Surgery for the Wrong Reasons: Surgery Will Make it All Better

Throughout my posts, I’ve addressed a number of unrealistic expectations that people may have regarding cosmetic surgery. One common one, that can be related to my previous post, is this notion that “I’m in a bad place in my life and I want the surgery so I’ll feel better.”

Crisis? No Surgery

If you are currently involved in any kind of crisis, now is not the right time for plastic surgery. Examples of crisis situations which should cause pause are a death in the family, loss of a job, midlife crisis, or bullying at work or at school. Crisis situations are usually psychological minefields that are difficult for anyone to navigate and usually involve emotions that change from minute to minute.

If you are going through any kind of crisis, you should really work through the situation (often, simply letting time pass is the ultimate crisis resolution plan) before undergoing surgery, with the full understanding that surgery itself is not going to end the crisis. More often than not, people don’t get their job back because they’ve had plastic surgery, and surgery won’t make it any easier to recover from a loss.

You want to avoid making a big decision like this when you’re in some sort of panicked or emotional state. If you’re in a state of crisis, you can actually make things worse by relying on plastic surgery to solve issues for you that it just can’t solve. Moreover, stress has profound effects on your ability to heal, so surgery in mid-crisis is not the right time anyway. You want to be in a state of calm when you do this, in order to optimize your ability to heal well.

Life Isn’t Perfect – It Doesn’t Have to Be

All of this doesn’t mean that life has to be perfect before you have plastic surgery. Who has a perfect life all the time? Now, if you’ve already been through a situation like a divorce, for instance, and you are some distance from it, that’s a different situation. A procedure can be a huge confidence booster for people in situations like that who are trying to get their lives back on track. The self-esteem boost from looking your best cannot be denied, but it needs to be timed well, during a period of emotional and life stability. The smart patient usually come in because they’re unhappy with some physical aspect of them-selves. They’ve considered the pros and cons for some time, talked to their trusted advisors and loved ones about their decision, and arrived at a point where they believe plastic surgery can really help them feel better about themselves. Research has shown, as has my personal experience, that plastic surgery can make a large improvement in a person’s life, self-confidence, and self-worth. It can truly add a “spring” to your step!

Learn more about whether cosmetic surgery is the right choice for you and your current situation in my book, “Making the Cut” available for purchase on Amazon.

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