When you look in the mirror, do you love the reflection you see, or do you pick parts of yourself to pieces–or even your entire physical being? Do you dislike–or even loathe–the body that is your home? In today’s hypercritical, perfection-oriented world, your body image–and capacity to love yourself–might be suffering from silent comparison to the impossibly oh-so-perfect ideals that litter social media and TV screens. If you’re exhausted from trying to contort yourself to be someone–or something–you’re not, this healing, uplifting episode with two top-notch body image experts is for you. Join Dr. Carla and mental health clinicians Deb Schachter and Whitney Otto for a compassionate journey into the steps you can take to gently understand and heal from the hold of a negative body image. Discover how to unpack your body’s story and all the wisdom it has to offer!
Topics discussed include body image, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, disordered eating, anorexia nervosa, binge eating, eating disorder treatment, negative thoughts, self-compassion, IFS (internal family systems), CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), mindfulness, group therapy, self-awareness, and self-discovery.
Books by Dr. Carla Manly:
Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly
Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend
The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships
Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:
Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr.carlamariemanly8543
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly
Book by Whitney Otto and Deb Schachter:
Body Image Inside Out: A Revolutionary Approach to Body Image Healing
Connect with Whitney Otto:
Website: https://whitneyottocoaching.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitneylpost
Connect with Deb Schachter:
Website: https://debschachterlicsw.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deb-schachter-363b206
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Watch the episode here
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LOVE YOUR BODY, LOVE YOURSELF with Body Image Experts Deb Schachter and Whitney Otto
Improve Your Body Image with Self-Compassion and Self-Love
When you look in the mirror, do you love the reflection you see, or do you pick parts of yourself to pieces, or even your entire physical being? Do you dislike or even loathe the body that is your home? In today’s hypercritical, perfection-oriented world, your body image and capacity to love yourself might be suffering from silent comparison to the impossibly, oh-so-perfect ideals that litter social media and TV screens. If you’re exhausted from trying to contort yourself to be someone or something you’re not, this healing, uplifting episode with two top-notch body image experts is for you.
We’ll focus on this listener’s real-life question, “My best friend says I have body dysmorphia. When I do my makeup and have the right clothes on, I feel okay and even good, but I mostly feel fat and ugly. It’s weird because I just don’t like what I look like, even though people say I’m pretty and guys are attracted to me. Is it body dysmorphia, or does it have something to do with my mom always comparing me to my pretty, super-skinny, younger sister?” With that question as the focus of this episode, I’m Dr. Carla Marie Manley, and this is Imperfect Love. Please note, as this episode contains sensitive information, listener discretion is advised. If you need support, please see the special links in the show notes.
I’m joined by two very special guests, Deb Schachter and Whitney Otto, who will be sharing their expertise on body image healing through a blend of IFS, Internal Family Systems, CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and mindfulness. Whitney Otto is a U.S. world rowing champion, eating disorder specialist, and coach. Deb Schachter is a leading body image and eating disorder recovery clinician. Welcome to the podcast, Whitney and Deb. It is such a pleasure to have both of you with me, and with us, because I know our listeners are going to be eating up this episode, no pun intended.
Thank you so much for having us.
We’re excited for this conversation.
It’s such a pleasure. Before we launch into the topic, could you each tell me and our listeners just a little bit about what makes you, you?
I would say, no matter what else is happening in my life, the thing that always comes through the most is that I’m very big-hearted and just bring a lot of love to the table. That’s what makes me, me.
I love both of those. Big heart and a lot of love, beautiful. Whitney, a little bit of what makes you, you?
I probably have a different answer depending on the day, but today, part of what makes me, me, and part of what makes me someone who wrote this book, is someone who has a lot of feelings and a lot of sensitivity to her own body.
A lot of sensitivity to your body. I just want to ask you a bit about that, Whitney. From your life experience, that sensitivity to your body, has it worked for you? Has it worked against you? Or has it been both?
Yes, yes, yes. All of the above.
We can talk a little bit more about that.
Happy to.
Helping Others with Eating Disorders and Body Image Issues
You, Deb, your background is as a clinician and eating disorder specialist. How did you get into that?
