"The opposite of poor body image isn't believing you are beautiful. It's believing that your presence is more valuable than your appearance"- Eli Harwood
Dr Hannah Ryan, Clinical Psychologist, Two Leaves Therapy
How to commit to body neutrality using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Note 1. This article includes a discussion of body image issues.
Note 2. This article focuses predominantly on the impact of societal conditioning around body image on girls and women in recognition of the disproportionately gendered impact of this issue. However, it is recognised that body image pressure and shaming can apply to anyone, and the ideas in this article equally apply to people of all genders.
***
When I was thirteen, I had four main ambitions for my adult self: I wanted an exciting career as an international correspondent, a loyal group of friends, a dog, and to be good-looking. I don’t remember the last one being conscious at all, but then, not wanting to be good-looking wasn’t an option for a teenage girl. While my ambitions have changed (except for the dog), the reality for teenage girls has not. I regularly ask my adolescent clients, “What percentage of the day do you reckon you spend worrying if you are pretty enough or thinking about your appearance?” That figure has never been lower than 80%. The journalist Caitlin Moran has lamented that beauty is a hobby that most girls and women inherit without their consent, and has wondered what could have been invented or cured had all that precious brainpower been devoted elsewhere. I often share this with my teenage clients, although it doesn’t make an iota of difference.
In Alex Light's bestselling book, You Are Not a Before Picture, she writes that only 5% of people possess society's ideal body type, represented by actors, models, singers, celebrities, influencers and professionally beautiful people. "How does that leave the other 95% of people feeling?" she asks. I thought of this recently as I watched actresses glide like royalty down the red carpet at the Golden Globes, looking like paintings of Goddesses come to life. I wondered if it would drive ordinary people further into impossible and punishing resolutions; 6am jogs, personal training, teeth whitening, Botox and filler.
We often thinking that good body image means liking how we look. Many women, some with a history of eating disorders, will tell me, “I have good body image at the moment, I’m quite slim”. But this is not what defines good body image. Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and the fact that bodies and faces will change. It often requires good or bad luck (such as losing one’s appetite due to trauma), restrictive eating and/or expensive measures to keep bodies looking like twenty year old ideals. And for many, deviation from the ideal would cause great distress. Therefore, as Eli Harwood put it, “The opposite of poor body image isn't believing you are beautiful. It's believing that your presence is more valuable than your appearance".
Over the holidays, I read everything I could find the time to read on body neutrality and body acceptance. As a woman, I have a vested interest in this topic, but as a woman working with majority women as a psychologist the need to up my game feels urgent. I am not an eating disorder specialist, but I can probably count on one hand the number of women I have encountered in my practice, and in my life, who have a truthfully undisordered relationship with food. When I started reading a book on body neutrality, I sat up straighter: this could be the thing. Realising with excitement that this approach could pair seamlessly with the therapeutic modality Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, I decided to write an informal Acceptance and Commitment Therapy guide to body neutrality, since I couldn't find an existing one online.
In this article, I will define body neutrality and explain how to choose it as a value and begin moving towards it using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy principles. As I do not have magic fairy dust, you might still want to change several things about yourself by the end, but I hope you will have a spark of hope that a different relationship with your appearance might be possible.
What is body neutrality?
Bethany Meyers defines body neutrality as follows:
"Body neutrality is not saying that you shouldn't have any feelings about your body, or that you should never think about your body, or that your body doesn't matter. But it is saying that your body does not dictate your worth. You are more than a body, and your value as a person extends far beyond your physical presence".
This was music to my ears. Ambivalence is one of my favourite words, because it captures so much about the human experience. Body neutrality gives us permission to feel ambivalent towards our bodies, whilst inviting us to consider whether the importance we are currently placing on our looks is congruent with our well-being.
Body neutrality has three fundamental premises. I have given these a slight Acceptance and Commitment Therapy makeover.
