Our body and our sense of worth so often gets tied together in our minds, for a variety of reasons. This is the message we get from the culture we live in at large (we hear this from others and see it all over social media for goodness sakes), this is the message that often gets reinforced in our family of origin as well, and because of this, it becomes very easy to go to this idea of “if I change my body I will change my life”, “I will be more valuable to others if I look a certain way” etc. This is not true! Our body and our worth are actually completely different things.
Most of us intellectually know this, but to actually truly come to a place of deeply internalized knowing around this is a completely different thing. Our body is simply that, our body. It’s how we move around in the world. It’s our physical form, it’s simply how we get around in the world, and changes all the time. As much as the world around us places a large amount of emphasis on our physical form, it is truly not anywhere near the most important thing about us.
Our worth, is something completely different. Our worth is a very internal thing as opposed to something as external as appearance. Worth really is as simple as “I am worthy by virtue of being a human being on this planet”. We don’t actually have to earn our worth. We don’t have to earn our worth by looking a certain way, acting a certain way, or accomplishments. We don’t earn our worth, it’s inherent. It is simply a part of us that we don’t earn or do anything to have. This is regardless of our what our physical appearance is at any given time.
When we struggle with realizing our inherent worth, we often search for our worth externally to fill this void, this sense of worthlessness. That said, as it is not something that can come from external things, this sets us up to really struggle. When we are on a journey to come to a place of greater acceptance of our bodies, having this piece of awareness can be so, so helpful and important. The more we can lean into the idea that we don’t earn our worth, the more we can get off the rollercoaster of searching for that worth externally and the emotionally struggles that come from doing so.
Questions about food or body image related concerns? Feel free to get in touch!