What Is Therapy for Body Image?

Struggling with negative thoughts about your body? You’re not alone - there is support available.

I’m an Integrative therapist and I work online with a range of body image and eating problems. I’ve spent many years working in eating disorder services and learning about body image, partly due to my own lived experience in the past. I’m passionate about helping others tackle their body image concerns, so I work online offering body image therapy for anyone in the UK.

​This post will explain what body image therapy is, what it can involve, and how it can help you feel more at ease in your own skin.

​What Is Body Image Therapy?

​Body image therapy is a space to explore how you feel about yourself, where those feelings come from and how they are impacting your life. It’s common to carry around messages about our bodies from childhood, the media, family and peers, and painful experiences. Therapy offers a way to untangle those beliefs, process difficult experiences, unpack expectations and standards, and begin to relate to your body with more compassion and acceptance.
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​How Therapy for Body Image Can Help

Unpacking and challenging harmful beliefs

Many people come to therapy believing they are not attractive enough, not thin enough, or not good enough. We work together to explore those thoughts and look at where they might stem from. From there, we begin to challenge them and create space for new, more supportive ways of thinking.

Building self-compassion
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Body image counselling encourages kindness and compassion. If your inner critic is loud, therapy can help soften that voice and respond to yourself with more care and patience. Often, people have experienced many years of their harsh inner critic, and have tried to punish and shame themselves into self-improvement. This rarely works – shame is not a good motivator for change.

Processing trauma

For many, body image issues can be connected to past trauma. That might include bullying, abuse, weight stigma or medical trauma. These experiences can often bring shame to the body, and this has a huge negative impact on self-worth. As a trauma-informed therapist, I will support you in exploring those experiences at your own pace.

Improving your relationship with food and movement

Many people with negative body image may also have a history of disordered eating or feel stuck in a cycle of guilt or restriction. Therapy for body image and disordered eating can help improve your relationship with food and exercise. This may involve working on understanding binge eating/dieting cycles, exploring how your relationship with food and exercise was formed whilst growing up, and reconnecting with what your body needs now. Often, exercise can be used to “compensate” for eating, and as a punishment. We can work on reframing this to be able to enjoy movement for fun and wellbeing, and separating health from the thin ideal.

Building confidence and trust in yourself
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Therapy can help you move away from external rules and expectations, towards a relationship with your body based on respect, understanding and trust. Negative body image can be rooted in self-worth and self-esteem, so unpacking some of the underlying factors can help address how you view your body. Improving body image can improve your general confidence, relationships and overall quality of life. 

​The Benefits of Online Body Image Therapy

• Access support from your own space, wherever you are in the UK
• No need to worry about travelling or parking
• Stay comfortable in a familiar environment
• Easier to fit into a busy schedule
• Access a specialist in body image wherever you’re based
• You don’t even need to put your shoes on!

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​What to Expect in Body Image Counselling

Every session is shaped around you. I see it as a collaboration - you are the real expert in yourself, after all! Different people have different communication and learning needs so I aim to be as adaptable and inclusive as possible, whilst holding therapeutic boundaries.

​As an integrative therapist, I draw from different approaches, which can include:

• Person-centred and humanistic approaches, facilitating the space to be heard
• Attachment theories to help understand early needs and relationships which impact your whole life
• Cognitive behavioural therapy to explore and challenge thought patterns
• Compassion-focused approaches to help connect with your values and to encourage self-acceptance
• A space to talk about difficult past experiences or process trauma
• A non-judgmental space to talk about the impact of weight stigma, biases and discrimination with someone who “gets it”

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​Why see a Body Image Specialist?

Many people with body image and eating problems tell me they feel others don’t really understand or “get it”. It is quite hard to understand fully if you’ve not been there. I have my own past experience of body image and eating problems, which is why I do this work and am so passionate about it. I have been able to build a better relationship with my own body and food, and work on my strong inner critic; this is why I also truly believe that other people can (and deserve to) do this too.

My practice is weight-inclusive. That means I will never focus on weight loss, ask what you weigh, or ask you to keep a food diary. Body image therapists also need to have worked on themselves, their biases and unpacking diet culture and fatphobia. I have spent many years doing this work, and am privileged to be able to support others in this now.
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I also work with many neurodivergent people, and queer people, and understand the intersecting nuances of different aspects of identity and body image.
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​Who Might Benefit from Body Image Therapy?

Therapy for body image might be helpful if you:

• Experience lots of negative thoughts about your body
• Often feel ashamed or uncomfortable in your body
• Avoid social situations
• Struggle with mirrors or photos
• Compare yourself to others
• Have grown up with rules and expectations about how bodies should look
• Feel “fat”
• Don’t believe others when they give compliments
• Think you can’t be happy unless you change your body/lose weight
• Feel stuck in unhelpful eating or exercise habits
• Have a history of dieting and/or behaviours to try and change your body
• Feel like you can’t escape “food noise”
• Finally want to stop dieting and feeling guilty around food
• Want to feel more accepting and at peace with your body
• Want to value yourself, and grow your confidence and self-esteem

​No concerns are silly or too small. If you have any worries or concerns about how you look you deserve help. Anybody of any age, size, shape, ability, ethnicity, sexuality or gender can struggle with body image problems. Everyone deserves a safe, non-judgmental space.
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​Ready to Try Body Image Counselling?

​Therapy for body image isn’t about changing your body or losing weight; it’s about exploring thoughts and feelings, the past, your relationship with yourself, and building self-worth.
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I offer body image therapy sessions online, with a free 15-minute initial chat via Zoom. Please get in touch and let me know your availability if you’d like to book.