Calming Your Inner Critic to Release Body Shame

When it comes to having a healthy relationship with your body, one of the most challenging obstacles to overcome is your relationship with your thoughts. Do you notice what goes through your mind when you look in the mirror, when you look at a picture of yourself, when you are trying on clothes in a dressing room? If you struggle with body-image, most likely there is an inner critic who has some less than kind things to say.

Body shaming often starts very young and is deeply engrained into the fabric of our culture. Commenting on other people’s bodies based on size and shape has happened forever in the media, and this is not likely to change. However, for many people who struggle with body-image, the shaming most likely began within familiar environments, such as at home or in school. Sometimes the body shaming could look like a parent commenting negatively about their own body, their child’s body, their partner’s body, their neighbors body, and so on. For many people, the body shaming happened in school, where kids are often bullied for how they look. Sometimes the shaming came directly from parent or caretaker to child, where the parent constantly commented on their child’s body, and even made decisions about food for their child based on how their child’s body looked. All of these experiences often leave a residue of shame, feeling not good enough, resulting in trauma, and the development of a very unkind inner critic.

When a child feels shame, they internalize the negative language said to them and then begin to say these unkind things to themselves. This happens as a protective measure in our psyche to help reduce the suffering of when it’s heard from an external source (especially a parent/caretaker). This is where the inner critic is born. This is where this part of ourselves develops and sinks its roots in deep. It begins as self-protection, this is a maladaptive coping mechanism that served a purpose for the child to reduce emotional discomfort. This then becomes the language of our own thoughts, creating opportunities to develop perfectionism as a way of managing inner fears and anxieties.

The inner critic starts as someone else’s voice, and then becomes our very own. The words it says are unkind, even cruel, and cause hurt, pain, suffering, and increased feelings of shame. Shame triggers the belief that there is something wrong with us, such as not feeling good enough, unworthy, or deeply inadequate, which causes tremendous psychological pain. This pain limits how much we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, open, to feel deep connections, and even limits our experience of finding joy.

When we can learn to see our inner critic as a part of ourselves, not our true self, we can begin to heal it. When we get to know this inner critic part, it often is a very young, child-like part of ourselves, and we can more easily begin to understand why it is there, how it came to be there, and what it’s trying to protect us from. With this information we can begin to develop the capacity to lean into healing and self-compassion by working with this part. We work to give this part a new job that is supportive, healthy, and useful.

To begin to get to know your inner critic more intimately, it requires listening, and then getting curious about why it says what it says. Curiosity becomes the anecdote and where the healing can truly unfold. The next time you hear a self-critical thought about your body— or anything else really—try going through this process:

• Acknowledge your inner critic, and see it as a part of you, not your true, authentic self.

• Get curious, ask it what it wants you to know? Does it have a specific message for you?

• Ask it how old it is, when it learned to speak in this way.

• Ask it if it would be willing to reframe and shift into more self-compassionate language, just to see what happens? If it’s willing, try it out and see, if it isn’t, ask it if you can try again later. Let it know you want to get to know it, to understand it, and to validate its fears and feelings.

• Ask it if it might consider a new task, as this one it has learned to do so well is no longer serving you, in fact, it’s causing significant harm. If it’s open to that, offer some suggestions, or get ideas from it. If it’s not, let it know that change is difficult and you will try again later.

• Thank it, let it know that it is worthy of being seen and loved unconditionally.

• Practice reframing, reframing is looking realistically at the fear based negative thought and using mindfulness to answer what is really true right now. (If you want a deeper dive into thought work you can read a blog I wrote about examining your thoughts here).

• Try this reframing example, if the inner critic said something like, “you look terrible today, you don’t deserve to be in the pictures” try reframing with, “although I am having a bad body-image day, I still deserve to have the memories of this event and to be in the pictures.” Or, “Even though I don’t feel my best, I am going to choose to be in the pictures to remember this event.”

Over time you will be able to create a new inner language with the assistance of your inner critic. The more you get to know your inner critic, understand its role, you will get better and better at reframing. This process of reframing will help your inner critic to find—and get just as good at—a new job internally. This new job will be non harming, supportive, and a job that most importantly increases your capacity for self-compassion, and self-love.

