4.1 Marketing

Customer perception affects not only those consumers who purchase your products or services, but also anyone who sees your product or service without engaging in a transaction. That’s why it’s important for all entrepreneurs to understand how their ideal customer––as well as the general public––might perceive their company. With both audiences in mind, small business owners can then craft a brand to move potential customers to action and encourage non-customers to share their perception with others who may be searching for a company just like yours.

What defines Customer Perception

A number of factors affect your customers’ perception of your business, including advertising, social media, customer service, reviews and critiques, and public relations. Involved in all of these factors are four primary functions that create a response in your audience. First, your audience reacts to a sensation (how does your product or service stimulate the customer’s senses), which leads to capturing their attention (how effective is your campaign when using selective or subliminal perception marketing), which leads to initiating an interpretation (how your brand makes them feel), which leads to branding retention (how your product or service will stay in your audience’s mind long after they have moved on from your marketing campaign or proximity to your business).

Customer perception theory takes a closer look at what motivates your audience to engage with your company and take action. Examining that motivation can help small business owners determine how to approach their advertising, customer feedback, public relations, social media marketing, and customer service policies.

How to Use Customer Perception to Improve Sales

The general public and your ideal customer are equally influenced by your brand, and it is your brand that drives customer perception. As a small business owner, influencing your customers’ perception of your company in a positive way often translates into more customers acting on their perception by either purchasing your product or service or by recommending your business to someone in search of it.

Here are a few recommendations on how to engage your customers and strengthen your brand, which will, in turn, affect their perception of your business.

1. Social Media Marketing

Social media is a valuable and relatively inexpensive marketing tool that can deliver significant ROI when managed well. But it’s important not to spread your focus too thin and try to market on every social media platform. Instead, examine which platforms serve your business the best.

Social media platform options available today are varied, with new networks popping up regularly, so you need to be discerning when it comes to choosing the right social media platforms for your business. Some platforms are better suited for fast customer service and public relations responses, while others are better for powerful short visual campaigns that illustrate your product or services succinctly. Develop a strategy to craft a perception that meets your ideal customers’ needs, and implement it where they like to chat, share and engage.

2. Customer Service

There’s an old anecdote about how a satisfied customer will tell 2 or 3 people about their experience with a company, but a dissatisfied customer will tell 8 to 10 people. What’s the lesson? Every interaction can make or break your business, so never take any customer interaction for granted. However, it’s also important to remember that quality customer service also includes setting boundaries on what customers can expect from you in a timely manner, as well as incorporating their feedback before larger problems arise.

3. Community Engagement

A common complaint shared among consumers today is how businesses that do not interact with a specific community for the majority of the year will suddenly seem to appear with massive advertising campaigns and higher visibility when it’s financially or socially convenient. (For example, large banks, and tech companies during annual Pride parades in June.) To avoid being labeled a fair-weather friend, be visible in your community and in your customers’ social circle throughout the year. Launch new campaigns and support community events “out of season” to show your audience that you share their values, beliefs, and attitudes all year-round.

4. Selective Perception Marketing

It’s virtually impossible for customers to pay attention to all the advertising they’re bombarded with every day, so most people filter out the messages for products or services that don’t interest them at that time. Companies who tailor their marketing strategy to gget their product in front of the potential customers who aren’t filtering out their industry are utilizing selective perception marketing, and the results are often effective. For example, placing ads for bookkeeping or small business accounting services in local coffee shops and co-working spaces to be seen by young entrepreneurs who may need your services is more cost-effective than placing an ad in a local newspaper.

5. Your Unique Selling Proposition

One of the smartest ways to cultivate a positive customer perception is to accentuate and promote what makes your business different from the competition. Your audience is constantly inundated with advertising, making it hard to break through the wall of sensory overload surrounding them daily. But it doesn’t always take a larger budget or viral marketing campaigns to reach your ideal customer. Sometimes all you need is to know what you can offer that your potential customer wants, but your competitor does not, i.e., your unique selling proposition.

