Body Image Coaching

Adolescents often grapple with self-identity, societal pressures, and the desire for acceptance. Negative words can deeply impact their self-esteem, potentially leading to mental health struggles. How we talk to our teens when we are coaching them is important to help then understand their own issues and where they are at in their journey to a better relationship with their body.

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Once adolescents are on the programme, we show them what stage they are at in their healing journey.  This helps them to understand how far they have come and what inner work needs to be done. From this, they can measure their success through a visual platform. 

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STAGE ONE - THE ZOMBIE STAGE

 

On the 5th workshop, we show clients  the  ‘Zombie stage’ of their healing journey. This is the stage they were at before starting this programme as they were unaware of their beliefs and habits which caused them mental health difficulties. We call this the 'zombie stage' because students have an awakening and go from the ‘zombie stage’ to stage two 'awareness stage'. Once at stage two, they are unable to go back to stage one as they have become fully aware of how they are treating themselves. This means that they are progressing in a BIG way!

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STAGE TWO - AWARENESS STAGE

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 This is where, once students have gone through the programme, or are going through it, they can see clearly, how they are treating themselves, what their internal dialogue looks like and all of those core beliefs and habits held inside of them including their core identity. Once at this stage, they can never return to ‘zombie stage’ around their body image and this stage is can be insightful and upsetting at the same time. We take it slowly with clients to ensure that they get the support they need while going though these shifts. And when they are ready, they move on to stage three, the 'practice stage'.

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STAGE THREE - THE PRACTICE STAGE

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The practice stage. This is where they gather all they have learned in the programme, and start to use it, to change their mindset. We often call this the ‘opening of a can of worms’ stage. Imagine a cog inside your mind, going anti clockwise. Then we come along and explain that your cog is going in a direction that doesn’t lead you to happiness. Then we ask you to stop the cog and get it moving clockwise. As you can imagine, this is extremely hard and many things will surface as your mind tackles you to the ground in an attempt to keep the cog going anti-clockwise.

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The secret to this stage is perseverance, practice and patience. Without these three PPP's, your cog will retreat back to old ways. Getting an adolescent to turn their cogs clockwise can be challenging, but that is why we are here. This is by far, the hardest stage and we always say to our students, do this is small doses. Steady and persistently wins the race. The great thing about this stage is that clients can flit between stages 2-3 until they enter stage four, 'mastery stage'.

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STAGE FOUR - MASTERY STAGE

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What’s great about all these stages is that a client can physically measure their progress and they like this. Having only four stages to recovery, helps them to focus and feel nearer to the finish line. We've seen this first hand. Knowledge of this stage brings them hope and we support them all the way to this stage. This stage looks like when a client let’s go of their debilitating habits, when they have practiced their new beliefs to the point that their new beliefs start to feel real and right. This stage is the stage where clients claim their life back and tend to forget about their past problems. That’s when they reach the next stage.

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The next stage is lifelong. It’s practicing everything they have learned and keeping up with this throughout their lives. Practicing self kindness, speaking kindly to that inner critique and educating it to love one’s self. We show them how.