Through this work you can create a deeper appreciation for your body, just as it exists within this moment. Your body deserves this, this hurt protective part of you deserves this, you deserve this. You are worthy of creating a new language within, and shifting from inner criticism to inner kindness and inner peace. If you feel overwhelmed with where to begin or as though your inner critic is unmanageable, you may benefit from EMDR therapy, IFS therapy, or an EMDR intensive. With this work you can reprocess the traumatic memories that have created or reinforced the negative beliefs that have given your inner critic so much power. Healing is possible, you deserve to release the internalized shame and feel your best in mind, body, and spirit.

Emotional Eating, it's Not About the Food

When your mind is constantly preoccupied with food, weight, and your body, it may be difficult to recognize that your struggles are really not about food at all. Most people who struggle with emotional eating have a deeper understanding of food in relation to studies, diets, and health than they’d care to share. When we can explore our food history to begin to see where our patterns were first picked up, we can more clearly see how it’s not information we are lacking. Rather, we want to explore how it came to be that food became the most accessible coping tool for emotional pain, which is about emotional avoidance and really has nothing to do with the food itself. 

If you have been stuck in yo-yo dieting struggles for much many years, gaining and losing the same X amount of weight over and over again, it feels like “it must be me, I must be the problem.” However, the awareness that it is actually NOT about the food can be difficult to wrap your head around because food and body thoughts constantly preoccupy your mind. When this awareness, it’s not about the food, can be fully internalized, it can begin to set free the feelings of failure and shame that a yo-yo dieting history can create. Diet culture has instilled the belief that a diet can save us, that it IS about the food, that a diet can solve all of our body-image struggles and give us confidence and happiness. We now have a lot of research and data that shows quite the opposite, that diets actually have a nearly 96% failure rate, and yet they make the dieter feel as though it’s their fault. The culture is changing, however, it’s slow as these beliefs are deeply embedded and extremely pervasive.

Most people have a food story. A story that begins with their body being up for discussion from a very young age. One that begins with being put on a diet very early in their life. One that begins with not being allowed to eat things their siblings were allowed to because of their body size. One that begins with food being offered as the only sign they received from care givers of being loved or cared for. One that begins with food being an escape from loneliness, isolation, fear, and pain. One where they were told to ignore their hunger/full cues in order to clean their plates, or due to guilt of hungry children in other countries. One where access to food was scarce and inconsistent. One where food was a punishment. One where a parent actively restricted their food, commented on their own and other people’s bodies with constant judgement. No matter what your food story is about, the middle, the place where we can recognize that it’s not about the food, is where there is an opportunity to seize the moment and develop a deeper self-awareness. When we can fully understand that it’s not about the food, then we are free to explore, then what is it actually about?

Writing out your food story can be deeply healing and meaningful. In both my online course and workbook, I offer guidance to go through this process as an exercise as it’s an essential component in the process of healing your relationship with food. Ideally we all want food to be just food. We all want food to be something we eat for nourishment, pleasure, connection, and to feel good. We want to stop the food noise, body checking, and just feel good. If you have a complicated relationship with food, or one where food is both a problem for you as well as the solution to your problem, we have to interrupt the cycle and begin to create openings for the relationship and patterns to change. With any relationship, there needs to be awareness, honesty, shared experience, and open, respectful communication. In order to heal and transform our relationship with food, as well as with ourselves, we have to unlearn the old beliefs, stories, and fear of food and our bodies from the toxicity of the past to one of mutual respect and care.

When you examine the past, it’s not about drudging up pain and suffering, or pointing fingers and blaming, it’s about awareness. When we have a deeper understanding of how and why our relationship to food has become one of struggle, shame, and even contempt, we can begin to unravel, understand and hold the past with curiosity and compassion. When we start with awareness we can begin to develop a roadmap for ourselves to what we want from where we’ve been. When you know it’s not about the food, you know that there is no diet, wellness plan, or workout that will make you satisfied with food or your body. When you know it’s not about the food you can take a deep dive and excavate the roots of the emotions, the hurt, the struggles, and the external noise that became internal dialogue. When you know it’s not about the food, you can clearly see that healing is possible by walking through the wounds of the past, and into the hopeful space of the vision you can create for yourself. 

When time allows, spend some time writing out your food story and examine your own history. Then take anything that feels harmful, toxic, and just untrue, and begin to rewrite your story, write out your desires for your new, more loving, inclusive, and compassionate story going forward from today.

