Potential CW: This post discusses body acceptance in light of gender and body dysphoria and includes discussions of body size in relation to myself.
I want to preface this post by stating that this is simply my experience and my own thoughts. Each individual, especially those who are experiencing body or gender dysphoria, need to work with their care team and come to their own thoughts and decisions. This is simply my journey.
One of the techniques that I’ve been working on is radical acceptance. It’s part of dialectical behavior therapy, and for me, it seemed like an antidote to a lifetime of self-hate and self-loathing. Those negative voices in my head constantly putting down my appearance or my body size were not doing me any good, no matter how much I thought I needed them. Beating myself up for eating a constant diet of fast food and chips wasn’t helping me, and in fact, once I realized I was neurodivergent,
I discovered two things. First, those are my safe foods. Secondly, because I often was bullied or punished for other emotional regulation tools (like fidgeting or bouncing my foot/leg), I turned to eating as a stim. My entire family talked about “emotional eating”, but it wasn’t until my AuDHD diagnosis when I realized exactly what that meant and what purpose food served for me. It’d take another eighteen months of hard work with my therapist before I could even think about going a week before buying a large cache of chips and munchies.
I know I’ve lost weight. Of course the weight I lost that was noticed by the nurse at my last mental health medication checkup was because of me being so sick this summer and unable to eat solid food for several weeks, but I know that this change in my eating habits is having a beneficial result.
But radical body acceptance isn’t about food, though that is a lovely side effect. Instead, it’s about understanding the body that you’re in, even if there are things you’d like to change about it, and accepting the body as it is even if that’s a precursor to making additional changes. That’s what dialectical behavior therapy is about, holding two things that can be in conflict in your mind at once. I accept myself exactly as I am AND I want to change (whatever you want to change).
I also want to pause here and take a moment to acknowledge that severe body dysphoria and gender dysphoria exists. It’s painful. It’s difficult. And no amount of “loving yourself” or “acceptance” will most likely make it go away. In my case, the radical acceptance simply makes it easier to bear. As I said at the start of this blog, your mileage may vary and I am in no way proposing a “cure” or a “fix”.
There’s a lot honestly that goes into this idea and one thing that’s helped is the loving kindness meditation. Holding my hand on my heart and telling myself that I wish kindness for myself has been a game changer. Realizing that it’s safe and okay to be in this body (again, that’s related to everything else and something that is a part of this thought process) has been a game changer. And slowly, but surely, I am learning to love and accept this body, which means feeling that it’s okay to share myself with others.
Body theology is about mapping the divine in your body, seeing how you are connected to and a part of the divine. For me, radical self acceptance is accepting this divine nature, but also the entirety of the divine. I cannot disparage the divinity within me without also somehow cutting myself off from the divine world beyond. It’s all a part of the connection I talk about. Connecting with yourself. Connecting with others. If I radically accept myself, then I radically accept the divinity within myself, and that means that my divinity sees yours. And when I see the divinity within, then I want to treat myself as divine, not in a selfish way, but rather in a caring way, thinking about what foods feed and nourish my cells, and how those can soothe my nervous system because I am finally caring for myself the way I wished others had cared for me in the past. I cannot change the behavior of others; they will still believe and act in the ways in which they will. But I can radically love and accept myself and this body and treat it the way I want to be treated, both as an example and as an affirmation of my own inner divinity.
And that, for me, softens a bit the dysphoria that comes along with being in this body as I take steps each and every day toward further radical acceptance.
