What Happened to You
Our American monarch and bread-loving* matriarch, Oprah Winfrey, recently wrote a book called What Happened to You? Conversations on Resilience, Trauma, and Healing. I’ll admit, I haven’t read it. For two main reasons:
1) I am too busy using my crumbs of spare time to watch TV
2) Sometimes I foolishly feel like I’ve learned everything I need to know about a book from the title. Yes, I judge a book by its cover--technically, title. And subtitle! Some others from my Osmotic Learning Library?
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
The Body is Not an Apology: the Power of Radical Self Love
When the Body Says No: the Cost of Hidden Stress
The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence
Fearing the Black Body: the Racial Origins of Fatphobia
I am learning it is probably unwise of me to assume the contents of these texts before recommending them. I am learning how unwise assumptions are in general. We make assumptions all day long. It saves a lot of time. Can you imagine if you genuinely had to consider whether other cars will honor the traffic light at every intersection? Our brains would be completely bombarded wondering whether a plane is going to crash into us on the street or if the barista getting our name wrong is an act of malice. Assumptions are a sign of our neurological advancement and adaptation. However, these shortcuts are imperfect. I am sure you can think of a time when you falsely assumed. I assumed my cat didn’t know how to open doors until I found the empty treat bag in my closed pantry. All beings live beyond our capability for assumption or stereotyping. When I work with people one-on-one, I am blessed to see this first hand. Recently, I quit assuming things about people, and started asking a lot more questions. Especially “why?”
The simplest sentence is “why?” I just keep asking it. In sociology, the 5 Whys is “an iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem” When it comes to applying this to your work, I feel like an archeologist, a compassionate mirror, and a teacher.
Did you know that most of the dust in your home is dead skin cells? Yes, we shed. A lot. We live and move through the world, and we shed parts of ourselves, even when we don’t mean to. You leave breadcrumbs as to why things are they way they are. Why you think the way you do. Sometimes my job is to notice the dust you’ve been living in. Many of my clients have backgrounds in psychology, but even then it’s hard to see the forest from the trees. (Buckle up, because it is about to be a roller coaster of mixed metaphors out here.) Uncovering what happened to you is like looking at a web and tracing it back to the very first threads. It always begins with curiosity.
Sometimes, I pull a thread and it leads to...nowhere. Turns out you just don’t like salmon! Other times, it leads to a holiday lights box-style tangle that we need more help to unravel. (Shoutout to our psychotherapist partners!) The point of all this is: Trauma. Most of us have experienced it, and most of us are very scared to talk about it. Some of us have experienced so much, that we don’t even register certain “smaller” things as traumatic. Or you don’t have the context to know that what happened to you was not okay. Traditionally, we’ve associated trauma with big, violent events, such as war or terrorism. But the true definition of trauma is “a deeply disturbing event that infringes upon an individual’s sense of control and may reduce their capacity to integrate the situation or circumstances into their current reality.” More succintly, trauma changes our brains.
We are now recognizing that trauma is not so much contingent on a specific event, but a bodily response to fear. ANYTHING can be traumatic if you feel you are so scared you might die. That’s why parts of eating disorder recovery can be so scary. Mac & cheese is not inherently threatening, but if we walk that fear ten steps back, we recognize that the idea of social pain your brain associates with your body and food is terrifying. And brains work so quickly that you often don’t see the 10 links between the plate set in front of you and and your racing heart.
When someone is terrified in front of me, I recognize I am seeing the tip of an iceberg. I help us cope and breathe and get calm enough to excavate. Picture your misunderstood fear like it’s the point at the top of a pyramid. Now, walk it back only one step at a time. I use a pyramid, because often the bricks lead in two or three directions. The key is to be patient, and not to try to repel down too quickly, or we may miss something really important, sometimes another thread entirely. I don’t stop until I get to the base level, which is always something that speaks to one of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. The two most common needs being threatened at the bottom of the fear are: food and safety/security. People get confused here sometimes, “but Kymber, that doesn’t make sense. I am safe and I have food?” And this is where we come back to the idea of pain and trauma.
Our society has made such an effort to disenfranchise and dehumanize and literally starve people in different body sizes, that our brains aggregate this information and create fear as a protective measure. This is not an irrational fear. It is very valid, and you may even have experienced the trauma of other people placing their fears about being healthy or small on you. What you fear is not necessarily weight or food, but social pain that you have seen come up around those things. Some real examples include:
-Bullying during childhood
-Feeling watched or judged while eating/moving
-Parents encouraging diets
-Forced exercise
-Exclusion due to body size or food choices
-Teasing/commentary
-Romantic partner focus on body/food
-Ultimatums related to body/food
Breathe.
Social pain is real pain. “Social pain is the experience of pain as a result of interpersonal rejection or loss, such as rejection from a social group, bullying, or the loss of a loved one.” Painful events cause our brain to adapt in a reactive or proactive way. We will do anything to not be in that situation again, even starve ourselves, even decades later. It’s a survival mechanism.
Humans are tribe creatures. We literally cannot survive alone, and we can’t even ethically do the research to prove that in literature, because if you leave a baby alone, it will die. Belonging is a basic human need, same as food or water or shelter. So it’s no wonder that we get so scared of being abandoned by our group. There is research now showing that shame and disgust live in similar centers of the brain, and if you’ve ever felt truly sickened by your own actions, you are probably getting anxious right now realizing this.
Breathe.
