Wes Woodland
Counsellor
Body Image Counselling in Dorset
Struggling with body image can be exhausting. You might find yourself constantly criticising your appearance, comparing yourself to others, or feeling that you need to change something about your body before you can feel comfortable in yourself. Perhaps you know intellectually that beauty standards are unrealistic, but that knowledge doesn’t stop you feeling the way you do when you look in the mirror.
I don’t believe body image is simply about how you look. It’s also about your relationship with yourself, and the meaning you’ve come to attach to your appearance. When your body becomes something to fix, control or feel ashamed of, it can be difficult to recognise your own worth beyond how you look.
I support people in Dorset and online who want to develop a different relationship with their bodies. My approach is collaborative, non-judgemental and led by you. I won’t tell you that you must love your body, or that wanting to change your appearance is automatically a bad thing. Instead, we’ll explore what your body image means to you, where your beliefs about yourself have come from, and what it might look like to treat yourself differently.
How Counselling Can Help With Body Image
As an integrative humanistic counsellor, I work with you to understand your experiences rather than simply trying to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. We might explore how your relationship with your body has developed, the messages you’ve absorbed from family, relationships and wider society, and how these have influenced the way you see yourself today.
Our work might include:
- Understanding your inner critic and the beliefs that fuel feelings of shame, inadequacy or dissatisfaction with your body
- Exploring your relationship with appearance, including how much of your self-worth depends on how you look
- Questioning unrealistic beauty standards and the influence of social media, comparison and edited or AI-generated images
- Developing body neutrality, learning to relate to your body as something you live in rather than something that must always meet a particular standard
- Exploring your relationship with food and exercise, including whether your choices come from a place of care for yourself or punishment
- Building self-compassion, so that looking after yourself becomes something you do because you matter, rather than something you must earn by changing your body
You don’t have to choose between accepting yourself as you are and wanting to make changes. We can explore both, helping you move towards choices that reflect your values and wellbeing rather than a belief that you’re not good enough as you are.
A Different Relationship With Yourself
I think one of the difficulties with body image is that we can understand something in our heads without feeling it emotionally. You might know that bodies naturally look different, that images online are often manipulated, or that your appearance doesn’t determine your worth. But knowing these things doesn’t necessarily change how you feel about yourself.
Counselling can help you to:
- Spend less time criticising your appearance or comparing yourself to others
- Understand where your beliefs about your body have come from and begin to question them
- Develop a more compassionate relationship with yourself, including when you’re struggling with how you look
- Feel less dependent on your appearance for a sense of self-worth
- Recognise when you’re making choices from shame or self-punishment, rather than care for yourself
- Develop a more balanced relationship with food, exercise and looking after your body
- Feel more comfortable being seen by others, without worrying so much about how you look
- Make decisions about your body that reflect your own values, rather than pressure to meet other people’s expectations
The aim isn’t necessarily to reach a point where you love everything about your body. Rather, the hope is that you can begin to care for yourself without feeling that you first have to become someone different.
Counselling to Improve Your Body Image in Blandford Forum and Online
I offer counselling from my private practice in Blandford Forum, supporting clients across Dorset, including Wimborne, Poole, Bere Regis, Shaftesbury, Salisbury and surrounding areas. I also offer online counselling for clients throughout the UK.
If you’d like to explore whether counselling could help you develop a different relationship with your body, you’re welcome to book a free 20-minute consultation, with no obligation to continue.
If you’d like to explore my thinking about body image in more depth, you can also read my blog post.