I would say some of it landed in my lap, and some of it was really my own journey. I myself had an eating disorder when I was in college and landed in therapy, and just was blown away by what being a therapist was. That just hooked me from day zero. It was both the combination of my own journey and my own background and really just falling in love with the idea of being someone that can create that safe space for someone. From there, it evolved in its own way. I did all kinds of different trainings and internships in different kinds of settings, but I was always interested in women’s health at the time.
That, over time, evolved into eating disorder work. Then I met Ms. Whitney, and we started really jamming on the body image piece. That was the last tile in the game, and it just feels like such a beautiful piece of work. In some ways, it’s expanded to be for everyone, because we really believe that everybody has a body, and everybody has feelings about it. That’s really what I almost love most about the book, it’s really for everybody.
Eating disorders and body image issues are increasingly part of the world of men. It used to be just women. The rates of men who are suffering from body image issues and eating disorders, it’s skyrocketing, unfortunately. Thank you. Thank you for the work that you do. Whitney, let’s hear a little bit about what brought you into this realm.
My first career was as an athlete. That’s what I wanted to be good at first. What I was most intrigued by as an athlete was what makes people tick? How come, of all these bodies that look equally strong, some are going to win, and some aren’t? What goes into that? Going into therapy was a natural way to answer that question. I also struggled with my own eating disorder.
It extended beyond college, but at first, I wanted to go into addictions. I was curious about addictions, but I got placed in an eating disorder therapy center for my internship. That’s how it all started, and then I met Deb. Like I said, we were working professionally in the field and also having discussions about our own body image and our relationship. There was safety, curiosity, and compassion. We found that when those were present, we had very different conversations about body image than when we were in our own critical, judgmental, pretty harsh minds.
That was the origin of the workshops, and remains the foundation of the workshops. We really believe that when you bring this stuff out of your head, and you enter into discussions and learn new tools, very different things can happen in your relationship with your body image. Just to go back, I didn’t stay in the field of eating disorders. I’ve had a couple of different career iterations, but I’ve continued doing these workshops all along. Now I’m an executive coach, and I work with people on patterns, similarly, I’m training these patterns and learning new ones, but just in a different realm.
I love that piece because so much of the work in the realm of body image and eating disorders is training. It’s getting rid of the old, unhealthy mindsets, thoughts, and behaviors, and being gentle, training the mind, training the body, training the spirit, to move toward patterns that feel kinder, that are kinder and gentler, and that allow us to accept these beautifully imperfect beings that we are.
Understanding CBT, Internal Family Systems, and Mindfulness in Therapy
I used some words that are terms our listeners might not be familiar with. Many people are familiar with CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but if one of you will just give us a rundown on that, and IFS, Internal Family Systems, a beautiful modality, if the other would please give our listeners a background on that, and then we can give a little nod to mindfulness. Although it’s such a common term these days, I never like to assume. Please, one of you choose CBT.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is really looking at the link between our thoughts and behaviors, learning more about those links and practicing new ones from both angles. Changing our behaviors to impact our thoughts, changing our thoughts to impact our behaviors, and working on both those ends. It has a lot of powerful evidence behind its efficacy. I’m married to a CBT therapist. Who doesn’t listen to my podcast, so I’m fine.
I was just going to say, he was a great editor of the book nonetheless.
I’m a firm believer in the efficacy of CBT. It is one of, if not the, most well-researched modalities regarding behavioral change.
Do you want to add anything to my explanation? I’d love to hear you add on to it.
With CBT?
Yeah.
Just a tad about the two of you. I saw that you did IFS and CBT. CBT, for me, even though I’m a yogi and trained, and I’ve pulled in many pieces and trainings, CBT is one of the ones I’ve pulled in. Why? Because it works, it’s basic. The moment we begin to, and it requires mindfulness, we must become aware of our thoughts and where they lead us in order to change our behaviors. As you said, you can do it backward. If you go into a behavior and then move towards what thoughts led me to this? A dozen chocolate chip cookies, that’s the behavior.