The theory is that shame is there to protect us from being so uncaring of the needs of our group that we would do something to get us kicked out, abandoned and thus left in danger, in the elements, alone. For example, if you just thought it would be fun to burn down all the tents in your tribe, and felt no shame or empathy to prohibit that recklessness, that would be bad. I am not a fan of this adaptation, personally. It seems to have had a pretty short-term usefulness evolutionarily, because absentmindedly telling the waiter “enjoy your food, too!” should not elicit this strong of a response.
Healing your shame is key in healing your relationship with food and your body. It starts with changing the question “what’s wrong with me??” to “what happened to you?” When we make that simple shift, grace enters the room. What happened to you offers explanations, not excuses. It opens the gate to understanding. Understanding gives us knowledge, even in the most seemingly “irrational” situations. Your fear and your pain is not senseless. It may not seem fitting for the situation, and that just means we have more to learn.
Knowledge is power. Knowing what happened to you can allow you so much room for compassion.
Breathe.
Some of us can’t know or remember all that has happened to us. But you can sit with your dietitian or therapist and be safe to explore. We want to hold this space for you. I want to hear what happened to you. Your story is yours to share, keep, or tailor, and I feel so honored to be a steward of the parts of yourself you choose to share with me. You may have felt different at times, but you have never been wrong. There is nothing wrong with you. There is probably a lot wrong about what happened to you.
Breathe.
As we start to explore how your past has informed your present, and your future, it can feel overwhelming to untangle all the threads.
Take heart; there is no rush. I have some tools to help us.
Standard Units of Distress Thermometer- We can use this to gauge how safe you feel and how to cope according to your distress level
EMDR, Somatic Therapists- A trauma therapist told me recently, “the body remembers, even if the mind doesn’t,” and that was so cool to find out about EMDR therapy. You can process your buried traumas with someone who is trained to help
Dr. Brene Brown-researched shame and vulnerability, and has such a thoughtful, practical style of conveying information
Coping Skills-there are thousands. Breathing is the quickest one to access, in my opinon. Your dietitian can probably teach you at least 3 in your next session. You deserve to try as many as necessary until it works
Cognitive Defusion-less elegantly put, thinking practice! It took years to make your brain think the way it does, and it will take a lot of active practice to undo the harmful thought processes. It can feel “silly,” but truly this is how minds and lives change over time. Just try.
Speak (or write)- This one is so important. Saying what happned to you is so scary. But it happened, and someone should know. You deserve to let it out. Your story matters. There is nothing you can say that I will judge you for or be irreparably horrified by. Even if it’s the wildest thing I’ve heard all day, it will likely not be the wildest thing I’ve heard all week. Grief shared is grief abated.
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There may have been times in your life where you didn’t have agency. Or maybe you have felt completely alone. That is not the case here. You are in charge now. I am here for you and with you. You tell us when it is too much and you need a break or when you need to be challenged.
I will listen to you and respect you, because I care about what has happened to you.
I was telling a client yesterday I was sorry I couldn’t really cry with her in session, while she courageously shared her story. But that it’s okay to cry and I cry all the time. I’ll probably cry today. Yesterday, I cried listening to my morning news podcast as they covered the testimony of the police officers who have suffered trauma due to the terrorist attack on the American capitol earlier this year. The following transcription does not do it justice. Listen, if you have time.
Here’s the excerpt that got me:
Officer: “I have been left with the psychological trauma of surviving this horrific event...what makes the struggle harder is knowing that so many of my fellow citizens are outright downplaying or denying what happened...I went to Hell and back to protect them...and now too many people are telling me that Hell doesn’t exist. Or that Hell wasn’t that bad.”
Chairman of the Committee: “I never expected that today would be as emotional as it has been...I think it’s important to tell you right now though, that even though you guys may individually feel a little broken. You guys all talk about the effects you have to deal with, and you know, you talk about the impact of that day. *voice breaks* but you guys won. You held. We are not defined by our bad days. We are defined by how we come back from bad days...Our mission is very simple. It’s to find the truth and to ensure accountability.”
YOU won. That’s why I ask for your wins every week. YOU held. YOU survived through your impossible circumstance. What happened to you informs you, and it doesn’t have to define you.
Our work is about so much more than food.
Whatever’s been eating you up has changed your eating, but you have survived.
Breathe.
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*Oprah has been quite problematic in contributing to and upholding diet culture for decades. However, Black women in this country have had to do way more than most to fit in and survive. We will not judge her while she untangles herself from this, likely contractually obligated, web. We will not judge how people cope or survive in this very tricky world. I have high hopes she’ll be a HAES proponent within 5-8 years. (Let’s bet on it!)
About the Author
"Kymber Stephenson is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist living and working in the Greater Denver area. Her experience began with a love of food which led her to pursue a degree in Culinary Arts from Johnson & Wales University. As her love of science and helping people wove with that initial path, she continued on to a Bachelor of Science in Culinary Nutrition with a dual concentration in clinical dietetics and culinary food science.
Kymber is especially passionate about eating disorder management and prevention. In this vein, she focuses on educating clients about the multi-faceted ways history, marketing, food systems, culture, psychology, and body image affect health and relationships to nutrition, food, and body. She works with clients to truly fall in love with food again, acknowledging not only its nourishing properties, but truly embracing its comforts, tradition, and fun! Working in a client-guided manner with a Health at Every Size approach, she strives to help each unique person reach their idea of peace and satisfaction in their bodies and their overall lives. Kymber's driving philosophy is that all people deserve equitable access to quality food and evidence-based nutrition education, regardless of status or background."