Approximate reading time: 3 minutes

Adopting society’s beauty standards as your own, a process known as beauty ideal internalisation, can significantly influence body image, especially when individuals frequently compare themselves to others (Baceviciene & Jankauskiene, 2021). Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT, a type of therapy that focuses on changing negative thinking and behaviour) techniques, have been effective in improving body image. This improvement involves recognising and changing irrational or false beliefs, referred to as cognitive distortion, and using methods like evaluating the accuracy of your thoughts (perception checking) and comparing thoughts to real life (reality testing). According to Alleva et al. (2015), changing the way you think about your body, using neutral instead of judgmental words to describe it, thinking back to times when you felt bad about your body and rewriting those experiences in a positive way, and getting better at understanding and resisting media messages about beauty, were helpful techniques. These findings were based on their study that combines the results of multiple studies, a meta-analysis of previous research.

Some Steps to Love Your Body in a Social Media World

Utilising this knowledge, try out some of these methods and make notes about how you feel about yourself throughout the process.

• Take a look at your social media accounts (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and unfollow people or products that make you feel bad about your body. Increase your media literacy by reminding yourself that what is shown is not reality.
• Be more selective about what you watch and expose yourself to, and pay attention to the ways the media impacts your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
• Choose media that uplifts and supports you. Resist media that is judgmental and negative.
• When you see images of people who have attributes you desire or see something that makes you feel self-conscious about the way you look, reality-check your experiences by asking yourself questions.
• Recognise common thinking errors related to our body image.
• Reality-check and restructure our cognitions by putting thoughts on trial and challenging negative thoughts.

To illustrate these techniques in action, consider the case of Emile, a 20-year-old college student.