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Welcome. And thanks for joining me once again today on calm your caveman. Today we are going to focus on body image anxiety, which I know a lot of people suffer from and something that I suffered from a lot in my teenage years, my twenties, my thirties. I feel like I finally got a handle on it in my forties.
First, we're going to talk about, though, from research, what the research shows us about what doesn't work for body image anxiety, what is it that does not help? Okay. So first we're going to talk about cosmetic surgery. Does cosmetic surgery help with body anxiety? And just to be clear, When I say cosmetic surgery, I'm not referring to reconstructive surgery. Reconstructive surgery is something to, a procedure to correct a clear abnormality. Something like a cleft palate or a cleft lip. This is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about cosmetic surgery, which we define as a surgery to "improve" quote unquote, normal appearance, such as reshaping your nose or augmenting breasts, this type of thing. This is cosmetic surgery. So the question is, does cosmetic surgery help with body anxiety? Well, Two important things are brought up in the research that has been done in relationship to this. First of all studies have shown, various studies that have examined this have shown that there's certain mental health symptoms that are good predictors about whether or not people will do cosmetic surgery. In other words, people that have a history of symptoms of depression or anxiety, or history of deliberate self-harm or illicit drug use. These people tend to be more likely to have cosmetic surgery. The second important theme that research shows is that cosmetic surgery does not alleviate these mental health problems. It does not help with anxiety. In fact studies have shown that cosmetic surgery often leads to deterioration in these mental health symptoms and lack of patient satisfaction. People who suffer from body dis dysmorphia, which is basically again, this anxiety about body image, it shows that they typically do not benefit from cosmetic procedures. That what helps instead is therapy that focuses on changing their mental relationship with their body anxiety. So one study, for example that was done in Norway, that looked at a group of 1,597 adolescent females and follow them over 13 years, it found that as we said, there were certain, there were people with certain mental health problems that were more likely to do cosmetic surgery, which we mentioned, anxiety and depression were among those problems. But that cosmetic surgery did not seem to alleviate these mental health problems. In fact, those who underwent surgery during the course of the study, experienced a greater increase than other females in the study in symptoms of depression and anxiety and eating problems and use of alcohol. So it seems to not help with body anxiety, but in fact, To make it worse, to make the body anxiety worse. And this has been shown repeatedly in study after study.
Another thing that people tend to look at when they think about body anxiety and different solutions is weight loss. And we referred to a study a couple of episodes ago. This particular study was done by the department of epidemiology and public health at the university college of London. And they looked at 1,979 overweight and obese adults. And they wanted to look at the psychological benefits of weight loss. So they looked at this large group of people, 1,979 over four years. And there ended up being three different groups of people, that were people who gained weight, there were people whose weight was stable, and there were people who lost weight. And what they found was that those in the losing weight group, who actually lost weight, Had more depression, they had lower well-being. And they S the researchers simply had to conclude that weight loss is not something that gives psychological benefits in and of itself.
Now, why is this? Why is it that cosmetic ,surgery that losing weight wouldn't automatically help us with psychological symptoms of anxiety and depression related to body image? Well, it goes back to what we talked about a couple episodes ago where we talked about the limitations of focusing on our situation in order to change our emotions. There are various different parts of the emotion generation process, but there is one part that is really going to determine our emotional experience. That part is our appraisal. That is our mental interpretation of the situation. That's the meaning that our brain makes of the situation. It's the way that the brain tells our story about how the situ, what the situation means for my wellbeing and for my survival. This is really the key to changing our emotions is being able to work on our appraisal, work on the mental story that our brains tell. That's what produces our emotional experience. Other aspects of the emotion generation process, like the situation, like our attention, like our emotional response itself. If we work on these, these can indirectly help our appraisal sometimes, because they can make it easier for us to change our appraisal. But they don't actually directly change our emotional experience. So in the case of cosmetic surgery of weight loss, that's working on this, our situation. And we often think that if we just had a different looking body, that we wouldn't be so anxious. But research shows that that's not the case and it is because having a different body doesn't change the way our brains tell stories about our body. Our brains have a meaning that they assign to our bodies and that meaning will often continue or even get worse after we try and change our bodies to be more in line with what we, what we imagine is more beautiful. . I'm not saying the weight loss can't make you healthier, but it apparently won't make your body anxiety go away. So if we're not going to try and work directly on our weight loss, we're not going to try and work on cosmetic surgery, changing our bodies in some way, but we're going to talk about strategies that focus directly on our mental maps, directly on the story and the meaning that our brains give to our body image.
