Scars and how they affect your relationships
Has your operation affected how you – and your partner – feel about your body?
So, what can you do about it?
When you have surgery leaving very visible scars, it can really affect how you feel about your body and, sometimes, partners to whom image is important, or who have an aversion to scars, might find it difficult to cope with the scarring. If you stop liking your own body, quite often even the most loving partner becomes someone you push away, based on your own, new, insecurities.
Caesarean sections and hysterectomies are a case in point. Clients tell me they feel “cut in two”, and they “hate the overhanging pouch it leaves”. They may “hate touching the scar” and “feel unattractive”.
Tummy tucks, often promoted as “a bit of a nip and tuck”, are in fact major surgery; they leave the same scar as that caused by a Diep Flap, where the patient has a mastectomy, then the fat from the belly is relocated to create artificial breasts. These are operations that, in theory, give you your shape back and makes you feel better if your issue was one of being overweight, and better about yourself than you might have felt if you’ve had breast cancer and you don’t want to stay ‘flat’ with scars or have artificial implants. However, both these operations leave a hip to hip scar and often that ‘cut in two’ feeling, as well as potentially other, more serious problems.
How can we help you?
All these major surgeries can leave us feeling battered, ugly and unlovable. We can turn that around by determining to love ourselves, perhaps having a tattoo to make the scar into something beautiful or humorous, and celebrating our bodies. I discuss this further in my book, Scars, Adhesions and the Biotensegral Body, referenced below.
If you do decide you want a tattoo, by the way, I recommend you have ScarWork first, not afterwards, as the tissue changes and moves during the healing process.
Sharon Wheeler’s ScarWork is a gentle, non-invasive approach to scars that capitalises on the phenomenon of Light Touch, where a gentle touch to the skin effects changes at cellular level (this is known as mechanotransduction).
Helping the body to release internal tension and torsion that can and usually will be caused by adhesions from the above scars, takes the ‘pull’ out of the tissues and normally allows more normal functioning and mobility. ScarWork has been empirically demonstrated to do this, click here to read one of my case study blogs for more information.
Having someone work with and accept you, scars and all, can also be very positive, helping you to appreciate your scars for what they are, or at least stop disliking them as much.
The priority, if your scar is affecting your relationship with your body and/or with your partner, is to find something to love about yourself. Without this scar you would not, for example, have your baby, have nice breasts, have your shape back….. focus on the positive. A scar is just part of your amazing journey through life and can be embraced as such.
If you would like to discuss further please click here to get in touch and see how we can help you.
Sources:
- Flat and Fabulous
- Breast Cancer UK.
- Handspring Publishing – Scars, Adhesions and Biotensegral Body by Jan Trewartha.
Image Credit: kimwonyeul from Pixabay