One of the strategies I recommend in Healing Your Emotional Self to help you take better care of your body is be become more aware of your body image and where your ideas about your body come from. Your body image and the way you feel and care about your body is an essential part of your overall sense of self worth and level of self-esteem, therefore, improving your body image can help you make lasting and meaningful improvements to your overall self-image and vice versa.
 

Body image is the picture you have of your body—what it looks like to you and what you think it looks like to others. In other words, it is the view or perception that you have of your physical appearance. For many people, low self-esteem is caused by a negative body image, while for others it is low self-esteem that comes first and the negative body image that follows from it.
 

Often our bodies are mirrors—they reflect how we feel about ourselves. What does your body say about you? In what ways does it reflect your overall sense of self worth? Does your body say, “I feel really good about myself” or does it say, “I feel really crappy about myself?”
 

In addition to how you feel about yourself, your body is a reflection of many other things, including:

• how safe you feel in the world

• your level of emotional and/or physical health

• how well you were taken care of physically and emotionally as a child

• the messages your parents passed on concerning body perfection

• the messages your parents gave you about self-care

• the messages you received from your parents (and others) about how they felt about your body.

Many people are poor judges of themselves and have a distorted view of how they impress others. Most people, especially women, are not as unattractive as they think they are. Women are more likely to have a negative self-image than men. Recent research has found that only 2 percent of women are satisfied with the way they look. Studies have shown that relatively few women look in the mirror without focusing on all the things they’d like to change, whereas men tend to be more accepting of what they see. Women tend to distort their perceptions of their bodies negatively, while men—just as unrealistically—distort their perceptions in a positive, self-aggrandizing way.
 

The sad truth is that even if you have a near-perfect body, you may not be able to appreciate it. This is especially true if you were neglected or emotionally abused as a child. You may have a tendency to look for the slightest flaw and focus on your imperfections so much they seem to overshadow all your other good qualities. Some people take this to such an extreme that they develop a disorder called Body Dysmorphic Disorder or BDD.

How is Our Body Image Created?

To a great extent, our body image comes from the physical and emotional input we received as children. Although media driven images and expectations certainly have an effect, messages from significant others have an even more dramatic impact on how we feel physically and emotionally about our bodies as adults. Our parents have the most profound effect on our body image. If they like how we look and tell us so, we face the world with a head start. If, on the other hand, our parents dislike our appearance, our body image will be tremendously influenced in a negative way.
 

When parents place a great deal of importance on physical appearance, often instill in their children a tendency to overemphasize looks. In addition to whether or not your parents like the way you look and how much importance they place on physical appearance, another factor that influences your body image is whether your parents are satisfied with the way they look. Parents with a poor body image can pass on their negative attitudes and feelings to their children, causing them to dislike their own bodies. This is especially true if you resemble a parent who dislikes his or her body.

It is also very important to children and adolescents to be accepted by their peers. Those who have this acceptance tend to have high self-esteem while those who experience rejection, teasing or indifference tend to have lower self-esteem. Name-calling is particularly hurtful to children and can affect their body image negatively. Names such as “Fatso” can stay with a person for a lifetime.

Rejection or indifference from the opposite sex can be particularly devastating to a person’s body image and can be the start of an adolescent believing that she or he is not attractive or desirable.

The Effects of Emotional Abuse, Neglect and Smothering on Our Body Image

It is no wonder that most of us have issues with our bodies. We feel we are too fat or too short or that our bodies are not in proportion. But those who were emotionally abused or deprived in childhood tend to have far greater issues with their body. They may have taken on their parent’s negative messages and projections about their bodies, “You’re ugly,” “You are too fat,” “God help you, you’ve got the Hanson nose.” But more important, when those who were emotionally abused or neglected look in the mirror they often see their own self-loathing reflected back on themselves—the self-loathing that often comes from having been criticized, ignored or viewed with contempt by their parents.

If a child is emotionally, physically, or sexually abused she or he is especially likely to have a problematic body image. Nothing erodes a child’s confidence more than experiencing emotional, physical or sexual abuse, particularly when the abuse comes from his or her parents. When a parent abuses a child that child will tend to blame himself or herself instead of being willing to experience the alienation that feeling anger toward the abusive parent can create. A great deal of this self-blame turns into self-loathing—in particular a hatred of the child’s own body.
 

