Healing Body Image and Self-Perception After Betrayal (Episode #64)

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Something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh.

Welcome to the human intimacy podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner. Marianne Michaelis. Today we're going to be talking about your self perception and as that relates to your body image and what we're going to talk about those two things combined. A lot of times individuals in relationships, Marianne, they struggle with their self perception. So we're going to start with self perception and then we're going to talk about how our sexuality can influence our, our body image and our, and really in particular how we see ourselves in relationship to others in society. So Marianne, welcome. How are you doing today?

Thank you, Dr. Skinner. I am excited for this topic and also coming in a little bit tenderly, just knowing that what this topic that we're talking about today is often a trigger for most people in our society. We live in a society where we're told and the media and the influence in our culture are all based around our bodies and our body image and how we look. And really oftentimes our value is placed on how we look and how we're perceived. And so I know just by the get go saying like, here's what we're going to be talking about today. I know for our listeners this can be really triggering. I know different points in my life I might have said, like, I'm going to turn this one off, I'm skipping this one. This one's just too tender and too raw for me. And so I, I'm really grateful that we're having this conversation because I think it's needful and I do want to invite our listeners to stay with us because it's my intent and I know your intent, Dr. Skinner, to really Treat this topic with a lot of gentleness and understanding and compassion, because it's something that most people have some insecurities about their body in some way, shape or form.

Yeah. And. And so we're going to start with the body image conversation, but before we go there, so maybe first really is actually talking about self perception. How. How I see myself when I look in the mirror. What do I see? What do I think? What do I feel? For me, that is a very interesting. We could spend a whole new podcast just talking about self perception, how that. Where. Where it's formed and where it comes from. The information, the. The. That we get from family and others and society about how we see ourselves and how that actually develops over time. Now incorporate how I see myself. And now let's look at sexuality and my body.

Yeah.

And it can be really based upon my original self perception. Do I like myself? Do I not like myself? And now as I go through puberty, what's my sexual experience? How do I see this growing, developing body.

Yeah. That's doing all these weird things that I don't know that it does. Can I back us back up? Because as you know, I love to talk about babies because I just think that babies have so much to teach us. And as you are, you know, saying, let's talk about self perception, I immediately think about young children. And young children have such a gift because they let me back up when I was. When I was young, when I was born, I was born without a left tear duct, which means that my left eye was goopy. It drained onto my face because I didn't have a tear duct. It just wasn't there. I had a surgery when I was 5 that finally corrected that. What I knew about that was that two or three times a day, my mom would call me in to play. Like, I'd be playing at the neighbors or playing wherever. My mom would say, hey, Marianne, come here. You got to get your eye drops. And they stung and they hurt. And so I didn't like. I didn't like them, and I was annoyed. And sometimes my mom would say, come on in. You got to get your eye drops. And then she'd make me take a nap. And so, like, that made it even worse. I was like, is this a ploy? But I had no idea, really, of what I looked like, of how others perceived me. If I had this goopy eye, I was totally unconscious of it. I hadn't. Who cares? Who knew? I was just busy playing. I was busy learning. I was busy being curious. Children are not born with a bad self perception. Children are born, they don't really have a lot of self perception. They're really curious learning about the world and they are taught their value. And so as we're looking at this, you know, in 12 steps, it often talks about going back to like restoring yourself to sanity. And oftentimes I'll hear people say, well my sanity place is probably when I was a three or four year old just running around and I didn't have any self doubt, self fear, insecurities, especially about my body or who I am. So I, I want to make sure that with our listeners where I'm inviting them to go back to a place and say like if, if you're stuck saying like I don't even know how to like where a safe self perception might be, I'll invite you to, to go back to maybe when you were.

