Body Impolitic
June 9, 2008 by Tracee Sioux
Filed under Parenting
Laurie Toby Edison of Body Impolitic asked me to guest blog. I submitted Body Image: No Name Calling about how I try to teach Ainsley that the habit of self-deprecation is wrong and carries a real cost to the self-esteem.
Thanks to Laurie for the opportunity. Laurie will be sitting on the BlogHer panel about body image with me in San Francisco in July.
Please stop by and read it while I decompress from my political trip and spend extra time with my kids – they missed me.
There’s another reason to leave the kids every once in a while – you can’t beat the experience of seeing them run towards you with pure joy to see you. Who else is that happy when they see me? You miss that experience you never leave home.
Your article about “Body Image: No Name Calling” is superb — and unfortunately totally NOT the way I was brought up.
Which is why I now have huge issues (not just from mild self-deprecation – that would be fairly easy to deal with) but from serious, constant chipping away at my self worth and self image by my own family (mother, father, younger brother) while I was a child — which was ALLOWED (not encouraged, but just allowed) ….. and then bullying at school etc.
Only now, as I explore these issues in my own blog am I beginning to realise how much negative conditioning I received as a child (so much of it has been so well repressed by my memory banks).
I will be linking your blog / article in my own blog very very soon (possibly later tonight) as it relates *sooooo* precisely to things I have been writing about in my own blog (all the negative conditioning I received).
Many thanks,
Sharon
I’m so glad you found it helpful.
Many women take the criticism from their childhoods and apply it themselves. Basically, we become the mean and critical parent or sibling in our own heads with self-deprecation.
While there may be different degrees of this habit and different degrees of self-acceptance issues the one thing I know is that if you continue to self-deprecate you won’t be able to feel good about yourself. You can’t change how they treated you, but you have ultimate control over how YOU treat YOU.
Thanks so much for linking up. I appreciate your kind words.
Tracee
Small addendum — it’s not in my blog tonight (which is now just an update on my weight) but it is going to be in one of my next blogs very SOON because I still have some more words to blurb about the negative conditioning of my childhood.
I’ll let you know when it’s up as a post — it is definitely one of my “in the pipeline” posts !!
Best wishes,
Sharon
I use to use self deprecating humor to mask my insecuriteies. Until I saw someone else do it and I could see it from a different standpoint. Underneath the joke is really someone elses opinion about you that you absoulety have to clear out of your conscienes and allow the real you to exist
deep.
Sable that’s profoundly insightful. I never thought of it like that, but I think you’re right.
My siblings used to call me buffalo butt and hippo hips and thunder thighs. When I have self deprecated I used almost the exact same language.
What I great insight.