Overvaluing Appearance
AND Connecting to Values.
Body Image is the combination of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions you have about your body.
It can be positive, negative, or neutral. And is influence by internal stressors (e.g. personality, cognitions), and external stressors (e.g. socio-cultural messages about bodies).
Becoming concerned about body image is a common experience. In therapy, clients will identify a variety of reasons behind fixating on body image. This can be because while everything else happening to/around us is uncontrollable, our bodies are tangible. We can touch, manipulate, and change our bodies, and this may act as an unhealthy coping strategy for anxiety and stress.
One difficult component of body image cancers and behaviours, is overvaluing our appearance. When people overvalue their appearance, in their perception of things, the way certain body parts look becomes tantamount to other parts of life.
A fixation on appearance makes people vulnerable to overvaluing their appearance, and this may disrupt a person’s ability to live according to other values they might have.
This pie chart demonstrates how someone who over values their appearance has less capacity for other valued areas of their life.
A way to reduce the value held by appearance concerns, is to start creating more time for the other valued areas in life.
This takes time, but with effort can start to balance out the sections of the pie.
People often notice that with time, focusing on other valued areas of their life leads to less value being placed on appearance.
Take a moment to consider what you value, and where your energy goes in any given week. This might include your friends, family, hobbies, exercise, pets, work, travel, study, self care, etc. It might even be something you’d like to introduce or do more of in the future.
If you’re sitting there like, ‘what the heck do I even value?!’, here’s a definition:
Values are the principles that give our lives meaning, and allow us to persevere through adversity.
You can reflect on your values by considering three meaningful or important relationships in your life, and what you treasure about them.
You can also reflect on you value by looking at this comprehensive list of values from Russ Harris ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy’:
Acceptance: to be open to and accepting of myself, others, and life.
Adventure: to be adventurous; to actively seek, create, or explore novel or stimulating experiences.
Assertiveness: to respectfully stand up for my rights and request what I want.
Authenticity: to be authentic, genuine, real; to be true to myself.
Beauty: to appreciate, create, nurture, or cultivate beauty in myself, others, and the environment.
Caring: to be caring towards myself, others, and the environment.
Challenge: to keep challenging myself to grow, learn, and improve.
Compassion: to act with kindness towards those who are suffering.
Connection: to engage fully in whatever I am doing and be fully present with others.
Contribution: to contribute, help, assist, or make a positive difference to myself or others.
Conformity: to be respectful and obedient of rules and obligations.
Cooperation: to be cooperative and collaborative with others.
Courage: to be courageous or brave; to persist in the face of fear, threat, or difficulty.
Creativity: to be creative or innovative.
Curiosity: to be curious, open-minded, and interested; to explore and discover.
Encouragement: to encourage and reward behavior that I value in myself or others.
Equality: to treat others as equal to myself.
Excitement: to seek, create, and engage in activities that are exciting, stimulating, or thrilling.
Fairness: to be fair to myself or others.
Fitness: to maintain or improve my fitness; to look after my physical and mental health and well-being.
Flexibility: to adjust and adapt readily to changing circumstances.
Freedom: to live freely; to choose how I live and behave, or help others do likewise.
Friendliness: to be friendly, companionable, or agreeable towards others.
Forgiveness: to be forgiving towards myself or others.
Fun: to be fun-loving; to seek, create, and engage in fun-filled activities.
Generosity: to be generous, sharing, and giving to myself or others.
Gratitude: to be grateful for and appreciative of the positive aspects of myself, others, and life.
Honesty: to be honest, truthful, and sincere with myself and others.
Humor: to see and appreciate the humorous side of life.
Humility: to be humble or modest; to let my achievements speak for themselves.
Industry: to be industrious, hard-working, and dedicated.
Independence: to be self-supportive and choose my own way of doing things.
Intimacy: to open up, reveal, and share myself- emotionally or physically in my close personal relationships.
Justice: to uphold justice and fairness.
Kindness: to be kind, compassionate, considerate, nurturing, or caring towards myself or others.
Love: to act lovingly or affectionately towards myself or others.
Mindfulness: to be conscious of, open to, and curious about my here-and-now experience.
Order: to be orderly and organized.
Open-mindedness: to think things through, see things from others’ points of view and weigh evidence fairly.
Patience: to wait calmly for what I want.
Persistence: to continue resolutely, despite problems or difficulties.
Pleasure: to create and give pleasure to myself or others.
Power: to strongly influence or wield authority over others, e.g. taking charge, leading, and organizing.
Reciprocity: to build relationships in which there is a fair balance of giving and taking.
Respect: to be respectful towards myself or others; to be polite, considerate andshow positive regard.
Responsibility: to be responsible and accountable for my actions.
Romance: to be romantic; to display and express love or strong affection.
Safety: to secure, protect, or ensure safety of myself or others.
Self-awareness: to be aware of my own thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Self-care: to look after my health and well-being and get my needs met.
Self-development: to keep growing, advancing, or improving in knowledge, skills, character or life experience.
Self-control: to act in accordance with my own ideals.
Sensuality: to create, explore, and enjoy experiences that stimulate the five senses.
Sexuality: to explore or express my sexuality.
Spirituality: to connect with things bigger than myself.
Skillfulness: to continually practice and improve my skills and apply myself fully when using them.
Supportiveness: to be supportive, helpful, encouraging, and available to myself or others
Trust: to be trustworthy; to be loyal, faithful, sincere, and reliable.
