Hey Everyone, after a year long hiatus, I am back. I’ll be sharing stories, tips, and other useful information that will hopefully leave you a bit better off than when you started reading this blog. So, on with the show.
Diet Culture
Did you know that the diet industry is a $70 billion, that’s billion with a B, industry? Did you also know that 95% of diets fail? I’ll let that sink in for a second!
People spend more than $70 billion in a year on a product that will fail more than 95% of the time! Would you buy a car that wouldn’t work 95% of the time, a house that had a 95% chance of collapsing into a pile of rubble, or buy clothes that had a 95% chance of falling apart on the first wear? Of course not! Yet that’s what millions of people in America do each and every single day when they go on a diet. They’ll spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on something that will ultimately fail them.
Poodle Science
When I begin treatment with clients who have an eating disorder, like Anorexia; Binge Eating Disorders; or Bulimia, one of things I introduce to clients is Poodle Science. I was introduced to this concept by Tianna Smith, a a wonderful dietitian based in California. For the non-dog lovers out there, a Bullmastiff is a HUGE dog that usually weighs 100 pounds or more while a Chihuahua is a small dog that usually weighs around 6-7 pounds. Because of genetics, it would not matter what kind of diet or exercise you did with a Bullmastiff, it would NEVER weigh anywhere close to the 6-7 pounds of Chihauhua. Not only that, that Bullmastiff would probably be pretty miserable from the lack of food and constant exercise. And yet, it would never come close to having the bodily figure of a Chihuahua.
When I work with my clients in therapy, I talk to them about Poodle Science because the same concept applies to humans. We have a biological blueprint based on our genetics that determines the shape and size of our body. Some people will naturally be 100 pounds while others will naturally be 150 pounds or more. Like the Bullmastiff and the Chihuahua, it’s an impossible fight for a 150-pound person to try and get down to 100 pounds. All you will do is fail, be miserable, and in some cases do incredible harm to your body.
Accepting Your Biological Blueprint
After explaining Poodle Science to my clients, I then work with them in therapy to help them accept that they are beautifully unique individuals no matter the shape or size that their genetics have given them. By accepting their biological blueprint and working with me on techniques like Intuitive Eating, my clients begin to lead happier and healthier lives! So, the next time you see or hear the diet culture in the media, brush it aside and be proud of the beautiful body you have!
Want to read more from Alyssa? Check out her other blog posts here.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made me forget part of the reason why I love traveling so much – the unexpected lessons, the character sculpting, and the major moments of insight and awareness that come from being in a completely different place.
This past weekend, David and I finally got to go away together to a place neither of us had ever even heard of: Skaneateles, NY. We’ve heard of the Finger Lakes, but we had never heard of specifically the Skaneateles Lake/Town. I cannot say enough great things about this town! It was both stuck in the past and way ahead of its time in all the best ways. As we soaked in the views from the lake, hiked up mountains with dozens of waterfalls, and explored various nature preserves, I realized that this was the most at peace I have felt in a long time.
And then, on one of our last days in Skaneateles, I found myself standing on the dock, peering down at the fish swimming in the lake below as we prepared to take a boat tour. Suddenly I was hit with a feeling that I still don’t really have words for. All I know is that the feeling was so strong, it nearly took my breath away. The wind suddenly picked up, the water from the lake sprayed my face, and, almost involuntarily, I whispered to myself “It’s time.”
“It’s time? Time for what?” I asked myself almost immediately. And then, a few moments later, I understood what was happening.
In this midst of moving to a new state, selling our current house, recovering from health issues, watching my business change, and adjusting to post-pandemic life, I’ve done a lot of fighting – fighting for relationships, fighting to keep certain friendships, fighting because it felt like something I “should” do. Or perhaps I have been fighting to keep these relationships so I could avoid the grief that comes with letting go. Either way – the last few months have found me holding so tightly to the people who continuously seem to be slipping through my hands.
While I know I’m on the right path for myself, I also recognize that I have been pushing away the fact that this path I am taking means I will be saying goodbye to people I once held close to my heart. The fact of the matter is that not everyone is meant to stay in our lives forever; and, perhaps most importantly, not everyone is meant to fill the role that we think they should fill.
For years I’ve held on to certain hopes and expectations about what some of the relationships in my life should look like, and doing so has often sent me into bitterness, anxiety, and depression. When I fight to keep a relationship that simply isn’t meant to be, I end up abandoning myself. And in this last year of my 20’s, I made a promise to never abandon myself again.
I have spent far too many years sacrificing my own needs, blaming myself for miscommunications, and overlooking painful moments just so I can maintain communication with people who I thought I needed in my life. Over the last several months, as I fall more in love with the woman I have become, I am realizing I cannot have it both ways. I cannot please others just to avoid confrontation or abandonment AND honor my own needs. While I know this on an intellectual level, emotionally speaking it has still been very difficult for me to let go of the things/people that need letting go. But leave it to traveling to teach me some of life’s most difficult lessons; for when I was standing on the dock taking in some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen, my gut told me it was time. It’s time to release my grip. It’s time to grieve over what happened, because I can’t change it. It’s also time to grieve over what won’t ever happen, because I can no longer operate in relationships that aren’t two-way streets.
