Healing Your Emotional Self by Beverly Engel

she didn’t believe him. She started me on diets and paying a lot of attention to what I ate.”
    This continued throughout junior high school. By the time Shelly entered high school, she had a serious problem with her self-image. She thought she was fat even though she wasn’t. “I even saw myself as overweight when I looked in the mirror, although I was actually get- ting thinner and thinner.” By the time Shelly reached sixteen, she was throwing up any food she ate and had become anorexic. I have worked with Shelly for the past two years, helping her overcome her problem and to see herself accurately instead of so critically.
    Like Shelly, many people have negative body images, not because they have unattractive bodies but because they see themselves inaccu- rately. Their images of their physical selves are distorted, either because they see their overall size and shape as much fatter, thinner, taller or shorter than they actually are, or because they view specific body parts in a distorted way. When the latter occurs, not only do they perceive their long nose, acne, wide hips, sagging breasts, or large butts as more grotesque than they are, but they see these imagined or real flaws as dominating their entire physical selves, as Carla did: “Everyone tells me that I am so pretty, but I know I’m really not. They don’t know I have these huge hips and thighs because I do such a good job of hiding them. But when I look in the mirror all I see are my hips and thighs. They disgust me so much that I refuse to wear a bathing suit or shorts. I know other people would be just as disgusted if they ever saw how I really look.” Unfortunately, Carla has been blinded to her other physical attributes—her beautiful skin and hair, her lovely shoulders and breasts, her striking facial features.
    Carla is not alone. Many people are poor judges of themselves and have a distorted view of how they impress others. Most people, espe- cially women, are not as unattractive as they think they are. Recent research has found that only 2 percent of women are satisfied with the
    way they look. Studies have shown that relatively few women look in the mirror without focusing on all the things they’d like to change, whereas men tend to be more accepting of what they see. Women tend to distort their perceptions of their bodies negatively, while men—just as unrealistically—distort their perceptions in a positive, self-aggrandizing way.
    Women put an overemphasis on the way their bodies look and assume that men are attracted to them solely or primarily because of their bodies. Although our culture does in fact place a high value on physical attractiveness, women don’t take into account their personal- ities, their wits, their minds, their sensitivity, their ability to relate to others, and most important, their ability to love.

    Do You Judge Yourself Accurately?
    Most people’s poor body image reflects the fact that something occurred in childhood to erode their confidence. Unfortunately, we are all taught from an early age that attractive people are also more worthy (for example, recent research shows that parents treat their attractive children better than their unattractive children). And we are all taught just what is considered attractive in our particular social circle. This training begins very early on, when the cutest babies and toddlers are given the most attention by outsiders. Slowly, as children grow up, they will be treated a certain way depending on how cute they are, what kind of clothes they wear, and what color skin they have.
    It should be no surprise that studies have shown that attractive children tend to develop more self-confidence and have higher self- esteem than children who are perceived as less attractive. If adults smiled approvingly and told you how cute or how pretty or how hand- some you were as you were growing up, you probably felt very good about your body and the way you looked. On the other hand, if