Mogging and biohacking and why it matters in the therapy room.
Hello, fellow therapy people. Are you all feeling like the world feels unstable as well? We only have to catch a headline to feel our ethical stances and core beliefs being tested. As practitioners, there is a delicate balance to strike: we must stay informed enough to understand the “digital-biological” world our clients inhabit, while protecting ourselves from the secondary trauma of constant exposure to complexity. For me, that filter is often Substack, a platform for cohesive summaries rather than sensationalist imagery.
I want to offer a similar “filter” here regarding a shift I am seeing in the counselling room: the move from Addition to Subtraction.
The Evolution of the Aesthetic Mask
Image and style have always been powerful markers of identity, but for young people today, the “Self” is no longer built in a vacuum. It is a digital-biological hybrid. This hybridity dictates lifestyle, politics, and even ethics.
In recent years, we have navigated a wave of shifts that often contradict one another. Previously, the dominant theme was Addition. We saw it in the “Kardashian aesthetic”: fillers, implants, thicker eyebrows, and fuller lips. Everything was sleek, glossy, and hyper-visible. Parallel to this, we saw a rise in Acceptance, a move away from the 90s “heroin chic” toward body neutrality and inclusive access. In the therapy room, this felt like a softening; there was a broader range of role models and, for some, a slight lowering of external pressure.
But the tide has turned. We are currently witnessing a “vibe shift” from acceptance and variety to shrinking conformity.
The Rise of the ‘Subtracted’ Body
The Kardashian aesthetic became too accessible. When a look can be bought on any high street, the elite move the goalposts to find new ways to differentiate. The visible bone, the “Ozempic Face,” and the “Clavicle” have returned as markers of wealth and exclusivity. Oh, hello ‘heroin chic’, I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon. It signals a body that doesn’t “need” to consume in a world of abundance.
However, this isn’t just a fashion cycle; it has become medicalised and political. We see this most clearly in the “Manosphere”- a space that has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. Characters like “Clavicular” promote “looksmaxxing,” using harmful injections and “bone smashing” to treat the body as a piece of hardware to be hacked, optimised, and “won.”
I don’t believe the majority of our young people are directly susceptible to the Manosphere; in fact, many are the first to laugh at the absurdity of ‘bone smashing’ for content. But my concern lies in the dilution effect. We don’t have to join the cult to be affected by the noise. While the extremes are dismissed, the underlying values, that we should be ‘optimised,’ ‘subtracted,’ and ‘clinically clean’, are leaking into the mainstream. We might not see the drama, but we see the quiet erosion of body-positive spaces. We might not see the ‘looksmaxxing’ rituals, but we see the language of ‘winning’ and ‘failure’ creeping into how a young person describes their own reflection. It isn’t a radical conversion or simply a social media problem; it’s a slow, cultural atmospheric shift.
The Clinical Red Flag: The Loss of Interoception
In the counselling room, this cultural shift can manifest as a profound break in Interoception - the ability to sense the internal state of the body.
If a drug manages the appetite, or if a client adopts the “stoic” language of the current perfection drive to ignore hunger and anxiety, or measure themselves against a curated, falsified media, they lose the ability to “listen” to their gut, both physically and metaphorically.
This is where our “Professional Curiosity” must sharpen. When we see a client who is suddenly “perfect,” quiet, compliant, and thin, we must ask ourselves: is this health, self-expression, or is this cultural compliance? Is the client living in their body, or are they merely operating a machine to meet an algorithmic ideal? A “Clean Girl” or “Optimised Alpha” exterior can often be a mask for a state of high-intensity internal freeze. As always, within any presentation, we must ask why, what is behind this drive?
Bringing Back - More
Against this backdrop of sterile optimisation, therapy must become a space for Addition.
Not the addition of fillers or filters, but the addition of:
Feeling: Reconnecting the head to the gut.
Space: Supporting the client to take up physical and emotional room.
Messy, Human Hunger: Validating the “Radical Act of Need” for food, for life, and for connection.
Our role is to move the client away from the “monitoring” of a machine and back toward the “experiencing” of a human life.
Practitioner’s Reflection Checklist
Am I misreading ‘Cultural Compliance’ as ‘Discipline’? When a client is “doing well” on a restrictive regime, am I praising the result or exploring the cost?
Do I know the language? Am I aware of terms like looksmaxxing, mogging, or bio-hacking? Understanding the lexicon helps us recognise when the “Machine” mindset has entered the room.
Where is my own bias? How do I feel about the shift toward medicalised weight loss or aesthetic surgery? Where is my line in the sand? Am I protecting my own humanity in a culture of subtraction?
About the Author: Helen Gifford is a counsellor, supervisor, and author of ‘A Practical Guide For Working Therapeutically with Teenagers and Young Adults’.
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Work with me: Clinical Supervision and Training via www.branchcounselling.co.uk