For some businesses like independent bookstores, the answer can be as simple as personalized recommendations, a sense of community and a display of awareness of what your customer needs in times of change and adversity.

Although seemingly obvious to many entrepreneurs starting a new business, customer perception can be a difficult field to navigate. Logic tells us that a great idea coupled with a strong business plan, expert functionality, and efficient customer service should be enough to lead us on the path of entrepreneurial success. Yet reality teaches us that there’s a reason why 50 percent of businesses fail in the first 5 years, and customer perception often plays in a role in that unfortunate outcome. But with careful examination of your audience’s response to your business’s marketing and customer engagement, you may be savvy enough to see your company succeed where others fail.

4.2 Corporate Imaging

Business organizations are always faced also with the issues of imaging. There are cases where people do business with some organizations and leave out others even at lower prices. There must be a solid strategy to build a corporate image and identity that will endure.

4.3 Continuous Improvement on Image

This image must be continuously improved upon existing images both offline and digital. Digital imaging is so important in our days because of the advent of the internet especially social media. There must be a social media strategy for your company and to set a target with respect to that.

4.4 It’s in your Hand

With this piece we have dealt exhaustively with the subject matter. Please go use the knowledge and information you have acquired because your life is in your hand!

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3.1 Reverberation of Image

Every individual is a broadcasting station. We are sending and receiving signals continuously every second of the day. Consequently, you are communicating 24/7 even when you are not talking.

There are mainly four ways we communicate;

• Your countenance
• Your dressing
• Your gestures
• Your voice

You must make sure the all of these are in congruence with your thoughts and intended purpose. The seat of interaction is the mind. So these four channels are channels through which you communicate your thoughts.

3.2 Influence of Images

I have personally come to acknowledge that the signals you are exhuming does not only affect you but primarily other people in your environment  and that’s why the resentment. If you put on a positive outlook and look nice and have good social skills and well articulate speech you wont lack commendation. Negative images are so detrimental to the people around you. So its not all about you. At least for the sake of others, put up a positive image.

3.3 Imprinting of Images

Its wisdom to concentrate on your strength and work on improving your weakness. Now that you have a great image please keep perpetuating it unto perfection. Keep working on the images better; it may require that you put up a smile throughout the day at work or get new set of clothing you are comfortable with, maintain a professional posture, be a team player or take a language program of public speaking course to enable to gasp the intricacies of the language of use.

3.4 Communication of New Image

Make the change obvious to all; before you know it people will start commending you because of the noticeable changes they have seen in you. Do you know the importance of that? It builds in you a positive self image and confidence to do more, its your feedback system so treasure it. Let everybody notice that you are making effort to change and see how some will be willing to help you change and some may them be bold enough to let you know how they struggle to let you know but couldn’t communicate it to you. Those words are soul soothing and will help you do more.

Wrong appearance connotes from research that you

• Disorganized
• Cant multi task
• Un intelligent
• Can’t work under pressure
• Poor self manager and should not be given more responsibilities

For obvious reasons work on your appearances!

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For those who really struggle with self-image, there are many types of therapy that can help them improve their self-image and align it more closely with reality.

Therapy modalities that can help include:

• Traditional psychoanalysis: A long-term form of treatment that focuses on changing problematic behaviors, feelings, and thoughts by discovering their unconscious meanings and motivations.
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): a form of therapy that combines cognitive therapy (focusing on what people think and how to change the way they think) with behavioral therapy (an approach that focuses on changing people’s behavior more than their thoughts) to try to change both thoughts and behaviors.
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): a five-component form of CBT that emphasizes the learning of new skills and strategies for a healthy, happy life.
• Client-Centered Therapy: a type of therapy in which the client—not the therapist—is considered the “expert” on their own life and the therapist focuses on providing interest, concern, care, and respect (APA, n.d.).

Depending on the diagnosis you have (if any), your regular treatment can also help with developing a healthy self-image.