(1) How we feel about our bodies is staggeringly affected by the external world, which we have absorbed throughout our lives and continue to internalise daily. Humans are fundamentally social creatures, and how we think about ourselves is clearly affected by the norms of our culture, which dictate how we need to look to be acceptable, esteemed and cherished. To understand our relationships with our bodies, we must understand the systemic, discursive and narrative influences that have shaped us.
As someone who was raised in the nineties and 2000s, I had a lot to reflect on. From Kate Moss saying, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels", to Bridget Jones describing herself as obese at a beautiful and healthy size twelve to nineties and 2000s advertisements bombarding us with Special K and Weight Watchers ads. And that's before we get into our mothers’ comments about us, herself, and everyone around her. "Tess Daily mustn't eat a bite; she looks amazing," my mother says whenever Strictly is on TV. What are some of the influences you remember from your days as a child, teenager and young adult?
(2) It is natural to feel ambivalent towards your body; how could you not? After all, you have been marinated in a sea of body obsession since birth. You have been brainwashed your entire life into believing that there is a perfect way for an arm, a leg, a nose and a belly to look and that if yours does not conform, this will have dire consequences for your desirability, acceptability, popularity, health and worthiness.
It may be liberating to accept that you may never get rid of distressing thoughts about your appearance completely, although their frequency and intensity may reduce over time. Instead, you can change your relationship with those thoughts and your body more generally and learn to shift your attention towards the values that matter to you the most.
(3) Beauty may be a value given to you by society, but it is not a value you have to keep on a pedestal. If you were a girl raised in most cultures, you have been told in a billion different ways from birth that your appearance is the most interesting and important thing about you. It may have begun with the dolls we were advertised when we were toddlers.
As Sasha's character tells a real-life Barbie in the 2023 movie of the same name, "You represent everything wrong with our culture: sexualised capitalism, unrealistic physical ideals. Look at yourself. You set the feminist movement back 50 years. You're the reason why women hate themselves".
But it's not just dolls and their makers that reinforce these ideas. Perhaps you were told you couldn't play with a group of friends because you weren't pretty enough, or you couldn't get with your crush because your body part was only a 6/10. Perhaps on your wedding day, you were told you were "stunning!" after starving yourself for months into a Barbie-like shape. The compliments may have disappeared when you started eating bread again. If you grew up as a boy, you may have been told you weren’t big enough to join the rugby team or that you looked like a girl. Regardless of gender, these comments scar us and we never forget them.
You cannot deprogramme yourself, but you do get to resist the brainwashing. That doesn't mean you can hit a switch and shut off caring about your looks; that's impossible. However, you get to choose how much space beauty takes up in your life, the fun and joyful ways you might want to relate to it and how much space you want to cultivate for other values that ultimately bring you more fulfilment.
How is body neutrality different from body positivity?
Body neutrality and body positivity share a core mission: to dismantle society's harmful standards and help people of all genders find a peaceful relationship with their physical selves. However, they approach this in very different ways.
While body positivity encourages you to love your roles, stretch marks and thighs, body neutrality says: "That's just not always realistic, I’m afraid". Body positivity asks you to stand in front of the mirror and tell your arms you love them anyway; body neutrality invites you to notice your thoughts about your arms, allow them to come and go, and nourish yourself by committing to other values that are more important to you than physical beauty. Body positivity says: "You have a beautiful body, no matter what". Body neutrality says: "You are so much more than a body, and beauty doesn't have to be the most important thing".
Bethany Meyers, author of I Am More Than My Body, writes about how body positivity can veer occasionally into toxic positivity, the pressure to suppress the broad spectrum of human emotions, lie to ourselves and pretend to feel good all the time:
"When it's just you and the mirror, the resounding reality is that sometimes you just don't feel that positive about your body. Yes, you can fight with the voices in your head, argue with the unrealistic standards that have been set, disown the marketing messages you are fed on the daily, but wiping them from memory is challenging at best. For some, toxic positivity can add a layer of guilt and shame- when we have those days that we don't feel positive about our body, we can feel like we failed".
