Body Guilt and Shame as Predictors of Isolation and Social Anxiety

Social anxiety is the dread of social circumstances that include association with others. The uneasiness and nervousness of being contrarily judged and assessed by others is called social anxiety. The physical symptoms of social anxiety include Muscle tension, rapid heartbeat, Stomach trouble and inability to catch breath etc. (Teng, Gao, Huang, & Poon, 2019). Moreover, the role of social anxiety for the body shame is very significant and symptom of these are the fear of judgment based on one’s appearance and it is linked to the social anxiety and body dysmorphic disorder and isolations of individuals etc. (Gilbert, 2014).

Body shaming is the practice of making critical, potentially humiliating comments about a person's body size or weight. An example of body shaming is telling a child that they are 'too fat.' An example of body shaming is when thin women are told they are 'too skinny' (Weingarden, Renshaw, Tangney, & Wilhelm, 2016). Moreover, Body-related guilt is a negative emotion that involves remorse and regret in reference to a specific behavior related to the physical self that is perceived as undesirable Guilt is a valuable emotion, because it helps to maintain your ties to the people in your community.

Shame and guilt belong to the self-related and self-evaluating emotions which constitute a peculiarity of human development. To the best of our knowledge, even higher developed animals know neither shame nor guilt (Chen, Teng, & Zhang, 2013). Previous research demonstrated that attractive people are more welcome in social interactions and are more likely to have the opportunity to build relationships with others (Kroplewski, Szcześniak, Furmańska, & Gójska, 2019). However, People with social anxiety disorder “may have few or no social or romantic relationships, making them feel powerless, alone, or even ashamed,” the association reports. Without someone in your life to share the experiences, the experiences often seem empty, and these feelings feed any type of social anxiety issues. Apart from this, lowered self-esteem may put person at risk of later social anxiety, having an anxiety disorder can also make you feel worse about yourself. In this way, these two afflictions interact to continue a negative cycle. A self-esteem is defined as a person’s overall sense of self-work or personal value (Barker & Galambos, 2003).

There are many group of disorders but specifically eating disorders considered as abnormal eating attitudes of individuals that becomes a reason of significant disturbance in maintenance of healthy body weight and also shows that these become a reason of serious health problems including death as well (Kircaburun, Griffiths, & Billieux, 2019). It is reported that the dimensions of self-esteem considered as therapeutic methods and diagnostic by considering their determined mediating role (Rashid, Saddiqua, & Naureen, 2011). Apart from this, eating disorders among individuals with a negative measurement of family function that can be minimized only when individual is agreed with oneself, when he has the ability to command on new task, point out the affections received from the others and last when it has their own internal integrity. According to these all points are considered as effects by taking survey of 160 people at the age from 18 to 47 years (Jones & Moore; Rashid et al., 2011).

Shame is a universal emotion rooted in the need for attachment to others. This emotion arises in the social context when individuals believe that others see or evaluate them as inferior, inadequate, defective or unattractive (Rashid et al., 2011. Therefore, shame can be conceptualized as a functional defensive response to social threats. activated to attenuate its negative social consequences (e.g., rejection, social criticism and ostracism) Shame motivates striving or working hard to correct one’s behaviors or features and thus to appear desirable and be accepted by others Body image has been identified as a salient source of shame because it represents a dimension of the self that can be easily assessed and evaluated by others (Peplau, 1982). Body image was defined as the picture that one has in mind of the size, form and shape of body and the feelings one has about these characteristics (Porter, Zelkowitz, Gist, & Cole, 2019). Furthermore, body image comprises cognitive (thoughts and beliefs about the body), perceptual, affective (feelings about one’s own body), behavioral and social components, and so the development of body image is influenced by events affecting the body, as well as relationships with others, self-esteem and socialization (Lynch, Heil, Wagner, & Havens, 2008).In this sense, the display of a valued body image by others plays an important role in the interplay with others and in one’s self-evaluations.

There is a recognized need to further study the mechanisms that may explain body image difficulties in men, few studies have focused on that. Given the pervasive and negative impact of body image shame and negative body attitudes, it is considered that research should focus on the analysis of potential factors and mechanisms involved in these difficulties to inform the development of prevention and intervention programmers on these areas. Also, considering the aforementioned impact of early memories with peers and shame on eating psychopathology and body image concerns (Lynch et al., 2008).

People, often women, are sexually objectified in modern society such that their bodies are regarded as objects to be looked at, evaluated, and sexually exploited by others. Sexual objectification occurs frequently, often through interpersonal encounters (Cacioppo et al., 2002) and media portrayals. According to the objectification theory (Furnham, Badmin, & Sneade, 2002), frequent experiences of sexual objectification will coax women into internalizing a third-party self-perspective as some women come to see themselves through a sexually objectifying lens, a process termed as self-objectification (Hrabosky et al., 2009). Women who sexually objectify themselves attach great importance to their physical appearance and habitually monitor their outward appearance from an observer’s perspective (i.e., body surveillance; Lindberg et al. 2006).

In clinical literature, it is clearly shows that body shame is considered as major reason for the body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). However, the studies effects of body shame with respect to its effect on the BDD (Hrabosky et al., 2009). It is due to the researchers mainly focus to study the body shame with respect to eating of individual and weight-based content. Secondly, researchers considered body shame is due to the shame felt by individual when someone point out the flaws of one’s body parts (Ko, 2010). A body-focused shame model that is more related to person’s shame experience within BDD and concluded that shame is deeply painful emotion that person only felt when person figure out the bad part of his body (Porter et al., 2019).

It is found from that obesity is not considered for the effect of mental disorders. But it has significant negative effects on psychological behaviors of individuals and that becomes a reason of increasing rates of mental disorders in the obese populations (Hrabosky et al., 2009). In additions, these are considered as a heterogeneous group with respect to the individual psychological well-being. It is also become a reason of higher rate of psychopathology. In order to face these problems, author developed his own model that received need for the easy-to-administer etc. (Gilbert, 2000). And author concluded that there are many reasons of individual to feel bodily shame and guilt that related to over-weight persons etc.

So far, the focus of previous researches was on the studying the effect of body shame with respect to eating disorders. For example, (Teng et al., 2019) reports suggest that eating disorders increasing especially among women from the non-Western ethnic origins. Thus, contradiction from previous research, in this paper, the main aim of the study is to discuss the body shame of individual with respect to all the concerns parameters and also point out the parameters that are the main reasons of social anxiety and isolation of individuals. For that, we conduct a survey and analysis its respect with respect to culture behavior of individuals etc.