What thought led me there? You can also do it the other way. You can catch yourself, “I’m thinking this, I’m headed toward that pint of ice cream, or whatever it might be. What is leading me there?” I think that’s a really good example of the power of CBT because it does require mindfulness. When we slow things down, we can see. I take it, in my fourth book, The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships, I talk about the interplay of our feelings, thoughts, mindset, energy, and actions. It’s a play on CBT but also takes in a bit of other modalities.
I love your approach, especially for eating disorders. When we look at whether it’s binge eating or something as life-threatening as anorexia nervosa, CBT therapy can really save lives, because, as you know, anorexia nervosa is the most deadly diagnosis. It’s very hard for people to recover from that. Applaud the work you do. Thank you for bringing such rich tools to us. Deb, a little bit about another modality I love, Internal Family Systems?
IFS really informed the book in so many ways. IFS is really this idea of thinking about ourselves as multi-dimensional beings, having many aspects of ourselves that we can explore and get to know. One of the things we both really love about it is how non-pathologizing it is. It leads with this idea that when we bring compassion, curiosity, and connection, we can really discover these parts of ourselves that maybe, historically, we’ve wanted to shy away from or hide from.
Thank you for that beautiful overview. I agree. I love how you both keep talking about compassion and curiosity, how that compassion and curiosity create healing, and the piece about not pathologizing. Because often, somebody gets a diagnosis, and they feel like their chain to it, like it is them. When we have a modality like Internal Family Systems, it’s different. Same with attachment theory, we’re not trying to put somebody in a box and say, “This is your diagnosis, and you’re stuck here.” It’s about, “Let’s look, let’s get curious, let’s understand, and let’s examine that internal family system, that little system inside of you that’s talking, often way below the radar.”
Let’s raise awareness of it. So beautiful. I’m excited to use these two modalities as a way to address, and mindfulness. We don’t want to leave out mindfulness. What is the power of mindfulness? You can both weigh in your own ways. I am a big believer in mindfulness, yoga teacher, meditation leader. We know, as clinicians, that any change, real change, lasting change, is going to take mindfulness. It’s not one-and-done. We don’t become mindful or not. I don’t know if you’re like me, I have to remind myself a lot. Be mindful. Slow down. Please, each of you talk a little bit about mindfulness for our listeners.
As a coach, I’m constantly talking to people about self-awareness, and I feel like mindfulness is advanced self-awareness. It’s being present to yourself. It could be mindfulness around your behaviors, mindfulness around how you feel in your body. It’s directing our attention and our curiosity. When we do that, we can collect all sorts of data. We can be curious. We can learn about ourselves. When we do that, we have some choices to make. I feel like it’s just the foundation of change, really. It’s also the foundation of being in a relationship with yourself, because it’s bringing that presence, that curiosity, to your own being.
Beautifully said. I love how mindfulness, if we’re working it, helps us not judge ourselves. We get a chance to almost be this wise self up here, looking down, being mindful, and not judging what we’re doing, just noticing, just noticing and pivoting when we are able to pivot. Deb, your thoughts on mindfulness?
Whitney laid a great foundation there. If we jump off of what she shared, so much of the premise of the book is about starting to discern the difference between your body image and you being the same thing, or feeling like your body image has a microphone screaming in your ear, and the fact that we have a relationship with our body image.
It’s that invitation, if we can start to notice when our body image gets louder, when it gets quieter, and start to really just notice those patterns, it already puts us in the position of having a little bit more, I’ll say power, but really just engagement, with our body image and our relationship with it. It’s really an invitation to start tracking what’s happening rather than just feeling like we’re being assaulted by it without any sense of what just happened. It’s about creating more of that dialogue, creating space for that dialogue, and inviting that relationship to start to blossom.
It’s the foundational step in our retraining process. If we think about body image standing there with a megaphone, screaming nasty things in our ears, the very first thing is to say, “Step back, megaphone, body image, person.” I am going to notice this, without so much judgment and without so much attitude, and just notice what’s going on in my life in this moment.