Words to Note

Meditations can be incredibly helpful in boosting your self-esteem and helping you build and maintain a healthy sense of self. Give these meditations a try when you have a few minutes to spare:

“Self-esteem is like a battery. When the battery is charged, the person is positive; when the battery is low, the individual is negative.” Lilly Harry

“A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success.” Joyce Brothers

“The ‘self-image’ is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self-image and you change the personality and the behavior.” Maxwell Maltz

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. all the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” Patrick Rothfuss

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but … life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” Gabriel García Márquez

“Seeing, feeling, thinking, believing—these are the stages of how we change our style on the outside and our self-image on the inside.” Stacey London

“Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.” Malcolm S. Forbes

“Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.” Eleanor Roosevelt

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How to Address and Change Self-Image Issues: 8 Exercises to Increase Self-Image

As with most changes in the way we think and feel, there is no quick-fix to improving self-image; however, the good news is that there are things you can do! Try the exercises below to give yourself a boost in self-image.

Troll Travels – Who Am I? Worksheet

One of the best ways to work on your self-image is to gain some self-knowledge; use this worksheet to learn more about you!

It is broken into two parts:

1. Ask yourself “Who am I?”
2. Go on a journey with your new self-knowledge

In Part 1, you are instructed to write down everything that makes you who you are—the good, the bad, and everything in between. As a hint, you should definitely write down the bad ones too, because you’ll need them in Part 2!

Now, on to the journey – imagine that on this journey, you will cross three bridges. At each bridge, Trevor the Troll is waiting to exact his toll – 30% of your qualities!

That’s right, every time you cross a bridge you will have to give him nearly a third of your qualities. This is why writing down so many negative ones comes in handy: now you can dump them!

Once you reach the end of your journey, you will only have 10% of your qualities left. These are your most valued and most important qualities, and the ones that you should nurture and exercise.

Through this short exercise, you will get a better idea of who you are and what your qualities are—both good and bad—and you will learn which qualities you value most. With this information in hand, you can build a more positive self-image.

List 10 Things You Love About Yourself

This is a simple exercise, but one that can be very powerful.

All you need to do is list 10 things you love about yourself! Yes, this can be harder than it seems, but actively seeking out the positive in yourself will make it much easier to see yourself in a positive light.

If you reach 10 and have more to list, keep writing them down! It won’t hurt to have extra things to love about yourself, after all.

List 10 Skills You Possess

Building a better self-image isn’t just about loving ourselves though, it’s about building ourselves up in each of the self-image dimensions. This exercise can help you boost your self-imagine in the skills dimension.

Grab a pen and a piece of paper and list 10 skills you possess. These skills can be anything you’re good at, like roller-skating, working with Excel spreadsheets, making shy people comfortable in group situations, training dogs new tricks, or painting.

Write down at least 10 skills. However, if you write down 10 skills and still have more to say—keep going!

Also, for an extra boost to your self-image, include a brief note that explains how other people have benefitted or might benefit from this skill. This will help you see it as a valuable skill, and to see yourself as a worthwhile person.

List 5 Achievements of Which You Are Proud

Another list exercise that can help is writing down at least five things that you are proud of yourself for doing or accomplishing. These achievements can be big things, like winning a national competition, or smaller things, like acing a test.

The achievement itself doesn’t matter as much as the key point to the exercise—reminding yourself of what you are capable of and challenging yourself to rise to the occasion next time you run into an obstacle.

For extra self-image boosting, try writing a detailed account of each achievement you note.

List 3 Occasions Where You Overcame Adversity

Now, put together a list of situations in which you overcame some kind of adversity. The adversity could be anything from institutional and systemic adversity, like a bias against your gender or racial group, to an intensely personal adversity, like your anxiety or depression.

Write down the details of each of these three occasions and use the written record to remind yourself of your strength, your resilience, and all that you are capable of.

Again, if you can think of more than 3 occasions, keep going until you run out of things to write about.

List 5 People Who Have Helped You

We all need a little help to get by sometimes, and it doesn’t make us any less capable or valuable! In fact, depending on how you look at it, it might mean that you are even more valuable a person than you thought – if others find you worthy enough for their assistance, then there must be something great in you!

