Episode 23: How to Respond to Body Shaming in Relationships
Has anyone ever given you unsolicited criticism about your body?
In this episode, I address the comment of one of my Twitch chatters, whose girlfriend shamed him for growing his leg muscles ātoo bigā (umā¦that doesnāt exist). This was a great start to a discussion on body shaming and dealing with people when they give unsolicited feedback about your body. My strategy for dealing with anyone who criticizes your body is to challenge them with questions like āwhat makes you think thatās an appropriate thing to say?ā
I also highlight the importance of setting boundaries and not allowing others to dictate how your body should look. Value yourself and work on healing unhealthy beliefs about yourself.
Trigger warning: This episode contains a discussion on the impact of unresolved trauma and relationship abuse on self-worth.
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Jayd (00:00):
So if you want to stop that cycle, it begins with one, doing the work of valuing yourself and working on your sense of self-worth healing those unhealthy beliefs about yourself and just asking questions and staying curious and compassionate.
(00:29):
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I'm a personal trainer and I created this podcast that I can share information on how to eat better and build a body that you love. In this episode, I provide some advice for how to communicate with your partner, with your friend, with a family member, someone who gives unsolicited feedback criticizing your body. I firmly believe that no one should ever offer unsolicited feedback on anything, but especially when it comes to the appearance of our bodies. We experience enough body shaming as it is in this culture as a trigger warning. This episode also does go into relationship abuse, emotional abuse, which often criticizing and body shaming is a part of abusive relationships. So if you are very sensitive to that topic, I want to give you a trigger warning now, and if that is just a little bit too triggering of a topic for you, feel free to set this episode out.
(01:31):
However, I do think that it's a good conversation to listen, to help you to identify those types of patterns in your relationships. I will post some links to resources below in the comments to this video and also in the podcast episode notes for resources that can help you if you do find yourself in an abusive domestic situation or in an abusive relationship, and you need a little bit of help getting out of it or coping with it. So without further ado, let's talk about how to deal with people who criticize our bodies and try to shame us.
(02:10):
The girl that you're dating told you to stop training legs. Why she thinks they're getting too big. There's no such thing as too big. Are you kidding me? That's a red flag for me. Dude, that's a red flag for anybody to tell you how to train starting now and moving forward. We are no longer going to be shaming ourselves or accepting shame and criticism of our bodies either by our own brain or from other people. And if somebody says something like that, I would encourage you to take the gentle parenting approach of asking them why they think it's appropriate to give criticism of how another person's body looks, regardless of whether you are having spicy snuggles with that person or not, nobody has the right to tell you how your body should look. Okay. Your body is beautiful the way it is. It's miraculous. It does so many amazing things for you every day.
(03:05):
It keeps you alive, moves you from place to place so that you can do all your fun little activities. Okay? So we're no longer going to shame ourselves. They don't like you. They like what they imagine you should be. You may be onto something there. If someone is going to be giving you criticism of how your body looks, maybe they just don't really like you, like who you are. Actually, they want to mold you into something more palatable to them. Yeah, maybe they're projecting an idea of you and then they're going to try to make you fit into that idea. That's something that anybody can experience. It's not just something men experience or women experience, and it's not always just romantic partners too. You have friends who can treat you that way. Parents a lot of times treat their kids that way. They're picturing a fictional version of you and they want you to become that.
(03:59):
I would question the depth of that relationship or the potential for that relationship to go further. Because if someone treats you like that and they get away with it, if you allow them to treat you like that, that's just the beginning. People will behave towards you however you allow them to. And so if someone says, your arms are getting too big or your legs are getting too big, I want you to stop training them. And instead of challenging them and saying, what makes you think that you have the right to say that to me? What makes you think that you have the right to tell me what my body should look like? What makes you think that you have the right to tell me how I should train? Did we sign some kind of an agreement where you're my trainer? Did I hire you to help me with a bodybuilding competition?
(04:39):
Because if I didn't, and that's not an agreement we've ever come to, I'm just a little confused about where you think it's appropriate for you to tell me what my body should look like, and this is something that I think should be said in that instance. Yeah, I think that would be the first question would be to put it back on them and say, why do you think that it's appropriate to tell me how my body should look? This is not build a bear. I'm a human being and I have goals for myself, so I'm going to pursue my goals. If you want to be the person by my side, I will only accept enthusiastic support for my goals. And if you can't offer that, then I would say, this is not the relationship for you. Give 'em an opportunity to make a better choice, but that conversation needs to be had.
