Beauty's Dark Side/ Guest Therapist Alicia Racine Fink

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Beauty culture isn't just about looking good – it's sometimes a sophisticated coping mechanism for avoiding deeper pain. When licensed therapist Alicia Racine Fink returns for her second appearance, our conversation quickly moves beyond skincare into the fascinating psychological territory where beauty meets trauma.

What happens when self-care transforms into something darker? We explore how post-breakup "glow-ups" and revenge bodies often serve as armor against truly feeling our grief. "People should grieve the fuck out of a loss before they actually go glow up," Alicia notes, highlighting how our cultural obsession with transformation often masks an inability to process difficult emotions.

The discussion takes a particularly fascinating turn when examining how filtering has warped our perception of ourselves. We're now so accustomed to seeing enhanced versions of our faces that encountering our natural reflection can feel jarring or even traumatic. This creates what therapists call "ego dystonic" responses – where even when loved ones compliment our appearance, we simply cannot believe them because their perception doesn't match our internal narrative.

Perhaps most provocatively, we question whether beauty standards themselves have created a "compound complex trauma" affecting us daily. For women especially, appearance remains intrinsically linked to credibility and worth. This raises essential questions about motivation: "Am I doing this because I love myself, or am I trying to avoid feeling something deeper?"