“I’m noticing I’m having a lot of negative body image thoughts.” “I’m noticing that I’m signing up for a course that makes me nervous.” That’s very different from “I am all bad. My body image is bad, and I am all bad.” That very mindfulness is so key. Deb always talks about making space, making space between us and the megaphone of bad body image, and starting to collect more data about what’s going on. Even starting to view ourselves as somebody who’s having bad body image thoughts versus somebody with a bad body image.
It’s beautiful how you’ve created body image as an entity, as a separate entity, rather than that label, I am my body image. Instead, it is this entity with the megaphone. Sometimes the megaphone is loud and mean and nasty, and we want it to be able, ideally, to shift toward a gentler, softer, more compassionate body image.
Message and Impact of the Book “Body Image Inside Out”
Deb, you mentioned your book. Let’s just talk about the book for a moment, Body Image Inside Out: A Revolutionary Approach to Body Image Healing. Why did you two write it? What’s the message? If we could crystallize the message, what would you say it is? It’s such a beautiful book and so well written. What do our listeners want to take away from this book? What does it do for them?
Thank you, we really appreciate the reflection back. I’m going to say that Whitney is an excellent synthesizer, so I’m going to do my best, but I welcome her to jump in. What I would say is that the title itself really captures everything. In response to what you said about cultivating a gentler body image, our hope is that when we engage in that dialogue, when we build a relationship with our body image, there’s actually so much to learn.
When we think about body image inside out, it’s this idea that we’re multi-dimensional, and there’s so much to learn. We often think that body image is about a one-dimensional or two-dimensional mirror we’re standing in front of, or a picture of us. The reality is, there are so many different things that impact our body image every day.
Our health. Our relationships. Our work life. Our children. Our mood. How we slept. Everything, our place in life, our menopausal status, whatever. Bringing that curiosity and discovering all the things that are impacting the way we see ourselves, and how that evolves every moment, every day, is really just a very, again, empowering way, we hope, to start being in a relationship with these messages that are coming through our body image.
Thank you, very clear. Whitney, did you want to add something to that?
I’m writing it down as we speak because it’s a little bit different every time. What I feel so passionately about is that we are handed, again, we talked about training, like no one said, “Let’s take this course,” but we absorb it through this culture. The training is, “If you have this particular body type, all of these things will come with it. You will have connection. You will have love. You will be adored.” There is some data that supports some of that, but that’s basically a false promise.
As we know, your client who wrote in, people think she’s pretty. She doesn’t have all those things. She has a negative body image. We want to give people the skills to learn how to get their needs met, by listening to their body, understanding more of who they are, and learning how to give themselves that. We go from the framework of, “If I can just contort myself and arrive at this pretty template or this shape, then I will get my needs met” to, We hope that when you finish the book, you’re learning how to say, “What do I need? What do I want? What feels good to me? I know how to get it.”
Body Dysmorphia and the Impact of Comparison on Self-Image
Beautifully said. When we look at the listener’s question, it sounds like a young adult who has written in, someone who sounds very much plagued by looking in the mirror. External forces might be telling this individual that they look pretty and attractive, but this internal voice is saying, “I’m fat. I’m ugly.” Discordance. We might, even though we don’t want to label anybody and we don’t want to pathologize it and put a label on it, it does sound somewhat like a classic case of body dysmorphia.
The image says one thing. The brain is saying something else. Moving past that, because the diagnosis isn’t helpful, really, it just puts a label on something. The listener is giving us a clue. I took it as a clue. With this mom, always, it sounds like a constant comparison to a younger, very thin, possibly very pretty sister. What does that do to the psyche? We can see, through Internal Family Systems alone, what that’s going to do to the psyche. Who wants to take that question?
Go, Deb. Start with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and then go from there.
I’ll see what I can do.
I love your framework in terms of saying, we can call it whatever we want. All my clients know diagnosis is something that sits on my shelf. The first thing that I thought of when you were asking the question, which you equally can speak so beautifully around, is this idea that she, this idea of what kind of mirrors we have. Far before we’re looking in mirrors, she had a relational mirror that was giving her a message, however she would describe it, “Not enoughness.” “You could be better.” “There’s a right way to be loved more.” We talk a lot.
