APPETITE & BODY IMAGE
The body speaks in a language older than words. Hunger, fullness, craving, refusal — these are not just physiological signals but messages from the psyche about safety, control, desire, and what feels permitted. For many people, the relationship to food and the body becomes a site where deeper conflicts play out: conflicts about worth, about need, about taking up space, about allowing pleasure or imposing discipline.
Appetite is not only about food. It has to do with desire itself. At its root, the word comes from the Latin appetere, meaning "to long for" or "to reach toward." Appetite names a movement of desire, a leaning in the direction of something needed or hoped for. That movement can feel straightforward, like hunger, pleasure, or satisfaction. It can also become entangled with fear, anxiety, loneliness, or the need for comfort and control.
For some people, this reaching becomes hard to feel at all. Bodily signals grow faint or confusing, and hunger and fullness lose their clarity. Desire begins to organize around what feels allowed or expected, rather than what is genuinely wanted. For others, appetite becomes highly monitored. Sensations are tracked closely in an effort to feel safe, but this vigilance often leads to fatigue rather than relief. In both cases, the issue is not only about eating. It is about how safe it feels to want, to take in, and to feel satisfied.
When the reaching movement of appetite begins to feel dangerous or disorganized, attention often shifts outward. The gaze fixes on the body’s surface as a way to manage deeper tensions that feel harder to name. Body image, in this sense, is rarely about the physical reality of skin or shape. It becomes a mental map of what we believe we are allowed to embody.
If appetite is a leaning toward — a reaching for nourishment, pleasure, or satisfaction — body image often becomes the container we feel we must fit into before that reaching is permitted. Over time, the body can stop feeling like a place to live and start feeling like an object to manage: something to shrink, control, or refine in an effort to resolve conflicts that are not actually about appearance at all.
Healing body image, then, isn’t only about changing what you see in the mirror. It’s about reclaiming the body as a safe place for longing.
GET IN TOUCH
If you’d like to share more details (availability, fees, therapist preferences), please use our full inquiry form. You can also book a consultation directly with your preferred clinician.