Very young and when we go back to our younger self there often we have a sense of joy and happiness. I, I hear that from a lot of people and really not knowing. I, I've shared this story often, but it was, you know, Talking with my 4 year old daughter as we were getting ready to go to religious services and she's got on this be dress and she's just this beautiful four year old girl. And I say to her, you are so beautiful. And she says, I know daddy. And that's that pureness that you're talking about, that, that image of how you see self. And then something happens, somebody says, oh, you're too finish ugly. You're, you're ugly or you're fat or you're too short or you're too tall or you. Again, just this week I was talking with somebody, adults struggling with experiences that happened as a child and how others talked to this individual and, and I just put in context when you're criticized, belittled, put down, you don't know it until you're there. And then it stings, especially like, oh, that's how I'm seen by other people. Well, shame on them. Shame on anybody who makes somebody feel like they're not good enough, beautiful enough. The language we use with each other matters.

I think what's really important here is recognizing two parts. Oftentimes the adults in our lives may say something out of care and concern or out of projection. And we as innocent young beings, we hear things. So I had an accident when I was like 10. I hit my head and I had to get stitches on my eyebrow and I was like, okay, no big deal. I was having Fun when I did it, whatever. And when I went to the doctor, my parents said, you know, is this going to leave a scar? They were worried that I would have this big scar through my eyebrow for the rest of my life, and they were worried that it would just, you know, disfigure me in some way. I had no concept of that. I wasn't worried about it. But my parents were fearful of, oh, what will this do to her face? What will this, how will this impact her in the future? Their own fears were projected onto me. And I've never forgotten, like, from that point. I was like, oh, wait, what? Because I didn't care.

But that's a great point. I didn't care at all until, until you determined or read it from someone else who cared.

They projected their fears onto me. And so now. Oh, that wasn't. Well, it kind of still didn't matter at that time, but it stayed in the back of my head. This is something to worry about. I need to be concerned.

Yeah. So as we mature, as we go through the phases of growth, especially during puberty, as our body's changing, there's so much, especially, I mean, I've got seven daughters, especially females, the way the body changes, the timing of it. It's interesting that females typically go through puberty, mature faster than males, and, and males don't understand, you know, the bodies that are changing around them and body's changing. Like, what, what is this? My voice and the cracking and, and this image of self, especially at that age, is very difficult. I think if I, you know, had a dime for every client that dealt with trauma as their body was developing, I think I'd be a pretty wealthy person.

And as we talk about the females development, I don't know, I, I've never developed as a male, so I, I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I know for females, it is so visual. It is so visual what your body's doing or not doing. And there's so much pressure and there's so much question of how is this going to turn out? When do my breasts, when will they grow? When will they stop growing? What size will they be? There's so much societal pressure and cultural pressure on the size of a woman's breasts and as a little girl going, well, wait a second, what's, what's happening here? And, and when will this happen? And when do you wear a bra and when do you not wear a bra? There's so much that's happening, so many questions about. And then how do I now start to use my body. Before I could run and play, I could play soccer with all the boys. I could do all of these things. And then how do I do that now that my body's changed in a different way? And now other people might look at me in a different way and I don't know how to deal with that. And I might be uncomfortable about it, or a friend or somebody may say something about my body developing which suddenly shifts me into this new place where I have too much or I don't have enough, or somebody said something and I'm suddenly so self conscious and insecure about my body, how it's changed.

You bring up the concept of comparison.

Yeah.

Comparison is not a good friend of ours. As I compare myself to other people, I'm not again, tall enough, I'm not athletic enough. My body, my breast, whatever it may be, whatever, whatever that internal dialogue is. I have seen over and over again this comparison which damages our perception, that self perception we started with like I don't compare to. I'm not as, finish the sentence. Tall as, whatever it is, I'm not as good as other people. When we grow up and that begins to be what we're thinking about. I like the concept of where the energy flows, our mind goes, where we put energy. And if I'm putting energy into my body image, into my body, how I perceive myself in comparison with other people, I will never have, have what other people have. There's, I mean, unless there's something unique about me. And especially this becomes true when we're exposed to pornography or we perceive that pornography is, is the norm because these doctored up images of pornographic images or whatever people are doing sexually in videos, people can't compare them. So now we add to this because children are exposed to pornography around age 9, 11 on average about age 11 to 13 is common. So then how do I perceive body image of what I'm actually seeing and this body of mine.