Body positivity is something that we can always aspire to when this feels possible for us, while body neutrality allows us to have those days where we care too much and feel like crap because of how we look.
How to use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to move towards a value of body neutrality
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy fits beautifully with body-neutral ideas. Rather than suggesting, as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy often does, that our dodgy thoughts are the problem and we need to banish them, ACT (pronounced like actor or actress) takes a more pragmatic approach.
ACT suggests that all humans (therapists included) experience hundreds of unpleasant, unwanted or tricky thoughts and feelings daily, reflecting the nature of minds. To suggest that to be sane is to get rid of all aversive thoughts and exist in a state of unicorns and rainbows is to misunderstand humans fundamentally.
Instead, ACT takes a leaf out of the mindfulness playbook and suggests that we can develop a new relationship with those thoughts. Rather than giving them power, we can adopt a mindful relationship with them, where we observe at least some of the tricky ones.
We can notice that thoughts are simply words or images in the brain, many of which have been been conditioned into us, and that we have a choice whether to obey them. Importantly, we can notice if they hijack our path towards our chosen values. By taking an observer position, we can take the wheel and prevent them from steering us off course.
At the heart of ACT is the importance of clarifying our chosen values. Importantly when it comes to body neutrality, these often differ from inherited values from family, society, religion, friends, relatives and the media, as we naturally identify with some and resist others. However, if we don't actively choose our values, we find ourselves living out the values imposed on us, whether or not this is healthy.
Our chosen values are the north stars that light our way towards a rich, meaningful, nourishing, flourishing life. By selecting those stars for ourselves and committing to following them- in other words, making values-driven choices rather than thought-driven ones- we can get closer to a life we feel proud of.
2. Clarifying our values: where do we want beauty to fit?
So here's a question: what would you want people to say about you and how you'd lived at your funeral? Over the holidays, I had the privilege of listening to some of the most eloquent, magnificent eulogies at a humanistic ceremony. The eulogisers spoke about this man's irrepressible energy, generosity of spirit and playfulness as a parent and friend. They talked of his effervescent joy on outings with his hiking club, his childlike delight in the wonders of nature, his adoration of his pals and his devotion to his family. They spoke of his love of Irish literature while his love of seventies music spoke for itself, as the electric guitar and raspy voice of David Bowie rang through the hall not once but twice, reducing us all to tears.
Once we'd wiped our faces, those who'd attended confessed that we were left feeling moved, impressed, inspired and, guiltily, a little envious. Were we on track to be remembered like that? Did we have friends who loved us as much and who could express that love as beautifully as this man's parade of poets?
It's a good question, one Acceptance and Commitment Therapists routinely put to their clients. It's also a thought experiment used by body neutrality writers. "Do you want people to stand up and say, Emily was the most beautiful woman, and she always maintained a size eight dress size until the end?" they might ask. It's okay if you do, but it's important information.
I hate to break it to you, but beauty and slimness may not be what you want to be remembered for. Maybe your true dream is to be remembered as a loyal friend, present parent, or dedicated and innovative artist. Perhaps you would like to be remembered for bringing a smile to people's faces in your career as a nurse or being a wonderful cook who loved people through feeding them. You may want to be remembered for standing up for social justice and advocating for the underdog. Usually, when we think about it, although we might wish for a flattering photograph on our coffins rather than an unflattering one, we don't long for beauty to be our legacy. Realising this can be powerful.
To clarify your values, you can divide a physical or virtual piece of paper into three parts: not important to me, somewhat important to me and very important to me. The next step is to include the values "to be beautiful", "to maintain slimness", and "to groom myself" as sample values (they won't always be included on typical lists, even though they are top priorities for many of us, whether we admit it or not) and think seriously about where you want them to go.