This has really become our baby, this idea of where body image and relationships intersect. This idea that far before we’re thinking about body image, even our bodies, we have already got mirroring about who we are, how we should be, how we should not be. We often start to adapt and shapeshift ourselves to stay connected.
I’m hearing, when you said clue, I was thinking about that little bit of curiosity she had, “I wonder about this message I’ve got from my mom all these years.” I really heard that, as Dick Schwartz would say, as a trailhead, to really get curious about, “What was that like, to take that in?” Learning more about that experience of getting that mirroring early on, that’s overridden whatever other feedback she’s got.
We both would probably love to sit down with her and get curious about her negative body image. To learn more about it. To learn more about what role it serves in her life.
What it’s trying to get her.
Let’s pretend she’s here with us. We can go into that imaginal space and imagine that, because probably many of our listeners have had some moment in their lives, or a series of moments, where they were compared to a sibling, a neighbor, or somebody in their gym class. All of those little messages can pack in, no matter how insignificant they seem.
The psyche is holding on to them for a reason. The psyche knows, “Wait a second, I am not that.” That’s where that negative voice starts. That voice that just really pushes us down, because we’re not that. We’re already, at very young ages, often being trained, consciously, to abandon ourselves in favor of being or looking like somebody else who is not us.
I was just going to say, so much of what we orient around in the body image and relationships space is this idea that she got, “If you’re like this, I will, fill in the blank, love you more, care for you more, be interested in you more.” We often describe body image as being a hero or a heroine. In some way, I would be really curious to ask her, “How has feeling so bad about your body somehow offered something to you?” She may have a fantasy, “If I get the right body, then I’ll get whatever came with that in the original recipe, the love, the support, the mirroring that she’s looking for.” Getting curious about how that body image, and the ways that she’s orienting to it, what it’s trying to help with.
We have a section called The Hope in Self-Hate, that when we hate ourselves, we hate how we are, we also have a vision of how we should be or could be, and there’s hope. The way I am isn’t working out so well for me. “If I hate myself enough, then maybe I can motivate myself to change, to be something else.” That’s hopeful and sad.
What will come with that, right?
Yeah.
Overcoming Body Image Issues and Self-Love
I like where this is going, and I’m wondering, in your paradigm, I’ll meld several clients together that I work with. It’s not just about one, but a client who comes in saying, “I don’t like the person in the mirror. I wish I looked like this person, this person, this person.” It’s pretty much what the listener’s question of the day is talking about, “If I could look like them, I’d be happy. I’d be safe. I’d be loved. I’d be worthy.” All of these things.
From the paradigm you work with, how do you help them get back? This is the question of the day. How do you help them get back to abandoning the other images and turning to truly and deeply love this self? This beautiful being that likely doesn’t want to go through this breast surgery. Go through this procedure to get a bigger butt, or a smaller butt, or a bigger whatever it is, or smaller whatever it is. In order to be loved. How do you help someone do a U-turn, to come back to love that self?
If we can take this from a couple of angles, I’ll take one of them. Deb can be preparing which one she’ll go down. We can say globally, “I want to look like this person and that person.” With an assumption that, generally, everything would be better if we did. We like to get very curious. “Tell me a little bit more if you matched all those people together and you looked like that, tell me what your life would be like.” “What would you do first thing in the morning?” “What would your day be like?” “What would your friends be like?” “What would your closet be like?” “What would the work you do be like?” To use that jealousy or that coveting as a portal, to learn more about what they think that person has. Because that’s going to teach you what they want more of. That’s one approach. Deb, what’s another one?
I was going to say, that’s my favorite. We talk about how jealousy can be a teacher instead of a tormentor. I think so many people feel a lot of shame about being jealous. We’re like, bring it on. To respond to your question, that is bringing them back to them. If they can tell us about what it’s like to have those arms or that butt, then they’re getting to whatever imprint is within them that they’re projecting onto that person. I was thinking, probably the best way to explain it would be an example. I was thinking of a client that I talk about often because it’s just such a great anecdote. She’d grown up in an abusive family, where her father had been quite critical of her and her mom. She had this professor that she was obsessed with, and wanted to be like.
