Read Healing Your Emotional Self Online
Authors: Beverly Engel
Any movement toward autonomy on the part of the child is greeted by the parent’s pain, resentment, and anger. Children of nar- cissists often feel they do not have a right to exist. As Elan Golumb so eloquently stated in
Trapped in the Mirror
, “Their selves have been twisted out of their natural shape, since any movement toward inde- pendence is treated as a betrayal and something that can cause the parent irreparable harm.”
The Mirror That Narcissistic Parents Hold Up to Their Children
The child of a narcissist becomes the carrier of both his parents’ rejected imperfections and his parents’ grandiose fantasies. This
creates a self-image that is extremely contradictory—he is a miserable failure who will never accomplish anything and at the same time he is capable of total perfection and admiration. The child’s inner self is treated as identical with his external behavior and the products he cre- ates. He is barraged with criticism, which he inevitably comes to believe. On top of all this damage, the narcissistic parent frames his comments in such a way that he implicates the child’s inner self. It isn’t that he got a bad grade on a paper, it is that he is a failure. As a result, the child cannot be objective about what he does and cannot utilize criticism effectively. It hurts too much to take in.
As a result, children of narcissists often have serious problems with performance. Because of their fear of failure and their damaged self-esteem, they find many ways of hiding. Although adult children of narcissistic parents may achieve competence in some areas, they usu- ally achieve only a small measure of their true potential. They are slowed down, constricted by the lack of confidence their narcissistic parents showed in them and by their own defenses against their par- ents’ criticism, control, manipulation, and rejection.
This is how Elan Golumb describes it: “One terrible defensive outcome is to settle into an emotionally robotic existence in which they feel neither the pain of childhood nor the realization of life’s pleasures. Feelingless and neutral, we defer to the parent’s prohibition of our becoming a separate person.”
Mirror Therapy Assignment #2
Write down each of the negative mirrors your parents held up to you. While you may relate to many or even all of the descriptions and examples, is there one that you resonate with more than any other?
Write a detailed description of the way your parents treated you. Include any behavior on their part that led you to feel inadequate, incompetent, unloved, shamed, worth- less, alone, or helpless.
Your Body as a Mirror
Self-contempt never inspires lasting change.
—J
ANE
R. H
IRSCHMANN AND
C
AROL
H. M
UNTER
,
When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies
Y
OUR BODY IMAGE AND THE WAY YOU FEEL
and care about your body are essential parts of your overall sense of self-worth and level of self- esteem. All the work you will be doing in this book will help raise your self-esteem, but in this chapter we will focus on your body image. We will begin by helping you become more aware of your body image and where your ideas about your body came from. Later on in the book, we will focus on how you can make lasting and meaningful improve- ments to your body image.
Body image is the view or perception that you have of your physi- cal appearance—what it looks like to you and what you think it looks like to others. For many people, low self-esteem is caused by a nega- tive body image, while for others low self-esteem comes first and the negative body image follows from it.
Often our bodies reflect how we feel about ourselves. What does your body say about you? In what ways does it reflect your overall sense of self-worth? Does your body say, “I feel really good about myself,” or does it say, “I feel really crappy about myself ”?
In addition to how you feel about yourself, your body is a reflec- tion of many other things, including:
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Your level of emotional and/or physical health
How well you were taken care of physically and emotionally as a child
The messages your parents passed on concerning body perfection
The messages your parents gave you about self-care
The messages you received from your parents (and others) about how they felt about your body
The sad truth is that even if you have a near-perfect body, you may not be able to appreciate it. This is especially true if you were neg- lected or emotionally abused as a child. You may have a tendency to look for the slightest flaw and focus on your imperfections so much they seem to overshadow all your other good qualities. Some people take this to such an extreme that they develop a disorder called body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD.
Many teens worry incessantly about their weight and appearance, but some become obsessed with a specific flaw or perceived defect. This was the case with Kimberly, age sixteen. Kimberly was convinced that her chin is too big. She constantly looked in the mirror, examin- ing her chin from various angles, and she obsessed about which hair- style would best camouflage it. When others tried to tell her that her chin looked fine, she didn’t believe them. In fact, she pressured her parents into sending her to a plastic surgeon to correct the problem. When her parents refused to allow her to get the surgery, she became very upset and refused to go to school anymore. Her behavior signaled to her parents—rightly so—that this was more than the typical teen obsession with looks. Kimberly needed therapy.
Obsessors and Avoiders
People who have issues with self-esteem, body image, and self-criticism tend to fall into two major categories—obsessors and avoiders—and they tend to deal with the mirror in very different ways.
