Healing Your Emotional Self (8 page)

Exercise: What Were the Messages You Received?

1. Make a list of all the messages concerning your body that you remember receiving from peers, siblings, and friends from the time when you were a child until the present. Include nicknames and insults from your siblings and peers, and things that you have been told by friends and lovers.
   

2. List the messages you received from your parents concern- ing your body. Include verbal and nonverbal messages.
   

3. Review your two lists and put a star beside each message that still has an effect on you (the ones you still believe, and the ones that are still replayed in your head).
   

Children who are highly criticized by their parents, especially when their bodies are criticized, tend to internalize the quest for flaws. They look at their bodies in a similarly critical way, evaluating and rejecting the slightest imperfections. As long as we constantly compare ourselves to an ideal standard, we conclude that self- improvement is necessary for self-acceptance.

The following exercise was designed to help you begin to view your body in an entirely different way.

Exercise: What Is Your Body Trying to Tell You?

1. Look at your face in the mirror. What does your face tell you about yourself? For example, do you look sad? Angry? Afraid? Ashamed?
   

2. Come closer to the mirror. Look deep into your eyes. What do you see there? Fear? Anger? Sadness? Shame?
   

3. In a full-length mirror take a close look at your body, not from the standpoint of evaluating it but from the perspec- tive of seeing what your body says about you. What is your body telling you about yourself? Is it trying to tell you that you are angry? Sad? Afraid? Ashamed? Is it trying to tell you that you are not taking care of it properly—that you are neglecting it the same way your parents did? Is it trying to tell you that you are abusing it the same way your parents
   

   did? Is your body telling you that it is trying to protect you from further harm?
   

4. Take a close look at your posture. Do you stand up straight or do you tend to hunch over? Is one shoulder higher than the other? What do you think these things say about you?
   

Body Issues as Red Flags

Sometimes the parts of our bodies we dislike the most are caused by genetics—we inherit a parent’s nose or a predisposition to be overly thin. But other times a problem body area is a red flag, telling us that something is wrong. For example, obese people often use eating to deny inner pain. Allowing themselves to acknowledge and feel their pain can help to alleviate the need to suppress feelings with food.

Our bodies are mirrors. They reflect what is really going on inside of us. If you are sad, your face and your body will reflect this sadness in some way. If you look deep into your eyes, you will see the sadness and the pain that is inside you. If you look at your expression, you will likely see sadness in the downturn of your mouth, stress in the pinched lines between your brows.

Our body also reflects how we really feel about ourselves. If we are filled with self-loathing, we will likely see it in our bodies. It might be revealed by being far too thin from depriving ourselves of needed nourishment. It may be revealed by punishing our bodies with alcohol or drugs. Or it may be revealed by the scarring on our arms from con- tinual cutting.

When Anna was very young, her parents didn’t expect anything good or bad from her. They just didn’t see her. “It was like I didn’t reg- ister to them. They were so busy with their own lives, so focused on their own feelings and needs, that they couldn’t pay attention to mine.” So Anna did to herself what her parents did to her—she ren- dered herself invisible. She isolated herself in her room and got lost in books. She denied her feelings and hid from her true self.

Then, when Anna became older, her parents often punished her for things she didn’t do. When she tried to defend herself, they became even more angry and rejecting.

“I was so used to not being seen that when they started accusing me of things I hadn’t done it felt horribly painful. I tried to become a turtle, going inside an imaginary shell so I’d be out of reach of their accusatory comments. And I hid from my pain by eating. I had no other way to comfort or soothe myself. I’d tell myself, ‘It doesn’t mat- ter what I do,’ and ‘It doesn’t do any good to defend myself or to get angry,’ and so I’d sneak food into my room and stuff my feelings down. I turned all my anger onto myself.”

At school Anna was deeply afraid of further rejection, so she kept to herself. “I had perfected my turtle act by the time I was in the third grade. No one seemed to notice me and that’s exactly the way I wanted it. On the inside, of course, I was starving for love, but on the outside I created a hard shell that kept everybody away.

As Anna told her story, I was struck by how, in some ways, she actually did look like a turtle. She had short arms and legs and her trunk had a boxy look to it—the way a turtle would look if it stood on its hind legs. She seemed to have almost no neck at all. And there was an invisible quality to Anna. She tended to wear very muted colors, and nothing about her features really stood out. I had once seen her at a café near my office. She said hello to me, but I did not recognize her. It wasn’t until she mentioned seeing me at our next session that I realized that she was the woman who had said hello.