This professor had what she called Michelle Obama arms. We talked a lot about what those arms were about. Originally, it was about lifting this much and doing all these things so she could have a certain definition or arms. Ultimately, what we learned was, it was really about being a strong woman with a loving partner. Again, this stuff gets embodied. You look at someone with strong arms, and that may mean different things to different people. It may be about competency. It may be about courage. It might be about being able to set strong boundaries. We have these general ideas of what strong looks like, or whatever these idealized ideas are, but when we really get down to what it means to each of us, it’s our story. That was her story that was laid on top of Michelle Obama’s arms.
I love that image because it is so true, whether it’s Michelle Obama’s arms or some model’s figure, whatever it is. We do tend to create a story around that. I agree that if I could be that person, if I could be that individual, my life would be easier. I would be loved. I would be safe. I would be secure. All of those things that we naturally want. It’s normal to want those things. I agree with you. I use the word envy because so many times I see that people are very deeply envious of social media posts. That image they see in that social media post, there were likely over a hundred images taken before that perfect one came into being, with filters and all of that.
It is that envy, if you can find what you’re after. Sometimes you’re after looking like Barbie, or whatever it is. If you’re able to say, “That won’t happen. I can’t change my entire being to look like Barbie, nor maybe do I really want to go through all of that” What I can change is something she seems to have, which is confidence. That can give us something if we use it correctly.
Notice that piece you’re talking about, the shame, because we all have feelings of jealousy. What do we do with them? If we channel them either toward truly being able to achieve something that’s achievable, like a fitter body, becoming fit, lifting weights, going for walks, those kinds of things. Also letting go of those things that are just tormentors.
Going back to the brain training. Every time I look at a picture of so-and-so, I think, If only, and then blah, blah, blah. I’m training my brain to do that every time. If I train my brain, which I have, because I still get jealous. To say, “Whitney, what is it about them? What are you jealous of? How do you get more of that in your own life?” “I don’t have time for that.” That’s a choice you’re making. That’s a training that I’m constantly engaging in, and will be, probably, for the rest of my life.
The other thought that I had was this idea of how we feel in our bodies. I’m thinking of a client who was talking about what Jennifer Aniston looks like, when she answers the door at her house, in her jeans and the tank top that hangs the right way, or whatever. We ended up landing on, “How does she feel in her body?” “How does she feel in her home?” Really getting people to get back to the body, too, whether it’s safety, whether it’s grounded, whether it’s connected, whether it’s settled.
We really dive into sensations, and really help people track the actual sensations they’re having in their body, because there’s so much rich information in there. Often, when we go back to the Michelle Obama’s arms story, it was about safety. It was about a certain level of comfort, a sense of safety in the world, and a sense of connection with a partner. We really like to help people also track what’s happening in their nervous system and what’s happening in their embodied experience of their body.
We think all of this is about safety and belonging at the end of the day.
When you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, down at the bottom, he didn’t put good looks. He put safety.
He didn’t put perfect jeans with the rips in the right places.
Although that is important. In Maslow’s hierarchy of body image, inside out, it’s on the top.
We should do that. We should do one of those.
What is it instead of sweets? It’s high heels and jeans.
We talk a lot about alignment, and the ways that when we feel it, maybe it’s the Michelle Obama arms, and maybe it’s a certain pair of jeans that just make us feel fabulous. We love them. We love how we feel in them.
I like how you bring it to that piece, where you both talked about it in that hierarchy of our needs. There is that part where we do want to find the ideals that fit us, not from society, not from mom, dad, or other people. That is a big part of the journey of life, finding those ideals that align with us, not those that have been plastered on us because that’s what other people expect. I’m going to use a word that kept coming up as you were talking, Ease. As you were talking about safety and comfort, and ease.
I know for me, that’s what I strive for. Often, when I help clients, what I realize, along with the safety, is that they’re looking for more ease, more flow. It’s also the same when we have on the right clothes. When we have on clothes that don’t feel good, we don’t feel ease. When we’re sitting in a position, or standing in a way, that doesn’t feel right. If we’re eating food that doesn’t suit the body, suit what we’re after, we feel a lack of ease in the system.
