Everyone does inner child work. Everyone talks about healing childhood wounds. But there’s a developmental stage we consistently skip over—the one where some of the deepest body shame, identity confusion, and self-worth wounds actually formed.
Adolescence. Those years between 12 and 18 when your body changed dramatically, when you were figuring out who you were, when social belonging felt like life or death. When you learned whether your body was acceptable or shameful. When you internalized messages about your worth that you’re still carrying decades later.
As a somatic therapist and holistic healer working with clients in Ireland and internationally, I’ve noticed a pattern: people can do extensive inner child work, heal early childhood wounds, and still struggle profoundly with body image, self-worth, and feeling fundamentally wrong in their skin.
That’s because the wound isn’t in childhood. It’s in adolescence. And almost no one addresses it.
Let’s explore why body shame specifically emerges during teenage years, what makes adolescence such a vulnerable developmental stage, and how understanding this can finally help you heal wounds that traditional approaches miss.
Why Adolescence Is the Critical Stage for Body Shame
Adolescence isn’t just ‘difficult teenage years.’ From a developmental psychology perspective, it’s the second most formative stage of your entire life—rivaling only early childhood in its impact on who you become.
During adolescence, several critical processes happen simultaneously:
Puberty radically transforms your body. Within a few years, your body changes more dramatically than at any other time except infancy. Hormones surge. Sexual characteristics develop. Your body literally becomes unrecognizable from what it was. This isn’t a small adjustment—it’s a complete physical transformation.
Identity formation becomes central. Adolescence is when you figure out who you are separate from your family. It’s when you answer: What do I believe? What do I value? Who am I attracted to? What kind of person do I want to be? This identity work is essential developmental work.
Peer relationships become primary. Suddenly, what your friends think matters more than what your parents think. This isn’t superficial—it’s a necessary developmental shift. You’re learning to navigate social structures outside your family. Belonging to a peer group becomes crucial.
Self-consciousness peaks. Brain development during adolescence creates heightened self-awareness and concern about how others perceive you. The ‘imaginary audience’ phenomenon makes teenagers feel constantly observed and judged.
This convergence—body transformation, identity formation, social pressure, and heightened self-consciousness—creates the perfect storm for body shame to take root.
The Specific Ways Body Shame Forms During Adolescence
Body shame doesn’t emerge randomly. During adolescence, specific dynamics create conditions where you learn to hate, fear, or feel ashamed of your body:
Early or late development creates comparison and judgment. If you developed early, especially as a girl, you might have been sexualized, stared at, commented on. Your body became public property. If you developed late, you might have felt left behind, inadequate, like something was wrong with you.
Weight and body size become markers of worth. This is often when eating disorders begin, when dieting becomes normalized, when you first internalize that your body is a problem to be solved rather than a home to inhabit.
Acne and physical ‘flaws’ feel catastrophic. What would be minor issues at other ages feel devastating during adolescence because your sense of self is so tied to how others perceive you.
Comments from peers cut deep. Bullying, teasing, casual cruel remarks about your body—these don’t just hurt in the moment. They form your understanding of whether your body is acceptable.
Family messages intensify. When parents comment on your weight, your appearance, your changing body—even seemingly harmless comments—you internalize these as truth about your worth.
Cultural and media messages bombard you. During adolescence, you’re highly susceptible to societal beauty standards. The bodies you see in media become the standard your body is measured against and inevitably falls short of.
Sexual attention feels confusing and dangerous. For many, especially girls, adolescence is when your body becomes sexualized—by peers, older people, or even strangers. This creates a specific kind of shame around your body being ‘too much,’ dangerous, or inviting unwanted attention.
These aren’t just experiences you had—they became your identity. The teenage brain is forming your sense of self. What happens during these years doesn’t stay in the past. It becomes who you understand yourself to be.
Why Inner Child Work Misses Adolescent Wounds
Most healing modalities focus on early childhood—ages 0-7 or so. This makes sense: early childhood is foundational. Attachment patterns form, basic trust develops, core beliefs about the world take shape.
But adolescence is a second critical period. It’s when you individuate, when your body matures, when your identity crystallizes. The wounds that form during adolescence are different from childhood wounds—and they need different healing approaches.
Inner child work often focuses on: feeling unsafe, needing protection, healing attachment wounds, reclaiming playfulness and innocence.
