3 steps for coping with negative body feelings

When you experience a negative feeling about your body, what do you do?

Most of my clients say they try to distract or numb themselves from these feelings.

While I understand why you’d want to do this (I know, I’ve done it too!), it’s not a particularly effective strategy for coping with negative body feelings.

So, in this post I’m sharing:

• What your emotions are really trying to communicate to you.
• Why ignoring emotions makes them come back with more force.
• How acknowledging your emotions helps them to dissipate.
• A 3-step process to help you to cope with negative body feelings.

Watch or read below:

Why ignoring negative feelings doesn’t work

Today I want to talk about your negative body feelings and why ignoring them or pushing them down won’t make you feel better.

I know it’s tempting to push down the shame, sadness, anger or whatever feelings you experience about your body.

When one of these feelings surfaces you may feel it somewhere in your body. It might feel like a tight knot in your chest, a sick feeling in your tummy or a rush of blood to your face.

However you experience negative body feelings, it probably doesn’t feel good. And of course, your immediate reaction might be to distract yourself from or numb yourself to that feeling.

The issue with ignoring feelings is that they have a habit of coming back! Your emotions provide you with information – they exist to alert you to something that needs your attention.

So, the more you ignore them, the harder your emotions will work to make themselves known – it’s as if you didn’t get the message and it’s programmed to automatically repeat itself until you do.

The key to dealing with negative emotions

When you’re experiencing negative body feelings, the key to dealing with them is to acknowledge and accept them. The irony is, that when you accept what you’re feeling, it soon passes.

Most people fear being overwhelmed by their emotions, when in fact, when you resist them, they cause more pain and overwhelm than accepting them.

There’s a great quote by the late, great Louise Hay talking about negative feelings. She said, “If you want to clean the house, you need to see the dirt.” Sounds totally logical, right? You don’t know what needs cleaning unless you can see where the dirt is!

The same is true with your negative body feelings. You need to understand how you’re feeling about your body before you can move towards a better relationship with it.

You need to give a voice to your negative feelings before you can cultivate a kinder more compassionate voice towards your body.

3 steps for dealing with negative body feelings

So the next time you experience negative feelings about your body, try these three steps to help you acknowledge and accept the feeling:

Firstly, take a moment to sit with the feeling without trying to push it away.

Secondly, take a few breaths and notice where you experience the feeling in your body.

What does it feel like? Perhaps it’s like butterflies in your tummy, a knot, or shortness of breath. Don’t make any effort to try to change the feeling, just let it be and continue to breathe.

Finally, continue to notice your feeling as a quiet observer

Don’t judge, rationalise or try to change the feeling. Can you name the feeling? Is it shame, anger, resentment or something else? Just quietly acknowledge what it is without judgement.

Gently ask yourself if you can accept the feeling? Can you let it be? Continue to breathe deeply as you observe the feeling.

After a while, you’ll hopefully notice that the feeling has dissipated. If it doesn’t, don’t worry. You just need more practice sitting with your emotions, and that’s okay!

Getting into the habit of noticing your emotions, sitting with them, and letting them pass is a healthy way to process the information you’re receiving, so give it a try!

And, if you need help dealing with your negative body feelings, this is something that we work through on my 1:1 Coaching Programme, The Body Confidence Journey.

If you’d like to learn more about how the programme can help with body acceptance and if it’s a good fit for you, answer a few questions for me, and I’ll come straight back to you.