"The shame you feel about your body might have nothing to do with your actual body — and everything to do with whose love you're still trying to earn."
If this resonates with you, what follows may help you see something about yourself.
Seeker
I hate how I look. I can’t even look at myself in the mirror without feeling disgusted.
Companion
What happens when you look at yourself?
Seeker
I just see everything that’s wrong. My stomach, my arms, my face. It’s like a checklist of failures.
Companion
A checklist. Like you’re being graded?
Seeker
Yes, exactly. And I’m failing.
Companion
Who’s doing the grading?
Seeker
I mean, society, right? Media. Instagram. Everyone has these perfect bodies and I’m just not that.
Companion
Is it really everyone else? Or is there a specific voice in your head doing the grading?
Seeker
I don’t know what you mean. It’s just obvious what’s wrong with me.
Companion
When you hear that critical voice, whose voice is it? Not the words, but the tone, the feeling of it.
Seeker
I don’t think it’s anyone’s voice. It’s just the truth.
Companion
You said “checklist of failures.” When did you first learn you could fail at having a body? Any specific memories?
Seeker
What? I don’t… that’s not… I remember my mom. Standing in front of the mirror, grabbing her stomach, saying she was disgusting. Every morning.
Companion
What did that teach you?
Seeker
That bodies were disgusting. Something to fix. Something to be ashamed of if they weren’t perfect.
Companion
And when she looked at you?
Seeker
She’d adjust my clothes. Tell me to suck in my stomach. Point out if I was getting “chubby.” But she was trying to help me.
Companion
Help you with what?
Seeker
To be acceptable. To be loved. Oh god.
Companion
What are you seeing?
Seeker
I’m doing it to myself. The same thing. The checklist, the criticism. It’s her voice. But I thought it was mine.
Companion
What was she really saying when she criticized your body?
Seeker
I don’t know. Maybe that I wasn’t good enough as I was. That I had to work to be okay.
Companion
And you’re still earning it?
Seeker
Every fucking day. Every time I look in the mirror. But it doesn’t work. I could be perfect and it wouldn’t matter because the game is rigged. The shame isn’t about my body.
Companion
So true. What’s it about?
Seeker
It’s about… I learned that I will be loved if I am physically perfect. And my mom couldn’t even give that to herself. She hated her own body. She was passing it down.
Companion
And now?
Seeker
I don’t know. I feel sick.
Whose standards are you still trying to meet when you look in the mirror?
If you want to sit with this question, SelfChatter's journal is built for exactly this kind of inner work.