For each person, write a detailed account of how they helped you and think about the good they must see in you. Brainstorm some things that these people might have seen in you – like kindness, conscientiousness, or natural talent – and add it to your own image of yourself.

If you can think of more than 5, keep the list going until you run out of people to list!

List 5 People Who You Have Helped

On the flipside, take a few minutes to write down 5 people who you have helped at some point. It doesn’t need to be a giant gesture, just think about all the ways you have helped others—cheering a friend up when he or she was having a bad day, giving some money to a family member who was down on his or her luck or acting as a reference for someone to help them get their dream job or move into a great new place.

Write down what happened, how you helped them, and the ways they benefitted from your help. Think about this important point: the fact that you can help others demonstrates that you are someone with value to offer others.

Add this fact to your mental catalog and your view of yourself – that you have value and you share that value with others when you lend a hand. Keep this in mind as you go forward and continue to help others.

List 50 Things You Appreciate About Your Life

This is a big one, and perhaps the most time- and effort-intensive one as well, but it can have a profound effect on your self-esteem, your worldview, and your view of yourself.

Although gratitude is a great thing to work on experiencing more often, this list goes beyond gratitude to appreciation. Appreciation involves taking the time to understand how you have benefitted from the good things that have happened to you in your life, making it easy and natural to feel grateful and positive about yourself and your life.

An important part of appreciating is to share your appreciation with others. Feel free to share that appreciation with those on your list, and commit to sharing your appreciation more often as you go forward. It will help you realize how lucky you are and how many good things you have in your life, which is an important thing to keep in mind as you build and maintain a more positive self-image.

Of course, if you can think of more than 50 things, keep listing them until you run out!

Each of the “list” exercises above was shared on the Live Your True Story Blog.

 How to Help Build a Positive Self-Image in Child Development

If you are raising a child or teaching a classroom full of them, you might be wondering how you can contribute to a healthy, positive self-image in those children. Luckily, there are ways to go about this important task! Try the activities outlined below with your children and watch as they develop a strong, healthy sense of self.

7 Activities for Developing Self-Image in Preschoolers

Jean Merrill from the Strong Kids series on the A Fine Parent website shares 7 activities you can do to help your preschooler build a positive self-image.

1. Create a Sense of Belonging to Your Family

This is the most important thing you can do to help your child build a healthy self-image. Without healthy roots, your child will struggle to develop a healthy self-image.

To create this important sense of belonging, try using simple inclusive statements like, “We are the Smiths!” (but substitute your last name for “Smiths”). This helps even very young children understand that they have a safe place in their family.

2. Invite Values into Your Family

Build on these inclusive statements by adding a bit more to them. It’s easy to turn them into “value declarations” with a simple expansion. These value declarations reinforce the sense of belonging and help your child understand your family’s most important values, boosting their sense of self.

To do this, turn your statement of inclusion (e.g., “We are the Smiths!”) into a value declaration, like:

• We are the Smiths and we are problem solvers!
• We are the Smiths and we believe community service is important.
• We are proud, even though we are quirky.

3. Use Value Declarations to Set Lofty Expectations

You can use declarations like these to set high (but achievable) expectations of your children and your family.

Saying something like “Our family dinners are a chance to decompress with those around who love us” or “We have so many things to be grateful for” will help even the youngest children understand what is important to your family and what is expected of them: to participate in meaningful family moments and to show gratitude for everything they have.

4. Get the “Scoop” by Encouraging the “Dish”

As your child ages, you can incorporate more exercises and activities to help them maintain that positive self-image they built.

Encourage your child to share with you, even if others might frown on it. For example, Jean Merrill notes that her children loved to share “who got their card flipped” for bad behavior at school. Although some might think of it as “tattling”, Merrill appreciated that they were willing to share their observations and encouraged them to continue sharing what they saw during their day.

5. Take the Teachable Moments

Once your child is sharing these sorts of observations with you, take advantage of the situation and use them as a teachable moment.

First, talk about why the behavior was inappropriate, how the behavior affected the child and the rest of the class, and how your child felt about it.

