Most of us have heard of the body positivity movement, which can be helpful and affirming for some people. However, criticism of body positivity is often that it feels unrealistic for people to swing from really disliking their bodies to complete love and acceptance. Plus, it keeps the focus on our bodies – it says everyone is beautiful and therefore everyone is worthy. It’s still connecting worthiness to appearance. That’s where body neutrality comes in. Body neutrality says you do NOT have to love your body. Body neutrality really tries to separate our worth from our bodies altogether. There may be days we feel really good about our bodies and days we feel not so great about our bodies, and regardless, we can aim to treat our bodies with respect and care. We can try to shift the focus from how our bodies LOOK to what they allow us to DO and EXPERIENCE. This is, of course, not the “only right way” to think about our bodies, and this may or may not resonate with you, but it’s often a new and refreshing perspective for my clients to explore.

Health At Every Size is a scientifically-backed framework of health that affirms, normalizes, and celebrates body size diversity just like any other human trait like height, hair color, or skin tone. HAES focuses on building healthy habits across all aspects of health rather than solely focusing on weight as an indicator of health. 

What does it sound like when you talk to yourself? How is that similar or different from how you talk to other people in your life? Many of us are stuck in patterns of being very self-critical. I firmly believe that developing a gentler, kinder relationship with ourselves is the foundation for positive change.

I believe you are the expert in your own story. We all have frameworks, or “stories,” through which we understand ourselves and the world around us. Although all of these stories are valid and have come about for a reason, they are not always truthful or helpful to us in the pursuit of our values. Therapy is a place we can work on re-writing or re-framing these stories in order to move towards what we truly want in life.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is all about increasing our psychological flexibility. Some of the main themes include connecting to our values, increasing our ability to be present in the moment, and moving towards the things that are important to us even with painful or difficult experiences in our lives. 

Dialectical Behavior Therapy is built on the principle that two seemingly opposing things can be true at the same time: I can want to create change in my life AND I can be hesitant to let go of my current unhelpful patterns. I can recognize how far I have come AND I can acknowledge how much work I still want to do. I believe this seemingly simple principle is a game changer for how we approach both ourselves and the world. In a nutshell, DBT helps us take big, intense emotions and relationships and navigate them in a way that helps them feel more manageable. 

Whereas DBT takes big emotions and helps them feel more manageable, Radically Open DBT is an offshoot of DBT that, in essence, helps us do the opposite. RO-DBT is helpful for people who are overcontrolled, or who maybe are a little too good at pushing down their feelings. RO-DBT helps us learn to be more expressive, less rigid in our thinking, and more connected to those around us.

Exposure and Response Prevention is an approach to therapy that challenges us to do things that are difficult for us. You might be thinking “why in the world would I want to do that?” And it’s a good question – but the thing is, we only use exposures to work towards things that we care about. We don’t do exposures just for the heck of it. For example, I’m really not a fan of snakes. BUT, my fear of snakes isn’t keeping me from anything in my life that’s important to me, so I don’t feel any need to challenge that fear at the moment. However, if my fear of snakes was keeping me from spending time in nature or taking my dogs on walks (both of which are things that I love), then it might be a different story. I would still really not like snakes and not be psyched about challenging that fear, but I might be more willing to do so if I would be moving towards something else I valued.