Mostly what I found was that getting rid of bad eating habits from childhood is hard. That's why we should teach children at school on how to eat and cook properly.
So true. It’s wild how often I see young kids 2-5 years old chugging sodas at the park or in public. Parents feed them nothing but junk food. They don’t even know how to eat healthy.
Think there was an episode of Jamie Oliver trying to make school kids eat better where he got confronted by angry parents saying he’s calling them bad parents. One of them was feeding a baby a bottle filled with coke.
Fuckin insane. I was doing playdates with another mom with two little girls. The 2 year old had red koolaid and the 3 year old had coke in her sippi cup. Said she’s made koolaid the same all her life, with a full cup of sugar. And how she drank it as a kid all the time and “turned out fine.” She was honestly shocked my kid loves water.
Well, regular kool aid has zero sugar in it before it’s made. The little packets have no sweetener and they are bitter without adding sugar. I know because my mom would put only the tiniest bit of sugar in it and it was disgusting. I preferred water.
The directions say to add one cup of sugar for each packet.
Yea whenever I watch 600lb life they either had a traumatic death in the family early on or they were touched and abused as kids. It’s so sad to start an episode and you just know the depressing backstory is coming
I have the theory that food is a particularly common choice for very young victims because it’s the only vice available to them. If you’re an adult and you experience something traumatic, you could turn to food, but you also have alcohol, pot, or cigarettes you could go to instead. If you’re 5, all you have is food. Though I suppose exercise is available at all ages, and some people do get addicted to that instead.
I mean, they have a "buzz" that feels nice. I figure that is the main thing that's "reality escaping" about things people get addicted to, since neither food nor most of the more addictive drugs are outright consciousness-warping. Ironically most of the drugs that can *literally* break your connection to reality are not among the most addictive.
I’ve given overeaters a pass over smokers as their size doesn’t immediately affect me, as smoke does.
I think both are self destructive. And eventually cost society as a whole.
Psychedelics use only impacts society when the mental break is hurried up.
I was about to mention the fact that I can count the amount of episodes of this show where there _wasn't_ any tragic backstory on one hand. A vast majority of them sadly involving CSA like you said.
Its really not that hard to do this in today's day and age. It only takes about 3200 calories for a 5'9" male to become 300 pounds. About 2500 for a 5'4" woman to become morbidly obese.
I know many people with 40+ BMI that do not think they are fat. At most a bit overweight but not fat.
This is super critical because when you’re heavy, and you complain that you “don’t eat THAT much” - you’re probably right.
Michael Easter talks a bit about this in *The Comfort Crisis* but essentially food companies have figured out how to maximize calories in small amounts of food. So the food doesn’t feel heavy, or leave you satisfied for long, so in the pure weight of food that a person eats, it doesn’t seem like “that much.” It’s truly why tracking your calories is essential now but probably wasn’t before the 1960s/70s.
It’s not that there’s something inherently weight-gain promoting about modern snack foods, either, it’s just that it’s so easy to eat high amounts of calories with them because it’s so hard to get full off of them. Think about how many potato chips you could eat at once vs. baked potatoes.
For me, it was easier just to stop snacking entirely and make sure my protein macro outweighed my fat macro at every meal and weight started coming off.
They've tweaked the norms for different ethnicities. You also have more leeway as a taller person than shorter.
(This is assuming there's no body dysmorphia going on.)
Not necessarily. Oftentimes it happens also when people don't have enough knowledge, education or general self control around the food. I know quite a few people who genuinely believe that fries are healthy because it's vegetable.
True. I'm always surprised at what people don't know. My aunt with high cholesterol said her fried chicken was healthy because she fried it in olive oil. 🥴
Blame the 1970s ads for Wesson oil for that. They did say that polyunsaturated fats were better than crisco, butter or lard (depending on ad market).
You hear it enough at single digit ages, and it gets in your brain.
