And why understanding its roots is the first step toward healing
A Question Worth Sitting With
Brian Pollack, LCSW, CEDS-C
Brian is the Founder and Clinical Director of Hilltop Behavioral Health, a boutique eating disorder specialty practice in Summit, NJ. He is one of the few male master’s-level Certified Eating Disorder Specialists in the country, with expertise in FBT, male clients, athletes, and muscle dysmorphia. He hosts the Minding Men podcast and serves as an adjunct professor at Yeshiva University.
Learn more about Brian →When was the last time you felt truly free? Not just relaxed, but free in your body. Free from the quiet hum of self-criticism, the reflex of checking your reflection, or the mental math of whether you ate “enough” or “too much” today?
I ask this question to nearly every client I sit with, and the room almost always gets quiet. Because for so many people, adults, teenagers, parents, athletes, that kind of freedom feels like something that belongs to a younger version of themselves. A version that played in the backyard without thinking about their stomach, or ate birthday cake without a second thought.
I’ve sat with hundreds of people who are searching for that freedom again. And what I’ve come to understand, through both clinical training and years of real conversations, is that to find our way back, we have to understand where body image begins. Not just when the dieting started, or when the comments at school got cruel. We have to go further back than that.
In a recent video discussion on this very topic, I explored a concept that I think is at the heart of all body image work: somewhere, early in life, many of us stopped living within our bodies, and started acting on them instead. That shift, quiet as it often is, changes everything.
“We all started making transitions and changes because the development of being a person started to demand such a thing.”
Brian Pollack, LCSW, CEDS-C
The Moment the Shift Happens
Here’s what the research tells us: body image concerns begin far earlier than most people expect. Studies show that children as young as six years old begin expressing a desire to look different, and by ages seven to ten, social comparison, measuring ourselves against others, becomes a regular mental habit (Clark & Tiggemann, 2006).
But this isn’t just about kids becoming “self-conscious.” It’s about something deeper happening in how identity gets constructed. Think of your sense of self like a house being built. During childhood and adolescence, you are laying the foundation. You’re figuring out: Am I safe? Am I lovable? Do I belong?
Dr. Niva Piran, Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto and one of the most important voices in embodiment research, spent decades listening to the body stories of girls and women. What she found was striking: in early childhood, most children experience their bodies through agency, functionality, and passion, a pure, joyful sense of what their body can do. But as development progresses, many begin to experience restriction, shame, and disconnection instead. In her landmark work, Journeys of Embodiment at the Intersection of Body and Culture (2017), Piran describes this as the body journey – a path shaped not just by individual psychology, but by the social world around us. Her Developmental Theory of Embodiment outlines three pathways that either protect or erode our relationship with our bodies: Physical Freedom, Mental Freedom, and Social Power. When those pathways are compromised by (1) objectification, (2) gender-based messages, (3) environments that reduce a person to their appearance, the experience of living inside one’s body narrows. And that narrowing is where body image struggles take root.
For children who receive consistent warmth, encouragement, and messages that their worth isn’t tied to appearance, that foundation gets built on solid ground. But when the messages are different, when a parent makes an offhand comment about “baby fat,” when a coach praises weight loss, when peers at school rank each other’s bodies — a crack forms in that foundation.
And instead of building identity through values, connection, and internal worth, something else happens: the child starts acting on their body as a way to feel safe. Restricting food. Over-exercising. Wearing certain clothes to hide or to fit in. These aren’t vanity, they are survival strategies. They are a child’s way of saying, “If I can just control this, maybe the world will feel okay.”
“When we start acting on our body instead of living within our body, we lose the through line that keeps us happy day in and day out.”
Why It Stays With Us
Here’s the part that surprises most people: those early adaptations don’t just fade away when we grow up. The identity we begin constructing in childhood — including the beliefs we hold about our bodies, continues to be built in high school, college, our twenties, and beyond. The patterns just get more sophisticated.
The teenager who learned that being smaller made her feel more in control becomes the adult who still can’t eat at restaurants without anxiety. The boy who was praised for being “big and strong” becomes the man who can’t stop at the gym, terrified of losing the only thing that ever made him feel valuable. The neural pathways are deep. The story feels like the truth.
