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Body-images concerns are incredibly common, especially among adolescent girls and women.

They are, in part, a consequence of beauty ideals in mainstream and social media.

A painful mental schema of defectivenes may also be to blame for a negative self-image.

Such a schema can be healed, leading to better self-esteem and a more positive body image.

When you see yourself in the mirror, how do you feel? I hope you like yourself and feel friendly towards the person reflected back at you. After all, you have to live in that body every moment of every day, for the rest of your life.

Sadly, many people don’t feel that way. Clients often tell me they don’t like some aspect of their appearance, whether it’s a facial feature such as their nose or chin, or their whole body, which looks bigger than they would like, or one specific body part they focus on.

Although I have had male clients with such body-image concerns, it’s usually the women in my consulting room who don’t like their appearance. And if we reflect on the culture most girls grow up in, it’s not hard to see why. Despite moves towards body positivity in recent years, such as the celebration of plus-size models, many of the images women are bombarded with are still those of painfully thin teenagers and twenty-somethings, the beauty ideal all women are told they must aspire to.

This is heartbreaking on so many levels. Is a 50-year-old woman supposed to look like a 17-year-old, unnaturally thin model? It’s a tragedy that modern notions of beauty reject ageing faces, hair, and bodies. It would save women so much........

© Psychology Today