It’s time to acknowledge the hurt and rejection I feel instead of pushing it down, telling myself that if I just try harder, I’ll get the acceptance I’ve been craving from the people I’ve been craving it from.
The fact is that I am so loved. I am loved by people who see my light and celebrate it in ways I never imagined. And I am so grateful for it – for my friends and family, for my dogs, for my clients, for the podcast listeners, the blog readers, and all the supporters in my life – each and every single one of you!
All of these feelings seemed to hit me at once, and I found myself both smiling and crying at the same time. While I know that so many good things await me on the other side of letting go, it’s still a sad process. I wiped my tears away, stepped onto the boat, and climbed my way to the second floor (for the best views of course!). I peered back at the little village of Skaneateles as the engine revved and we started gliding across the lake. I know the path ahead of me, and I know with absolute certainty that what is behind me is no longer meant for me. I turned my head up to the sky and let the sunshine dry the remainder of the tears on my face as a mixture of grief, gratitude, and relief flooded my soul. I know that it’s not just time to let go of the past – it’s also time to move forward to the next part of my career. This strong intuition has been simmering just beneath the surface for some time now, but I wasn’t ready to acknowledge any of it until this moment.
How will I make it happen? How do I move through the grief? Where do I even begin with the next chapter of my career? God only knows. The only thing I am certain of right now is this:
I really wish that we were talking about Pascal, the chameleon from Rapunzel. He is one of my favorite Disney characters! Has anybody ever discovered a stuffed animal Pascal? I’ve looked high and low but cannot find one anywhere! So if you know where I can buy one, please let me know. Clearly it’s a very urgent matter!
But I digress. What I really want to talk about today are the human versions of chameleons – those whose thoughts, beliefs, and opinions can change depending on their environment. Pete Walker, author of Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, first coined the term “fawning” as a trauma response. Fawning is essentially described as being a chronic people pleaser. Some trauma survivors will engage in fawning, or people pleasing, as a way to diffuse tension if they feel unsafe or uncomfortable. But what I don’t think many people know is that fawning extends beyond saying “yes” to everything and everyone’s requests. People pleasers are also the kind of folks mentioned above – the ones who tend to have different beliefs or different personalities depending on who they are around.
For example, someone who is fawning could look like your friend that tells you all the time she is a Democrat, but in a room full of Republicans she will quickly turn into one of the most passionate Republicans the world has ever seen. Someone who is fawning might also look like that cousin of yours who complains constantly about how much she hates this one person in her friend group, but the second she hangs out with that person she acts like the two of them are best friends.
As a whole, the public generally doesn’t take kindly to people who behave like this. It creates a sense of mistrust and frustration among people when they see that somebody acts one way one minute, and is completely different the next minute.
Now I am not saying that every single person who engages in these types of behaviors is fawning, because that simply isn’t the case. But what I am trying to say is that sometimes people aren’t trying to copy others and sometimes people aren’t changing their beliefs and values out of a desperation to fit in. What this behavior actually could be is fawning, or in other words, a type of trauma response.
I myself can be like this when I feel threatened in some ways. Recently, I found myself in a situation that felt tense, uncomfortable, and downright awkward. The topic of conversation was very triggering to me, and I had many triggering events take place in the hours leading up to this conversation. Thus, I was already on edge. The people around me were in a heated discussion about something that I actually found offensive. On a good day, or even a so-so day, I might have chimed in and dared to have an opposing viewpoint. But on this day in particular, I was already having such a bad day, and between the topic of conversation and the harsh tone of everyone’s voices, I was triggered beyond belief. I did the only thing I could do to try to get the conversation to come to a close: I simply agreed with them. Yep, against everything I believe in, I became the person that I thought that they wanted me to be and I agreed with what they were saying, even though, if you were to ask me to speak on that same subject any other day of the week, I would have given you a completely different opinion.
I didn’t agree with them because I had an overwhelming desire to fit in, and I didn’t pacify them by siding with their beliefs because I wanted to make friends with them. It was more so that I felt emotionally unsafe, and feeling that way put me in such a high state of emotional distress that I said whatever I could to get myself away from the situation. Fawning, like fight or freeze or flight or any of the other trauma responses, is a survival tactic. I wasn’t able to fight or flee the situation, so I became a chameleon and I blended in with my surroundings in the best way that I knew how.
Millions of folks do this. I’ve watched it time and time again, and while a younger version of me might get annoyed and accuse that person of not being genuine, the person I am today realizes that so many people engage in fawning because they have found themselves in situations that trigger their previous traumas.
While I have come a very long way in my PTSD recovery, I was reminded by this event that there is more work to be done. Even though I am tempted to sit in a pit of shame and self-loathing, I’m refusing to do so because my brain did whatever it could to keep me safe in the moment, and that is no reason to feel ashamed. So here I sit, pouring vulnerability onto the page in the hopes that I can educate other people on this type of trauma response, as I think it is often misunderstood and creates a lot of tension in relationships.
To those of you who have never engaged in fawning and don’t quite get it, please be patient with us.