I'm going to talk to you about several different techniques that I have used because as I said, I suffered from body imaging anxiety quite severely for many decades before I finally got a handle on it. The first thing that I want to bring up to you is related to mindfulness. We talked last episode about the technique of mindfulness and how this influences anxiety. So there's a way that you can use some of these mindful approaches toward your own body anxiety. Now, remember mindfulness, as we talked about last time, is being present in this moment and being accepting and open and nonjudgmental to every part of your experience in this moment . So remember we compared it to being able to associate yourself with the sky rather than the clouds. So you defuse from the body anxiety itself. So instead of feeling like you are the cloud, I am this cloud of body anxiety and it is overtaking my entire experience, you try and take a step back and recognize that there is a part of you that can observe your emotions, that can observe your thoughts and you are the sky watching this cloud pass through.
So as I practice this technique of mindfulness in relation to my body anxiety, I like to think about that quote that we mentioned last time by Anne Weiser Cornell, which is that "everything inside you wants to save your life." And I like to think ,about in what way is my body anxiety trying to save my life? Well, this takes us back to the idea of the way that we evolved, to our environment of evolutionary adaptation. Most of our history as humans, we lived the hunter gatherer lifestyle and we lived in small social groups of 50 to 150 people. And so our brains evolved to be very sensitive to social cues and our groups to help us to know whether or not we are in line with the values of our groups. Because it was very dangerous in those times to be cast out of the social group. For example, if you're cast out and you're out there alone, there's nobody who's going to watch over you as you sleep. It's more likely you're going to be overtaken by a predator. But besides just defense from predators and things like that, we have food gathering, getting enough resources, all of these things we really depended on the whole group to be able to survive. And so our brains are very sensitive to how we are doing in comparison to our group's values. Another thing that we're sensitive to besides just being in or out of the group, is that we are sensitive to social hierarchy within the group. Because it was not just a matter of being included or excluded, but within the group, there are certain members who are higher at the social hierarchy and they receive more of the resources than the people who are down lower on the social hierarchy. And so there's a part of our brains. That's quite sensitive to social hierarchy because our ability to get enough resources to have access to mates and many other things is partially dependent on this, where we fit in this social hierarchy. To see this illustrated and be able to step outside of it and be a little bit more conscious of it, it can be interesting to watch a couple episodes of the documentary Chimp Empire that's on Netflix, which is a documentary about chimpanzees. And it's really interesting to see how their social groups interact. And when you watch the series, you see, you understand how there is a very clear alpha male, and then there's a very clear hierarchy beneath him. And those at the top of the social hierarchy have access to more of the food, to more of the desirable resources and those who are farther down, get less of it. We do have a lot in common genetically with chimpanzees. And so it can be interesting just to be able to look at them, analyze how they behave and see how that might have some parallels to the ways that we evolved as humans in small, similarly, small groups with hierarchies and different access, different levels of access to resources, depending on where you are in that social hierarchy.
So when I start to ask myself the question, how is it that my body anxiety is trying to save my life? I like to think of this scenario of the hunter gatherer, small group and the social hierarchy and then I can see that there's a part of my brain that feels that it's extremely important that I be the most beautiful person around because that will help me bump up in the social hierarchy. I'll have greater access to more resources and thus better chances of survival, better chances at reproduction and so on.
