Being a parent of a teen with body image issues can leave you at a loss as to how to help. You know there’s so much more to life than appearance, but you also know your teen is facing a lot of conflicting messages and pressures about their body. The majority of teens in America are self-conscious about their bodies, and the early pressures on teens to conform to an impossible ideal can have long-term consequences, including disordered eating, an unhealthy relationship to exercise, and even unleashing their pain by body-shaming others.
Whether a teen is pressured to weigh less, be taller or shorter, be stronger, more tan, have different hair, clearer skin, or altered facial features or body proportions, the consequences of a negative self-image can impact your teen’s body and mind. Their very sense of how much they matter as a human being can be tied to body image, and the physical and mental consequences of poor self-image can linger for a lifetime when teen body image issues go unaddressed
At Suffolk DBT, we specialize in treatment for BPD and comprehensive DBT programs for people navigating complex symptoms. We provide DBT for adults, DBT-C for children, DBT-A for adolescents, and telehealth options for families looking to access care across New York.
DBT can help parents and teens to confront teen body image issues
Dialectical behavior therapy for adolescents (DBT-A) can help you, as a parent, to support your teen as they build a new relationship to their body, one based on healthy attitudes and perspectives that support enjoying life in the body they have, not punishing themselves for not having the body they’re told they should want.
DBT skills for parents worried about teen body image issues
Mindfulness about how you speak about bodies can help your teen
DBT-A mindfulness skills encourage your teen to take time to focus on the present moment. When you notice your teen becoming distressed over body image issues, take a mindfulness moment together. Have your teen observe what is happening within their body, mind, and all around them. Let thoughts and feelings enter their head and pass through without judgment, even the hard feelings like shame and the negative thoughts like “I ate way too much today, I’m disgusting”. Less self-judgment and less focus on past criticisms and future triggers of body image fears can all help your teen reduce the impact of shame and self-blame about their body.
DBT mindfulness can also help you be a better parent when it comes to messaging on food, weight, and appearance. Both you and your teen can benefit from a mindful approach to observing how you discuss bodies, food, appearance, weight, ability, strength, and the value of a person. We have all been subject to years of negative messaging about eating, weight, and appearance, and we may not even realize how often we judge ourselves and others. How can you adjust your phrasing to take a more neutral or positive approach when it comes to body image? Your example will help your teen shift their own mindset and make it easier for all of you to cultivate a healthy body image mindfully.
Distress tolerance offers your teen a haven in an emotional crisis
Teen body image issues can lead to an emotional crisis for your teen. The sharp, loud negative feelings and urges toward self-destructive behaviors can become overwhelming. In these moments, having the ability to self-soothe and handle the distress without resorting to harmful behaviors can be crucial for your teen.
The DBT self-soothe skill guides your teen to soothe all 5 of their senses in a moment of severe distress, creating comfort on multiple levels to help your teen make it through a body image crisis. Create a self-soothing plan with enjoyable visuals, comforting scents, calming textures, the taste of favorite foods, and sounds that make your teen’s heart happy, for them to use whenever they need to self-soothe through moments of extreme distress.
Emotional regulation helps your teen employ positive self-talk when negative self-beliefs get too loud
Teens are bombarded with negative messages about body image, and it can be easy for them to internalize these messages into negative self-beliefs. These beliefs can be tough to ignore, pushing your teen to restrict food, over-exercise, purge, or otherwise alter their appearance to try to prove those beliefs wrong.
Your teen is trying to prove they aren’t a bad, unworthy, or ugly person, and they can do that for themselves in a much healthier way with DBT. The DBT skill of positive self-talk encourages regular practice of identification of automatic negative thoughts (“I’m so fat, I look gross!”), using facts to challenge those thoughts (“The people telling me I’m fat are trying to control or profit off of me hating myself, and my weight isn’t a reflection of my value or my health.”), and reframing with positive truths when these automatic thoughts pop up (“I really like that I am so talented at drawing, and it’s cool I’m learning to play the guitar.”).
Focusing on positive self-talk can be a game-changer for a sensitive teen, encouraging them to seek healthier perspectives and to cheer themselves on instead of tearing themselves down.
Interpersonal effectiveness helps your teen navigate conversations around diet and size
Your teen is probably on the receiving end of opinions on food, appearance, and body size on a regular basis from their peers, adults in their life, and especially from influencers and other online personalities. For teens struggling with their body image, even off-hand comments about “clean eating”, “cheat days”, and “being bad” when it comes to food or skipping exercise can hit hard. Your teen may feel pressure to erode their own boundaries, shutting down their opinions and going along with the crowd, or may lash out, letting their feelings erupt into a hostile, upsetting exchange of words.
DBT-A interpersonal effectiveness skills offer your teen a way to participate in conversations about body image without getting overwhelmed and losing their self-respect. One of these skills that can come in handy during conversations on the tense subject of weight and size is the FAST skill.
- Be Fair: Encourage your teen to validate their own values, feelings, and goals, while also recognizing that the other person’s feelings have value. Your teen doesn’t need to agree with everything (or anything) the other person has to say, but it’s important they recognize it’s possible to be fair without agreeing.
- Don’t over-Apologize: Your teen doesn’t need to apologize for disagreeing, for advocating for themselves, or for simply being in a body with a size and shape the other person has an issue with.
- Stick to your values: Your teen doesn’t have to keep quiet about how they value themselves to be more agreeable, but they should also understand and stick to their values around respectful communication as well.
- Stick to the Truth: Don’t exaggerate or downplay either what your teen has to say, or what the other person has to say. Don’t lash out with accusations, and don’t accept mistreatment either. Find a balance of self-advocacy and self-respect.
Teen counseling at Suffolk DBT helps teens and parents to change the narrative when it comes to body image
The empathetic therapists at Suffolk DBT can guide both parents and teens on DBT skill use at home, in school, and in life to navigate the challenging arena of adolescent body image. We offer quality dialectical behavior therapy for adolescents (DBT-A), a specialized form of cognitive behavioral therapy, at our offices in Manhattan and Long Island, New York and online.
Our experienced therapists create a teen counseling environment in both individual therapy and DBT skills groups where teens suffering from body image issues and eating disorders can open up about what they’re going through. From there, your teen will learn to use DBT skills to manage emotions and work through life’s challenges, developing the self-understanding and self-esteem that will help them reconnect with their body in a loving, accepting way!