And to those of us who struggle with fawning, let us try to have more compassion for ourselves. We have brilliant minds, built for survival. And although fawning doesn’t always serve us well, it did keep us safe and alive for many years. We are all a work in progress, but please oh please, don’t forget to love yourself throughout the journey just as much as you’ll love yourself once you’ve arrived at your destination.
I am quite guilty about having talked like this in the past: “I’m so OCD about it.” About what? How clean I like my house to be, how I organize my closet, etc. I can even recount many times at the gym where I would be in the middle of a fitness class – God forbid the instructor accidentally lost her place and we ended up doing 11 kettlebell swings with the right hand and 10 kettlebell swings with the left hand. I’d be the first to say out loud: “Oh my gosh, we’re uneven, we have to do one more one this side – I’m so OCD about it!”
A lot of us do this, but as I got older and started becoming more seasoned as a therapist, I realized how wrong those comments were. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can be a crippling mental health disorder in which we find ourselves having to act on certain impulses in order to quiet the thoughts in our head that just won’t seem to stop.
Yes, people can develop OCD symptoms around cleanliness, disorganization, and numbers, like I mentioned above, but the obsessive thoughts can also be much more than that. You see, when I would make those comments like the ones I mentioned above, I would laugh, my friends would laugh, and we would go about our day. But the truth is, I was joking about an issue that runs so much deeper and is more serious than most folks know. While many of us joke about having OCD, the truest form of the disorder is brutal.
Of all the issues I have been battling, one of the ones I talk about the least is my OCD, mostly because I know that my OCD is a result of my trauma and in treating the trauma, I am also treating the OCD.
But truth be told, OCD is an absolute beast, one that lives with you, follows you everywhere you go, and keeps you from sleeping at night. It’s the worst friend you’ve ever had, but cannot seem to get rid of. It’s counting how many times you chew your food before you swallow, it’s making sure you step on the scale 3 times just to make sure the scale is right. It’s this irresistible compulsion to say your prayers exactly the same way every night, fearing that something bad will happen to you if you don’t.
This elusive beast comes in many forms, and what I named above are only a few symptoms that people with OCD may struggle with. Looking back on my childhood, I know that my OCD began as early as 3rd grade, where I remember washing my hands so much and for so long that my skin would bleed. As I got older, my obsessions then became about people breaking into our home. I would have to check the doors at night, dis-arm the alarm that my mom already armed, check to ensure the garage door was shut, and then re-arm the alarm. After about 3-4 rounds of doing this each night, only then could I be assured that the doors were truly locked and the alarm was truly set.
My symptoms have come and gone throughout my life, worsening during times of extreme stress. COVID 19 of course sent my obsessions and compulsions through the roof. I would cry if anyone came too close to me, I refused to see anyone but David for months on end, and any time I needed to go anywhere, I would come home and strip at the front door, throwing my clothes immediately in the washer and jumping into the shower to scrub my skin raw. We even used disinfectant to wipe down every grocery item that we bought before allowing it into the house. It was exhausting, time consuming, and needless to say, very rough on my skin.
And have I mentioned intrusive thoughts? I could write an entire blog post on intrusive thoughts so I won’t dive too deeply into this, but they often couple with OCD. For example, if you’ve ever been driving your car on a highway and suddenly thought to yourself: “What if the car next to me runs me off the road and I crash into a tree and die?”, this is an intrusive thought. Or maybe worse, you’ve even pictured the entire event taking place in your head. This is also an intrusive thought, and you are not alone if you have them.
Often times we develop compulsions to quell our obsessive and intrusive thoughts. Over the last few years, my obsessions and compulsions have come back in more crippling waves, likely due to extreme stress. Back in 2018 when my mom was severely ill and in the ICU, I believed that I caused her sickness. I recall sitting in the spiritual room of the hospital, feeling the urge to pray the same exact prayer, in the same way, for the same amount of time, because somehow, I believed that would save my mother. I remember those dreadful times when I would have to leave the hospital after spending a day with her in the ICU, I would make sure I didn’t step on a single crack on the floor as I walked down the hallways, because I thought that if I stepped on a crack it would be the reason why my mom didn’t survive.
In more recent months, I have been battling health issues, including an autoimmune disease that is – to put it lightly – excruciatingly painful, rendering me, at times, incapable of even breathing without severe, nauseating pain. I have also had multiple tests done on my eyes, as doctors were concerned that I had inflammation in my optic nerves that were being cause by a brain tumor. I was referred to one of the best neuro-opthamologists in the country, but had to wait nearly two months for an appointment. (I just had my appointment this week – no brain tumor!) Naturally, these last two months have been wrought with compulsion after compulsion to try to quell the obsessive thoughts about dying. Some examples:
-Driving to work: Did I check the stove to make sure the gas isn’t on? (after having checked it 20 times before leaving) Am I sure my dogs are safely in their crates? What if there is a fire and my house burns down? My dogs will die. Oh god, I can’t go to work. What if David dies? Let me call him to make sure he and the dogs are okay. NO, don’t call him. Don’t give into the compulsion.