Yeah, and let's slow that down just a little bit, Dr. Skinner, because I remember years ago somebody who's in marketing saying something to the effect like we are assaulted with I, I want to say 20 to 40, 000 images a day.

Wow.

Like there's so much and I might be wrong, I need to double check that number. But let's just say it's like a huge astronomical, mind blowing number of how much messaging we receive all of the time, every, every day. The average human person, whether, and if you, if you have a tv, if you have a radio, if you have friends if you go to school as a kid. There is so much as we're sitting here right now, Dr. Skinner is wearing a shirt that has a Nike emblem on it. I'm wearing a shirt that has to do with my daughter's old high school swim team. We wear product placement, and it's all around us all of the time. And our. As children, that media, we see the cartoons, everything has a message, whether it's food, whether. Whether it's toys. I remember my daughter being about four or five years old, maybe even younger than that, and saying we hadn't had tv and. And for the, whatever, Olympics, we had tv. And. And she saw something. She said, mom, I need that. It's like, no, no, as a matter of fact, you do not need that. But she was just like, I need that. And we are taught from very young ages, this is. This is what's valued. We're taught what we value. And it's usually using sex or our bodies or, look, this looks so fun. We're sold something, and we are the product that is actually being marketed, but we don't that.

Great point, great point. And. And while we're talking, I actually chat GPT this 6 to 10,000 commercials. Images A day. That's just commercials, right? Forget if I'm going through Facebook or if I'm going through Instagram or whatever that account is. So I'm going to assume it's, you know, astronomically high, all those images. And now we're seeing people, and we're seeing. We're seeing people putting on their best images, and we're seeing commercials that are designed to send a message to us. This is. This is the norm. This is how we should be. Now that comparison comes in. How we perceive ourselves, how we look into the mirror, how we speak to that internal self. I don't compare. I'm not like. And now we incorporate this into a more complex scenario where the inundation of pornography in our culture begins to warp people's minds.

Yes, I. I know I keep rewinding us and slowing us down, but that no go. Yeah. And the thing we haven't talked about is airbrushing about the photo editing. And so what we see, we see images, even at the checkout calendar of, you know, magazines of whatever we see. Most of the image that we see have been edited. And so we are seeing something that is false, that is unattainable. We see people without wrinkles. We see people without saggy whatever. And these have been airbrushed or edited out. I Remember several years ago, watching some type of a documentary, kind of like, I wish I could reference it, but they said, we expect the people that buy our magazine to know that our. Our images are fake. Our images are doctored. That is part of the industry. People know that. They need to know that. But yet a little kid standing at the checkout aisle and going, wait a second. This is like, this is how you be rich and famous. This is how you're Whatever. And how many magazines of the checkout aisle talk about diets, lose 20 pounds in 25 days without doing anything? This is what we're bombarded with all of the time. Images that aren't real, images that are doctored, that are fake. And so this does absolutely pull into the pornography as well. Pornography is edited. There are a lot of things in pornography that aren't real. We are comparing ourselves to things that are unattainable because they're not even real. So we're comparing ourselves to a false fantasy or reality, and we can never win because it's not real.

And we don't even know it. We don't even know that we're. We've been trained to think this way because the authentic, the real us, we know. I really believe this, Marianne. I believe we know when what we're doing is healthy. We know that we and I, when we get back to our core self, we are enough. But we don't know we're enough because everything outside of us is saying, this is the. This is the Persona. This is what's reality. This is what people look like. This is the way we should look. No, we instinctively, I think when we get back to our core self, we know who we are, and we need to turn out the voices, and we need to say, what is the healthy me doing?