Perhaps relegating "to maintain a groomed and attractive appearance" to the 'not important to me’ column is unrealistic, and perhaps it would have negative consequences in your culture. But maybe you want to downgrade it to 'somewhat important to me' and rank it lower than others. Reflecting on what this could look like has the power to be transformative.
Next, read through a list of other, non-beauty related sample values such as to be adventurous, to be honest, to be creative, to be hard working, to be open-hearted, to learn and grow, etc, slowly and mindfully and notice which ones you identify with and resist. This process is about deciding who you are and who you want to be in your body beyond your looks. What matters to you, deep inside, and what do you want to spend your time, energy and thinking space on?
That could be spending time in nature, nurturing friendships with generosity, making people laugh, creating beautiful paintings, being playful with your kids, or growing and learning. Whatever it is for you, this process can help to remind you that you are so much more than a body.
2. Thought defusion: how do we deal with distressing thoughts about our appearance?
Thought defusion is a key skill in ACT that helps us manage distress and keep walking towards our values, even when tricky thoughts try to pull us off course. Thought defusion originates from mindfulness and refers to the skill of gaining distance from our thoughts.
When we are in a state of fusion with our thoughts, it is as though the thought is in control. The thought is having us; we are not having the thoughts. This colours the lens through which we see the world; we automatically see the thought as powerful, as capable of predicting the future, as reflecting a clear truth about the universe. Crucially, we believe we must obey it.
When we take a step back - when we defuse - we can see things more clearly. It is as if we can hold the thought out from our face and examine it, like a sun observing a planet. There is some distance. There is some clarity. From this perspective, we can see that thoughts are just words or images in the mind. We have millions of incorrect thoughts all the time, and many thoughts fail to predict the future - especially anxious ones. We can see that we do not need to obey our thoughts. From this perspective, we have a choice.
The fastest way to defuse from a thought is to put the phrase "I am noticing I'm having the thought that..." in front of a thought or urge you are having.
I also like to tweak this by saying, "Thoughts come and go like waves, and I am noticing that I am having the thought that...", "Tricky thoughts are human, and I am noticing that I am having the thought that...", or "Thoughts are just thoughts and I am noticing that I am having the thought that...". Here are some examples:
"I am noticing that I am having the thought that I look so fat today."
"Thoughts come and go like waves, and I am noticing that I am having the thought that my nose is enormous in that picture and I look hideous."
"Tricky thoughts are human, and I am noticing that I am having the thought that I feel awful in this dress and everyone looks better than me."
"Thoughts are just thoughts, and I am noticing that I am having the thought that I need to go on a diet."
I don't recommend doing this one without the support of a therapist, but if there is a word or short phrase (such as "fat") which is particularly frequent for you and comes with strong emotion, you can try defusing from this (taking the power out of it) by setting a timer on your phone and repeating the word over and over for two minutes. This usually has the effect of showing you that the word, however emotive, is just language: sounds and syllables, and this can help you see it in a new light.
To learn defusion well, I highly recommend this deep dive podcast with Russ Harris. Defusion can be a tough skill to grasp, but it improves with practice and consistency.
3. Connect with the present moment
Connecting with the present moment can also help. Mindfulness, ultimately, is a form of attention training. When you learn to direct your attention, you can choose to shine the spotlight of your attention on many things other than your appearance: to notice the way your niece’s giggle sounds when you play with her, the way your dog’s paws smell like digestive biscuits, to notice the sensation of flow you have when you paint or the way birdsong makes you feel grounded and peaceful when you walk in the woods.
Building in a regular(ish) mindfulness practice, for example, with an app such as Headspace, can really help.
How do we break the cycle with our children and friends? Consider becoming compliment neutral.