-Driving home from work: Did I really blow that candle out in my office or did I just imagine it? Let me turn around, I have to check, I can’t be responsible for burning down the building. *drives back to office, confirms that the candle is blown out, starts driving home again* Okay but what if I imagined that? Did I really blow out that candle? *Gets home from work 45-60 min later than expected because I have to act on my compulsions*
-Getting ready for bed: *Hears David cough* He must have COVID. Oh God I probably gave it to him. He’s going to die and it’s going to be my fault. He can’t die, because I’m going to die because I probably have a brain tumor. He has to live because someone needs to take care of the dogs. Speaking of dogs, are mine safe? I know I checked earlier but let me check on them again to make sure they are breathing. While I’m at it, let me check the locks on the doors again. If I don’t, something bad will happen and everyone I love will die and it will be my fault.
It’s terrible. It’s exhausting. And sometimes I so desperately want out of this head of mine. This is the case for so many folks with OCD. It’s not just about wanting your house to be neat and orderly. It’s about needing to do certain things to avoid horrible things from happening and to quiet the brain.
I understand things so much differently now. I used to have the attitude of “I’m not changing the way I speak just to save other’s feelings” but the older I get, the more I realize how much of an impact words have on myself and others (I am a therapist, after all!). Intent does not equal impact – and even if I was just joking all those times when I said “I am so OCD about it”, I realize that it is nothing to joke about.
1. If you have been diagnosed with OCD, know you’re not alone and there is no shame in sharing the thoughts and compulsions you are having. In fact, speaking them out loud takes the power away from them.
2. If you have never been diagnosed with OCD, but resonate with some of what I’m saying in this post, please reach out for help. You don’t have to live like this forever and managing the symptoms truly does get much easier.
3. If you have no experience battling OCD, but often say phrases like “I’m really OCD about it”, maybe consider trying to change your words. What else could you say instead? “It makes me feel frazzled and disorganized when my house is a mess” or “I prefer my closet to be organized by color because it makes me happy” are just a few examples. The beautiful thing about language is that there are millions of ways to say something without using words that might minimize the beast that is OCD.
No one likes it when they feel as though they aren’t being heard. For me, over the years, not being heard has become a debilitating trigger. Sometimes it feels like all I do is scream at the top of my lungs and people don’t seem to hear me – especially when it comes to my health.
I have known for months, if not years, that something is wrong with me. But because of my history of trauma and because of my weight, I typically get one of two responses from doctors, therapists, etc.:
“It’s the trauma! Your body is holding so much pain.”
“It’s your weight. You’d feel better if you worked out a little bit.”
I mean, I typically would say “don’t even get me started” when it comes to healthcare providers saying this type of stuff, but who am I kidding? We all know I’m about to get started!
Perhaps this is shocking coming from a trauma therapist, but I truly don’t believe that every single sickness is a manifestation of trauma. Sometimes people are, in fact, sick. I don’t know how many times I tried to tell my therapist “my body hurts, I’m so tired. I cant function” only for him/her/them to go “Well of course! It’s the trauma!” This therapist believed that people get illnesses due to undigested trauma, and while I do absolutely agree with that, I don’t think that means that trauma therapy is the be-all, end-all cure. I think I needed a medical doctor, stat, but never got one because I was told the trauma therapy would cure it all.
Ah, the “It’s your weight” comment – a personal favorite. Here’s my truth: You could put me in a boxing ring with a man ten times my size, and STILL, the strength of my right hook alone would knock him off his feet. So what is it that these doctors want me to do when they tell me to exercise more? Push-ups? Not a problem. Deadlifts? Child’s play. Planks? Sure! Triathalon? Let’s go!
And the most dysfunctional thing of all about doctors telling me to move my body more is that they incorrectly assume that exercise is a weight-management tool (it’s not!!!). Doctors are taking one look at me, observing that I’m fat, and assuming I’m lazy (not true for anyone, fat does not equal lazy). Therefore, in their minds, the solution must be that I need more exercise.
Thus, because of my weight, because of my trauma history, I am stigmatized. I am not heard. And quite frankly, I’ve been getting downright disgusted by it. A few weeks ago after being told by yet another doctor that nothing is wrong, I was ready to quit and live the rest of my life only maybe 40-50% of the type of person I knew I could be if I were feeling better. But thankfully I have a supportive partner at home who reminded me that I have never been one to give up or take “no” for an answer.
And so I continued to fight. And over the last few weeks, my fighting is starting to pay off. I have seen multiple doctors who have run tests on me that have never been run. I went back to a doctors office for the second time in a month and requested a new doctor because I didnt’ like the answers I got from the previous doctor. And this time, I got a few more answers. I was HEARD. This doctor, bless her sweet soul, sat down next to me and handed me tissues as I cried and told her how horrible I felt. She validated me, listened to me, comforted me, and after an examination she gave me a diagnosis. She confirmed that what is going on with me is NOT my fault and that my weight gain, fatigue, and chronic pain is a result of this diagnosis, NOT a result of being lazy.
I am now being referred to a doctor who specializes in this specific autoimmune disease, as my doctor suspects that I have multiple autoimmune diseases that are contributing to my symptoms. All in all, I still don’t have all the answers. I have a few different doctors that have varying concerns ranging from issues in my brain, potential loss of vision, multiple autoimmune diseases, etc.