You know, this week, my husband came to me and said. He almost had tears in his eyes, and he said, oh, my goodness, he loves socks. Let me just preface this with he loves socks. And there's a brand that he really, really likes that are near and indestructible, and if you get holes in them, they'll send you a new pair. They're a great brand of socks. And he's a runner, so he goes through a lot of socks. But he came to me and he said, did you know, I just saw this ad for this company, and the runner they had, it was a woman, she was black, and she ran, like, five marathons in five days, like, back. Back to Back to back. And. And then he said, and do you know what she was big. She had, like, big fat rolls. Like, she had fat rolls. And he was just like, that is so great that they're embracing somebody who doesn't fit the norm, who doesn't fit the molds. And so I was like, really? Let me. Let me find out about this. And I had seen this woman previously somewhere online talking and been like, wow, she's really breaking some boundaries. And. But I googled, because I was like, what's her name? I want to find out a little bit more about her. And I. I came across her, but I. And she talked about running the Boston Marathon and being almost to the end and somebody from the sidelines, fat shaming her.

Oh.

And she's like, what? What? She talked about growing up in New York, and she said if I went out for a run at 3 o' clock in the afternoon, everybody else around me, she said there were times of the day, like after 3 o' clock that you didn't go outside because you'd get shot. And if you were outside running, everybody else would start running too, because they'd think that there was somebody chasing you. Like, looking at our culture. Wow. In that same Google search, I came across a woman who weighed 288 pounds who ran a marathon.

Incredible.

Yeah. And so we. There's. There are people that don't fit these molds.

Why is this society, Marion, do we even care? Right? I. I mean, kudos to anybody who runs a marathon. I don't. I don't. All I know is I've ran a marathon. And if you ran a marathon, I'm gonna raise my hand and say, you are an amazing person.

Takes grit.

But why does our culture send. I mean, why are we so trained to look at a person and say they are and, and talk about their body? Why do we even do that? What is it? What's the benefit?

Yeah.

Everybody has their body, and it's beautiful and it's incredible. And we as a culture have been programmed to say, this is the. What it should be. And the damage that that's done to our society. I. I mean, our weight loss programs, there are people trying to lose weight that shouldn't be losing weight. They don't need to lose weight. But our culture is putting so much pressure on them.

And even I'll hear about people saying, yeah, I need to lose five to ten pounds. There's always this unattainable, I'm never enough. And one thing that I. I've seen in my office, especially with betrayed partners, and I want to be very clear for our listeners, it's hard for me to recall if there has been one. Like, there may have been one or two. But I don't know if I've ever met somebody who's like, yeah, my body's perfect. It's fantastic. It's great. Most of my clients, especially if they've been betrayed, there is. They're. They're lacking. And I can look at my client and say, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? You look very healthy. You look very fit. You're a beautiful person. Yet what my clients see when they look in the mirror is not that. Because it's not the airbrushed, it's not the photoshopped, what they've been taught.

And when you say you're beautiful, they probably start crying because it's so counter to what they have felt. And maybe what they feel like they're receiving from a spouse or a partner or. Or from society, or they don't believe it, or they. Or they. Or yes. Or they may resist that and reject it because it can't be true. Because I don't believe what you just said. Oh, that makes me so sad. I. It just hurts. It just hurts, Marianne. Because we, as human beings, there's an internal core, and it's all of us, and it's an innate goodness. And we. And I think when we get to our core, we know we're enough. But when I conclude I'm not enough, I must not be enough because my spouse is doing xyz, I must not be enough. Now we're internalizing someone else's behavior and saying, that must mean I'm not. And if we've grown up in a culture where it's. It's constantly in our face, this is it. This is it. Then we see people changing their body, doing body surgery to. To compete with what they think is the right way to look.

