Annie Alpers (she/her)

After meeting with about 200 women and 100 men for therapy, it was hard to miss the prevalence of body image issues. After helping lead a body image issues group during one of my training years, I developed the idea that it is a societal rather than an individual problem. The individuality is simply the exact behaviors the individual uses to express the stress of societal over-focus on perfecting the body. Let's talk about that stress, and also about how to love your wonderful body.

I define relationships broadly to include romantic, friend/peer, workplace, family of origin, and many other relationships. Relationships play both powerfully positive and negative roles in all of our lives, and I have found difficult relationship dynamics to be at the core of many of the problems that bring my clients into therapy. For that reason, I consider relationship issues to be my main focus.

This has been one of the most heart-breaking and compelling parts of being a therapist. I have heard story after story of sexual assault and abuse, sometimes soon after it has happened, sometimes decades later. It is such a painful experience, and at the same time the people I work with who have gone through it are no less capable, multi-faceted, or themselves because of it. I notice it helps clients to talk openly about the experience rather than avoiding thinking about it.

I define relationships broadly to include romantic, friend/peer, workplace, and family of origin relationships. Relationships can be both powerfully positive and powerfully negative forces in our lives. Difficult-to-navigate relationship dynamics seem to be at the heart of many of the problems clients bring into therapy. For that reason, I consider relationship issues to be my main focus.

This has been one of the most heartbreaking and compelling parts of practicing therapy. I have heard story after story of sexual assault and abuse, sometimes soon after it happened, sometimes decades later. It is a deeply painful experience, but people who go through it are no less capable, multi-faceted, or themselves. There is a natural human urge to avoid thinking about it, but I find my clients are better served by discussing it openly with me and sometimes with other people in their lives.

In my very first year of clinical practice, within my first few intakes I noticed the near-universality of body image issues. Years later, after helping run a body image issues group, I developed the idea that the problem is societal, not individual: there is society-wide over-focus on "perfecting" the body, which puts great stress on individuals, who then express that stress in unique ways. Let's talk about the stress, and also how to shift focus to loving and caring deeply for our bodies.