For years now, I’ve been calling myself a “body image coach.”
I do this because my job is often to help my clients identify the underlying subconscious reason that food, exercise, or their appearance have so much power over them– so that they can strip their body/appearance of false or inflated meaning, and allow them to re-access their natural state of body neutrality.
As soon as we start digging below the surface, however, it often becomes clear that the hidden purpose of a client’s body anxiety, insecurity, shame, or obsessiveness actually has very little to do with their actual body/appearance at all!
Instead, it generally has more to do with primal fear, attachment wounds, unmet needs, and unfulfilled dreams and desires… and once we start exploring that stuff, we very quickly find ourselves doing deep work around topics like identity, pleasure, community, spirituality, sex, purpose, and perhaps more often than anything else: relationships.
To give you an example, I once worked with a woman in her forties, who gave me permission to share a bit of her story anonymously, so I’ll call her “Lisa” here.
Lisa had been single for a very long time, and her body image issues centered around a belief that the reason she didn’t have a boyfriend, husband, or family yet was because she was too fat, too hairy, too old, and not conventionally attractive enough to be “chosen” by a man.
When I asked her what “evidence” she had to support this belief, she told me it was “just obvious,” and then said it was because “men are more visual and superficial, and only care about how women look.”
As we kept exploring this idea, Lisa told me about the mean boys who had bullied her in middle school for being chubby and ugly, as well as a partner in her early twenties who had pinched her thighs and told her she should start working out more.
These experiences were clearly traumatic for Lisa, as such experiences often are, and her feelings about them were valid. But I pointed out that they didn’t exactly constitute an ironclad case for her argument that her appearance was the reason she was single, and instead might make a better case for the argument that boys/men can be immature and cruel sometimes.
To my surprise, Lisa’s response to that was to start defending them.
“Well in fairness,” she said, “I was overweight in middle school, and I had really bad acne and hadn’t learned how to manage curly hair yet. And my ex was kind of an asshole, but I had also just finished college, where I was drinking a lot and not taking care of myself.”
Lisa’s kneejerk reaction to justify the behavior of people who had been cruel to her was telling.
It told me that she held herself and her body accountable for their behavior, both then and now, and that (on some level at least), she believed something about her body/appearance gave them the right to treat her that way.
As if not having the perfect body meant she deserved humiliation, disrespect, and cruelty.
As if only women whom men find attractive are deserving of basic human respect and kindness.
Woof.
From that moment on, we weren’t really talking about body image issues anymore, we were talking about Lisa’s beliefs about love, respect, worthiness, men, arousal, sex, intimacy, and compatibility. We were also working on fear-facing and skill-building around vulnerability, authenticity, boundaries, and self-advocacy.
In the end, Lisa realized that she had been scapegoating her body and blaming it for her inability to find a partner because doing so was easier to process and tolerate than dealing with the deeper, stickier, more vulnerable issues she had around intimacy, control, and safety.
If she needed to lose weight before anyone would choose her, for example, she could avoid the very risky prospect of putting herself out there with men, and letting herself really be seen and known. And if she held her body accountable for other people’s disrespect and cruelty, then she could convince herself that once she gets her body under control, nobody would ever treat her that way again.
See how we started with body image, but ended with relationship stuff? This is often how it goes in my work with clients, because relationships underscore so much of our pain, fear, shame, trauma, and insecurity!
In fact, given how much time I spend with clients exploring relational topics and themes, I sometimes wonder if I should even still use the label “body image coach!”
The label just feels too reductive and niche to be fully accurate. But despite the fact that some of my clients come to me specifically to work on issues in the realm of sex and intimacy, partnership struggles, ethical non-monogamy, and relationships with friends and family, the label of “sex/relationship coach” doesn’t quite hit the mark either.
I suppose I could call myself something like an “empowerment coach,” “confidence coach,” or “worthiness coach.” After all, no matter the topic, the work I do is always focused on redirecting my clients back toward their own inner wisdom, helping them live in alignment with their deepest truth, helping them accept and embrace themselves, and helping them step into their most authentic, empowered, and expansive selves.
The truth is that the label I use doesn’t really matter, of course.
Most of my clients call me a body image coach or life coach, but I have several clients who refer to me as a mental health coach, one who calls me a sex coach, and one who refers to me as her “personal relationship wizard.”
All of these feel appropriate to the work we’re doing together, and all of these work for me.
Plus since the goal of using a label is to make it easier to give a quick snapshot of myself and my work, it wouldn’t be particularly helpful to get too specific and descriptive. I mean, can you imagine if I started trying to call myself a “Strip-Away-False-Meaning-So-You-Can-See-The-Morally-Neutral-Truth Coach?” (Lol.)
Anyway, for the sake of simplicity, I’ll just say this today:
I’m a life coach who helps people identify and understand the underlying root causes of their pain and suffering, so that they can figure out how to finally let them go.
Whether we’re talking about food and body image issues, identity and self-worth, sex and relationships, job/career, or the meaning of life… our pain and suffering always serves a purpose, and it’s always attempting to help or protect us in some way.
Just as with body image issues, we’re never going to be able to overcome that pain or suffering until we see and understand it, approach it with compassion and curiosity, and figure out a way to survive and thrive without it.
Also, speaking of relationships, since this Friday is Valentine’s day, I’ve decided to make February’s Patreon Community Zoom Call topic all about cultural norms, expectations, and ideals when it comes to dating and partnership, and how they impact us!
The call is happening this Thursday Feb 13th at noon ET, and the call only costs $5!
I invite you to join us in discussing our social conditioning about men, dating, monogamy, and romance through a liberatory lens! To get the call link, all you have to do is sign up for my Patreon at the $5/month level or higher now!
Hope to see you there!
Big hug,
Jessi
PS If you’re interested in private coaching around dating, relationships, sex, or intimacy, go ahead and apply here now!
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