but you can't just remove mental wellbeing and say "it sits here in this box away from my physical self". my Ts notice my physical appearance and oftentimes it says a lot about the way i'm feeling emotionally. maybe because my problem is with depression, but they can tell when i'm putting less effort into my appearance and it's a good yardstick for measuring how i'm faring.

i've also had on/off problems with not quite healthy eating, so of course my body and how i look comes into that. i kind of see it as the Ts responsibility to bring something up if it isn't brought up by the client -- kind of like going to a GP and them neglecting to check your broken arm because you only want a bandaid for your finger. of course a GP can't force treatment on you, but they'd be negligent if they ignored something they should really check out.

i think the comment that the OP's poster was manifesting a sickness is wrong. that's just my opinion, i don't want to offend. we happen to live in a world with men and women, i don't see why it's more ok for a woman to comment on our physical appearance than it is for a guy. my friends can tell me i'm attractive and i don't get offended. my pdoc can tell me i'm attractive and i dont' get offended. it's because they see me as a sexual being, not a sexual object. and of course they see me as much, much more. at the same time, though, old-t told me i was attractive once and it made me rather uncomfortable. i think that's because he actually was assessing me as an object at that point, and that made me feel really eck. but we had a number of issues around this point, so that comment was in the context of a larger pattern of not-quite-right comments.

i guess what i'm saying is that two people can say the same thing but one can be doing it with respect and the other can be seeing you as an object -- i don't think that the fact your T has made a comment on your appearance is a bad thing, it depends on the context and his reasons for doing so.