This invites an opportunity to talk about how certain behaviors are not consistent with family values. Merrill suggests saying something like, “[Classmate] sure is lucky to have you as an example of how to [better behavior].” This lets your child know what is desirable behavior and tells them that they are a good example of this desirable behavior, something they can add to their self-image.

6. Use Descriptive Praise

Make sure to help them learn how to have positive self-talk later in life by using descriptive praise.

Rather than saying something generic like “You did good!” tell them exactly what they did and why it was good. For example, you might say, “Wow, you wiped down the table without even being asked. That shows initiative. I love it!”

Using this descriptive praise will help your child know what is good behavior and praiseworthy, and make them feel that being good and praiseworthy is achievable.

7. Adopt the “It Takes a Village” Approach

Use any tools available to encourage your child to maintain their positive sense of self and work on continuing to grow in healthy directions.

Continue to affirm values, reinforce positive behavior choices, and help your child differentiate good and bad behavior, and embrace the assistance of anyone around who might be able to help (Merrill, 2016).

How to Help Build a Positive Self-Image in Adolescents

It’s always best to start early, but it’s also never too late to start! If you are raising a teenager or helping to guide a young adult through that precarious time in their lives as a teacher, counselor, family member, or another important adult in their life, keep these activities and resources in mind. 

Gratitude Journal: Three Good Things

Encouraging your teenager to build a positive worldview and be more grateful for the things around him or her is also a great way to encourage their positive self-image.

The worksheet is split into seven sections, one per day of the week, and each day has three prompts for good things your teen can write about.

For example,

Day 1 has:

• One good thing that happened to me today…
• Something good that I saw someone do…
• Today I had fun when…

Day 2 gives these prompts:

• Something I accomplished today…
• Something funny that happened today…
• Someone I was thankful for today…

Help your teen be a bit more positive and a bit more grateful by having them fill out this worksheet for one week. Their newfound gratitude will help them see the good in themselves, in those around them, and the world in general.

Strengths Exploration

Discovering strengths is a sure way to boost your self-image, especially for teens who may not have as much experience and self-knowledge as you do.

Encourage them to use this worksheet to figure out some of their own strengths.

At the top, the worksheet shares this important point: “Those who know their strengths and use them frequently tend to have more success in several areas. They feel happier, have better self-esteem, and are more likely to accomplish their goals.”

Next, it instructs the user to circle their strengths from the big list below, adding some in the blank spaces if necessary.

The strengths listed include things like:

• Wisdom
• Fairness
• Ambition
• Common Sense
• Creativity
• Cooperation
• Assertiveness
• Forgiveness
• Spirituality
• Adventurousness

Once they have their strengths circled, there are three further pages to the worksheet that they can use to help them figure out where they have used their strengths and where they can use them in the future.

First, they will explore their strengths in Relationships, then in a Profession (school counts here), and then in Personal Fulfillment.

For each section, they will respond to these three prompts:

1. List the strengths you possess that help you in your relationships/in your profession/achieve personal fulfillment.
2. Describe a specific time your strengths were able to help you in a relationship/your profession/with personal fulfillment.
3. Describe two new ways you could use your strengths in relationships/in your professional life/for personal fulfillment.

Completing this worksheet will help your teen discover their strengths, gain some self-knowledge, and plan for the future – all activities that can boost their self-image.

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One of the earliest mentions of any type of theory about self-image came from renowned psychologist Morris Rosenberg. His 1965 book Society and the Adolescent Self-Image was one of the first in-depth explorations of the concept, and it also provided one of the most-cited psychology scales ever: the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. The book itself has been cited in peer-reviewed publications over 35,000 times (as of December 2nd, 2018).

Since then, interest has remained steady in “self” constructs, but most of the attention has been aimed at self-image’s cousins: self-esteem, self-concept, self-worth, self-efficacy, self-confidence, etc. As such, there isn’t really one unifying theory of self-image.

However, we do know that self-image is based on our perceptions of reality, that it is built over a lifetime and continues to change as we do, and that it’s something we have some influence over.