Avoiders may check the mirror briefly as they get dressed or occa- sionally throughout the day to make sure their hair or makeup is okay, but otherwise they seldom look in the mirror. Many avoiders look in the mirror without really looking—just a quick glance to make sure their clothes match or their lipstick isn’t smeared—but they avoid looking too closely. This avoidance of the mirror may be caused by a basic disapproval of their looks. For this reason it is painful for them to look at themselves. Others feel so ugly on the inside that they see only ugliness when they look in the mirror—no matter how attractive they actually are.
How Is Our Body Image Created?
To a great extent, our body image comes from the physical and emo- tional input we received as children. Although media-driven images and expectations certainly have an effect, messages from significant others have an even more dramatic impact on how we feel physically and emotionally about our bodies as adults.
Parents have the most profound effect on our body image. If they like how we look and tell us so, we face the world with a head start. If, on the other hand, our parents dislike our appearance, our body image will be influenced in a negative way.
Carlos began to dislike his body when he was quite young. This is how he explained it to me: “My dad was a jock and he wanted me to be one, too. But I was more frail, like my mother. He was constantly on me to gain weight and to ‘toughen up,’ but no matter how much I ate or exercised I was still too thin. I knew my dad was disappointed in how I looked, and it bothered me a lot and made me self-conscious.
When I was in school I hated gym class and never wanted to take off my shirt because I was ashamed of my underdeveloped chest.”
When parents place a great deal of importance on physical appearance, they often instill in their children a tendency to overem- phasize looks. This was the case with Annette: “My mother was very pretty and spent a lot of time on her appearance. She taught me to do the same, starting when I was very young. If I had one hair out of place, she got on me. My dad also seemed to pay a lot of attention to how my mom and I looked. He was always making comments about how beautiful my mom was, and he always told me that I looked cute. But I knew I’d never be as beautiful as my mother because I didn’t inherit her good looks. I grew up thinking that beauty was the most important thing a woman had to offer a man and that in order to keep a man you have to work on looking good all the time.”
Another factor that influences your body image is whether your parents are satisfied with the way
they
look. Parents with a poor body image can pass on their negative attitudes and feelings to their chil- dren, causing them to dislike their own bodies. This is especially true if you resemble a parent who dislikes his or her body.
Madeline’s mother, who was of Armenian descent, had a great deal of body hair—as did everyone on her mother’s side of the family. She had dark hair on her arms, thighs, and calves, and even on her face. “When I was little I remember my mother using a product called Nair to remove hair from different parts of her body. She was always worried about hair growing back,” Madeline shared with me. “When I was around twelve and I started to develop she began worrying about my body hair. She taught me how to use the depilatory and nagged at me to use it as soon as even the slightest bit of hair started coming back. I hated using it. It stank and it made a mess. And some- times it gave me a rash. But she insisted I use it even when I protested. When I became an adolescent I began to feel self- conscious about being so hairy and I became as obsessed as my mother about always making sure it was removed. I noticed that other girls weren’t as hairy as I was and somehow it became a source of shame for me. I began to hate my body for being so hairy.”
Shelly’s mother also projected her own poor body image onto her
daughter. “From the time I was a little girl I remember my mother was always battling with her weight. She went on all kinds of crash diets, sometimes starving herself for days. When I reached ten years old, she started focusing on my weight as well. The doctor told her I was of normal weight and I would probably grow out of my baby fat, but she didn’t believe him. She started me on diets and paying a lot of attention to what I ate.”
This continued throughout junior high school. By the time Shelly entered high school, she had a serious problem with her self-image. She thought she was fat even though she wasn’t. “I even saw myself as overweight when I looked in the mirror, although I was actually get- ting thinner and thinner.” By the time Shelly reached sixteen, she was throwing up any food she ate and had become anorexic. I have worked with Shelly for the past two years, helping her overcome her problem and to see herself accurately instead of so critically.
Like Shelly, many people have negative body images, not because they have unattractive bodies but because they see themselves inaccu- rately. Their images of their physical selves are distorted, either because they see their overall size and shape as much fatter, thinner, taller or shorter than they actually are, or because they view specific body parts in a distorted way. When the latter occurs, not only do they perceive their long nose, acne, wide hips, sagging breasts, or large butts as more grotesque than they are, but they see these imagined or real flaws as dominating their entire physical selves, as Carla did: “Everyone tells me that I am so pretty, but I know I’m really not. They don’t know I have these huge hips and thighs because I do such a good job of hiding them. But when I look in the mirror all I see are my hips and thighs. They disgust me so much that I refuse to wear a bathing suit or shorts. I know other people would be just as disgusted if they ever saw how I really look.” Unfortunately, Carla has been blinded to her other physical attributes—her beautiful skin and hair, her lovely shoulders and breasts, her striking facial features.