Many emotionally abusive parents include attacks on their child’s physical appearance. When the body is labeled inadequate, especially by a parent, the self feels diminished as well. This can lead to self-defeating behaviors and even self-loathing. Those who were abused as children often ignore, neglect, and even abuse their bodies, since they see them as objects of shame. Survivors of abuse tend to cover up their bodies, hiding them from themselves and the rest of the world.
 

Parental neglect, contempt or verbal abuse can convince a child that she is completely worthless, unlovable and ugly inside and out. This was the case with my client Marilyn: “I can’t look in a mirror. I hate what I see there. I only look in the mirror for a few seconds to comb my hair or put on some lipstick.” The reason Marilyn felt this way toward herself was that both her parents treated her with contempt. They made it clear that they did not want her and that she was in the way. Parental criticism and contempt can cause children to hate themselves and their bodies, often leading to self-mutilation and other self-destructive behaviors.

In order to heal this self-hatred Marilyn needed to work on rejecting the negative parental messages that helped to create it. (You can learn how to do this in Part II. of Healing Your Emotional Self. I’ll also write more about it in next month’s ezine).
In order to heal the damage caused by emotional abuse and neglect, you will also need to learn how to rediscover yourself through your emotions and physical sensations, and to reconnect with your body. Throughout Healing Your Emotional Self I present creative techniques to facilitate this, such as writing exercises, creating self-portraits, and expressing your emotions through art, poetry, and writing. But it will be through “mirror work” that the real changes will take place. By utilizing the concept of the “body as mirror” and by doing various exercises actually using the mirror, you will be able to heal your distorted body image and begin to see yourself in a more realistic and positive way.

Here is one of the beginning exercises I offer in the book. It will help you determine which messages you received about your body and from whom.

Exercise: What Were the Messages You Received?

1. Make a list of all the messages concerning your body that you remember receiving from peers, sibings and friends from the time when you were a child until the present. Include nicknames and insults from your siblings and peers, and things that have been told you by friends and lovers.
2. List the messages you received from your parents concerning your body. Include verbal and nonverbal messages.
3. Review your two lists and put a star beside each message that still has an affect on you (those you still believe, those that are still replayed in your head).
 

We are all fascinated and repelled by our own image in the mirror. Most of us are preoccupied with our body image, how we look to others and how to make ourselves more attractive. But it is important to understand that unless we heal ourselves on the inside we will not like the person we see in the mirror.

“Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order.”
Ann Wilson Schaef

BEVERLY’S NEWS

LOOK FOR MY NEW BOOK HEALING YOUR EMOTIONAL SELF: A POWERFUL

PROGRAM TO HELP YOU RAISE YOUR SELF-ESTEEM, QUIET YOUR INNER

CRITIC AND OVERCOME YOUR SHAME COMING OUT THIS MONTH!

“Emotionally abusive parents are indeed toxic parents, and they cause significant damage to their children’s self-esteem, self-image, and body image. In this remarkable book, Beverly Engel shares her powerful Mirror Therapy program for helping adult survivors to overcome their shame and self-criticism, become more compassionate and accepting of themselves, and create a more positive self-image. I strongly recommend it for anyone who was abused or neglected as a child.”

Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of Toxic Parents

“In this book, Beverly Engel documents the wide range of psychological abuses that so many children experience in growing up. Her case examples and personal accounts are poignant and powerful reminders that as adults, many of us are still limited by defenses we formed when trying to protect ourselves in the face of the painful circumstances we found ourselves in as children. Engel’s insightful questionnaires and exercises provide concrete help in the healing process, and her writing style in lively and engaging. This book is destined to positively affect many lives.”

Joyce Catlett, M.A., coauthor of Fear and Intimacy

For Those Who Are Working on Losing Weight

I strongly recommend the book The Pathway: Follow the Road to Health and Happiness by Laurel Mellin (Regan Books, 2003).

In the book you will learn about The Solutions Program—a highly effective (but long-term) way of losing weight. This program is especially beneficial for those who have been emotionally, physically or sexually abused as it teaches how to self-nurture and set more effective limits and how to retrain the elusive feeling brain to spontaneously favor a life of emotional balance, relationship intimacy, spiritual connection and freedom from excessive appetites.

I hope you enjoyed this issue of Working Together to Create an Abuse-Free Future.

—Beverly Engel

To find out more about Beverly Engel, go to http://www.beverlyengel.com

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