But low and behold, people are finally listening to me. I have no idea what will come of the journey ahead, but I am so much more hopeful knowing that people are hearing me, believing me, and truly wanting to see me feel better.
It’s so easy for us to fall into silence and not question anything when a doctor is not giving you the proper time and attention that you deserve. But it’s so important to push through your triggers and never stop fighting for your right to be heard. You know your body better than anyone else, so if you feel as though something is wrong and you are not getting the answers you want, use your voice! Use it one time, ten times, or a hundred thousand times if need be and I promise you that someday, someone will hear you and someone will provide you with the answers for which you’ve been searching.
If I hear the phrase “unprecedented times” one more time…..
Now let me just preface the remainder of this post by saying that I am eternally grateful that my loved ones have not yet lost their lives to coronavirus, and therefore, my intention is not to come off as inconsiderate or selfish when I say the following:
UGH! I miss going out to eat. Especially Zahavs (to die for) in Philly. My husband and I went on our first date there, celebrated our engagement there, and continue to go there every year on our anniversary, with the exception of last year and most likely this year due to Covid. What I wouldn’t give to be able to hop on a train and head into the city, where I can stroll carefree from one historic monument to the next, enjoying the sights and sounds and, most importantly, the delectable cuisine!
I won’t sit here and go through all of the things that I miss, because it’s not news to anybody. I know we are all on the same boat when it comes to missing our pre-covid lives. But what I will say is this: Being stuck inside has forced me to re-evaluate what I’m doing to take care of myself. If you had asked me a few years ago, I would tell you that self care was going out for an expensive date or a pricey spa day. I would tell you that self care is being able to hop on a plane and go to your favorite vacation spot whenever you want. Or I might tell you that self-care is forcing yourself to wake up at 5 AM so you can get to the gym even though you only got three hours of sleep the entire night.
Some part of me always believed that self care should have an emphasis on spending money or looking a certain way. But I didn’t have an opportunity to do any of that this past year. I had to actually stay in my house and figure out how I was going to take care of myself, because going on vacations or strolling the mall or hitting the gym excessively was not an option for me. Looking back, I see now that those things weren’t truly self care at all. The only purpose that all of those things served was to be a giant distraction for the painful feelings that were surfacing as a result of my PTSD.
With all of that being said, I thought I might take a moment to share on the blog some of what I’ve been doing to keep myself sane over the last year. It has nothing to do with spending big bucks or trying to make my body meet some impossible standard. Ready? Let’s go!
1. Puzzles. Don’t you roll your eyes at me! I hated puzzles up until this year. You know why I hated them? They forced me to be still and process all of the intense feelings that were coming up. Since quarantine, I have completed about ten 1000-piece puzzles. When I’m having some big feelings, I shut all of my technology down and I work on my puzzle. It keeps my hands busy, and keeps my brain distracted while allowing space to process my emotions at the same time. I highly recommend!
2. Painting. Again with the eye rolls?! I’m telling you, it works! I have zero artistic talent, and that’s putting it nicely. But a few months ago, one of my clients introduced me to “Canvas by Numbers”, which has been so satisfying to work on! Not only do all of the colors soothe my soul, but just like with puzzles, it keeps my hands busy and keeps me focused, while also allowing me to process other things.
3. Epsom salt. People who struggle with anxiety and depression tend to have lower magnesium levels, which can be found in Epsom salt. Magnesium is best absorbed through the skin, and there are now different types of Epsom salts that are infused with essential oils (which is really the icing on the cake if you ask me). If you are not a person who enjoys taking baths, I have also found it to be extremely soothing to put some Epsom salt in a cup and bring it in the shower with you. You can scoop it out with your hands and rub it into your body, using it as an exfoliant. It certainly helps with aches and sore muscles, but also with anxiety and depression. It’s one of those instant fixes for me when I’m really depressed or dissociated.
4. Essential oil diffuser. When I am dissociated or anxious, I need all of my senses on deck to pull me out of the funk that I am in. So my diffuser doesn’t just give off incredible scents, but it’s also a 3-D light-up diffuser. I found it on Amazon! Between the amazing smells from the essential oils and the pretty lights, I find this to be a very grounding tool for me.
5. Movement. And I don’t mean exercise, although this can include exercise if you would like it to. If you have a yoga mat, roll it out and sit on it. Do some light stretches, some neck rolls, some lower back stretches, and even give yourself a foot massage. There are parts of the feet that are directly connected to your organs (more on that later), which is partially why some spots on your feet are more tender than other spots. There are a million free videos on the internet with guided stretches if you need a bit of assistance. The goal here is not to lose weight or change your body. It is simply to allow the emotions that are stuck inside of you to start moving through you.
6. Animals. Do you have a fish? A cat? A dog? A bearded dragon? Whatever you may have, interact with him/her/them. Yes, even your fish. Feed your fish, clean the tank, walk your dog, etc. When I force myself to put my phone down and play with my dogs, it often pulls me out of my depression and brings some laughter into my days.
This self-care list is drastically different from the list I would have given you two years ago. One of the most important differences between what I did back then and what I do now is that my current self care tools are all about moving through the feelings instead of trying to avoid the feelings. If you’re struggling in these (dare I say it?!) ~unprecedented times~, I hope that this list can help you make a giant leap towards taking better care of yourself. You one thousand percent deserve it!
