Community Corner

Psychiatrist on Body Image Issues: 'No One is Immune...'

Sheppard Pratt's Steven Crawford talks about body image issues with Patch.

Sheppard Pratt’s Center for Eating Disorders will be hosting Emily Sandoz, a psychiatrist and author of "Your Body and Other Things You Hate," on Sunday to help facilitate a community discussion about issues with body image. 

Patch spoke with Steven Crawford, a psychiatrist and associate director for the center, about what constitutes a body image issue, when it becomes a problem and where these issues come from.

What is a body image issue? How is that defined?

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Everybody has a body image. And the body image is sort of the concept you have in your mind about your body, and how you feel about your body. It’s a visual image as well as an emotional image. And it’s based on what you visually see when you look in the mirror, but it’s also based on life events, and your experiences growing up and interacting with people.

In our society we are constantly confronted with images that try to tell us what we’re supposed to look like, and who we’re supposed to be in terms of physically and in appearance. And we’re almost taught that, in our society, that our identity and our self worth is based on our appearance. That can foster within individuals a sense of inadequacy, and a sense of desire to change their bodies, and you know marketing efforts are there to try and say that 'If you change your body, if you look differently, you’re going to find happiness.' 

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What that leads to is people inevitably can become dissatisfied with their bodies, particularly if they’re trying to make changes, and still continue to struggle with not feeling OK about themselves and [can’t] separate out their identity from their body.     

Who do these body image issues usually impact? 

Body [image] issues can almost impact anyone. So I wouldn’t say that it’s one specific person that you could pick out and say 'That’s the one who is going to have the body issue that leads to an eating disorder, or to major life problems.' We see here at the center all ages, all ethnicities, all socio-economic groups, both genders men and women. No one is immune from the possibility of having a body issue.

How can you tell if someone is having a body image issue?

Is the body issue interfering with the person functioning? If someone has major difficulty getting out the door in the morning because they’re dissatisfied with how they look, and they go through multiple instances of what they’re wearing before they finally feel they can get out the door. If they avoid going out socially to a party because they’re afraid that somebody is going to take their picture, and it’s going to end up on Facebook, and they’re not going to look the way they want to look. At times parents may experience taking their child clothes shopping, and it becomes a nightmare because there’s such a struggle with worry about what size they’re wearing or how they look in their clothes. If a person is also consistently making disparaging remarks about their appearance, and putting themselves down in a very self-critical way, also the inability to accept compliments. 

Why do you feel it’s important to have events, like the one scheduled on Sunday, to draw attention to body image issues? 

I think it’s rare that people have a forum to talk about these issues. People struggle silently with body issues and that it’s important to give people a forum where they recognize that they’re not alone with these struggles, and that there’s a way to manage your body issue and to manage dissatisfaction with your body and be OK with yourself.      

How do you go about helping someone that acknowledges, and recognizes, that they have a body image issue? Where do you go from there?

Well I really think that’s what the talk on Sunday is all about. There are different ways to help someone with body image issues. One major way that you can get therapy is what is call Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. And that’s looking at ‘What evidence do you have to support your body image issue? And what evidence do you have that doesn’t support it? And then really needing to challenge the negative thoughts you have about your body. 

Sunday’s speaker, Emily Sandoz, what she’s going to be speaking about is the use of what’s called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is different than CBT in that what it works toward doing is opposed to trying to fight the thought, and challenge the thought, which at times there’s concern may make the thought stronger, it’s more about accepting the thought and allowing the thought to be there but not letting the thought dictate how you think about yourself and impact your behavior.        

Sandoz’s talk is scheduled for 2 p.m., Sunday at the Conference Center at Sheppard Pratt, 6501 N. Charles St.   


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