What is Body Image?
Body image is the perception someone has of their own body. This view is affected by relationships with friends and family members, experiences and struggles in life and also by how they think others perceive them.
Some people have more of a positive body image and some more of a negative body image. Negative body image comes in varying extremes. Mild dislike of one’s appearance is at the lower end of having a negative body image, while the development of an eating disorder is at the top. Anorexia Nervosa treatment centers, and bulimia help centers can be very helpful for those with a poor body image.
Distorted Body Image
A disturbance of body image, specifically the misperception regarding body size and decreased self esteem, has long been recognized as a clinical feature of central importance in those suffering from eating disorders. These disorders are often compounded by difficulties in identifying feeling states, or by an individual’s efforts to disassociate from bodily sensations and the attendant loss of body functions. In most cases, eating disorder treatment is recommended for improving body image. Since the earliest and most direct contact a human can make with itself as a source of experience is through the body, our body itself is a meaningful source of memory, response and learning. Images, postures and sound often condense, conserve and represent issues and past experiences of ourselves.
Benefits of Body Image Therapy
Body Image therapy provides a wonderful opportunity to develop positive body awareness, instead of constantly viewing our body as a source of unremitting problems. This therapy addresses the body directly, utilizing movement action and interaction to create a more realistic and positive body image.
Through a variety of techniques, body image therapy teaches participants to recognize and access sensations in their bodies as valuable signals and cues of emotional states. By encouraging individuals to explore relevant issues and feeling states via movement, imagery, music, theater and art, they develop trust, body awareness and ultimately a more positive body image. Body image therapy teaches us to tolerate and express our emotions in more constructive ways and consequently develop meaningful interpersonal relations. Body image therapy is offered at various eating disorder treatment centers and has proven to be very beneficial to those with a low sense of self-esteem and poor body image.
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