I like this quote from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He wrote a book called the Evolving Self. He says, "if we let our individual consciousness be directed by genetic instructions that have been advantageous in the past, the quality of our life is likely to suffer in the present." so this quote just encapsulates what the studies show that we talked about in the beginning about whether cosmetic surgery, whether weight loss, whether these things are actually going to improve our quality of life. Well, they don't because they are really motivated by these genetic instructions that have been advantageous in past times, they were what made it so that we could survive as a species. But these instructions are not concerned with our quality of life. They're not concerned with our happiness. So, when you think about it, this way, you can see how body anxiety can be linked to these ancient instincts that we developed socially to help us to thrive in our individual social groups and have adequate access, or superior access to resources and to the capacity for reproduction. So see it for what it is, recognize that that body anxiety is really about your brain feeling like it needs to know that you're going to have the resources that you need for survival and for reproduction. That that's where this anxiety is coming from. This need to feel secure in relation to your survival and to your reproductive capacity .
So to help us get away from that survival fixation. We can ask ourselves purpose related questions that help us to identify more enduring concerns than our survival. Things that are even more important to us than our ability to reproduce and our ability to survive. We talked about many of these different purpose questions and our find your why episode. But I'm going to repeat a couple of them. One of them that's particularly good for helping you break out of that survival anxiety fixation is a question from Stephen Covey's book, seven habits of highly effective people, where he talks about imagining that it's your funeral three years from now. And how would you like to be remembered? what will you wish that people would say about the kind of person that you were? So, can you see how this helps you to break out of that survival fixation? Because this mental exercise imagines that you haven't survived. Your survival is out of the question now because you have passed on. And what will be even more important to you, that is even more enduring than your own survival? How will you want people to remember you? And being able to answer this question, to write about it, to really investigate how you would answer this question helps you to identify what is more important to you than your body image, what it is that is even more important to you longterm ,about what you want your life to mean, and how you want people to remember you, what you want to create in this life.
Another question that can help you break out of that survival fixation is to think, okay I'll imagine myself 20 years from now looking back on my situation right now, my life experience right now. How will I wish that I had behaved? What will I wish that I had done? So this is another question that creates that continuity of self that recognizes that I'm still going to be me in 20 years, even though my body will be different and I'll be a different me in a sense. What will I wish at that point? That I had done. How will I wish that I had lived my life at the point that I am right now? So helping us break out of that immediate survival fixation, and reproductions fixation, and look at what is even more important and more enduring than that. And one last question, which comes from Viktor Frankl, man's search for meaning, is this exercise where you picture that you have lived your life already once and now you are living it for the second time. And on the second time, you will have all of the same difficulties, all of the same challenges, all of the same problems that you had last time. But you have a second chance. And how will you act differently this time? What will you prioritize? Again, this question helps us to break out of that survival fixation because we're thinking in terms of a whole lifespan. And so our goal in this exercise is not survival. But it's meaning. It's understanding what is it that will be most important to us. What will be most valuable to us long-term. So these questions, this cultivating a sense of purpose helps us to switch from this anxiety mindset where fear is the main motivator. It switches our mind from this avoidance motivation to an approach motivation. Helps us to locate where our power is. We don't have power over the fact that our bodies will age. That's just a fact. But we do have power over what we will do with our time. And so it helps us to focus on what is even more important to us then being extremely beautiful and extremely desirable. That is important to a part of our brains. That's wired into us. That's not going to go away. But there are other values that exist in us at the same time that are even more important to us. That have to do with our life as a whole. They have to do with what we want our lives to mean. And what we want to create with our time. We don't have control over the body that we got from our ancestors. It's just what we got. But we do have a locus of control and that is what are we going to create? And what are we going to do with this life that we have? What is it we are going to choose as our life purpose and meaning. So anyone who liked to. Explore further, that sense of purpose and cultivating that sense of purpose. Go back to those. Find your why and find your why continued episodes that are in the show notes.
