Body Image & Self-Worth Therapy in Arlington, VA

It’s exhausting to spend so much of your life thinking about your body.

Maybe how you feel about yourself changes depending on how you think you look that day. You find yourself comparing your body to other people, picking apart photos of yourself, or believing you’d finally feel more confident if you could just change something about your appearance.

You may know logically that your worth is about so much more than your body, but knowing that hasn’t made the thoughts go away. You’re tired of how much space they take up and want to feel more comfortable being yourself without your appearance having so much power over how you feel.

Illustration of a person looking into a mirror with repeated reflections, representing self-exploration, identity, and deeper self-understanding.

You May Be Here Because

You May Be Here Because

Body image struggles can affect much more than how you feel when you look in the mirror.

  • You check your body in mirrors, photos, or reflections throughout the day.

  • You compare your body to other people without even meaning to.

  • Getting dressed can change your mood or make you want to cancel plans altogether.

  • You avoid photos or spend way too much time analyzing them afterward.

  • A comment about your appearance can stay with you for days.

  • You have a hard time being present because part of your attention is always on how your body looks.

  • You keep thinking you’ll feel more confident once your body changes.

  • You’re tired of your appearance having so much influence over whether you feel good enough.

Understanding Body Image & Self-Worth

None of us develops our relationship with our body in a vacuum. We’re surrounded by messages about which bodies are considered attractive, healthy, disciplined, or worthy, and we learn those messages from family, peers, healthcare providers, social media, and the culture around us.

For people in larger or marginalized bodies, this can also include very real experiences of judgment, discrimination, or being treated differently because of your body. It makes sense that those experiences can affect how safe or comfortable you feel being seen.

Over time, it can become easy to connect how you look with how you feel about yourself. Your body becomes something to monitor, compare, improve, or control rather than simply the place where you get to live your life.

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Body Image and Self-Worth Therapy at Soul Bloom

We’ll start by understanding your relationship with your body and the experiences that have shaped it. We might look at the messages you’ve received about weight and appearance, the ways you evaluate or check your body, and what tends to happen emotionally when you don’t feel good about how you look.

I also want to help you experience your body as more than something to evaluate from the outside. That can mean paying more attention to how you feel in your body, what it needs, what it allows you to experience, and what it’s like to be present without constantly monitoring how you look.

My work is weight-neutral and informed by Health at Every Size® (HAES®), Intuitive Eating, and fat liberation. I won’t make assumptions about your health, behaviors, or goals based on your body size. We can talk openly about weight, food, body changes, health, and the complicated feelings that can come with all of them.

Over time, body image can take up less space. You may still have difficult body-image days, but they don’t have to determine whether you go to the event, take the picture, wear the clothes you like, or feel worthy of being seen.

Back view of a person with a bald head, wearing striped underwear, with the phrase "WEIGHT IS NOT AN INDICATOR OF HEALTH" painted on their back, surrounded by illustrated flowers and butterflies.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Body image concerns don’t always mean you have an eating disorder. But if thoughts about food, weight, exercise, or your body are taking up a significant amount of your time or affecting the way you eat, socialize, exercise, or move through your day, it may be worth exploring more closely.

    We can talk about what you’re experiencing and determine what kind of support makes the most sense. If food and eating are a significant part of what you’re struggling with, you can also learn more about my Eating Disorder Recovery work here.

  • Yes.

    My approach is weight-inclusive and informed by Health at Every Size® (HAES®). I believe people of all sizes deserve dignity, respect, compassionate healthcare, and the opportunity to explore their relationship with their body without assuming that changing their weight is the solution.

    Therapy can also be a place to name and process the very real effects of weight stigma and fatphobia rather than treating those experiences as something you simply need to think differently about.

  • Yes.

    You don’t need to arrive at therapy with a particular set of beliefs or make certain choices about your body in order to work with me.

    My role isn’t to tell you what decisions you should make. We can explore what is influencing those decisions, how they affect your relationship with food and your body, and what it might look like to make choices from a place of greater self-trust, compassion, and alignment with your values rather than shame or fear.

  • Depending on your goals, I may integrate EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Health at Every Size® (HAES®), Intuitive Eating principles, mindfulness, nervous system regulation, self-compassion, embodiment work, and trauma-informed therapy.

    Our work will always be individualized to your experiences and what feels most supportive for you.Rather than rushing the process, we’ll work together at a pace that supports lasting healing.