Carla is not alone. Many people are poor judges of themselves and have a distorted view of how they impress others. Most people, espe- cially women, are not as unattractive as they think they are. Recent research has found that only 2 percent of women are satisfied with the
Women put an overemphasis on the way their bodies look and assume that men are attracted to them solely or primarily because of their bodies. Although our culture does in fact place a high value on physical attractiveness, women don’t take into account their personal- ities, their wits, their minds, their sensitivity, their ability to relate to others, and most important, their ability to love.
Do You Judge Yourself Accurately?
Most people’s poor body image reflects the fact that something occurred in childhood to erode their confidence. Unfortunately, we are all taught from an early age that attractive people are also more worthy (for example, recent research shows that parents treat their attractive children better than their unattractive children). And we are all taught just what
is
considered attractive in our particular social circle. This training begins very early on, when the cutest babies and toddlers are given the most attention by outsiders. Slowly, as children grow up, they will be treated a certain way depending on how cute they are, what kind of clothes they wear, and what color skin they have.
It should be no surprise that studies have shown that attractive children tend to develop more self-confidence and have higher self- esteem than children who are perceived as less attractive. If adults smiled approvingly and told you how cute or how pretty or how hand- some you were as you were growing up, you probably felt very good about your body and the way you looked. On the other hand, if insen- sitive adults said things such as, “My, she is a fat one, isn’t she?” or “He must look like his father” (implying that he doesn’t look like his
attractive
mother), you probably ended up not feeling very good about your appearance.
Peer Acceptance and Rejection
It is very important to children and adolescents that they be accepted by their peers. If they have this acceptance, they tend to have high self-esteem, while those who experience rejection, teasing, or indiffer- ence tend to have lower self-esteem. Name-calling is particularly hurt- ful to children and can affect their body image negatively. Names such as “Fatso” can stay with a person for a lifetime, as happened to Hank: “It’s pretty difficult to think of yourself as sexually attractive to women when you were called a “nerd” or a “fag” most of your child- hood. Those words still ring in my ears every time I even think of asking a girl out.”
Rejection or indifference from the opposite sex can be particularly devastating to a person’s body image and can be the start of an adoles- cent believing that she or he is not attractive or desirable, as it did with Ellen: “Boys just never paid any attention to me in school. I was taller than most of them and my parents couldn’t afford to buy my clothes at a specialty store, so they were usually either too short or too long. By the time I was in junior high school I just gave up trying to get their attention.”
The Effects of Emotional Abuse, Neglect, and Smothering on Our Body Image
We all have issues with our bodies. We feel we are too fat or too short or that our bodies are not in proportion. But if we were emotionally abused or deprived in childhood we tend to have far greater body issues. We may have taken on our parents’ negative messages and pro- jections about our bodies in comments like “God help you, you’ve got the Hanson nose.” But more important, when we look in the mirror we often see our own self-loathing reflected back on ourselves—the self-loathing that often comes from having been criticized, ignored, or viewed with contempt by our parents.
If a child is emotionally, physically, or sexually abused, she or he is especially likely to have a problematic body image. Nothing erodes a
child’s confidence more than experiencing this kind of abuse, particu- larly when it comes from parents. This is partly because children tend to blame themselves instead of being willing to experience the alien- ation that feeling anger toward the abusive parent can create. A great deal of this self-blame turns into self-loathing—in particular a hatred of the child’s own body.
Many emotionally abusive parents attack their child’s physical appearance, as in the case of Brenda: “My father would periodically go on a rampage—shouting and throwing things at my mother and then bursting into my bedroom and yelling horrible things at me. He’d tell me that I was ugly and that no man would ever want me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the same words over and over in my own head.”
Fathers have a tremendous effect on a daughter’s body image. If a girl knows that her father loves her and thinks she is attractive, she is more likely to feel attractive to other men. If, on the other hand, she feels rejected by her father or thinks he sees her as unattractive, she will generalize this to all men.
When the body is labeled inadequate, especially by a parent, the self feels diminished as well. This can lead to self-defeating behaviors. Adults who were abused as children often ignore, neglect, and even abuse their bodies, seeing them as objects of shame. Survivors of abuse tend to cover up their bodies, hiding them from themselves and the rest of the world.
Parental neglect, contempt, or verbal abuse can convince a child that she is completely worthless, unlovable, and ugly inside and out. This was the case with my client Marilyn: “I can’t look in a mirror. I hate what I see there. I only look in the mirror for a few seconds to comb my hair or put on some lipstick.” The reason Marilyn felt this way toward herself was that both her parents treated her with con- tempt. They made it clear that they did not want her and that she was in the way. Parental criticism and contempt can cause children to hate themselves and their bodies, often leading to self-mutilation and other self-destructive behaviors. In order to heal this self-hatred, Marilyn needed to work on rejecting the negative parental messages that helped to create it. (You will learn how to do this in part two of this book.)