I have not been feeling well for months. -low energy, aches and pains everywhere, chills, and chronic fatigue. I’m so exhausted that I can barely make it from my bed to the couch downstairs without feeling drained. At first I thought maybe it was depression, but as the months went on, I started to get this feeling that there is something deeper going on with me aside from depression. I have a history of thyroid issues in my family, and I’ve been told by a few doctors that I should keep an eye on my thyroid levels, as they have historically been on the lower end of the spectrum.
Thus, after months of feeling like total crap, I picked up the phone and made an appointment with an endocrinologist, hopeful that this doctor will give me the answers I am looking for. I scheduled my appointment for the end of December – and what did I do immediately after I hang up the phone?
I agonized over the appointment. Every day that it got closer to me having to go to the doctor, I felt my anxiety increasing. I loathe going to the doctor. In fact, I’m petrified. And here is a little glimpse as to why doctors appointments, for myself and many others, are often traumatic:
My recent appointment with the endocrinologist went as follows:
I arrived, checked myself in for my appointment, got my temperature taken, and was called back by one of the techs.
“Step on the scale please,” she says. I respond “Oh, no, I am in recovery from an eating disorder and I cant – ” She cuts of me off. “Ma’am, we really do need your weight if you’re going to be a patient here.” I feel myself starting to shut down. “Ok dont be a big baby, just get on the scale” I think to myself. As I step on the scale, I say to her “Okay but it’s triggering to weigh myself so can you please not tell me what my weight -” She cuts me off again to say my weight out loud in front of multiple other people in the office so that someone else can write it down.
And then the shame starts. I start sweating. “Oh my god oh my god that bitch yelled my weight out to the whole office everyone is going to know my weight oh god I cant breathe.” I walk into the room to wait for the doctor. Soon enough the doctor barges in the door and says hello without making eye contact. She sits down at her computer and asks me deeply personal questions without looking back at me one single time.
“You wrote down that you have PTSD?”
“Yes.”
“From….?????”
My heart sinks right into my gut. I stammer on my words as I try to give a 15 second elevator speech about my trauma to a woman who isn’t even looking at me. As I finish speaking I start to cry into my mask. “Why couldn’t I just tell her I wasn’t comfortable discussing it?” I think to myself. But I cant help it. I’m with an “authority figure”. I’m playing out my trauma – giving my all to a person who promises to help me but doesn’t actually care about me.
She types on the computer in complete silence for what feels like 15 minutes. She gets up, touches my hands, my ankles, my neck, my chest, and says “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong.”
I finally start to get angry. “That can’t be right. I’m telling you, I don’t feel well. I know when something is wrong with my body. I am in recovery from my eating disorder and eat better now than I ever have in my life and somehow have put on an excessive amount of weight in the last few months that has me extremely concerned about my health.”
She says “Well, I’ll send you for more bloodwork but in the meantime, you should exercise, 20 minutes a day. Sound good?”
NO THIS DOES NOT SOUND GOOD, DOC. If exercise was the f&%$*@! answer, I wouldn’t be here talking to you, now would I? The problem is that I do exercise, perhaps not as much as I would like because I’m so exhausted I can barely function but I do my damn best. I’m not here because I needed you to tell me to exercise. I’m not here to talk about how to lose weight – I’m here because everything in my body is screaming “SOMETHING IS WRONG.”
But I dont say any of that to her. Instead, I nod through my tears “Yes, I’ll exercise.” and I am sent to the front desk to check out. The woman hands me a piece of paper with the summary of my appointment, in which it says that the doctor discussed BMI with me and I agreed that I was going to exercise every day for 20 minutes.
And I sobbed. The discharge summary said nothing other than that I am overweight and need to exercise. I threw it in the garbage because IT IS garbage. Why why why can we be so obsessed with someone’s weight but be completely oblivious about the trauma that is often behind the number on the scale? Why are we still even talking about BMI? There is a plethora of research negating its validity as a tool for determining health.
How differently could that appointment have gone if she had asked me what is going on in my life aside from exercising? If she had looked me in the eye when she walked in the door and made me feel seen and heard? Would I have been so horribly triggered if they had respected my right not to step on the scale? I guess I’ll never know, but I do know one thing:
This sort of stuff happens in doctors appointments over and over and over again. Folks who are struggling with eating disorders are often masking trauma. When you get to the root of the trauma, you mitigate the eating disordered symptoms. The person then learns how to listen to their bodies and eat intuitively, and their weight becomes whatever it is meant to be.
WEIGHT WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF. It is not necessary for doctors to be discussing BMI when 90% of the time, we don’t show up to the doctors to discuss BMI. Weight isn’t, despite what so many people think in this fat-phobic society, the root of all evil. Unprocessed emotions, underlying autoimmune diseases, irregular metabolic functioning, and suppressed trauma, are just a few of the many, many things that are more important than BMI.
I wasn’t given the time of day by this doctor, as has been the case with dozens of other doctors. Instead of leaving with answers for what is going on with me when I know something is wrong, I left full of shame and rage that no one will listen to me when I am doing everything short of screaming at the top of my lungs “SOMETHING FEELS OFF WITH MY BODY PLEASE HELP.”