But here is what gives me hope, every single day: these patterns were learned. And what is learned can be unlearned, or more accurately, it can be expanded. We can add new chapters to a story that once felt finished.
4 Science-Backed Ways to Begin Healing Your Relationship with Your Body
Whether you’re someone personally navigating this, a parent watching your child struggle, or an adult who has never quite made peace with the body you live in — these tools are a place to start.
- 1. Find Where the Story Started
This is the foundation of so much healing work. Think back: when did you first start noticing your body critically? Was there a comment, a comparison, a moment when you realized your body was something to be evaluated? Research consistently shows that tracing body dissatisfaction back to its origins, rather than just managing symptoms, creates more lasting change.
You don’t have to do this alone. Journaling, therapy, and even quiet reflection can begin to reveal the original “crack in the foundation.” When you can see where the story started, it starts to feel like a story — not a permanent truth.
- 2. Practice Re-Administering Value
One of the most powerful concepts we return to again and again in clinical work is what we call “re-administering value,” actively redirecting your sense of worth away from your body and toward who you actually are. This isn’t about toxic positivity or forcing yourself to love your reflection. It’s about asking: what do I value in myself that has nothing to do with how I look?
Research on self-compassion, particularly the work of Dr. Kristin Neff (2011), shows that treating yourself with the same kindness you’d offer a struggling friend is one of the most effective interventions for reducing body shame. Try this: write down three things you did, created, offered, or felt today that have nothing to do with your appearance. Do it every day for a week. Watch what shifts.
- 3. Move the Line from “Acting On” to “Living Within”
Ask yourself honestly: am I moving my body because it feels good, or because I’m trying to change it? Am I eating this food because I’m hungry, or because I’m trying to control something? These questions aren’t about judgment, they’re about awareness.
The science of interoception (our ability to sense what’s happening inside our bodies) shows that people with body image struggles often have a disrupted connection to their own internal signals. Piran’s qualitative research (2016), which drew on 171 interviews with girls and women ranging from ages 9 to 68, found that positive embodiment, feeling genuinely at home in one’s body, is characterized by body connection and comfort, a sense of agency and functionality, and attuned self-care. These aren’t abstract ideals. They are lived, learnable experiences. Practices like gentle yoga, mindful eating, and even slow breathing can begin to rebuild that connection, slowly restoring the experience of living within your body rather than managing it from the outside.
- 4. Be Intentional About What You and Your Children Consume
The research is unambiguous: media exposure shapes body image, and it begins in early childhood. Studies from Durham University confirm that the brain’s representations of what bodies “should” look like develop very early — and are heavily influenced by visual input. This means the images your child scrolls past matter. The comments adults make about food and bodies at the dinner table matter. Smolak (2004) found that body image problems in childhood predict disordered eating attitudes and dietary restraint as early as age nine, meaning prevention conversations need to start long before adolescence.
This doesn’t mean banning social media or never discussing food. It means having conversations. Ask your kids what they notice about how bodies are shown in shows and ads. Model what it sounds like to speak about food as nourishment, not as something to earn or fear. These conversations are small seeds, and over time, they grow into something protective.
You Deserve to Feel at Home in Your Body
If you’ve read this far, I want you to know something: the fact that you’re asking these questions — about yourself, or about someone you love, already matters. Awareness is not a small thing. It is, in fact, where healing begins.
The version of you that felt free? They haven’t disappeared. They’ve just been waiting for you to stop acting on your body long enough to remember what it felt like to simply live inside it.
That journey looks different for everyone. For some, it starts with a conversation with a therapist. For others, it’s a moment of grace at the dinner table, or a walk taken just for the joy of it. There is no single path. There is only the next small step.
And if you need support, please reach out. You don’t have to figure this out alone, and you are not too far gone. No one ever is.
References
Neff, K. D. (2011). Self-compassion: The proven power of being kind to yourself. William Morrow.
— Brian Pollack, LCSW, CEDS-S | Founder & Clinical Director, Hilltop Behavioral Health
