The Relationship Between Complex PTSD and Body Image
Body image and self-image are fundamental aspects of our individual identities that form over time, and can be influenced by a number of factors. One factor that can have a significant impact on body image is childhood trauma. This relationship is often complex and multi-faceted, underlining the need for comprehensive and compassionate understanding.
What is CPTSD
Complex PTSD, or childhood trauma, can encompass a variety of experiences, including physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; neglect; bullying; and more. To learn more about adverse childhood experiences that could indicate complex trauma, head here where you can also check out the childhood trauma test.
Adverse experiences in a child's life can lead to distorted self-perceptions and harmful/distressing beliefs about the body.
Different forms of childhood trauma can significantly impact your body image. Here are a handful of examples:
Physical Abuse: Children who have experienced physical abuse may develop negative feelings towards their bodies due to associated bodily harm and pain. Over the years, this can morph into a distorted body image where they may view their bodies as weak, shameful, vulnerable, or undesirable.
Sexual Abuse: Victims of childhood sexual abuse often disconnect from their bodies as a survival mechanism, which can lead to a disoriented body image. Shame, guilt, and a sense of 'dirtiness' or 'contamination' associated with the abuse can often result in them harboring negative feelings about their bodies and sexuality.
Emotional Abuse or Neglect: Constant criticism, humiliation, or neglect from caregivers can cause children to develop low self-esteem and engage in harsh self-judgment about themselves and their bodies.
Bullying Peer bullying: Bullying throughout the formative years, especially related to a body-size, appearance, or any physical attribute, can distort your self-perception and lead to body image issues.
Parental Behaviors: Parents who overly focus on their own or their children's body size and appearance can unintentionally instill a sense of body-shame and body dissatisfaction in their children, planting seeds for a negative body image.
Trauma Related to Illness or Physical Injury: Illnesses or injuries that result in noticeable changes in a child's appearance (like scarring, hair loss, or weight fluctuation) can cause them to perceive their bodies negatively, untrustworthy or undeserving. This is especially prevalent when other children or adults react negatively to these changes.
Traumatic memories affect a person's mental, emotional, and physical state.
When traumatic experiences take place and/or are recurring, the body enters a survival state, scanning for, and protecting from, threats at all times. This is an incredible unconscious process!
As a result, many people who have experienced childhood trauma might also experience:
Distorted Self-Perception and/or Body Dysmorphic Disorder: Childhood trauma can impact the way a person perceives themselves and others, leading to a distorted body image. This could be due to criticism or negative comments about their appearance during their formative years, which can result in discomfort in their own skin and dissatisfaction with their physique as adults. Childhood trauma may trigger or exacerbate the development of such obsessive thoughts and behaviors.
Eating Disorders: Trauma can lead to extreme eating behaviors, like anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia and binge eating. These eating disorders can stem from a need to control something in your life, or numb from experiencing something in your life, that might feel familiar to your childhood environment was uncontrollable or unsafe.
Dissociation from the Body: Some individuals with past trauma may disconnect from their bodies as a psychological coping mechanism. This disconnect can lead to a distorted body image because the body is not viewed or felt as a part of yourself, instead there is a disconnect from what the body is, and what happened to/happens in the body. This disconnection can lead to a negative body image, where individuals either completely disconnect from their bodily needs or obsess over physical perfection.
Self-Harm: Childhood trauma like abuse and neglect may lead to self-harm behaviors (including eating disorders) throughout the lifespan. Often physical harm is inflicted on the body as a way to cope with emotional pain, to feel something differently, or to gain control over the bodies when other aspects of life seem uncontrollable.
Impaired Sexual Functioning: Adverse childhood experiences, particularly sexual abuse, can lead to issues related to sexuality and self-expression. You may view your body negatively, feel disconnected from it, experience shame on the heals of physical pleasure, or consider it a source of shame or guilt, which can lead to difficulties in intimate sexual relationships.
Exercise Addiction: Compulsive exercise can result from an attempt to regain control, suppress and numb from traumatic memories, and cope with feelings of anxiety and depression. It can also stem from an obsession with achieving an 'ideal' body, in attempt to find belonging, feel seen and worthy.
Internalized shame: Traumatic childhood experiences often results in internalization of shame and guilt, which can lead to self-critical thoughts and a harsh evaluation of your body and sense of self. The internalized shame can create an overarching self-belief of badness, or unworthiness, that can extend into the way you perceive your body.
It feels important to acknowledge that societal and cultural beauty standards often contribute to these complex feelings about body image, further complicating your self-perception. If you have experience trauma as a child, the pressure to fit into these standards can lead you to fixate on altering your bodies, as a way to regain a sense of control or self-worth that might've been lost due to overwhelming life experiences.
Recovery from body image issues and Complex PTSD is possible
Here at Reclaim Therapy we’re a group of trauma focused therapists, specializing in treating PTSD, CPTSD, eating disorders and body image issues.
We use trauma informed interventions like EMDR therapy for PTSD, parts work (IFS/Ego States) and somatic interventions to support our clients in reconnecting to their bodies in ways that are safe and slow to heal from their past.
If you’re searching for a trauma therapist near me, or EMDR therapy near me, we would be honored to explore supporting and working alongside you.
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Looking for a different type of support? We provide trauma focused EMDR Therapy near me for many different concerns.
Our therapists specialize in treating eating disorders, PTSD and body-image concerns. We know that many of our clients also experience significant anxiety and depression as they move through days and healing journey. If you’re looking for treatment for anxiety or depression, we would be happy to support you in reaching your goals and finding ease in your life.