Adolescent healing needs to address: body shame and physicality, identity confusion and authenticity, peer relationships and belonging, sexuality and boundaries, autonomy versus conformity.
When you only do inner child work, you might heal the little kid who felt unsafe—but the 14-year-old who learned to hate her body, the 16-year-old boy who was shamed for being sensitive, the teenager who internalized that they had to hide who they really were—these wounded parts remain unaddressed.
This is why people can do years of therapy, heal childhood trauma, and still struggle with body image, sexual shame, or feeling like they have to hide their true self. The wound isn’t in childhood. It’s in adolescence.
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How to Heal Adolescent Body Shame: A Somatic Approach
Healing body shame that formed during adolescence requires approaches that recognize this specific developmental wound. Traditional body positivity messages or cognitive reframing often fall short because they don’t address the deep, formative nature of adolescent wounds.
Effective healing involves several key elements:
Acknowledge that adolescent wounds are distinct. They’re not childhood wounds. They happened at a different developmental stage with different vulnerabilities and different impacts. Your teenage self needs specific healing that honors this unique stage.
Work somatically with body shame. Body shame lives in your body—in how you hold yourself, move, breathe, take up space. Somatic approaches help you feel into these patterns and gradually shift them. You can’t think your way out of body shame; you have to feel your way through it.
This might include: noticing how you physically contract or hide your body, exploring the sensations of taking up space, gradually reclaiming movements or expressions you learned to suppress, working with breath to soften chronic bracing patterns.
Meet your teenage self with compassion. Most people cringe at their teenage self. Part of healing is turning toward that awkward, struggling teenager with kindness instead of embarrassment. They were doing their best in an impossible developmental stage.
Try this: Think of yourself at 14 or 15. Instead of judgment, can you feel tenderness for how hard they were trying, how vulnerable they were, how much pressure they were under? That compassionate witnessing is the beginning of healing.
Recognize that your body wasn’t wrong—the messages were. The shame you carry isn’t truth about your body. It’s internalized judgment from a culture, family, or peer group that had narrow definitions of acceptability.
Your teenage body wasn’t wrong for developing early or late, for being bigger or smaller, for having acne or curves or no curves. Those were normal variations. The shame came from external judgments that you internalized as truth about yourself.
Reclaim your body as yours. During adolescence, your body often becomes public property—commented on, judged, sexualized, controlled. Part of healing is taking your body back. This is my body. It belongs to me. I get to decide how I feel about it.
Address sexuality and boundaries. For many, adolescent body shame is entangled with sexuality—early sexualization, assault, shaming around desire, confusion about boundaries. Healing body shame often requires healing sexual shame and reclaiming bodily autonomy.
Moving Forward: Honoring Your Teenage Self
If you’re struggling with body image, self-worth, or feeling fundamentally wrong in your skin, consider that the wound might not be in early childhood. It might be in those teenage years when your body changed, when you were trying to figure out who you were, when belonging felt like everything.
Adolescent wounds deserve specific attention and healing. Your teenage self deserves to be witnessed with the same compassion you’d give your inner child. They were navigating impossible pressures with a rapidly changing body and brain, trying to figure out who they were while everyone had opinions about who they should be.
The body shame you formed during adolescence isn’t truth. It’s a wound. And like all wounds, it can heal.
Whether you work in person in Dublin, Naas, or Newbridge, or through online sessions from anywhere in the world, healing adolescent body shame is possible. It requires approaches that honor the developmental specificity of this wound—and the unique healing your teenage self still needs.
Your body was never the problem. The messages were. And now, as an adult, you get to choose different messages. You get to reclaim your body as your home. You get to give your teenage self the compassion, acceptance, and belonging they needed but didn’t receive.
That healing is available. Your body is waiting.
About the Author
Abi Beri is an IPHM-accredited Integrative Holistic Therapist and Somatic Therapist with specialized training in developmental trauma and adolescent wounds. His approach integrates somatic therapy, developmental psychology, and trauma-informed practice to address wounds that traditional therapy often misses.
Based in Ireland, Abi works with clients in Dublin, Naas, and Newbridge, as well as offering online sessions worldwide. His work specifically addresses the overlooked teenage years where body shame, identity confusion, and self-worth wounds often form.
For adolescent healing, body shame therapy, or somatic sessions:
🌐 www.somatictherapyireland.com
🌐 www.blissfulevolution.com
📧 info@blissfulevolution.com
📱 +353 83 356 9588