I’ve been in recovery from my eating disorder for awhile now. I’m more in tune with my body than ever before, but because my BMI labels me as being overweight, everyone jumps to the conclusion that it must be my diet and exercise that are off.
We need to do better. We need to get rid of the BMI are start assessing people’s ACE scores (see https://alyssascolari.com/understanding-adverse-childhood-experiences/ for more info on ACE scores) because this is ultimately what’s going to kill people, not their BMI. You can put someone on the biggest, best diet in the whole world and they will still continue to have health issues until you get to the core of their wounds.
“Trauma-informed” is not just some training that we need to get in order to check off another box on our “to-do” list. It’s a crucial part of the work that all healthcare professionals do. When we start to shift our focus towards a truly trauma-informed practice, I can guarantee that we’ll start saving more lives than the BMI chart ever has.
Of all of the pain I have endured over the last few months as a result of a significant loss in my life, I have to say, both time and space have given me the ability to see this person for exactly who he/she/they really are. I have had some time to reflect on the recent years filled with scenarios that left me feeling full of guilt and shame. This person, who happens to be the ultimate gaslighter, loved to tell me that he/she/they were setting boundaries with me. The thing about being in toxic relationships is that when you’re in one, you inherently believe that this person is speaking the truth. You don’t question whether or not this person actually knows what he/she/they are talking about. And when you start to feel angry and offended by what this person says, instead of blaming that person, you automatically blame yourself!
Thank God I know so much better now. The fog has cleared and although this person is nowhere to be found in any aspect of my life any longer, I feel as though I can see this person for who she/he/they truly are for the first time in years.
As I am processing the depths of my relationship with this person, I have realized that if this has happened to me, it is likely happening to so many other people, so I want to provide a little bit of clarity on a rather fuzzy topic. There is a significant difference between someone setting a boundary with you and someone threatening you, but sometimes the lines can be blurred and what we think are healthy limits are actually threats.
So let’s break it down, shall we?
BOUNDARIES
Boundaries are limits that we set with other people or sometimes, even ourselves. The point of setting a boundary is to protect our own physical, social, and emotional health. Setting boundaries with others can look like:
-“Thank you for the invitation, but I can’t go out this weekend.” -“I won’t be joining you for the holidays this year due to the pandemic.” -“I have let you know repeatedly that I do not want to speak about this topic. If you continue to bring it up, I am going to leave the party.” -“I have told you that I am not comfortable meeting up without masks. If you are not able to wear a mask, let’s wait to meet up until it’s safer to do so.”
Again, boundaries are put in place to honor ourselves and protect all aspects of our well-being.
THREATS
Threats are designed for us to get the things we want and/or need, often at the expense of someone else. Threats typically come in the form of a warning that someone or something might be harmed if we don’t get what we want. Some examples of threats might be:
– “If you are going to continue dating that guy, then I’m going to stop asking you how you’re doing since you’re only going to get hurt.” -“If you don’t spend the holidays with us this year, then I’m not buying you those shoes you have been asking for.” -“We aren’t having sex at night anymore since you clearly can’t even have the laundry done by the time I get home from work.” -“I’m paying for this wedding so I think I should have some say in where you have it.”
Threats are about securing our wants and needs by taking something away from someone if things do not go our way.
THE THIN LINE
As you’ll notice in the section on boundaries, none of the examples I provided were about doing harm to the other person in any way. The only thing a boundary should do is help us to protect ourselves without doing harm to others. The line between threats and boundaries starts to blur when we start punishing other people for not getting our way. There is no punishment happening when we tell others, for example, that we aren’t comfortable meeting up with them unless they are wearing a mask. There is punishment happening, however, when we withhold sex, threaten emotional neglect, or hold money over people’s heads in order to get what we want. Sometimes it can be quite difficult to tell the difference between a threat and a boundary. Many people feel that they are one in the same, but that could not be further from the truth; and it is important to suss out the difference so that we are taking good care of both ourselves and our loved ones.
Now with all of this being said, I’d like to shift gears and speak directly to YOU – the one who is the epitome of the thin line. I know you lurk in the shadows of my life, reading every blog post, listening to every podcast episode, watching me rise from the ashes like the goddamn phoenix that I am. You are the thin line between threats and boundaries, the one who has been threatening me for years under the guise of being “great at setting boundaries”. I know your eyes will scan every word of this page, hoping to find evidence that you broke me but knowing deep down that you never had that kind of power. Let me take a moment to thank you for teaching me the difference between a healthy boundary and an insidious threat. You have allowed me to be able to share this critical information with others so that they can recognize a threat from a mile away and learn how to set appropriate limits with others. Allow me to express my gratitude for the blinding pain you caused me. While I would have preferred to live without your subtle threats, manipulations, and abrupt abandonment, I am proud to say that I am taking what you put me through and will use it to help others for the rest of my days.
As somebody who is rarely ever short on words, I find myself struggling to speak lately. I am quiet these days, possibly because I’m not too sure how to put words to the things that I have experienced over the last couple of months that have culminated in me being re-traumatized on multiple levels.