Yeah, let me take that a little bit further, because I. I know personally how sensitive this is. I've struggled my weight throughout my life. I have some infertility issues, and I have some hormonal issues that just inherently cause me some challenges. And this is so, so sensitive. It is so hard to think my partner is looking at pornography. He is looking. Or they are looking at other human beings and having sexual experiences with them. And the only. The only reason why they would reach outwards is because I am lacking. That is the perception. That is the belief, because it does not make sense. It defies. I am here. I am. I want to engage with you. I want to connect with you. And there has to be a reason why you're looking someplace else. And so it must mean that I'm not enough because if I were enough, you wouldn't go someplace else. That is the logic.

How do we count? Help them counter that logic. And I, I have a new concept that has been going through my mind that I want to, I want to share today.

Great, let's jump into it then.

So we think about body images is influenced by a betrayed partner. As you say, I'm right, I'm. I can't compete or compare with the images that they're seeing or whatever they're. They've been doing. So I was studying, researching how pornography influences those consuming it. And a study, this is released last year in Archives of Sexual Behavior, the journal August issue. And it's titled the association of Pornography Use and Body Body Image among Heterosexual and Sexual Minority Men. Here's what they found. This study investigated the relationship between pornography use and men's body image utilizing a social comparison theory. And that's what they did. They, what they discovered is that our sexual perception, individuals who view pornography, they reported higher levels of problematic use of pornography, perceived realism and social body comparison. Social body comparison, negative body image, I mean those two things all by themselves. So those viewing pornography are also feeling inferior to what they are seeing in those, in those pornographic images or videos.

That's interesting. So you're saying. So we're talking, I'm talking about the betrayed partner saying I'm not enough because my partner's looking at the. If I were enough, they wouldn't be looking saying someplace else. Which I just want to make sure that our listeners know that that's absolutely not true. But that is the, the common perception. Yeah, but you're saying the people that watch it their own. Where I was transported, you were reading that and talking about that Dr. Skinner was. Sounds like it trans. So viewing pornography basically transports you back to the seventh grade locker room where everybody has to shower and you're like wait, where? Look at them, look at me. What? Like it's that social comparison.

And, and again, let me read it one more time. Problematic pornography use was related to higher levels of social body comparison, which in turn were related to higher levels of negative body image. So now that may be mind boggling for people, but now what we're finding is it's influencing both party's perception of their bodies because we can't compete with doctored up fake images. It's just not possible. So just putting this in context, Marianne, pornography Just in and of itself does tremendous harm to both individuals and our society because it's not real.

Here's what I want to make sure that we have on the table and we are really shining a lot of light onto that's so important. Problematic pornography use, use of sexual acting out seeking behaviors. They never have anything to do with our partner, with our partner's body, with how, with our partner's value. And I know I'm saying never. That's a pretty big broad blanket statement. I'm recognizing I'm using that. And so maybe I can't categorically say never, but I'm going to say pretty close acting out behaviors. When we act out, it's because there's something inside of me. There's a need that I need to meet. And in our society, we numb and we medicate our emotions and we seek the dopamine that comes from porn or whatever it is that we choose to act out with that. My deep internal need. If I'm bored or lonely or angry or stressed or tired, that is my emotional need that needs to be met. And that is an internal thing that doesn't have to do with my partner. Yes, maybe my partner said something that was hurtful for me, but it's my emotions that I need to address. And if I choose to look at pornography so that I can numb and feel and not feel that or I'm bored or I need some type of a sensation, I'm turning there. I just really want to make sure that we're hammering home that that is not because my partner is not enough. In reality, no one's perfect. We all have faults, we're all human. But my self soothing, self medicating is not because my partner is lacking.