That sense of ease, when we can achieve it, it can be fleeting sometimes, but the more you work to achieve ease. That takes tuning in. We’re all going to have different things. For some people, it will be a really great-fitting pair of jeans that makes them feel ease. For somebody else, it might be yoga pants, because those are nice and stretchy and comfy.
For me, I love the ease I feel in a summer dress. It’s just, like, my favorite thing. If I could wear sundresses in Northern California all year long, I would. When we tune into that, again, we’re back to the piece you both keep talking about, learning to tune into the self, mindfully. To get granular, without judgment, about, what is right for me?
I was just going to say, it reminds me, one of my passion projects, but possibly at a fault, is about resonance and how we feel resonance in our body. It makes me think about a quote that we, and I, use time and time again, the Mary Oliver quote, “Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Just that idea, when you were talking about the ease and the flow, is, if we allowed our bodies to direct us. That’s so much of what we want to help people get back to, how much wisdom is in the body. That includes, “What do I want to wear? What feels good? What allows me to feel more?” The question you started us with, “What makes us, us?” Helping people really learn how to explore that is, it’s an honor.
I was just going to say, it always feels important for me to say that, we’re talking about that. “Just be mindful, and just get in your body, and just do these things.” This journey has taken us a long time. It’s a journey. These are the directions that we have found really useful. It may not be that simple. It may take time. It may take a while to be able to be mindful of your body or feel more comfortable in it. It just feels important to say that, it’s not just, “Ten easy steps and wham, bam, you got a better body image.” This is a journey that takes time, and often, a lot of support.
The Journey to Self-Acceptance and Imperfection
I want to pause here because you took me right back to something I was going to go back to, from what you said maybe ten minutes ago, where you were so kind and honest about how you are constantly having to train yourself when it comes to that little demon of jealousy or envy, whatever’s popping up. I so appreciated that, because often, people will look at a psychologist or a leader or mentor or therapist and say, “They don’t have any problems. Their life is all together. They don’t ever have to work at it.”
I’m a big believer in exactly what you were saying, that we are all imperfect. Some of us have been working our journey a little longer. Some of us had childhoods that were a little gentler and more helpful, the journey might not be as tough. For many of us, that journey, and I think for all of us, it’s a lifelong journey.
We never get to perfection. That’s why life is so challenging, and so fun. If we see it as a constant evolution of the self forward, it truly is not only very humanizing, it’s a game changer, when we realize, it’s just like a garden. The garden doesn’t grow itself and weed itself. It has to be replanted. All that, when we see it as an ongoing journey, it creates a lot more ease, doesn’t it?
I was just going to add to that, when you were talking, I was thinking about Whitney and I had this idea to write the book in 2019. We were maybe meeting once a month and chatting about it, and then the pandemic happened, and it allowed us to start writing much more regularly. We would meet every Sunday afternoon. I think, for the God only knows, I’m going to say the first six months, it was at least an hour and a half of crying before there was any writing.
At the core of the book, this idea of being in connection, is really the greatest healer we could hope for. Which is, we weren’t saying to the other person, “You’re crazy, you look great, or you shouldn’t feel bad about the fact that you slept for half of yesterday, or whatever it was.” We were just being together and witnessing each other in these messy times, and in these times that made no sense.
I just think it’s important, there are all these tools we want to help people along the way. Just that idea of being connected, whether it’s, hopefully, in reading the book and hearing other people’s stories in ways that they’re finding their way and just being in connection to people around you, and people that feel like they can mirror you in different ways. That’s just our wish, this idea of how much healing can come in the connection, even if our body image is sometimes in the can. It’s honestly the game changer of all game changers.
That’s what people really get out of the workshops. They go, “I’m not the only one. I feel less alone.” That’s what we hear. Other people look this way, but have bad body image.
Final Tips for Dealing with Body Dysmorphia
The power of getting outside, as you were saying earlier, of the self and that bubble, and saying, “I’m not alone.” No matter how somebody looks on the outside, they too might be suffering from a really poor body image. You two are an amazing force. Are there any other tips before we go, especially weaving back to the listener’s question, the question of the day, about body dysmorphia and perhaps the connection to this little sister? So pretty.
