Breast Asymmetry and Your Mental Health
- Evenly
- 13 hours ago
- 5 min read
At Evenly, we know that breast asymmetry isn’t just a physical experience — it can touch our confidence, self-image, and emotional wellbeing in powerful and sometimes challenging ways. That’s why we’re passionate about not only providing practical solutions like the Bra Balancer™, but also supporting the inner journey toward feeling comfortable, empowered, and beautifully yourself.
In this special guest blog, BACP-accredited counsellor Laura Harley from Harley Counselling shares her professional insight into how we can navigate the thoughts and feelings that come with body difference. With over a decade of experience working with those facing body image-related concerns, Laura offers compassionate reflections and three therapeutic suggestions to help you begin — or continue — your own body acceptance journey.
When Kate identified the need for the Evenly Bra Balancer™, she developed it as a non-surgical solution for those with breast asymmetry. The provision of a product that allows us to manage our appearance discreetly and practically is enormously soothing to those of us who struggle with body difference.
My name is Laura and I am a BACP-accredited counsellor and talking therapist. As an independent mental health professional with more than a decade of experience counselling those with body image-related concerns, I am naturally drawn to consider the thoughts and feelings of those of us who are Evenly customers and the experiences that might have brought us to join the Evenly community.
For many of us, the experience of having a difference in our bodies is something that we have experienced varied feedback on from friends, family, partners, peers, and even strangers. We may have our own internalised feelings about our bodies and asymmetry that stem from ideas about beauty standards and ideals we have picked up from our culture, the media, and social media. Rarely do the latter do much to improve our sense of self.
Many of the people that I meet who seek therapy to talk about their own - sometimes challenging - experiences around body difference, are people who have suffered bullying, humiliation, anxiety and sometimes even rejection as a result of simply existing in the body that they have been born into, or have developed as a result of surgery or medical intervention.
The therapy that I provide to these people is often centred around building a strong sense of body acceptance and processing some of the pain that has resulted from those unpleasant interactions. We might work on challenging the idea of body "ideals" and break down where those influences come from so that, from an informed and reflective perspective, we can decide whether or not the media or social media that we consume has the right to dictate how good or bad we might feel about a body that we simply ended up using to live.
If you are interested in challenging some of the thoughts or feelings that you have about your breast asymmetry, I'd like to offer you three therapeutic suggestions to start you off on the road to reflective body acceptance:
1 - How do I feel about my breast asymmetry?
A lot of what we think about ourselves is influenced by the world that we live in. We can see that different cultures have, through time, appreciated different types of bodies and physical attributes. It's not set in stone, and neither does the way we feel about ourselves need to be influenced by outside voices. That's why an activity like journaling can be so useful - either in addition to therapy or as a precursor to it - because it is so often a way to access thoughts and feelings that we might censor coming out of our mouths. When we write on a page, to no one else in complete confidentiality and privacy, we might surprise ourselves with what comes out. If this activity appeals to you, I suggest sitting down in a quiet place and giving yourself the task of writing a few sentences. Some suggestions for how they might begin could be:
How much of my day does thinking about my asymmetry take up?
Does my asymmetry stop me from doing certain things or activities?
If I see my body unclothed, do I shy away from looking at it?
Who knows about my asymmetry?
These open questions can allow us to access sometimes buried thoughts or feelings that in our daily lives we might not give much thought to.
2 - What would body acceptance look like for you?
If you were in a place where you had developed a more accepting view of your body, were more comfortable with it, and it took up less space in your thoughts, what might that entail? Would you aspire to be body positive? Or body neutral? Body positivity is the process of feeling positive thoughts about our bodies, despite the messaging that we might have consumed over a lifetime that may have told us that our difference is unattractive or undesirable. Body neutrality suggests that the way that we look is one of the less interesting aspects of our identity, and that we might choose to spend our time concerned with other aspects of being a person that are more important. The latter can be particularly liberating, and we can start to see our body as less of a commodity with an inherent value, and more simply as a place we live and that does its best to serve us - to allow us to eat, drink, breathe, move, etc.
3 - Does how I feel about my asymmetry influence how I dress and represent myself in the world?
Does the way that you feel about your body mean that you might avoid certain styles of clothes? If the Bra Balancer™ changes that for you, will it feel a little vulnerable to try types of clothing that you might have avoided previously? Change is never all one thing, neither good nor bad - and so it could be useful to pay a little attention to how we feel when dressing our bodies, because I would argue that not only does how we feel influence how we dress, but also how we dress influences how we feel.
Using a non-surgical intervention like the Bra Balancer™ or Subtle Shaper™ might allow us to feel able to access clothing that has previously felt off-limits. Now we might find that this differently dressed version of ourselves feels more confident and that, in turn, that confidence might feed a drive to continue to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and to try new ways of demonstrating our taste and personal style. This is a positive cycle that goes on to increase our sense of self-esteem and self-image.
If these suggestions sound useful to you and your journey with your breast asymmetry, then I would encourage you to consider them and give them a try.
Then, if you are interested in continuing the conversation around body acceptance and any other experiences that have impacted your sense of self, then I would be glad to do so in my online counselling and talking therapy sessions over at www.harleycounselling.com. The first 30-minute introductory session is free, and you can book directly via my live calendar.
Laura Harley BSc (Hons) MBACP (Accred) info@harleycounselling.com
*Please note, Evenly acts only as a point of referral for Harley Counselling, and receives no incentives or remuneration for doing so.
At Evenly, we’re committed to uplifting and empowering anyone navigating breast asymmetry — not only through thoughtful product design, but by championing conversations that normalise body difference and support emotional wellbeing. We hope Laura’s insights offer a gentle reminder that you deserve to feel comfortable, confident, and fully yourself — exactly as you are.
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