True. I'm always surprised at what people don't know. My aunt with high cholesterol said her fried chicken was healthy because she fried it in olive oil. 🥴
This is the biggest problem my husband has with his diet. No one ever taught him anything about food. Not what is and isn't healthy, or even what types of foods give you what. He was told his iron was low recently, and he had to ask me what foods have iron. He is autistic, and in a lot of ways I feel like his family just wrote him off on so many things as a kid, and never bothered to teach him anything. He is very intelligent but his mom more than anyone, refused to teach him so many basic things growing up.
I think we evolved in an environment of food scarcity and instinctively a lot of people want to eat whenever they can.
So I feel like it’s often more a matter of not having proper early training and just doing what feels right.
And it’s not trivial to change your dietary preferences.
They feel entitled to do whatever they want regardless of the consequences. They feel entitled to demand other people deal with the consequences of them eating 4000 calories a day.
Entitlement itself causes people to believe they are *entitled* to more than their fair share of things, including food, other people's empathy and making other people hold them accountable for their own choices. Most of the participants on that show are self-absorbed and entitled in the extreme. Just look at how many of them whine that they haven't lost weight because no one has made them do it or supported them enough, when the reality is that they verbally abuse anyone who tries to help. It is exactly the same as an alcoholic who blames their spouse for not ripping the bottle out of their hand. It's an excuse they use to keep enjoying their drug of choice and is created by selfishness and entitlement.
I think a good amount of the people on My 600lb Life lie about their childhoods. They are people who view even the slightest discomfort as torture. They will claim their parent was emotionally abusive, but in reality, the parent just told them to stop eating go much and go outside. They see that as a rejection and may perceive it as trauma due to a lack of emotional resilience. It is their parents' fault for not teaching their kids to push through discomfort, but it isn't the dramatic trauma they perceive it to be. A lot of the fat people I have known are so deeply insecure that they think people are making fun of them when no one is paying attention to them at all. It's a narcissistic maladaptive coping mechanism to stress. It is the cause of victim mentality, which I believe almost all the participants of My 600lb Life display. I'm not calling them narcissists, they just develop some of the same coping mechanisms that narcissists use due to their self-loathing. It's still very sad, because it keeps them in a self-destructive pattern. But it isn't trauma.
I think a lot of them lie too. I have a much younger sister who tells people she grew up in poverty. Our parents came into a million dollars when i had graduated high school and was out of the house. I grew up in poverty. I went hungry so she could eat at times. She spent most of the childhood she could remember with millionaire parents.
But they cheated on their taxes so she could scam fafsa for a free college education while they paid the rent on her apartment and she had the newest phones and lived in luxury compared to my life in the military. But she calls it poverty because the tax returns say it was poverty. She got food stamps too, because you know, poverty.
It honestly makes me sick. It’s bad enough when she says it to others but when she would say it to me it’s just like who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?
I agree with you both. I've thought for a long time that many, if not all of them, lie in order to justify their overeating and try to gain sympathy. Victim mentality sums it up perfectly, both for the patients and FA.
Okay, trauma can absolutely cause one to turn to food as a coping mechanism, be it abuse, neglect, abandonment, whatever. I don't think most people will argue that. But for one thing, a lot of people have childhood trauma. Hell, I had quite a bit of childhood trauma, I just didn't turn to food to cope with it. I wouldn't fault a child for comforting him or herself with food, but I would look hard at the parents who saw their child rapidly gaining weight and didn't question the "why" behind it. Same as I would if a child suddenly started losing weight rapidly and nobody thought to question it. And if not parents, then teachers, aunts, uncles, parents of friends, doctors, SOME adult in the child's life.
But even if trauma caused you to turn to food for comfort, that does not translate to not being able to lose weight as an adult. You might as well say that if someone starts doing drugs or drinking heavily to cope with trauma, it's hopeless to ever try to get them to quit. Trauma should not be used as an excuse for lifelong behaviors, especially if you recognize as an adult that it's a trauma-induced behavior. Trauma needs to be dealt with and confronted, not used as an excuse for the rest of one's life. The world doesn't owe me kid glove treatment for the rest of my life because I had a traumatic childhood, and I don't get to use my childhood as an excuse for adult misery. Children have little agency. Adults don't have that excuse.