The Elements and Dimensions of Self-Image

Although there is no widely agreed-upon framework for the aspects of self-image, there are some proposed types and dimensions. These come from Suzaan Oltmann, an independent distributor at one of South Africa’s FET Colleges.

The three elements of a person’s self-image are:

1. The way a person perceives or thinks of him/herself.
2. The way a person interprets others’ perceptions (or what he thinks others think) of him/herself.
3. The way a person would like to be (his ideal self).

The six dimensions of a person’s self-image are:

1. Physical dimension: how a person evaluates his or her appearance
2. Psychological dimension: how a person evaluates his or her personality
3. Intellectual dimension: how a person evaluates his or her intelligence
4. Skills dimension: how a person evaluates his or her social and technical skills
5. Moral dimension: how a person evaluates his or her values and principles
6. Sexual dimension: how a person feels he or she fits into society’s masculine/feminine norms (Oltmann, 2014)

These elements and dimensions offer a framework through which to view self-image, but remember that this is not a known and widely accepted framework; rather, it is one possible way of thinking about self-image.

10 Examples of Positive and Negative Self-Image

It’s pretty easy to distinguish between positive and negative self-image.

A positive self-image is having a good view of you; for example:

• Seeing yourself as an attractive and desirable person.
• Having an image of yourself as a smart and intelligent person.
• Seeing a happy, healthy person when you look in the mirror.
• Believing that you are at least somewhat close to your ideal version of yourself.
• Thinking that others perceive you as all of the above as well as yourself.

On the other hand, negative self-image is the flipside of the above; it looks like:

• Seeing yourself as unattractive and undesirable.
• Having an image of yourself as a stupid or unintelligent person.
• Seeing an unhappy, unhealthy person when you look in the mirror.
• Believing that you are nowhere near your ideal version of yourself.
• Thinking that others perceive you as all of the above as well as yourself.

The Importance of a Positive Self-Image

Distorted Self-Image and Self-Image Disorder

Having a distorted self-image means that you have a view of yourself that is not based in reality. We all have slight variations and detachments from reality—maybe we think we’re a bit thinner or heavier than we really are, for example—but when your self-image is greatly detached from reality, it can cause serious emotional and psychological problems.

In fact, there is a disorder that centers on this distortion; it’s called Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Here’s a description of BDD from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America:

“BDD is a body-image disorder characterized by persistent and intrusive preoccupations with an imagined or slight defect in one’s appearance.”

We all have things we don’t love about ourselves or things we wish we could change, and we might even occasionally exaggerate our flaws, but people with BDD are stuck in a much more negative and dramatic state of mind when it comes to their perceived flaw(s).

The ADAA goes on to say: “People with BDD can dislike any part of their body, although they often find fault with their hair, skin, nose, chest, or stomach. In reality, a perceived defect may be only a slight imperfection or nonexistent.”

Some of the coping behaviors that point to a diagnosis of BDD include:

• Camouflaging (with body position, clothing, makeup, hair, hats, etc.)
• Comparing body part to others’ appearance
• Seeking surgery
• Checking in a mirror
• Avoiding mirrors
• Skin picking
• Excessive grooming
• Excessive exercise
• Changing clothes excessively (ADAA, n.d.)

Unstable Self-Image (+ Symptoms)

If the problem is more of an unstable self-image than an excessively negative and narrowly focused one, similar to BDD, the individual may be suffering from a different issue: Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

People with BPD often experience a profound lack of self-image and self-concept. They may feel like they don’t know who they are, and their perception of their own identity may vary widely over time. They might even have trouble seeing their past self, present self, and future self as the same person.

This is known as identity disturbance: a “markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self” (Salters-Pedneault, 2018). It involves your personality, thoughts and feelings, and demeanor changing according to the context. Everyone does this to some extent, but people with BPD often find themselves exhibiting major shifts in identity.

It’s easy to see how these issues lead to instability in self-image; if we’re not at least mostly the same all the time, then who are we?

