You walk by the mirror and think, “Ugh! I hate the way I look!” You feel as though your body is not what it should look like in order for you to feel confident and for your partner to find you attractive. 

You are constantly trying to hide your body and talk negatively to yourself and others about what your body looks like. 

When it comes to sex and intimacy, you have anxiety around initiation and are taken out of the present moment with your partner due to feeling insecure about how your body looks or what rolls or folds your partner may see and feel in certain positions. 

You do not feel comfortable with your partner seeing you naked and this may prevent you from being more open and confident in exploring different ways of connecting and exploring through sex. 

Because of your insecurities, anxiety has built up around sex and intimacy and it now feels like a chore or something you are dreading. 

You try to fight this urge to constantly tear yourself down, but that is what you have been taught all your life and it is really hard to overcome. 

You deserve to feel confident and comfortable in your own skin! 

Why Do I Feel This Way?  

It is probably not surprising that we live in a culture that wants people to feel insecure about their bodies. 

Women are constantly being shown and told through society and media that their worth lies in how they look and that the only way they will find a partner is if they look one specific way… thin. Products are marketed based on any insecurity and flaw companies can drum up to make women think that they need these products in order to be worthy of love, attention, and success.   

Men are told that they are only attractive if they have big muscles, abs, and are super strong and fit. Men also suffer from low self-esteem and self-worth due to thinking that they need to look one specific way to be loved and succeed.   

Because we are all inundated with these messages, many of us continue to perpetuate them by only wanting to date people that look a certain way or giving more attention and success to people who are stereotypically ‘beautiful.’ Some people may even bully those that do not fit the dominate standard of beauty, causing even more trauma.

These societal norms put people into boxes and make everyone fear not being attractive enough to find someone who will love them for who they are.

Unfortunately though, even when you do find someone that loves all of you for you and finds you attractive no matter what state you are in, these fears and insecurities do not leave and lead to you having a hard time connecting to your partner, feeling comfortable with your partner, and being able to love yourself fully and completely.  

5 Tips on What You Can Do  

Gain Awareness of Your Negative Thoughts – If we do not have awareness of how often we are thinking negatively about our bodies and/or voicing these negative thoughts, then it is hard to change them. Take a week and just notice how often you think to yourself a negative thought about your body, complain to your partner about your body, hide your body, or make a joke about your body. Notice and take note.

Affirmations – I know we have all heard of affirmations and many of my clients that struggle with having positive thoughts about their body often think that affirmations won’t change anything. However, I do firmly believe we speak what we want into existence. If we are constantly thinking negatively about ourself and our bodies, that will be what we believe as truth. If we start to affirm and speak kindly about our bodies and ourselves as a whole, we will begin to believe that narrative as well. Write affirmations about yourself in first person, starting with ‘I’, and stick them to your bathroom mirror and/or work computer. Then pick 1-2 a day to recite out load to yourself and repeat them at least 3 times each time you say it. If you want, you can journal each day about how it feels to do this exercise and process your emotions.

Focus more on what your body DOES, instead of what it looks like – Our bodies are AMAZING!!!! As a mom, I have witnessed first-hand how freaking amazing bodies with wombs can be! However, ALL BODIES do amazing things for us every day. They grow, they keep us healthy, they heal, if you are able bodied they get you to where you want to go. There are so many things that we all take for granted that our bodies do for us every day. So let’s stop and take a moment a day to appreciate them.

 Really stop to look at ALL the bodies around you – My family has recently joined the YMCA for my son to start doing some classes and when he first started doing swimming lessons, I really was amazed at how varied the bodies were that I saw in the locker room and at the pool. So many people with all shapes and sizes of bodies coming together to have fun in the water and many walking proud and confident in their bathing suits. The real world does not look like magazines, television shows, or social media. Real life has real bodies and next time you are at a public pool or beach, stop to look at and notice how varied the bodies around you really are.

Work to become more EMBODIED – All the things we hear in society and culture tells us to think of our bodies as a thing that is disconnected from us and that we have to negotiate with every day instead of owning, loving, and accepting as one of the most important parts of who we are. Our bodies allow us to exist in the world and until we can really own and believe in the power of our bodies and the beauty that each body holds, we will never fully be free from these negative narratives that plague our minds and hearts.

As you work on building this new positive narrative for yourself, working to connect with your partner and allow their love for you and your body to become something you are comfortable receiving is important as well.

If you are struggling with negative thoughts about your body and it is getting in the way of you being able to be intimate with your partner in the way that you want, please click the button below to schedule a FREE 15 minute consultation with me and I would happy to work with you on finding your confidence and connection with your partner.