When Body Positivity And Toxic Positivity Collide For Depressed Women

There’s a lot of press lately about toxic positivity and, unless you’ve been in a coma for years, you have heard about the idea of body positivity. What about the combination of the two? Specifically, I am referring to my many depressed female clients who are unhappy with the weight gain that is a symptom of depression, and then are also ashamed of not being “body positive.”

Body positivity is great when it helps you truly love, accept, or appreciate your body. The philosophy can help many people. But, it does not feel authentic for many people, particularly for my many female clients for whom weight gain is a symptom of depression. Winter weight gain is particularly common in depressed women, who are more susceptible to seasonal depression and associated carb cravings. When your weight gain is linearly related to your depression levels, it is difficult to accept how your body looks because it doesn’t feel like your “real” body, but only an outward manifestation of your depression.

Many women think of body positivity as synonymous with being liberal/progressive or feminist. They try to pretend that they love their bodies even when they do not feel this way. Then they are reckoning with shame as well as body image issues. The shame is over not being evolved enough to truly embrace their bodies, and…