Body image: when the way you see yourself becomes a source of pain (Therapy practice in Paris 10 - for Expats)

You avoid mirrors — or you can't stop looking at yourself with a harsh, critical eye. You dress to hide rather than to express yourself. You struggle to receive a compliment about your appearance, or simply to feel at ease in your own body.

Our relationship with our body is one of the most intimate and emotionally charged aspects of our inner lives. And for many people, it is also one of the most painful.

The body as a mirror of our history

Our relationship with our body doesn't form in a vacuum. It takes shape very early on — through the looks we received, the comments we heard, the ways our body was touched, named, valued or dismissed.

A parent who made remarks about weight. A school environment where the body was a source of mockery. A puberty lived in shame or invisibility. These experiences leave deep marks — not only in memory, but in the way we inhabit our body every day.

The body holds what words couldn't always express.

Body image is not what you see

Body image is not an objective reflection — it is a psychological construct, shaped by personal history, cultural pressures and emotions that have settled there over time.

This is why changing your body doesn't always change the way you look at it. People who have lost weight, gained weight, or altered their appearance often describe the same dissatisfaction afterwards as before. The body isn't the problem — it's the relationship we have with it.

When the body becomes a battleground

For some people, a difficult relationship with the body shows up in behaviours that attempt to regain control: food restriction, over-exercising, obsessive focus on certain body parts, avoiding social situations out of fear of being looked at.

These behaviours often serve a purpose — they respond to anxiety, a sense of inadequacy, a need to control something when everything else feels out of reach. Understanding them without self-judgment is the first step toward something gentler.

What therapy can change

Working on your relationship with your body in therapy isn't about achieving a superficial sense of "wellness" or learning to "accept yourself" on command. It's about exploring what the body has held — and what the way you look at yourself says about your history.

Therapy offers a space to:

• Understand the origins of the critical gaze you turn on yourself

• Untangle your own feelings from the messages you received from others

• Reconnect with your body as a place to inhabit rather than evaluate

• Move through the emotions you learned to contain, deny or numb

This takes time — but it is possible to find a relationship with your body that feels less like a source of suffering, and more like a space of your own.

👉 I welcome you in my practice in Paris 10th arrondissement. Feel free to reach out to book a first session.