Gaslighting: The Conversations We Have With Our Bodies

Every day, all day, we are in dialogue with our bodies. Our bodies are communicating with us constantly, and it is through this communication that we are able to keep ourselves alive. So what does it look like when we add a third party to this dialogue? Diet culture becomes an aggressive third party dictating our responses to our bodies. We begin to speak to our bodies on its behalf, rather than in a genuine effort to stay in touch. The problem is, this oppressive mediator isn’t here to look after us or our bodies. It’s tricked us into thinking it has either of our best interests at heart. But we’ve also let it trick us. We have taken on the role of abuser and the victims are our bodies.

We abuse, we manipulate, and we dismiss our bodies’ desperate attempts for communication, and often even ignore their cries for help. I know, I know. It alls sounds very dramatic and harsh. Surely we couldn’t be treating ourselves so terribly. Surely we wouldn’t be capable of such abuse. But we are. It just happens so quickly that we are able to ignore it and sweep it under the rug. And what happens when we sweep things under the rug, day after day, meal after meal, workout after work out, glass of water after glass of water? We end up with a pile so big we can’t see past it. We end up with a mountain separating us from our bodies and cutting off any hopes for effective communication between mind and body.

The tool of choice for building this mountain of separation? Gaslighting.
Gaslighting typically occurs when someone manipulates another person into questioning their own reality, the validity of their feelings or experiences, or their judgement and perception. It’s discussed most heavily surrounding the topic of abusive relationships because we typically think of this as something that one person does to another. But diet culture, whether it is through overt diets like Atkins or Jenny Craig, or more covert diets that prefer to call themselves “lifestyle changes” or “wellness,” teaches us to continually gaslight our bodies, changing the relationship between mind and body from mutually constructive and protective, to intensely abusive and manipulative. We often even go so far as to label our body a failure without even realizing it.

Just like gaslighting between individuals makes it harder for the victim to communicate their feelings, experiences, wants, and needs, the way we gaslight our bodies through diet culture renders our bodies less capable of communicating their needs to us. They adjust and become used to the abuse we inflict upon them. They learn to limit unnecessary functions. They use what little they are offered to simply stay alive, leaving us without our true abilities to manage our emotions, handle conflict, or even think clearly. We enter survival mode and lose any hope we could have of thriving.

This gaslighting is typically unspoken. It happens quickly and internally and often becomes so engrained that it eventually is automatic. I’m going to lay out some examples of how this occurs, fill in some of that internal dialogue with real dialogue to more clearly demonstrate the way diet culture has trained us to expertly gaslight ourselves.

1) Body says, ““I’m hungry and I don’t feel well.” Mind replies, “You must just be thirsty, have some water.”
When we drink water after receiving hunger cues, we are communicating to our bodies that they cannot possibly know what their own needs are. We are letting them know that we know better what they need than they do, and that their perception of their needs cannot be trusted. They can no longer be sure that they know what they need at all.

2) Body says, “I need food.” Mind says, “You don’t start eating until noon.”
When we engage in time restrictions surrounding when we can or cannot eat, we tell our bodies that what they want or need matters, but only some of the time. The rest of the time, it doesn’t matter how they feel. Hungry, dizzy, lightheaded, distracted. Our minds feel it too—irritability, sensitivity to stress, fuzzy thinking. Our minds have consented to this suffering, but our bodies have not. They do not, and can not, understand why their needs are not being met, and they have no choice in the matter. They can no longer trust our minds.

3)Body says, “I’m still hungry.” Mind says, “You’ve just eaten, you shouldn’t be hungry.” When we shame our bodies for feeling hungry too soon, or not feeling full enough from
what our minds have labeled “enough food,” we are communicating to our bodies that they have failed us. They have to learn to make due with what they don’t feel is enough, because we are deciding for them what “enough” is.

4) Body says, “I don’t feel up to a workout.” Mind says, “We have to.”
Again, when we force ourselves to exercise beyond what our bodies can handle
reasonably comfortably, we teach our bodies that their feelings are unimportant. This shows up when we show up at the gym sick, tired, too sore, injured, or at risk. We send the message that it doesn’t matter if our bodies feel like shit. And again, we are sending the message that these feelings are failures.

5) Body says, “I’m hungry.” Mind says, “I must be giving you the wrong foods.”
When we blame the foods we eat for our experience of hunger, when we cut out food groups unnecessarily, we are telling our bodies they don’t know how to do their jobs. We are calling them incompetent, ineffective. Despite food being filling, food is not actually meant to keep us from being hungry. On the contrary, hunger is around to ensure that we keep eating food. Our bodies’ only jobs are to keep us alive, and hunger is a key piece of that. When we take on the belief that we aren’t meant to get hungry, we are telling our bodies that their jobs are irrelevant.

So what does this all add up to? It adds up to the mountain I discussed earlier. The separation of mind and body. A lack of cooperation and compassion. It teaches our bodies to fear our minds. It encourages them to make themselves as small and as quiet as possible, and that we have no intention of honoring or respecting them. So many of us go through life desperately wondering why we don’t have a good relationship with our bodies. Through our attempts to control our bodies, we eliminate any trust we have with ourselves, and with it any hope for a good relationship between the mind and body. The body gets the brunt of the abuse, but we all know that the mind has to hear it, too. And all of us, mind and body, deserve better.