I will never tire of the way in which I feel so alive when I sit with my patients. It feels so natural for me to enter their worlds and help them to make connections, process pain, and heal what hurts. But sometimes I don’t do so well when the roles are reversed. When I become the patient, looking back at my therapist, I am speechless. Perhaps this is because words simply do not feel like enough to describe what has recently transpired in my life.
I suppose I am doing as well as any one person could be doing after being re-traumatized. There have been moments, especially this past week, when I have wanted to crawl right back into the cold, icy arms of my eating disorder -anything to take the edge off and make me feel like I have some sort of control. I’ve had to fight like hell to maintain my connections with safe, supportive people instead of isolating. And once or twice this week, I even had to take the risk of reaching out to my treatment team to help get myself grounded.
The flashbacks have become more frequent and I am finding that the way in which I talk to myself or about myself has become increasingly negative. I’m having to focus nearly all of my efforts into the self-care department. It would be so much easier for me to constantly work so that I don’t allow time or space to process all that has happened, but I’m trying to be intentional about slowing down. My boundaries in both my professional and personal lives have gotten tighter (i.e., avoiding contact with potentially triggering people, setting limits on how many hours I am working a day, etc.). While this process has required an exhausting amount of introspection, I have become much more aware of the things that I can and cannot hold space for right now.
So what does this all mean? Does it mean I’m too sick to do my job? Does it mean I am unraveling and cannot function? Does my pain make me any less competent in my profession?
No. Not at all. If anything, being fully in touch with my emotions and having awareness of my limits right now makes me more competent in my profession than I’ve ever been. I am completely aware of how much I am hurting right now, and I am fully aware that I have more on my plate than I bargained for.
Therapists are humans too, and as a human, being in recovery from PTSD does not mean that I will never have bad days again. It does not mean that I am immune to being traumatized in the future, nor does it mean that I am immune to a relapse in my eating disorder. Relapse is not only possible, but is also probably given my circumstances right now. Healing is not linear. None of us will ever wake up one day and be 1000% cured. The simple act of being alive means we will most likely experience pain multiple times throughout our lives.
But the exciting news is that with every breath I take, I have become more aware and more empowered to take my healing into my own hands instead of self-destructing, which is what I would have done in the past. As distraught as I have been, I have turned away from self-destruction and instead, I have made every effort to take better care of myself than ever before. This is what healing looks like. Healing doesn’t mean that we never hurt again! Healing means that, when the pain creeps back in, we feel more equipped to cope and to persevere. I am healing because although I will never be okay with what has happened to me, I am choosing to love myself through it in every way that I can.
I truly don’t know what the days will bring given my current circumstances, but I do know that with every decision to love myself instead of hate myself, I heal a tiny bit more. I have the tools, the love, and the support I need right now. And when all else fails and I simply cannot turn down the intensity of the pain, the anger, or the worry, I turn back to one of my favorite fictional characters who, I believe, said it best:
“No good sittin’ worryin’ abou’ it. What’s comin’ will come, and we’ll meet it when it does.” – Rubeus Hagrid, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Today, the day after Thanksgiving, is my favorite day of the year! Yet, it’s also one of the hardest days of the year for those of us who struggle with being elbow deep in diet culture and eating disorders.
The day after Thanksgiving leaves so many of us feeling guilt and shame over our bodies as a result of what we consumed yesterday. Eating disorders and diet culture, at their core, are really all about having control; and in a world that feels more out of control than ever before, I am sure that the urge to over-exercise and restrict food intake as a way to make up for the the calories consumed yesterday is extremely strong.
So I’m here to ask you one thing, and that is to have mercy on yourself.
When you find yourself opening your eyes in the morning and immediately thinking about what you ate yesterday, have mercy on yourself.
When you tell yourself that you need to work out as a form of damage control for the food you consumed, please have mercy on yourself.
If you feel as though the only way you deserve to get through the day today is by eating lettuce that you later end up purging, please have mercy on yourself.
If you find yourself staring in the mirror and pinching and poking the softness on your body, wondering if your stomach is more doughy today than it was yesterday, have mercy on yourself.
When you find yourself starting to feel hungry, but do not feel as though you deserve to eat because you enjoyed yourself yesterday, have mercy on yourself.
And finally, if you find that you cannot stop chastising, telling yourself that you were out of control yesterday, and calling yourself names that are shame and guilt inducing, I beg of you, please have mercy on yourself.
You do not have to spend the day obsessing over how to reverse what you ate yesterday because you did absolutely nothing wrong. One huge meal will not, I repeat, will not have any effect on your weight. You deserve to nourish your body today, whether that means having three full meals with snacks, or snacking throughout the entire day.
Try to check in with your body and listen to what it needs. If we tune out the noise of diet culture, we will discover that our bodies already have the answers to the questions that we have been asking our entire lives. So be extra kind to the body parts that you hate, for those body parts have kept you healthy, safe, and alive far before your brain developed enough to allow diet culture and eating disorders get in the way.
When the guilt and the shame and the urges to restrict, purge, over-exercise, or body check start to creep in, please remember to have mercy on yourself. Not just today, but always.