Really, really well said and really important to understand. So I'm glad you're highlighting that. I can't tell you how many times I've talked with individuals who've been acting out and I have not heard somebody say my wife was not or my husband was not. Right. It's usually about them and their, the stuff that they've been carrying with them and, and what we refer to as an arousal template, what, what they find arousing or that's most arousing to them and, and individuals when they are so focused on their own arousal template which could be its own podcast, when they're so focused on that, then, then that's again, they're not seeing people, they're seeing what's most arousing dope, highest dopamine hit for them exactly what you're saying there. So I know this is hard to accept for a lot of my betrayed clients. They're like, I, I hear what you're saying. It's hard for me to believe that. It's hard for me to really accept what you're saying. I hope that you'll at least take into account what we've said today, because our clinical experience has found over and over, at least that's what I've seen. It's not that my partner's not enough. It's usually about internally something that's, as you say, an unmet need or something. I'm anxious or I'm depressed, and I'm turning to this to cope with whatever that is. And that's what I've seen over and over. Marianne.

And I want to be clear, especially for our listeners, I recognize that what we're saying, especially what we've just said right here, is it's not about you. Oftentimes, you know, my client might say, yeah, I understand that intellectually, logically, I can get that, but it doesn't feel like that. And I recognize and just want to be very explicit in recognizing that what we're saying to you might feel like, wait, you're telling me a cat when I've lived my whole life as a dog? Like, I understand that this might push up against and be like, no, no, I don't even know how to, to take that in, how to accept that, because it feels so foreign. Because you're telling me that the way that I've been seeing my life and seeing myself might not be how it really is. And what do I do in this new space if that's not the case?

Yeah, I, I really like that, that highlighting that part of it as well, because I know what we think and what we feel often aren't congruent there. And so you may hear us saying this and we're just inviting you to consider it just as an alternative to the way you've been thinking or the way you've been feeling. So, Marianne, I want to. Now, as you get ready to close, I want to turn into solutions. I want to, I want to give some ideas. Okay. So I've struggled much of my life with my body image. Uh, whether that's society based, my partner's done something, or maybe it's just what I see in comparison in the media. And I just think I'm, I'm just not enough. I, I'm to something. What, what are some of the best solutions that you have found effective for your clients as you've leaned into these body image challenges that are so prevalent in our society.

I would say I love that question because I think there's so many ways to tackle this and it they're going to be different for everyone. But I have a couple of thoughts that I'd like to share. Three specifically. The first one is I'll never forget. I was working with a group of women and I said, for your homework this week, I want you to take some time every day and look in the mirror after you get out of the shower. And just take some time just looking in the mirror and looking at your body. All of it. Because a lot of times my clients will avoid looking in the mirror. They don't want to see their body. They don't want to be reminded of every time they look in their mirror, they might think, oh, here's another reminder of where I'm lacking, where I'm failing, where I'm not enough. And so rather than address that shame, we just avoid it. And so I'll never forget one of my clients coming back. As I said, I want you to look in the mirror and I want you to look in your eyes and I want you just to find the beauty there. Or just see yourself and just say, I love you. And I had a client come back and say, I hate you. That was the worst homework I've ever had, ever. It was like torture. It was so uncomfortable. It is so hard to see and accept ourselves. But if we can't do that, how can we feel and accept the love of other people? I know we've talked about this in previous podcasts, but so it can be starting small, looking in my face and looking at my eyes and saying, oh, what color are my eyes? Let me appreciate that color. Or looking at. Maybe I'm just going to notice my nose and be so grateful. So bringing in gratitude for our body parts and. And that's that second part. So the first part is looking at ourselves from curiosity and from a place of acceptance, not judgment. We're keeping judgment at the door and just looking and saying, like, oh, wow, let me just notice the coloring of my skin. Let me just notice whatever it is about me. The second part of this is really looking at with the gratitude of saying, can I look at my stretch marks? And can I see them and say, wow, this is where my body, which is so magical, knew how to stretch and grow so that I could carry a baby. I have three babies that I can be so grateful for. And every one of those stretch marks helped me get those children here in my life. And I'm so grateful. So stepping into the gratitude of noticing these small things, the worry lines. Oh, man. When my teenager was learning how to drive, I think I earned that one right there. Slowing it down and really accepting our body for where it's at. Oh, my breasts might be a little saggy. I'm so grateful I was able to nourish all of my five children and feed them. Like changing our body from an object to. This is what has sustained me.

