Thank you for sharing such an initimate account of your weight gain. You may find Marianne Williamson's Book A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrending to your weight forever an interesting read.
Marianne gives a blessed account of women using weight gain for protection as it relates to sexual abuse and trauma. There are other issues identified as well. But she did indeed write the book for Oprah.
There are some interesting exercises in the book. Now that I am recommending it to you, I feel it maybe time for me to revisit it myself. If you are of the spiritual inclination there is healing to found in her words.
I delved into my childhood trauma at the beginning of this year. And I mean I jumped in it, like I never have before, dug around in the sh*t and got dirty. It was challenging to hear a therapist say the words I have told many clients myself over 15 years in social work "it wasn't your fault"..."no one protected you, no one nutured you and you deserved that". On initial hearing I rebuffed it as I had seen many of my own clients do and my therapist repeated the phrase maybe 8-9 times. Until I heard it, I mean really heard it and allowed it to resonate. Something in me broke. Something in me finally let go of a sh*it load of pain and betrayal I had felt for a lifetime.
Trust in others is hard Ancaire. And some people don't tred lightly. I know our friends and family think we are overly-sensitive to their critique. I am strong I know that, I am not a victim, and I also hate the word survior, but there are fragile spots and I need good boundaries. Ironic then that the adult of childhood abuse has few skills at implementing them. Our blueprint got erased by adults who were careless and selfish, at times plain cruel with us.
Letting go of weight is equally as scary Ancaire. When the first 70kg went I was feeling emotions for the first time. My drug of choice was gone, couldn't stuff the emotions down with food any more and I had absolutely no skills for feeling emotions. My first relationship with Mr M was fraught with my emotional meltdowns. Hmmmmm 35 and managing a romantic relationship for the first time with the emotional skills of 10 year old. That was going to work, yeah right lol. In addition I now know I was being regularly triggered from childhood trauma.
I never struggled with male attention when the weight first came off. I loved it. Let me just say I had my adolescence and 20's at 29-35. And I managed it like a teenager too. Completely emotionally inept. There is humour in it now for me. But at the time the angst was real.
My gut response to making sense of what occured in my childhood and the results is to say that my body and my mind has attemmpted to keep me safe as best it could, when others failed me.
We will be healed Ancaire. Time and a dedication to ourselves is what is needed.
Be kind to yourself as you take this journey. Your H behaviour is abuse and he needs to go.
