With the rise of social media use and the constant sharing of our every move, many women feel more pressured than ever to have it all and to seek perfection. In most cases, psychologist and other medical experts say men and especially women find it near impossible to accept their flaws, especially when it comes to their bodies. Rescu. Editor and Founder, Bahar Etminan talks to Dr DeMartini, author of The Values Factor and Human Behaviour Specialist about the rise in Body Dismorphia, a condition where your view of your body is vastly different from reality. He shares his expert strategy to combat negative body image and recognise your own beauty so that you can start loving the skin your in.
RESCU: Today we are going to talk about something that is very interesting in a time of social media and non stop comparison, which is Body Dysmorphia You’ve got a very interesting example of a client of yours who was experiencing this?
Dr DeMartini: Anytime an individual, particularly woman who have a very high value on beauty, compare themselves to other people who they perceive and admire for their beauty, they minimise themselves to that part that they admire in others.
The more extreme that difference is within themselves to that person, the more they can distort their view inside their brain about how they look. They may not even realise that they are quite beautiful. They will perceive themselves as less beautiful than they actually are, not recognising their magnificence. So anytime we subordinate to somebody we think has something we don’t, we can distort our vision of ourselves and minimise ourselves.
RESCU: In today’s world of social media where you go to bed or you wake up and you’re going through your feed and all you see is image upon image upon image of beautiful women and you think, my tummy doesn’t look like that, my bum doesn’t look like that, my boobs aren’t that high anymore, we never used to have this.
So, with this flooding of information that shows you constantly how you don’t look as good as you used to, or should, or other people do. How can you catch yourself and change that?
Dr DeMartini: Well what I have done with women with this, I’ve had the women identify first of all who are they comparing themselves to, because I have not seen it once without being comparisons, there’s always an underlying comparison.
I had this one lady who was comparing herself to JLo from many years ago, but then I happened to have some actual pictures of before they cropped and altered the pictures. Her real pictures didn’t intimidate her, but the after pictures did. So they had distorted the picture in photoshop.
RESCU: So the Body Dysmorphia was based from dysmorphic photos of the celebrity?
Dr DeMartini: Yes. So what I did is I had them go and identify what is the trait, or the posture that is different and then ask them where they have what they see in this person in their own form.
What we do is we tend to think that their form is better than our form but the truth is we have the form. We cannot see something we admire in other people without that being inside us in our unique form.
RESCU: I want to ask you a really basic question, so lets take the JLo option for example, and say that the person says I love her hair, she has beautiful thick flowing hair I have thin hair. How do you find that in your own form?
Dr DeMartini: Well first we define what that is about the thick hair, what is so valuable, we say so it’s and attractive trait, or it’s sexy. Then we go an ask when or where do you demonstrate an attractive sexy trait in your own form and identify.
RESCU: So it’s not the hair, it’s what it represents ?
Dr DeMartini: It may not be the hair, because if you look really carefully, every woman, every supermodel that I’ve worked with, doesn’t like half their body. It’s normal. So, what I do is I find out where they do have something. We are too humble to admit what we see in others in ourselves sometimes and therefore we minimise ourselves and that’s where the dysmorphia comes.
The second we ask where do I have the trait I see in them in my own form and keep looking when and where it happens until the quality of that is equal to what they see in others. The moment their opinion of themselves is equal to what they perceive of this person has, the dysmorphic view changes.
RESCU: So how often do you have to do this because as we were saying in that example with all that social media flooding, you were saying that you identified the people that they admired and then did what?
Dr DeMartini: For each one we found the traits that they admired in them and then found out where they had that to the same degree.
Now, add a 50 year old woman who is saying I can’t compete with this younger 35 year old, and I said so what is it specifically about the 35 year old that you don’t think you can compete with? Well I just don’t have the same tone, there is a little bit of sagging my eyes are starting to get some bags, so what is it that this girl has, well she has got more sex appeal and she can lure guys.
So where do you have sex appeal that can lure in guys because there is 7 areas of life that lure a guy. It’s not just physical. Many women have this allusion that it is all about their physical appearance but when I ask thousands and thousands of men in the Breakthrough Experience every week I found that they are looking for someone who is attractive, intelligent, ambitious, a desire to be with them and wants to have a family with them potentially, someone who is socially savvy, someone who is physically fit and somebody that is inspired by something. It’s not just physical looks.
So, even though the 50 year old didn’t think she had the same comparisons, when we looked at the whole picture she was more business savvy and had more things going for her, and there is no way the 35 year old could compete once you put it all together. Her perspective of the girl changed and the moment it happened it was like no big deal and she stood strong in her position and realised she had more to offer. It was a mindset change.
So whenever you are feeling Dysmorphia because you are perceiving yourself in a distorted way which happens whenever we compare ourselves, go and find out what it is specifically is the trait, action that they do that I’m comparing myself with and what is it about it am I judging and then find out where you have that. I promise you it makes a difference and all of a sudden it levels the playing field and you liberate yourself from this idea, this absorption of how you’re looking compared to other people and you give yourself the power to shine and recognise your own magnificence.
RESCU: Such simple easy to follow expertise and I really would encourage our readers to pick up a copy of The Values Factor because a lot of these exercises are detailed in that book. But again, great advice thankyou so much Dr Demartini.
Feature image via pinterest