The symptoms that are associated with an unstable self-image and BPD in general include:

• Having an unstable or dysfunctional self-image or a distorted sense of self (how one feels about one’s self)
• Difficulty feeling empathy for others
• Feelings of isolation, boredom, and emptiness
• A persistent fear of abandonment and rejection, including extreme emotional reactions to real and even perceived abandonment
• History of unstable relationships that can change drastically from intense love and idealization to intense hate
• Intense, highly changeable moods that can last for several days or for just a few hours
• Strong feelings of anxiety, worry, and depression
• Impulsive, risky, self-destructive and dangerous behaviors, including reckless driving, drug or alcohol abuse, and having unsafe sex
• Hostility
• Unstable career plans, goals, and aspirations (Cagliostro, 2018).

Low Self-Image and Depression

As you might expect, low self-image can also be a driving factor and/or a product of depression. When we feel bad about ourselves, it’s natural that our perception of ourselves can suffer. Similarly, when our self-image takes a hit, it follows that we start to feel pretty bad about ourselves and our lives.

An effective depression treatment will likely include some work on building and maintaining a better self-image and, since they’re so closely related, that better self-image can also reinforce the treatment and help you feel happier and healthier.

 Interesting Statistics and Facts

As noted above, a healthy, positive self-image is important for a lot of reasons. For a list of even more reasons why it’s important, check out these 9 facts about self-image from The World Counts website:

1. One study conducted a test on women. 3 out of 4 said that they were overweight. Only 1 out of 4 really was.
2. After viewing images of fashion models, 7 out of 10 women felt more depressed and angrier than before.
3. Anorexia Nervosa, an eating disorder, has the highest mortality rate of all psychiatric illness.
4. In advertising, the body type of models which is portrayed as ideal, is naturally possessed by only 5% of American women.
5. Only 1 out of 10 high school students are overweight, but 9 out of 10 are already on a type of diet.
6. Teenagers who engage in unprotected sex which results in unwanted pregnancy, often have poor self-images.
7. There are fewer cases of men with eating disorders because of the perception that they are women’s diseases.
8. Today’s media greatly influence the self-image of teenagers. They are told that their value is related to how thin or muscular they are.
9. In a study on Self-image Maintenance and Discriminatory Behavior, evidence showed that prejudice develops from a person’s need to justify a threatened perception of the self (The World Counts, n.d.).

The Problems That Occur When Obsessed with Self-Image

When a person gets obsessed with his or her self-image, it can wreak havoc in their life—especially when their obsession is with the physical dimension of their self-image.

Here are just a few of the risks of an obsession with your physical image:

• Significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning
• Development of a clinical eating disorder
• Development of Body Dysmorphic Disorder
• Physical disfigurement
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Persistent feelings of shame (Butterfly Foundation for Eating Disorders)

Of course, many of these problems can spawn even more serious problems themselves; eating disorders can lead to being severely unhealthy—even leading to hospitalization or long-term health risks—and depression and anxiety can result in worsening mental health and functioning.

Pregnancy and Self-Image Issues

One particularly trying time for those with self-image obsession issues is pregnancy.

Pregnancy can bring with it some significant changes in the body. Obviously, the biggest change is the ever-expanding belly! However, there can be tons of other changes: weight gain, weight gain in unexpected places, swelling of certain body parts (like breasts and feet – yes, feet!), acne, stretch marks, and more.

It’s natural that some of these changes can cause self-image issues. Some women find it hard to feel confident and sexy in their rapidly changing body, and they might have trouble seeing themselves the same way they used to.

These self-image issues aren’t always easy to deal with, but there are things you can do. For example, you might want to try the following:

• Focusing on the positive work your body is doing.
• Expressing your feelings with a partner, family member, or friends.
• Getting regular physical activity, like a light swim or a walk.
• Trying prenatal yoga.
• Getting a massage to relieve stress and feel more comfortable in your body.
• Learning as much as you can about pregnancy so you know what to expect.
• Seeking mental health support if you need it (OWN, n.d.).

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