Many individuals occasionally feel unhappy about their appearance, believing their thighs are too large, skin is blemished, or height is insufficient. Research indicates that it’s common for both women and, increasingly, men to harbor some negativity toward their looks. People often check their reflection, change hairstyles, and use makeup or other products to enhance their appearance. However, some individuals become significantly dissatisfied with their looks, leading to substantial interference in their lives.

Appearance concerns can adversely affect relationships, mood, finances, and health. While it would be ideal for everyone to feel positive about their looks consistently, we acknowledge that this is not a realistic expectation.

Read the article to learn to care less about your looks and more about the meaningful areas of your life.

Impact of Appearance Overconcern

Romantic, Family, and Social Relationships

Concerns about negative judgments regarding your appearance can significantly disrupt your relationships. This may lead to reduced socializing, increased time spent on personal grooming, and avoidance of romantic relationships and intimacy. These changes can result in feelings of sadness and loneliness due to limited contact with friends and fewer opportunities for positive interactions.

The preoccupation with your appearance may also hinder your enjoyment of time spent with family and friends. Constant worry about your looks can make it challenging to stay present and fully appreciate these experiences. Additionally, your loved ones may become frustrated if you frequently discuss your appearance concerns, leading to potential feelings of disappointment or irritation if they struggle to comprehend the significance of these issues or cannot provide a solution.

Work and Study

Worrying about your appearance can hinder your work or study. It may be hard to concentrate on tasks, causing everyday jobs to take longer. Anxiety about others judging your appearance negatively may make it challenging to go to work or attend classes. As a result, you might call in sick or skip classes, making it tough to pursue your goals.

Emotional Wellbeing and Quality of Life

Being overly concerned about your appearance can have a detrimental impact on your emotional well-being. If you are extremely dissatisfied with your looks, you may experience feelings of depression, anxiety, embarrassment, or even shame. These emotions may lead you to withdraw from social situations and enjoyable activities, especially if you feel uncomfortable in your body or anticipate negative judgments about your appearance from others (e.g., going to the beach, the gym, playing team sports, or dressing up for social events). This withdrawal can contribute to a further depressed mood as it restricts your opportunities for positive and enjoyable experiences, ultimately resulting in a limited and unfulfilling life.

Physical Health

Some individuals resort to physically harmful behaviors in their pursuit of an improved appearance. Actions like dieting, excessive exercise, vomiting, and misusing laxatives can severely impact physical health. Those engaging in such behaviors often experience low energy, disrupted sleep, hair loss, and compromised functioning of vital organs and hormone production.

Finances

The expenses associated with cleanses, health retreats, gym memberships, muscle-building supplements, and cosmetic products/procedures can accumulate rapidly, reaching hundreds or even thousands of dollars over time. Additionally, for individuals overly preoccupied with their appearance, frequent work absences may further contribute to these financial pressures.

How to Care Less About Your Appearance?

Train Your Attention

Those overly concerned about their looks often discover that their attention fixates on disliked aspects, hindering their ability to concentrate and enjoy daily experiences.

At times, individuals may believe that concentrating on looks is beneficial. However, upon questioning this belief, they often realize that focusing on their looks doesn’t yield any real benefits.

Attention training helps you to let go of thoughts about your appearance and bring your attention back to the present moment. 

Exercise 1: Focus on Everyday Tasks

You might have observed that during routine tasks, such as washing dishes or taking a shower, your mind tends to wander as these activities don’t demand much attention. These moments present excellent opportunities to enhance your focus. It’s beneficial to start by practicing attention strengthening during simpler tasks before applying it to more challenging situations where appearance concerns may arise. Once you’ve honed your ability to shift attention in mundane tasks, the next step is to practice this skill in more demanding scenarios, like during a gym class or at a social gathering.

Exercise 2: Delaying Appearance Thoughts

When attempting to shift your focus, you might find that your mind consistently returns to thoughts about your appearance. You may have tried to halt these thoughts through distraction or by instructing yourself not to dwell on them. Regrettably, trying to avoid thinking about something can paradoxically intensify those thoughts.