This is how it functions. Right. You talk about giving birth and you talk about whatever it is body part that's functionality. My eyes, my nose. You're talking about this body. That's incredible, Marianne. And. And I can feel so much resistance into what you just said in so many people. The resistance of. I. Are you kidding me? I can't. I can't look at myself that way. But you're speaking into a gratitude.

It's a gift. The gift of seeing, even having eyes that work. Yes.

The gift of this body.

Yes. So seeing ourselves slowly. And this is more of a gradual. What. You're right. What you're saying is this might feel revolutionary, and it might feel like, I just want to vomit before I even go there. But. And that's okay. That's good information. If that's your response to our listeners, that's really good information. Say, ooh, this is where I'm at. This is a triggering topic. This is a good place maybe to start working from.

And I would say lean into your own resistance.

Yes.

Why? Why am I speaking to myself this way? Where does that even come from? Because if you accept that those negative thoughts and you never challenge them, then you continue to think and act and feel the same way. We're inviting you to think and act and feel in a new way, a different way of gratitude and appreciation. Recognizing the beauty of your body, the performance, the amazing things that it's done. And you do it automatically, Marianne. You do it automatically. You don't think, okay, I'm going to nurse this child. Right. You don't think that. It's just that. That's right. Your body performs. It performed an absolute miracle in the creation of those five children. What an amazing miracle. That human body is our body.

Yes. So coming at this gratitude and curiosity, I think that the third suggestion that I have, which doesn't necessarily correlate with these two, but one thing that I love to. To do with my clients is just say, I want you to think about who. Who in your life is beautiful. When you think about beauty, who are the beautiful people in your life? And sometimes my clients will be like. And sometimes they'll point out, like people who have beautiful physical bodies. But what I often find is when I look for people who are beautiful, it comes with the kindness. Usually I see people who. My friend Darlene Henderson, who passed away several years ago, she'd had a stroke, Bill's palsy. Half of her face was frozen. She was one of the most beautiful human beings. She had the most amazing sense of humor and could laugh at others and herself in. In charming ways. But she was kind. When I think about beauty, it's not the beauty so much that I'm looking at the outside. It's the human as the whole. So I'd like to challenge our listeners to also look at what. How do I define beauty?

When we know who we are, we know we are beautiful. Let me say that one more time. When we know who we are, we know we are beautiful. And I say that to everybody. Whatever your body image type, whatever, it does not matter. When we know who we are, we know we are beautiful because we are comfortable in our own skin. Our personality, whether we've got Bell's palsy and a stroke and we can hardly move, we know who we are. And we're maybe that personality who we are. Now, we may say physically, I'm not. Physically I. I'm not. My might not be appealing, but I know who I am. And beauty is not disappearance. That's. That's one version.

They say beauty is, what, skin deep or something like that? Yeah. So really looking at. I. I'd love to invite our listeners to maybe start looking at how do I look at beauty? What is beauty really, to me? What is. And so I know that I'm challenging to maybe change perception of how we see the world. Recognizing what. What my culture. I think it was Brene Brown that said, you know, how do we help our kids with this? And she said something. It's like trying to throw, like a paper airplane through a moving fan. Like, you can't. You just get chopped up. And so this is a place that starts with ourselves. When we look at our children, we. We don't see our children as sexual objects. We don't see them as their value is based on their sexual appeal. We see our children and their gifts.

And if I could lean into that for a second, I think as a society, if we really want to change this, then we need to start sending those messages to our children so they're understanding how to counter the internal. The influences it's coming from externally and not internalizing it, but they're realizing the voices. And we need to send the message of, you're. You are beautiful. You're incredible. And, And. And help them lean into this strength of their body. Not in an arrogance or a prideful way, but look at this body of yours, and you're going to mature, and you're gonna go through all those things, and you're gonna compare yourself and be very cautious there, because you are incredible. Whether your hair looks a certain way, that's a personal one. With my son recently, it's like, my hair. People are gonna judge me. I'm saying, son, you, the way you.