Break Through Limiting Beliefs with EMDR Therapy

Identifying limiting beliefs is one of the most important elements within the EMDR therapy process. We take time to really understand, what are the negative cognitions, or internalized negative limiting beliefs that are holding you back, and causing you discomfort within your present life. These limiting beliefs may be keeping you from feeling grounded and centered, from taking action in your life, and from allowing yourself to feel and express your worthiness. Once we know what these core wounds are, we can work to reprocess, heal, and release them.

Some of the questions I ask my clients to help identify the limiting belief are:

• Consider what you say you want, such as a goal, a plan, a desire that you seem sabotage unconsciously, or that feels like it won’t happen no matter how hard you try. Now write down all of the reasons you can’t have it. When you reflect on why you believe you can’t have it, what do these reasons mean about you? 

• After reading through why you can’t have what you want, how does this make you feel about yourself?

This is your limiting belief, your core wound, in EMDR we call it a negative cognition. Our brains store the memories and experiences that have created or reinforced those beliefs in the memory network associated with this negative cognition. If your negative cognition is one of the following: I am not good enough, I am unworthy, I have to be perfect to be loved, or I have to please others to be loved, or I am unsafe, or I will fail, or I can’t handle it and so on… then we look for the target memories that have created or reinforced those beliefs. A target memory is a memory that still has a charge, or it still activates your nervous system when you bring it into your awareness in a way that feels uncomfortable. 

These negative cognitions, or limiting beliefs, when triggered, loop through these memories within that specific memory network, and can cause you to feel fear, ungrounded, or disconnected from your body. Feeling fearful, ungrounded, and disconnection from yourself will hold you back from taking action towards what you want. When this happens subconsciously, we wonder, “what’s wrong with me.” Because this is happening on a subconscious level, and this just further triggers the limiting belief or negative cognition. When this occurs, we then usually feel hopeless, frustrated, and this only further reinforces those limiting beliefs. This is where we often get stuck in harmful or non-useful coping strategies, such as emotional eating or any other escape or numbing behaviors. This can also cause us to become emotionally dysregulated and to generally feel overwhelmed. 

EMDR therapy helps to release limiting beliefs through the desensitization and reprocessing phase of the therapy. This is where bilateral stimulation is used while being present with the memories or experiences, and processed within the safe container of your therapy experience. The goal is to fully reprocess the memories, which frees or unravels the negative internalized belief from the memory. The memory now is relinquished to your long-term memory. At this point we create a positive cognition that supports integrating the desired feeling state. This process creates a new inner resource and it’s practiced, once the positive cognition feels true and accessible, using cognitive rehearsal and future templates.

Once all of the target memories have been reprocessed, and they are now relinquished to your long-term memory, and you have the creation of positive cognitions for all of the target memories, the way you desire to feel about yourself is now possible. For example, if your belief is, I am not good enough, a positive cognition could be, I am ok as I am, if your negative cognitions is I am unworthy, your positive cognition may be, I am always worthy. Once you’ve completed the work of EMDR, there is no longer room for the negative cognitions to overwhelm you.

EMDR therapy also includes the components of somatic release through the body scan phase of treatment with each memory. We get curious about any stuck emotions within the physical body. This process creates self-awareness, and through using curiosity and compassion to invite the emotion to process and release somatically, we do this with bilateral stimulation until your body feels clear and grounded when you bring up the target memory.

Throughout the work of EMDR, we get really curious about why an emotion is stuck within your body. We practice emotional awareness and exploration and understand the message of the emotion—why is this emotion here and what does it want us to know—we can then view the emotion as information versus judging the emotion. With this information it makes it more accessible and possible to determine how to respond to the emotion. This allows the processing of your past trauma to move forward with more emotional awareness and acceptance.

When you provide compassion for any emotion you are experiencing, comfortable or uncomfortable, you change how you show up for that emotion, as well as how you show up for yourself. When you respond to the emotion with curiosity and ask what it needs, you can offer it just that with an attitude of compassion and care, allowing you to make space for the discomfort. This process allows the opportunity to invite the emotion itself to flow away from your body, once it’s processed, with intention.

EMDR therapy is a very useful way to help identify, breakthrough, and heal limiting beliefs. Please know that there are many therapeutic modalities out there that can support healing, growth, and that support you to move closer towards a more integrated, whole self that operates from a place of empowering beliefs. No matter how you find the courage and inner strength to address what is holding you back so that you can move forward with hope, growth, and inner-strength, know that you deserve to heal.