Delaying your appearance thoughts involves anticipating that thoughts about your looks will arise. However, once you recognize such thoughts, you make a conscious decision not to delve deeper into them at that moment. By refraining from pursuing the thought, you prevent it from escalating into more significant and distressing concerns. Instead, you opt to postpone contemplating your appearance until a later time, redirecting your attention to the present moment using your attention skills.

Make it a daily practice to employ this strategy until your focus on appearance diminishes. While it might appear straightforward, mastering this skill properly may take some time.

Reducing Appearance Checking and Reassurance Seeking

People dissatisfied with their looks often engage in frequent appearance checks or seek reassurance from others.

The more you scrutinize your looks, the more attuned you become to identifying perceived flaws. This heightened focus can exacerbate negative feelings about yourself, perpetuating a detrimental cycle.

To break free from this cycle, it’s essential to limit the frequency and duration of appearance checks or reassurance-seeking behaviors. Whether stopping abruptly or gradually decreasing these actions, reducing unhelpful checking behaviors can contribute to minimizing overconcern with your appearance, allowing you to concentrate on other, more meaningful aspects of your life.

Reducing Appearance-Altering Behaviors 

Individuals overly concerned and dissatisfied with their looks frequently try to enhance it through various appearance-altering actions. Engaging in these behaviors can be costly, time-consuming, and negatively affect physical health and mood.

The more you participate in these actions, the more fixated you become on your looks, increasing the likelihood of dissatisfaction with your looks. This reinforcement can strengthen the notion that appearance plays a significant role in shaping your self-perception.

Exercise 1: Stop immediately

You might find certain behaviors that you are ready to cease immediately, like discontinuing an unhealthy weight loss program or opting out of a specific cosmetic procedure.

Exercise 2: Stepladder Method

This approach is useful for behaviors related to altering appearance, especially those that are considered normal (e.g., styling your hair daily). Begin with one specific behavior and gradually decrease your involvement in appearance-altering actions using a series of steps.

Identify five steps, ranging from the easiest (Step 1) to the most challenging (Step 5), that will lead you toward your goal. Establish a timeframe for achieving your goal using this step-by-step approach. You can choose to take one step each day, or if that feels too demanding, you may opt to repeat each step daily for one week before progressing to the next one.

Exercise 3: Behavior Experiments

You may feel significant concern about reducing your appearance-altering behaviors, perhaps predicting negative outcomes. To determine the realism of these predictions, consider conducting a behavioral experiment. Similar to a scientist testing a hypothesis, behavioral experiments involve making changes to your appearance-altering behaviors and observing the actual outcomes. While this may require courage, it offers an opportunity to gather more accurate information about the validity of your beliefs.

Reverse the Cycle of Avoidance

Individuals overly concerned about their looks often steer clear of situations to minimize the risk of negative judgments and alleviate distress about their bodies.

Avoidance and safety behaviors perpetuate appearance concerns and can significantly impact mood and relationships.

By avoiding situations, you miss out on opportunities for positive and meaningful experiences. Additionally, by avoiding these situations, your fears remain untested, reinforcing your beliefs. This avoidance diminishes your confidence in coping and increases anxiety about facing such situations in the future, creating a vicious cycle.

To break this cycle of avoidance, it’s crucial to start approaching feared situations, either gradually or directly. Addressing avoidance behaviors will decrease the impact of appearance concerns, ultimately enhancing your quality of life.

Summary

To diminish overconcern with appearance, it’s essential to:

• Release preoccupation with your appearance.
• Minimize unhelpful checking and reassurance-seeking behaviors.
• Curtail avoidance and safety behaviors by engaging in new and meaningful experiences.
• Cut back on excessive use of appearance-altering behaviors.
• Align your life with your values.
• Commit to accepting your appearance as it is.

Reducing appearance concerns requires time and consistent practice. Anticipate setbacks, and instead of dwelling on them, utilize this article to help get back on track.

Keep in mind that change is challenging but undoubtedly worthwhile!

Reference: Appearance concerns. Appearance Overconcern Self-Help Resources – Information Sheets, Worksheets & Workbooks. (n.d.). https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/Resources/Looking-After-Yourself/Appearance-Concerns