Values are not just about how you relate to yourself but also about how you relate to others. Every time I come home, my mother says things like, "That's a nice top; where did you get that?" or "When are you next getting your hair done? It looks like it needs a refresh". You might wonder if I am throwing my mother under the bus, but I am open with her about how this makes me feel, and I genuinely feel no blame; her intentions are benign, most women do it to each other, and I am part of that cycle. Women bond through compliments and appearance-oriented discourse, at least in Irish culture. Moreover, it is much more extreme in other cultures and households. When my (slim and extremely fit) Asian friends go home, their grandmothers say things like, "When did you get so fat?" and ask them when they are going on a diet.
However, all these comments have what Deborah Tannen, conversation analyst, calls implicit messaging. The explicit message may be more evident for my Asian friends. But the implicit message is the same for all of us: your appearance matters to me. It matters to everyone. If something is wrong with your appearance, you need to notice this and fix it urgently to become acceptable to us. If you conform to the ideal, you will get lots of praise. If you don't, there will be silence or insults. Again, our mothers are not to blame for this. The sexism they grew up with was so much worse than ours, and until you know better, you cannot do better. The judgment they project onto us is nothing more than the recycled judgment they feel toward themselves.
But we know better now and are responsible for doing better. By perpetuating the cycle, we keep everyone stuck in a world where we are slaves to our appearance. Instead, you can make many values-based, character-oriented compliments and appearance-neutral comments towards your daughter or friend when she comes to visit.
For example, you could say something like: "Wow, it seems you worked so hard in that home office today", "I missed hearing you singing around the house", "You are such a natural with those kids", "Your energy is buzzing today!" "You're always so insightful", "That was such a kind thing you did for your friend", "You got a promotion, amazing! I'm so proud of you", "You always make your brother open up", and "I missed you! Seeing you always puts a smile on my face". The possibilities are endless.
When you think back over your life, what are some of the appearance-related comments that have stuck with you? We feel like we are being nice when we compliment bodies, appearance and weight, but these compliments are often loaded and sticky. "You've lost loads of weight!" could be heard as "Was I really fat when I saw you last?" Complimenting one person in a group liberally and not another could induce feelings of inadequacy, especially if the person receiving the compliments exists in a teeny, tiny, size six body that conforms to that 5%. This signals to the other people that their bodies are less acceptable. They could be more beautiful. In a world where appearance is everything, especially for women and girls but increasingly for people of all genders, it is not oversensitive to feel hurt by this; it is human.
So, what can we do? Compliment your friend's earrings or sense of style, sure; compliment their energy, character and presence liberally, but consider minimising body, weight and appearance-related compliments. Together, we can break the cycle.
Final thoughts
If this is your first time learning about body neutrality, what has struck you, and what will you take away? Bethany Meyers writes that when they first discovered body neutrality, a weight was lifted: "My jaw dropped, tears sprang to my eyes, the boxing gloves melted off my hands...It hit me at once: I am more than my body".
The journey, for you, might be quieter, slower or more challenging. However, the body neutrality movement allows us the grace to feel our feelings, notice our thoughts and take our time on the road to finding peace in our skin, while Acceptance and Commitment Therapy gives us the vehicles to get there. You don't have to choose body neutrality as a value, and you don't have to downgrade beauty's importance in your life. But if you, like me, would prefer your friends to say something different than, "She was always slim and stuck to her diets religiously", when your time is up, then maybe this is your sign that beauty and slimness are values that were given to you, rather than ones you would have chosen for yourself. No matter how beautiful or unbeautiful you feel right now, the cheesy truth is that your worth is so much more than what you look like, and that you are so much more than a body- despite what society has told you.
Recommended Reading and Listening
"I am More Than My Body: The Body Neutral Journey" by Bethany Meyers
"Food Isn't Medicine: How Misinformation Is Harming Our Health" by Joshua Wolrich
You're Wearing That?! Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation by Deborah Tannen
"The Happiness Trap, 2nd Edition: Stop Struggling and Start Living" by Russ Harris
The Body Mass Index and its History - Maintenance Phase Podcast
An Introduction to Defusion with Russ Harris, ACT in Context Podcast
An Introduction to Values with Joanne Dahl, ACT in Context Podcast