(05:26):
I would argue and give them an opportunity to see reflected back on them how inappropriate that kind of a statement is. And you can even say, how would you feel if I told you that you needed to do something different to look better or to look like how I think you should look? Wouldn't that make you feel like shit? I think a lot of times women do things like this towards men and they don't realize that they're doing the very thing that we get on the internet and bitch about men doing to us, but women do it too. And I think that that's a good opportunity to ask the question if you think that it's inappropriate for me to comment on your body and tell you how your body should look or how you should train to look in the way that's more palatable to me, how would that make you feel?
(06:17):
And would you even want to be with me at that point if I said things like that? So why is it okay for you to do it? And I would say if their response is, well, it's different because I'm a woman, the next question I would ask is, are my feelings less important than yours in this relationship? Because you telling me something like that makes me feel like who I am is not good enough for you and you want me to be different, and that makes me feel like shit. And if I did that to you, you would feel like shit and something would have to change. But when I feel like shit, nothing has to change. Do you think that that's a fair relationship? Just keep asking those questions and eventually, either they're going to admit that they're kind of jerks and you'll realize I'm with a jerk and I shouldn't be with this person.
(07:01):
Or they'll realize, oh, I'm being a jerk and I need to back off. But I think that regardless, that question needs to happen, happen or that conversation needs to happen. I've totally done that to men, although I want to think that it's usually in the context of a bodybuilder asking about which body parts are lagging from a specific aesthetic perspective. Oh, that's totally different. That's totally different. That's totally different from a girlfriend telling her boyfriend, I want you to stop training legs. Your legs are getting too big and I don't find it attractive. I think we all do that from time to time where we project our ideas of what another person should be or should be like, and then we try to mold them into that. And that's why I think it's important to have the conversation and bring the question back, why do you think that it's appropriate for you to ask me that or for you to say that?
(07:54):
Why do you think it's appropriate for you to say that? Because sometimes the question can prompt the self-reflection that they're maybe not having or that you're, I'm not having in that moment and not realizing that I'm being unkind. The book Unbound a Woman's Guide to Power, which I actually think men should read too. I know it's specifically targeted towards women, but I do think it's a must read for everyone because it's basically about taking control of interactions and conversations. But in essence, whenever you're in a situation where somebody acts inappropriately or where you would maybe freeze, the best way to turn things around is to ask a question. So find a question to put the focus back on the other person and make them have to respond. And it takes practice to get good at instead of shutting down or arguing, instead just ask them a question that starts with why or do you really think and then just say back what they said or even just, you don't even have to say, why do you think it's appropriate?
(09:01):
You say, why are you asking me this? What makes you say that? What are you thinking right now that you would say something like that? What's going on in your mind? And you can even say, you can repeat what you're hearing. Just repeating back to them is another tool where basically you repeat what they just said as a question. So you can even literally repeat word for word and then just have a rising intonation at the end. Am I hearing you correctly? Am I hearing you correctly? Am I understanding you correctly? And then basically repeat back to them your understanding of what they're saying, or am I understanding correctly that you're criticizing my body right now? Is that how you're meaning to interact with me right now? Asking a question forces them to respond and reflect. I've had to come a long way and having these difficult conversations without getting defensive or shutting down, at which point the threat gets lost entirely.
(09:54):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So not perfect, but I've noticed a lot of difference in the outcomes when I can stay calm. Paro, you should read this book, you should read this book. I think it would blow your mind too. I'm just going to relink it in the chat because I do think it's a must read for everybody. I think it's a must read, especially for people who are survivors of any kind of abuse, any kind of abuse, because really all abuse kind of starts with psychological and emotional abuse. For some of us, it stays psychological and stays emotional, and then for others it eventually becomes physical. So when you have experienced that, the reason why you might find yourself getting in these relationships with people who take advantage or who don't treat you well, it's because you have, it's almost like your brain has been mapped and programmed in a certain way that certain stimulus makes you respond automatically in a certain way.
(10:51):
It's called a paradigm. Your abuser or the mean person in your life, they condition you and they teach you how to accept their abuse. They normalize it over time. They teach you how to respond in the right way, and this becomes just part of how you go about your life and you internalize it. And actually that's one of the main goals of an abusive person is to get you to internalize their system of abuse so that you do the work for them so that you start turning the shame onto yourself. You keep beating yourself up so they don't have to lift a finger. All they have to do is give you a look and they can send you into a panic, right? Those mindset structures are put in place over a long period of time, and when you break off that relationship and when you leave that person, those structures are still there in your brain and they're still there in how you interact with yourself and how you interact with the world and how you interact with other people.