Look, just aren't you glad you have hair?

Right? Especially the way, you know my hair. I'm like, son, I'll trade you. In fact, I just said that yesterday. I'll trade you yours for mine, right? But if you can see, I'm actually going. I mean, bald on top. And it's. It's just. It's happening. But my wife and I've had this conversation of. Of image and appearance, and do I do anything with it? Do I not do anything? Do I go bald? What do I do? It's one of those journeys of life. It's who I am. And I don't know whether I get rid of my hair or not. I still am me. I'm still me.

Yeah. There's a. One of my favorite quotes that I love to share with my clients as we begin to wrap up. There's a very prominent leader. He's also a heart surgeon, retired now, but his wife, who is a little bit younger than him, was one day saying something to him about, you know, complaining about body as it gets older. And his response was like, isn't that wonderful? Your body's doing what it's supposed to do. Our body's job is to get older. And he said, your body's preparing to meet its maker. That's what it's. That's what its trajectory is. That's what it's supposed to do. And. And so looking at it from this lens of, wait, my body is supposed to get older? That's what happens. We age and we fight our. A culture of media, of advertisers that want to sell products and make money, telling us that we need to live in this fountain of youth, which just isn't a reality.

And as we go through this process, our invitation to you is to really come back to the real you. That. That Child, you the one that looked in the mirror and said, I'm okay, I'm great. And realizing that we. Right. And I know. Yeah. And, and if we do that, then it give, it frees us up to be our real self, playful. Because if I don't, if I don't like myself, I hold myself back. I'm not as confident, I don't interact with others. And then we miss, all miss out because we are not being our true selves. So my invitation is to be you. You're enough. Final thoughts, Marianne?

My final thoughts as you're saying that Dr. Skinner, are. I'm gonna guess that most of us have had this experience at some time or another where we've been like in the grocery store, we've been somewhere and there's a young child who's like, hi. Like little children are oftentimes uninhibited. And they'll, you know, they're, if they've been in a safe environment growing up, they'll just say hey, hi. And they'll just interact. And so as you were saying, I'm inviting you, our listeners, to connect back with yourself, with the self that is loving and curious and playful, that doesn't carry these inhibitions. Once again, I invite you to go back to that you that really does exist, that can sit in the grocery store, that doesn't, you know, if we're in the grocery store and we don't say hi to somebody because we're afraid of how they might reject us or how they might perceive us, that is an older us versus the five year old will say, mommy, why does that person. Or hey, you like. Or they just sing in the grocery store because they feel like singing. Maybe I'm not saying everybody should sing in the grocery store, but I, I hope that, that this concept comes across that you are beautiful no matter how you are. Beauty isn't on the outside. And our value doesn't come from how we match up to something that doesn't exist, that's not real, that's been airbrushed or photoshopped. The real you is the you or the beauty of you is the you that wakes up with a crying child in the middle of the night and changes their sheets because they wet the bed. That's, that's the beauty of who we are.

So as we become the real us, the. The we become freer, if I can say it that way, freed from the burden of this perception that there's something wrong with me, freed from this comparison. And in many ways we become more childlike and, and then we come back to this true self and there's a, there's an energy that comes with being the real us. And really that's what we're saying. Be you, enjoy, be free. All right. Thank you so much for your time today. To our listeners, we're grateful for your time. If you haven't been to our website, human intimacy.com, we've got courses, a hundred day courses. We haven't just finished an incredible conference. If you haven't participated in that, we encourage you to go check it out. You want to learn how to heal from sexual betrayal? We have courses on that, how to create boundaries. Anyway, we invite you to come check out the site and as always, please share our podcast with others. If you found that this has been helpful to you, please share it with others. We appreciate your time and may you be blessed.

Thank you.