What if you are unhappy with your appearance?
ALL WE HAVE GROWN THE MASS OF QUESTIONS TO THEMSELVES AND THE WORLDwith which there seems to be no time or need to go to a psychologist. But convincing answers are not born when you talk to yourself, or to your friends, or to your parents. Therefore, we asked the professional psychotherapist Olga Miloradova to answer pressing questions once a week. By the way, if you have them, send to [email protected].
What if you are unhappy with your appearance?
We all understand that judgments about attractiveness somehow change over time, from country to country, with changing fashion trends, and so on. But despite the fact that we are able to perceive the beauty of both the Rubensian ladies, the thin-lipped Mona Lisa, and even the female aliens of Modigliani, we consider ourselves quite differently. The paradoxical benchmark for comparison is often not the work of classical artists, but the edited pictures from fashion magazines. And what to do if your face and body are completely different from them and even sport and a healthy diet will not change your face shape, leg length and chest size? We have repeatedly addressed the issue of the diversity of beauty, but now consider this problem from the point of view of psychology.
Olga Miloradova psychotherapist
It is believed that the root of evil in dissatisfaction with their appearance is hidden during adolescence, but according to some researchers (for example, Gilbert and Thompson, 2002), already in 2-3 years the child may have early, shameful experiences. Such experiences are associated with insults, critical assessments and comments, primarily from parents, but also from other peers. And already at such an early age, a child may form a conviction that others consider him unattractive. Already at the age of 5, children have a negative perception of completeness, and the age of 7-8 years becomes essentially critical, since the child gets into a rather aggressive school environment, and there are not enough cognitive resources to repel the attacks. But there are enough resources to accumulate dissatisfaction with oneself.
During the school years, there is a further permanent decline in self-esteem and self-attractiveness. Already at the age of pre-adolescence, that is, at the age of 9-10, according to different authors, from 40% (Smolak, 2004) to 70% (Cusumano and Thompson, 2001) girls are dissatisfied with some bodily aspect of their appearance. And only when it comes to adolescents, researchers begin to talk about all these factors in the aggregate: this includes teasing (within the family and at school), and the influence of the media.
It may seem to you that I started too far away, since you all grew up, and if someone teased you once, then you will not be able to help. But, firstly, awareness is the first step to solving a problem (by the way, you can never get stuck in the first step, you must do the following, otherwise it does not make sense), and, secondly, many of you may become parents, or parents are and want a better life for their children. One aspect of a better life for many parents is seen as including the best appearance of their children. And besides, we tend to repeat the behavior patterns of our parents.
So, referring to this repetition: according to all studies, teasing and negative evaluation from family members have especially destructive consequences for the child’s self-esteem. This aspect emerges in the future, when trying to assess exactly what qualities help a person to be resistant to the pressure exerted on him. The factors influencing this stability are considered, first of all, by stable personal characteristics (self-confidence, sociability, sense of humor, ability to deal with difficulties); social support from family members and friends, as well as effective social skills (adaptive defensive responses, a future-oriented outlook on life, and the like).
The most common problem of their appearance women call weight and shape.
And yet, let us return to those who are not very well established with sustainability. The most common problem of their appearance women call weight and shape. Approximately equal discontent causes the shape of the buttocks, the shape of the hips and overweight in general. Next in the ranking are the noses, then the skin, well, and some of the smallest part is simply dissatisfied with everything. The worst thing in this whole story is that of all areas (appearance, ability to learn, public recognition, behavior and athletic ability) external data is most strongly associated with global self-esteem. But, paradoxically, it doesn’t have almost any value how a person actually looks (someone else’s opinion is seriously taken into account only by 6%), and his sense of satisfaction with himself matters. Thus, we find ourselves in a double paradox, where the world requires you to be glossy and perfect, and you yourself demand from yourself not to become glossy and perfect, but only to believe that you are such.
If we talk about the ways in which people try to get rid of dissatisfaction with their appearance, in the first place there is still a change in appearance; then - a change in the importance attached to it, and only after that - work with cognitive processes, that is, essentially cognitive psychotherapy (work with beliefs, cognitive distortions, and so on). Even when talking about dissatisfaction with themselves, people tend to say: I want to lose weight, make a new chest-nose-eyelids, that is, instead of a request for self-satisfaction in general, people tend to formulate a request for change.
However, it is precisely when working with the processes occurring in our head that a much greater decrease in anxiety and more complete acceptance of oneself occurs. Perhaps, after working on yourself, you decide to continue to pump muscles or to operate on the nose. The huge difference will be precisely that, firstly, you will be able to do these actions (unlike those who are embarrassed to appear in the gym, because you need to lose a few extra pounds before this appearance), and you will also have a specific and a clear goal instead of vague discontent with oneself and possessing a new, incomprehensible nose.
But, unfortunately, you should always remember that any global work on yourself goes on for the rest of your life and that any psychotherapist can only help you set a direction, and you yourself carry out the main work. A small consolation can be the fact that, statistically, after reaching 30 years of age, the level of dissatisfaction with themselves is somewhat reduced.
And the last thing I would like to emphasize is plastic surgery. No matter how conscious and necessary your decision is to perform an operation, always remember that every simplest operation can have complications and unpredictable consequences.