(11:49):
You're conditioned to respond in a certain way, and it takes deliberate effort to recognize those responses and to change them. Just like it does take deliberate effort to recognize unhealthy eating habits or sitting still for the whole day and not getting any exercise. It takes deliberate effort to recognize and identify those things and then to correct them over time. But these are habits of thought. These are habits of interaction, and that's why another abusive person usually can pick up on cues that, oh, you've already been trained. You've already been trained how to deal with someone who wants to control you. And so they can step right in and pick right up off or pick right up where the other person left off. So if you find yourself in a series of relationships that are with people who just don't treat you well, and maybe they don't hit you, but they just don't treat you well, maybe you are not to blame.
(12:51):
Maybe you have been taught and conditioned to interact with people in a way where your boundaries don't get respected. Maybe you don't even know how to put up boundaries. Maybe you don't even know what your boundaries are or what they should be. It's not your fault. It have been taught to interact with the world that way. But the good news is that you can fix it. It's fixable. It definitely is. You just have to go through the process and it's a long process and you have to be patient with yourself. It is so disturbing how that happens. But the patterns are there if you know how to see them, yes, they are there if you know how to see them, and you need to learn how to see them because abusers can see them. So if you want to protect yourself from an abusive person or if you want to break an abusive mindset cycle for yourself, if you are, you can be in an abusive relationship with yourself.
(13:40):
A lot of times abusive people teach you to abuse yourself because that's how they keep you under control. So if you want to stop that cycle, it begins with one, doing the work of valuing yourself and working on your sense of self-worth healing those unhealthy beliefs about yourself and just asking questions and staying curious and compassionate. These are kinds of conversations that you can have with yourself and with other people. When you notice that you are maybe abusing yourself, maybe you're saying mean things to yourself, maybe you're punishing yourself, maybe you're neglecting yourself. You can stop and you can ask a question, why am I doing this right now? What is causing me to behave this way? And you try to get to the root of it, and when you ask these series of questions and you get to the root of your behavior, then you have something you can do.
(14:33):
Once you figure out what the root of it is, then you can take action where it's like actually addressing the behavior and actually changing your behavior and changing how you talk to yourself, changing how you eat, changing how you take care of your body. But if you never get below the surface, you're really going to struggle to stay consistent with your fitness and you're going to struggle with your self-worth, even if you do somehow end up, some people are able to stick to a workout plan, stick to a diet plan, but they're punishing themselves, right? It's all driven by self-hate. So they get super ripped, they get super muscly, they get super lean, and they hate themselves probably even more than they did when they started. So if you're not approaching this with kindness, if you don't have the ability to approach yourself with kindness, you're really going to struggle.
(15:22):
So I just wanted to talk about that because as a personal trainer, I've been a personal trainer for almost 10 years or more. I don't even know. I don't even know at this point. I've been doing this shit for a long time. But not only have I been a trainer, so to back up so you understand where I'm coming from. Some of y'all know my family history and a lot of the earlier generations of my family had a really hard time and grew up in really harsh environments, and that had an impact on how they interacted with themselves and with the world and with us, their family members, and it's created a lot of tension and it's really hard. But another thing that I've noticed is a lot of members of my family have also struggled with taking care of themselves physically with eating healthy and with exercising.
(16:10):
So many members of my family have eating disorders, and I grew up watching many of my close family members struggle with eating disorders of every kind, every single kind. There's someone in my family who has one. This is something that I'm very intimately familiar with, and I struggled with one too in high school, and a lot of this stuff stems from having unresolved trauma or untreated neuro spiciness. Having untreated A DHD and autism is one of the main issues that I've had to struggle with my whole life, and it impacts how I take care of myself. But having unresolved trauma, having poor self-worth as a result of that trauma or maybe as the result of your neuro spiciness, all of this can impact how you see yourself and how you interact with yourself and how you take care of your body. So if you've tried to get fit in the past and you've struggled to stay consistent or you've struggled with getting consistent success, I think there's two questions that you need to ask yourself.
(17:14):
Number one is, what was your motivator? Why did you want to get fit in the first place? What was your goal? Were you motivated by self-hate or self disgust? Like I hate where I am right now. Something needs to change. I don't like where I am, or are you motivated by, I want to take care of my body because I'm so grateful for it and it does so many things to me and I things for me, and I want to take good care of it. I want to live healthier, I want to live longer. Those are two very different approaches. I would say the most common approach when someone is the beginning of their fitness journey is the first one. Most people that I see who do an initial consultation with me as a personal trainer, they ask them, what brings them in today? What are their goals?
(17:58):
Why are they here? Basically? And most of the time people are saying, well, something needs to change. I hate how I look. I need to get on track. And so that is a really common motivator. It's good enough to get you through the door. You have to reach a point where you are sick of living the way that you are or sick of looking the way that you do. Once you reach that point where you're like, something has to change at that point, not only do you need to, yes, go ahead and start making plans for how you're going to take better care of yourself. Get with a personal trainer, book a couple appointments with a nutritionist, make a plan, okay, make a plan. Get on a plan and start. Use that fuel. Use that fire to get you started. But just know that for the long run, being motivated by self-hate and self disgust, for most people, it's only going to take you so far.
