I would like her to tell what she thinks would be different in her life if she had the body she wants - what would she be able to do, how would other people react to her, how would her relationships be? That could open for a conversation about how she could achieve that with her authentic body ...
Yes. One may find that one FEELS discomfort, which is the body's way of trying to get us to pay attention to something--maybe we're running a story that is harmful to our own well-being, for example, or maybe we are too tired and too hungry. And, trying to get the proverbial Other to somehow "authenticate" an image we are trying to project, to "see" us as we would like to be seen, is doomed to fail, because there is no controlling what others are seeing, in part because they are responding to their own stories, their own experience, their own judgments, etc. People don't "see" us even when we are being our whole selves either, for the same reason. The only way to settle this paradox is to tend to our embodiment in a loving, accepting way, and with perhaps an attitude of curiosity, discovery! Because, we humans are richly textured, varied, and vastly complex! A beautiful mystery! Any changes one makes to one's physical being in order to try and be perceived as a particular something are perforce crude and oversimplified. Just as a mask could never truly emulate an enlivened human face. Never.
I would like her to tell what she thinks would be different in her life if she had the body she wants - what would she be able to do, how would other people react to her, how would her relationships be? That could open for a conversation about how she could achieve that with her authentic body ...
Yes. One may find that one FEELS discomfort, which is the body's way of trying to get us to pay attention to something--maybe we're running a story that is harmful to our own well-being, for example, or maybe we are too tired and too hungry. And, trying to get the proverbial Other to somehow "authenticate" an image we are trying to project, to "see" us as we would like to be seen, is doomed to fail, because there is no controlling what others are seeing, in part because they are responding to their own stories, their own experience, their own judgments, etc. People don't "see" us even when we are being our whole selves either, for the same reason. The only way to settle this paradox is to tend to our embodiment in a loving, accepting way, and with perhaps an attitude of curiosity, discovery! Because, we humans are richly textured, varied, and vastly complex! A beautiful mystery! Any changes one makes to one's physical being in order to try and be perceived as a particular something are perforce crude and oversimplified. Just as a mask could never truly emulate an enlivened human face. Never.