As it turned out, Anna had not only made her body nearly invisi- ble but she had also created an emotional mask to protect her as well. “No one really knows me. I won’t let them see behind my mask. I’m afraid of what will happen if I show people who I really am.”

Your body also acts as a protector of your emotions and your very self. Marianne’s mother constantly criticized her from the time she was a very small child, especially about the way she looked. First she was too thin, and so her mother gave her cod liver oil, shots, and vita- mins to fatten her up. Then she became too fat and was put on an end- less series of diets. When she didn’t grow tall enough to offset her weight, her mother took her to the doctor to see if her growth was stunted in some way. When she finally did start gaining height, her mother ridiculed her and told her no man would want her because she would be taller than he was. By the time Marianne reached adoles- cence, she determined that she could never satisfy her mother and

that she had to hide herself from her mother’s critical eye. She did this by gaining an enormous amount of weight.

Although it may have seemed self-defeating to gain weight and thus invite her mother’s criticism, in reality Marianne was simply try- ing to defend herself against her mother’s constant scrutiny. As long as her mother was distracted by her weight, she didn’t delve into deeper aspects of Marianne’s personality. Her weight acted as a defensive wall, protecting her from her mother’s scrutinizing gaze. And by stay- ing overweight she didn’t pose a threat to her mother’s fragile ego— she was no competition. Finally, she stayed fat because it kept her from displeasing her mother by having an independent life. Boys didn’t ask her out and so her mother could keep her tied to her emotionally.

Reconnecting with Your Body

Much of the damage caused by emotional abuse, neglect, and smothering shows up in a disconnection with the body and in distortions of body image. This can lead to eating disorders such as compulsive overeating, bulimia, and anorexia. Children who were emotionally abused or deprived are often out of touch with their bod- ies and do not know how to read their body’s sensations and messages. The pain of rejection, humiliation, or deprivation may have been so intense that they had to numb themselves against it. If no one was there to comfort them when they were in discomfort or pain, they had to turn off the sensation or emotion. One of the main problems that these people have is an inability to soothe themselves, because this ability is typically learned from experiencing the soothing efforts of a parent.

Emotionally abusive parents do not respond appropriately to their child’s emotions and/or body sensations. They tend to be out of touch with their child’s emotions and to interpet and respond to them according to their own biases, moods, needs, and past experiences. For example, if a parent was laughed at when she cried, she will tend to do the same to her own child. Emotionally abusive or depriving par- ents also tend to mislabel their child’s feelings and needs, often telling

her she is not really feeling what she is feeling (for example, if a par- ent was too busy to stop to feed his child, he tells the child he is not really hungry). Because the body gives us vital clues as to what is going on with us emotionally, the inability to understand our body’s messages keeps us from having a deep understanding of ourselves. If we can’t understand our bodily sensations, who are we? Certainly we are more than our thoughts.

People who were emotionally abused or deprived can also suffer from body-image distortions. Some feel smaller while others feel big- ger than they actually are. Many feel they are far less attractive than they really are due to negative parental messages in the form of criti- cism, judgments, and shaming.

My client Linda is an exceptionally beautiful woman with a mane of curly black hair, large brown eyes, and a beautiful, athletic body. But she feels she is very plain and that men find her ordinary, because her father constantly criticized the way she looked when she was growing up. “My dad didn’t like the fact that I resembled my mother and not his side of the family, who had straight blonde hair and blue eyes. He wanted me to be sexy and curvy, but I was always too skinny. He teased me mercilessly about how much I looked like a little boy.”

In order to heal the damage caused by emotional abuse and neg- lect, you will need to learn how to rediscover yourself through your emotions and physical sensations, and to reconnect with your body. Throughout this book I present creative techniques to facilitate this reconnection, such as writing exercises, creating self-portraits, and expressing your emotions through art. But it will be through mirror work that the real changes will take place. By utilizing the concept of the “body as mirror” and by doing various exercises actually using the mirror, you will be able to heal your distorted body image and begin to see yourself in a more realistic and positive way.

We are all fascinated and repelled by our own image in the mirror. Most of us are preoccupied with our body image, how we look to oth- ers, and how to make ourselves more attractive. But it is important to understand that unless we heal ourselves on the inside, we will not like the person we see in the mirror. The idea that you can actually use the mirror to help heal your inner wounds may sound intriguing to you.