I would just say, rather than new tools, I would just highlight that curiosity and compassion, we really believe, are the greatest tools. Again, how we practice those, how we start to really build our own muscles, our curiosity and compassion muscles, is going to be unique to each of us. When you can get some space in there, there’s so much I’d want to know about her story and what it was like to be compared. There’s so much to learn. Just that invitation, for more connection and more curiosity and compassion, and really inviting that in.
If she can’t access therapy, afford therapy, what do you think about either using the book and doing some journaling? Do you have online workshops?
We do. We always invite people, if there’s something that feels a little tender, skip it. Go to the next chapter. We bring in a lot of humor, and we haven’t talked as much about that. We bring in a lot of levity. That’s really a big one of our intentions, partly because of our own journey and the ways we’ve giggled about the things that we say about our own bodies.
I would hope the book would be helpful just in terms of that practice. We really have a lot of concrete tools and exercises. I think any community is wonderful. There are lots of online things out there. We do workshops specifically on body image and all kinds of different themes within that. We welcome it. If people have questions, they can just reach out to us at [email protected], and we’re happy to direct people, whether it’s to our resources or other people.
We have a website, BodyImageInsideOut.com, where you can learn about the workshops that we do have. We have an Instagram account, @BodyImageInsideOut, where you can get some tips, hopefully laugh a little bit, learn a little bit more about us, see us live. We also offer live workshops as well as Zoom workshops, because the live stuff is just so important. We are in Boston, Massachusetts.
Excellent. Listeners, all of this will be in the show notes, as well as a plethora of resources. Thank you both so much for being with us. It has been such a joy and a privilege.
Thank you for asking such wonderful questions.
It’s so special for us to be able to share this with other clinicians and with your listeners. It just feels like such an honor to start to bring this to the world.
Thank you. Thank you for the work you do. To our listeners, thank you so much for joining us again. I so appreciate you. You’re taking time to be with us, and this is Imperfect Love.
Important Links
- Deb Schachter on LinkedIn
- Whitney Otto on LinkedIn
- Body Image Inside Out
- Body Image Inside Out on Instagram
- National Eating Disorders Association
- National Eating Disorders Association – Help
- National Alliance on Mental Illness – HelpLine
- Body Image Inside Out: A Revolutionary Approach to Body Image Healing
- The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships
About Deb Schachter and Whitney Otto
Deb Schachter is recognized as one of Boston’s leading clinicians in the areas of body image and eating disorder recovery. She has spent her 30-year career helping people unpack their body’s story and all of the wisdom it has to offer. She brings authenticity, curiosity and compassion to her work and emphasizes the profound power that connection has in the healing process. She integrates humor and mindfulness into her workshops, individual and group work and is inspired by how unique the growth process is for each of us. She believes wholeheartedly that we all have great wisdom inside and has seen how her confidence in her clients translates into change. Deb also trains other therapists and health professionals on how best to approach body image with their clients and staff. Blending together her grounded east coast sensibility and her playful west coast spirit, Deb has developed a language and an approach that is accessible to all.
Whitney Otto is a US world rowing champion and 2000 Olympic alternate who pivoted her skill and passion into helping individuals and teams achieve their goals through leadership development and clinical intervention. She holds a BA from Brown University, an MA in counseling psychology from Lesley University, and a Professional Coaching Certification from The Coaches Training Institute. Her clinical perspectives are informed by over a decade of experience treating eating disorders. Her inspiring and collaborative style was further honed through years of experience serving as a Master coach for physicians, elite athletes, entrepreneurs and C-Suite executives. Whitney serves as a Master Performance Coach and consultant at Valor Performance, and coach for R3 Continuum serving Senior level clients at Deloitte. Whitney also serves as Group Guide for CHIEF. She is the co-host of UNTRAINED, a podcast that launched in January of 2023 focusing on giving the tools and mindsets needed to help corporate executives “untrain” from toxic mindsets and perspectives that result in professional success at personal expense.