The Stories We Tell About Our Bodies

What Body Image Actually Is

Body image is not simply how you look. It is the relationship you have with how you look — the running commentary, the comparisons, the emotions that arise when you catch your reflection or see a photo of yourself. It is the story you have been told, and now tell yourself, about what your body means.

For many people, that story is unkind. And it runs constantly, quietly, beneath the surface of daily life.

Where Negative Body Image Comes From

• Family messages — comments about weight, appearance, or what looking good required
• Cultural standards — often narrow, often racialized, often rooted in bodies that look a specific way
• Childhood experiences — being teased, compared, or told your body was somehow wrong
• Media — the images we absorb about what bodies are supposed to look like
• Trauma — experiences that made your body feel unsafe, untrustworthy, or like something to escape

None of these forces are yours. But they become internalized — so thoroughly that they start to feel like your own voice.

How It Shows Up

• Avoiding mirrors, photos, or situations that require exposure
• Spending significant mental energy on food, weight, or appearance
• Feeling like your body is holding you back from living fully
• Comparing your body to others constantly and painfully
• Believing your body needs to change before your life can begin
• Shame that is hard to talk about because it feels shallow

This Is Not About Vanity

One reason people do not bring body image to therapy is the belief that it is too superficial to be a real problem. It is not. Chronic negative body image is associated with anxiety, depression, disordered eating, and significant quality-of-life impairment. The distress around how your body looks or feels is real, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

What Healing Looks Like

Healing your relationship with your body is rarely about reaching a specific size or shape. It is about building a relationship with your body that is based on something other than appearance — on what your body can do, on how it feels, on treating it with care regardless of what it looks like.

That shift does not happen because you decide to feel better. It happens through working with the stories and experiences that created the negative relationship in the first place — usually with support.

About the Author

Tracey Nguyen, LMFT

Tracey is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT #146704) offering telehealth therapy across California. She specializes in anxiety, depression, trauma, relationships, and perinatal mental health — and offers sessions in both English and Vietnamese.

Work with Tracey →