On the other hand, it may turn you off or frighten you. If this is your situation, try the various mirror exercises one time to see if they can be effective for you.

Mirror Therapy Assignment #3: Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

1. Stand close to your bathroom mirror and look at your face. Do you generally have a positive or a negative impression of how your face looks? If you have a negative impression, write down the reasons why you don’t like your face.
   

2. Closely examine each of your features, one by one. As you look at each feature, ask yourself the following questions: “Do I like this feature?” “What is it about this feature that I like or dislike?” “Does this feature remind me of anyone in my family?”
   

3. Make a list of messages you feel you were given by your parents (or other significant caretakers) about your face. The messages may have been spoken out loud or they may have been given to you nonverbally (with negative looks or the absence of praise).
   

4. Now look at your body in a full-length mirror. Start by ask- ing yourself if you like or dislike how your body looks. Then try to remember any messages you may have received about your body from your parents.
   

5. As you did with your face, look at each part of your body (your arms, your chest, your stomach) and ask yourself, “Do I like this part of my body?” “What is it about this part of my body that I like or dislike?” “Does this part of my body remind me of anyone else in my family?”
   

6. You may have felt anxious or embarrassed as you did this exercise. Write down any feelings that arose inside you. Don’t judge or analyze the feelings; just describe them.
   

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How Mirror Therapy Works

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?

M
IRROR THERAPY IS NOT BASED
on one particular technique. Instead, it centers on a series of psychological truths and two major processes I call “Shattering Your Parental Mirror” (rejecting the distorted images you received from your emotionally abusive or neglectful par- ents) and “Creating a New Mirror” (replacing the distorted images with a more accurate reflection of who you really are). These two major processes include a series of exercises and homework assign- ments, some involving an actual mirror.

The Basic Premises of Mirror Therapy

Mirror Therapy is based on the following psychological truths:

1. Problems with low self-esteem and poor body image are often caused by negative parental messages communicated through emotional abuse, neglect, or smothering.
   

2. The only real alternative to self-criticism is knowing the truth about who you are. If you have a deep belief that you are worthless, you must discover where that belief came from and why you believe it is true.
   

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3. People with a history of abuse or neglect tend to remain enmeshed with their parents out of a desperate desire to get what they did not get as children.
   

4. Parental emotional abuse creates a negative internal judge or pathological inner critic.
   

5. Survivors of emotional abuse or neglect often do not develop a clear and undistorted image of themselves. By keeping a Mirror Journal, creating a word self-portrait, and completing various other activities, survivors can gain a clearer image of themselves—their likes and dislikes, and their values, goals, and dreams.
   

6. Parents project their own unresolved issues onto their chil- dren. In order to heal from the damage this causes, adult chil- dren need to reject the distorted mirror their parents put on them and create a new mirror that reflects more accurately who they actually are.
   

7. People who were emotionally abused or neglected in child- hood tend to be numb to their emotions, feel sideswiped by them, or feel overwhelmed when their emotions build up.
   

8. Starting in infancy, children need positive, empathetic mirror- ing from their parents in order to know that they have worth. When a child is treated with empathy, that is, when parents sensitively respond to the child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns that she is worthy of love and is worthwhile. Her empathy and compassion for herself grow as she mirrors inside what the outside world has revealed to her about her self- worth. If, on the other hand, a child is not given this empa- thetic mirroring, she doesn’t feel loved and is not able to feel compassionate toward herself.
   

9. Adults who were emotionally abused or deprived need to cre- ate a nurturing, responsive, internal “mother” and a safe, pow- erful, internal “father” in order to provide for themselves what they missed out on as a child. This involves learning nurturing skills and how to set effective limits.
   

10. If a child’s needs and feelings are continually ignored or dis- counted, he will not know how to soothe himself.
    

11. By committing to the process of change and growth, we can discover that when we are more accepting of ourselves—even with all our faults and flaws—we are free to become the per- son we were meant to be.
    

12. People who were emotionally abused or neglected tend to be disconnected from their emotions and their bodies. Through body image exercises and feelings exercises, survivors can reconnect with these important aspects of themselves.
    

13. Children mirror what they see in life, especially what their par- ents do. Parents who behave in inappropriate ways become unhealthy role models for their children.