(18:49):
It's not clean fuel, like self-hate self disgust. It's not clean fuel. It doesn't burn clean. It's only going to take you a little bit into what you need to do. If you want to stay consistent with it, and you want to have long-term success and you want to reach long-term goals, you're going to have to work on your mindset and shift towards cultivating more of a, I'm going to take better care of myself. I'm going to do what my body needs for me to do. And if you have trouble taking care of yourself, then you've got to do some deeper work and figure out what's your block there? What's keeping you from being able to take care of yourself or value yourself enough as a person who deserves to be taken care of? Letting yourself hate motivate you is, like I said, it's a good way to kind of get started, but it's not going to take you very far.
(19:41):
For most people, they eventually drop out because it's just hard. It's hard to change your habits, and if you're stressed by your poor relationship with yourself and then you're stressed by all of the changes that you have to make, it becomes just too much for a lot of people. Whereas if you start working on your self-worth and you start working on how you see yourself and trying to do that inner child work or whatever type of therapy that you do, where you work on your relationship with yourself and improve that, you will have such an easier time taking care of your body and doing the things that you need to do because you're not at war with yourself. Because being at war with yourself takes so much energy. It's so draining. So how are you going to muster up the energy to get a workout in or to make the better food choice?
(20:35):
It's exhausting to hate yourself. It's exhausting to be beating yourself up all the time or recovering from getting beat up all the time. So changing your mindset is number one, and I'm not a therapist, and I don't pretend that I'm a therapist, but I do recommend doing that inner work, working with a therapist or doing shadow work. I know therapy is not for everybody, but there are ways that you can work on yourself and develop a better relationship with yourself. There's many, many more options than just therapy, but I would say that therapy is a good place to start. But yeah, you know what? And if nobody has ever told you, I'll tell you right now, you totally are a person worthy of being well taken care of. You deserve that, and regardless of what you think you deserve or you don't deserve, regardless of what you think you're worth or not worth, this is what your system needs.
(21:28):
You as a whole, your body, your brain, your body, your whole system. You need to be a safe space for yourself, and you need deserve to love yourself because at the end of the day, you're the one who sets the example for how you want to be treated by other people. If you don't like the way that other people treat you, check in with how you treat yourself. Because if you're not treating yourself well, it's going to be really hard for you to recognize poor treatment and set boundaries on poor treatment from other people. So prioritize that. So you need to do that while you're also learning how to take better care of your body while you're learning how to eat better while you're learning how to exercise. Also be learning how to formulate better thought habits and treat yourself better. At the end of the day, you're your own best friend.
(22:15):
You are the person who's going to be with you every single day of your life. You were born with you. You're going to die with you, and you wake up to you every morning. So how do you want the person who's with you all the time to treat you? Do you want them to be abusive and mean to you? Or do you want someone who's going to encourage you, someone who's going to say, oh, it's okay when you mess up? And that's another thing that you probably want to start cultivating is telling yourself it's okay. When you think of something that you did in the past and you were like, oh my God, I'm so stupid. I hate that I did that practice saying to yourself, it's okay, or You mess up. It's okay. How would you talk to a child? Or how when you were a child, would you like an adult who have spoken to you?
(22:57):
If you messed up? These are the things that you want to start questioning yourself and thinking about and how you talk to yourself, because I guarantee you, by working on yourself, you're going to have a much easier time taking better care of your body. I hope that that's helpful for you guys to think about. I like to have this reminder frequently because it's so easy to get sucked back into our old patterns of thinking and start, and I do the same thing too. We all need that reminder from time to time. So I hope that it's helpful for you.
(23:38):
Thank you so, so much for listening to or watching this episode, wherever it is that you are. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. If you would like to hang out with me while I'm live on my Twitch channel, that's Twitch.tv/jaydigains. Give me a follow there to get notified whenever I go live and ask your questions. When I'm doing a fitness stream, I also do gaming streams, so if you want to hang out with me while I do those, you can hang out then too. I usually do those on the weekends and in the evenings. I will see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure that you are eating your protein, eating your veggies, drinking your water, and prioritizing that self-care. Have a wonderful rest of your day.
ABOUT ME
Hey there! š Iām Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), and Iām a personal trainer and health coach. I help people build muscle, burn fat, and clean up their diets with my online coaching programs. Check out some of my coaching videos on Youtube, or join me live on Twitch and follow on social media:
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