Now another strategy, which I personally have found quite useful is to be able to see my ancestors in myself. See my ancestors in my body. I have a collection of pictures of grandmothers, great grandmothers, great, great grandmothers. And I like to look at these women. I like to look at their faces and think about how all of them in a way, mothered me by mothering my grandparents, my parents, my great-grandparents. That I, in a sense received all of their care. I chose these particular photos because these are women that I feel a connection to because of some meaningful story that was passed on in our family or some artifact that I have of this person. For example, my great grandmother, Alice died of stomach cancer at age 40, and I have the letter that she wrote to my grandfather, her son, as she was dying. And the love and comfort that she expresses in this letter are so powerful that I almost feel like she's loving and comforting me about the idea of death in general through this letter. Another great, great grandmother, Charlotte married a man with four children and raised his children, but also had nine children of her own. It was in the days before birth control. So I like to think about what her life must have been like the amazing management skills that she must have had to develop. When her youngest children were just tiny, she got mercury poisoning and ended up being extremely ill, bedridden for years. And I think about how hard that must have been for her. Anyway, I know about her and her experiences because she wrote a life history. And what I hear from that life history is uh, her storytelling capacity. She's an extremely talented, colorful, funny storyteller. And what I hear about the way that she tells her life, even though from the facts, it looks like it was quite difficult, I hear how grateful she was for her life and for her family. And that inspires me to want to feel gratitude for my life, even despite challenges that I face. In any case, I look at all of these women, I know something about their stories and about their lives and the things that they faced and the different things that they gave and they created, and I like to look at myself and realize that I have a piece of each one of them in my, in my body. I carry a piece of each one of their DNA. That in a sense they live on through me. And I look at my body, I say to myself, this is the body that my ancestors gave me and I say, Thank you for my body. Thank you ancestors for giving me this body. I look at the different parts of me and I see different characteristics that are clearly from my father, others that are clearly from my mother and my bottom teeth, for example, are crooked and exactly the same way that my maternal grandmother's bottom teeth were crooked. And so I carry these people in my body. Their DNA is expressed in me. I wouldn't have a body if it weren't for these people. So I like to look at myself in the mirror, recognize that I inherited my body from my ancestors, that they're living on in me, and tell them, thank you for my body, for the fact that I have a body. So this is one way of reframing relationship with your body that has worked for me.
So, I just want to remind you that all of these different strategies that we've talked about in this episode, They are reappraisal strategies, they're cognitive strategies. They're thinking strategies. These are strategies that you're going to need to practice a lot. But the more that you practice them, the more that you repeat them in your head and practice reframing your own view, your own interpretation of your body in this way, the easier and more automatic it will become to see your body in these ways. So the more you practice it, the easier it gets, this can create lasting change in the way that your brain works so that it will get to the point where it doesn't default go to that body anxiety, which is torturous, and doesn't leave you alone. But it can actually have a new default, where the default is peace, acceptance, gratitude, and focus on what is most important to you overall. You can actually cultivate this longterm change if you can practice these things. Daily. So don't get discouraged at the fact that it does require constant practice and recognize that each time you practice this. You are tracing a new pathway in your brain, which will get easier and easier for your brain to go to as a default.
So the important thing is to stop looking in the places that aren't actually going to help us with our body anxiety. So stop looking at the cosmetic surgery, stop looking at the weight loss, and instead start looking at ways to defuse from this body anxiety first of all, to be able to remember that you are the sky, that you have clouds of body anxiety that pass through you. Where these feelings of body anxiety originate and how they relate to these primitive circumstances in which we evolved in which social hierarchy was really important for survival to be able to put it in its place and understand what its origin is. And then also to cultivate a sense of identifying yourself with that longterm part of you, that's able to observe all of your changes over a lifetime, the changes in your body. That's able to focus on how you embody your ancestors DNA and how you are the expression of their lives and that your body is that expression. Gratitude to your ancestors for the body that you have, for the body they gave you. Without them, you. wouldn't have a body. And this focus on trying to find your purpose, what it is that you want your life overall to mean what it is that you want to create in your life? So those are my suggestions for you. And I wish you all the best in dealing with this difficult challenge. But remember you have this anxiety because it evolved to help you. And there is a way for you to reframe it in a larger context and put it in its place. And choose a more adaptive relationship with your body. So that's it for today. Thanks again for joining me.