Hi,
My name is Clara Sante and welcome to Insight Timer.
Today's talk is about body image in teenagers.
The teenage years are very self-conscious years.
When we're teenagers our focus is on us,
How we look and how we're coming across.
We think everyone is looking at us and thinking about us.
With this in mind it's not surprising we always want to look good and one of the most distorted beliefs is that we can only be happy or feel good or be confident or be worthy if we are slim.
Now this distortion can be so strong that we can't even see ourselves how we actually are.
Comparing our bodies to other teens who we are convinced are slimmer or prettier and happier.
When we wake up each morning we have nothing on our mind.
It might only be for a split second but there's complete peace.
Then our thinking kicks in,
Chatting away all about us.
Our mind's only job is to keep us physically safe.
If we've felt uncomfortable it will store this and remind us of it every time we're in the same situation giving us a massive beware signal just in case.
The way this might show up in body image and this is only one example could be when we're looking at social media.
We watch a video or see some photos and thoughts start creeping in comparing ourselves to the person in the video or photo.
We always live in the feeling of our thinking so we feel what feels like negative feelings in our body.
Our mind does its job and links the bad feelings to not being as pretty or slim as the person on the screen.
The mind stores this information and warns us telling us that we're not safe and linking the unsafe feeling to others being slimmer and prettier.
Now the mind is completely neutral.
It doesn't know good or bad so it's not doing it to be cruel or mean.
It's just a machine that stored some information.
It will give it to you exactly the same way as Google.
It searches its database and gives the info that's been stored.
What we tend to do then is if it's something that we would label as negative like jealousy we try to do something to not feel it.
So if we were slimmer then we wouldn't feel so bad.
We think it would bring us peace of mind or confidence.
It's this misunderstanding that peace comes from anywhere other than inside is what ends up driving our behavior.
We think if only I was slimmer then I'd be happy or if only I was prettier then I'd be more confident.
Nobody teaches us that it's an inside job.
Something to be very suspicious about is the fact that the way that we see ourselves can change.
We can go from thinking we're the most disgusting person on the planet to thinking we're okay one moment to the next.
Teenagers get so caught up in their thinking about how they look that their mind has come to the conclusion that this is very important to them and just like an algorithm it will give them more of the same.
It then becomes consuming.
The ones whose mind has settled on their weight start to diet convinced that their happiness lies somewhere around a slim body and yes there might be some good feelings as they're losing the weight because this is their thinking telling them that they're on their way to happiness.
This then goes on repeat and this is how so many people end up with eating disorders.
It feels like the mind is telling us something extremely important and not listening to it has never been suggested so we don't even know that that's an option.
So how can we help our young people to learn how the mind truly works?
Finding someone who can teach them this would be such a gift.
They need to know that they have everything they need inside,
That their mind is just a machine,
An amazing one but it's totally impersonal.
It's there to help but along the way humans have misunderstood its job.
We've listened to it like everything it says is the truth.
Instead of thoughts can come and go but we don't have to buy into them.
Repetitive thought is helpful so that we don't have to relearn how to brush our teeth every day but it's not helpful if we believe each thought and get sucked into the story.
Please keep listening to these tracks so together we can change the way our teenagers see the world.
Thanks for listening.
