Facing Your Fears of Showing Up

I braced myself for the looks of disgust and revulsion on their faces…

I walked into the gym in my capris and tank top, the same outfit as any other day.

But this time, something was different about the way I looked.

Or at least, I believed there was.

You see, a few months ago, I stopped removing the hair from my legs and armpits. 

My epilator broke, and rather than getting a new one or switching to a razor, I decided to let my body hair grow. 

I was sick of the ingrown hairs, and more importantly, sick of the societal pressure on me as a woman to invest my precious resources (time and money) in upholding someone else’s expectations for the way I should present myself.  

So I said “fuck it.”

But thanks to the strength of my internal programming, when I went to the gym, I anticipated sticking out like a sore sasquatch.

I was confronted with fierce worries over what other people would think of me, assuming they’d be disgusted at the sight of me. My brain told me that I needed to cover my body because of the way it looked.

I realized that my body hair insecurities were no different from the worries and shame we feel about the size of our bodies: assuming we know what others are thinking, believing we’ll be judged negatively, fearing the worst, feeling pressured to hide ourselves.

So I knew I needed to face my fear.

The process I put myself through was one of gradual exposure—the same therapeutic process that individuals undertake when facing fears in therapy, whether it’s a fear of dogs, germs, or leaving your house.

Gradual exposure involves putting yourself in an environment that triggers your fears so you can learn through experience that your worst expectations don’t occur. Then with each circumstance in which you conquer your fear, you step into gradually scarier situations.

I started small: I wore leggings that exposed the bottom of my legs, then graduated to ones that cut off below my knees. I wore long sleeves, and then a t-shirt, and then a tank top that exposed my armpits. 

I eventually went to the beach and to a group spa service where I wore a bikini: with my entire legs and unshaven bikini line in full view.

Through each stage of exposure, I treated the experience like an experiment: I made a hypothesis about what would happen and then observed what actually happened. Each time, I was able to notice that nothing bad happened. No one stared, no one made a face.

Most importantly, in every scenario, I had to do the work of managing my thoughts. 

It’s important to note that what you expect will happen can color your interpretation of an experience.

For example, people who are lonely tend to suffer from a mental bias whereby they interpret social interactions in a way that supports their negative expectations. 

In other words, people who are NOT lonely interpret neutral interactions as neutral, but a person who IS lonely tends to read the words and actions in a neutral interaction as negative, specifically because of their worries about their status or social skills.

I believe a similar phenomenon occurs when we feel insecure about the way we look. If you worry about how others will interpret your appearance, you’ll be scanning your environment for negative cues. 

For example, you might make eye contact with a person, and interpret their facial expression negatively, jumping to the conclusion that they’re judging the way you look. In reality, your own beliefs about the way you look become a confirmation bias.

Because I was consciously aware of this mental bias, I made sure I wasn’t trying to guess what others were thinking just so that I could confirm my own self-conscious feelings about my body hair.

Additionally, I decided how I wanted to respond (mentally) when my brain went into worry mode.

In one instance, I was lying on a bench in the gym doing an exercise where my arms were fully outstretched over my head. I was surrounded by teenage boys, and my brain assumed that once they noticed my underarm jungles, they’d be shocked.

So I armed myself with an arsenal of deliberate thoughts:

“Good. Let them be shocked. It’s important for young people to be exposed to different ways people choose to present themselves.”

“Bodies aren’t disgusting. It’s just hair.”

“I don’t know them. How they feel for 5 minutes isn’t my concern and doesn’t impact my life.”

“I don’t feel uncomfortable about having body hair. If someone else feels uncomfortable about seeing it, that’s not a problem I’m willing to take on.”

And so on.

Did they look at me? Yes.

Did they notice my body hair? Maybe. Probably.

Did it ultimately matter? No, because I chose to make it not matter.

What happened was, as time went on, I thought less and less about what other people were thinking, and I was able to just walk into the gym and perform my workouts without scanning the room for reactions.

I know it’s easier said than done to change your thoughts and face your fears, so if you’d like some support and structure in doing so, Food Body Self coaching provides a warm, encouraging environment to explore your toughest emotional blocks.

And while I still believe that a lot of the work that needs to be done to promote body acceptance is on a cultural level, we can fight back on a personal level.

Whether that means wearing the clothes you want to wear without worrying about them being right for your body type, wearing makeup, not wearing makeup, exposing your skin at the gym, at the beach, or anywhere else, and on and on.

Because each time you give yourself permission to show up in the world, you’re not only supporting your own well-being, you’re making it okay for everyone else to show up as themselves, too.