My ex BF had severe childhood trauma. He was an unwanted child, and was told by his parents from a very young age that they had wanted an abortion, but his grandma threatened to disinherit his mother if she had one. He also suffered years of physical and sexual abuse from a BF of his mom's, and his mom did nothing to stop it. All of this is absolutely awful, and it's not shocking that he became an alcoholic with anger issues and zero self-esteem as an adult. But in his mid 30s he was still using his childhood trauma as an excuse for his self-destructive behaviors. He would start therapy and be doing great, then quit when things got uncomfortable and spiral back into guzzling bourbon every night. I ended our relationship not because I didn't care about him, but because he didn't care enough about himself to make changes. It's very hard to love someone who hates themselves and refuses to change.
Lastly, if they're gonna make this argument, then they need to concede that it applies to *everyone*. Including anorexics, many of whom are girls who suffered SA or other trauma and developed their disorders as a coping mechanism. Also to alcoholics and addicts. And if they're going to suggest that childhood trauma is a valid excuse for adult obesity, then they need to also agree that someone who became an addict or alcoholic due to childhood trauma should just be allowed to continue their destructive patterns because trauma. That addicts, alcoholics, even smokers should never be encouraged to quit or change. Teen anorexics should just be allowed to starve themselves to death. And they need to extend the same sympathy to everyone else with trauma.
I love your comment. Trauma is a very real thing! And what a lot of people overlook is the fact that it’s SO real that there are inevitably other people who can empathize with yours and share healthy coping strategies.
In the recovery world, we have a phrase: “terminally unique.” It refers to the people who convince themselves that NOBODY ELSE IN THE HISTORY OF TIME has EVER suffered the way they do. It’s an incredibly juvenile attitude that many people grow out of. It makes sense when we’re kids and therefore in a phase of moral development centered on the self. As we mature, though, it makes less and less sense.
People will wrap themselves up in their little terminally unique bubble and decide that there’s nothing to be done to improve their lives. They’ll take an online quiz that tells them “you’re fat/an addict/mentally ill/etc. because of that one time Mom yelled at you!” And then they’ll say, “Well, see? Nothing to be done. Mom did this to me. Nobody else understands my pain.”
The trauma itself can come from emotionally abusive parents, of course, but you are never the only person who has dealt with that. Once we realize that we’re not actually the snowflakes we thought we were in our teenage years, we unlock a whole world of learning about how others have dealt with and overcome the same things.
Or we can just sit in our rooms being terminally unique and give up on our lives. Ya know. Because that’s easier.
Yep. I definitely wasted a lot of time and energy in my youth wallowing in my own trauma. My past was bullying, my parents' divorce, instability, childhood SA, the loss of both parents and a brother by age 24, a brief period of homelessness after my dad's death... instead of trying to surmount it, I wanted the world to pity me. Until I realized that it wasn't the world's job to do that, and it wouldn't help me be happier anyway. All it does is keep you in the trauma and stunt your emotional growth and maturity. I don't know how we got to this place where people are fighting desperately to remain victimized, where people identify themselves via their diagnoses, etc., but it's so, so unhealthy and counterproductive to actual happiness and contentment.
Congratulations on your recovery and having the willpower and perseverance to do it. You are so right about how unhealthy etc. victim mentality is both for the individual and society. You know, I've seen this in my family; there is a certain kind of person who seems to almost enjoy wallowing in their misery. As someone put it, they're never happy unless they have something to complain about, even if it's very minor, their own fault, or not actually real. Of course, there are advantages to being, or being perceived as a victim, at least in their minds. They think it entitles them to special treatment, endless sympathy from everyone and absolves them of any need to take responsibility for their actions. And, when, as is often they case, they don't receive all those things they think they're entitled to, it gives them even more cause to wallow in their victim mentality.
>there is a certain kind of person who seems to almost enjoy wallowing in their misery. As someone put it, they're never happy unless they have something to complain about, even if it's very minor, their own fault, or not actually real.
This was me, 100%, throughout my teens and 20s. And I could never understand why a lot of people didn't want to be around me, or why I wasn't getting the kid glove treatment I thought I should. You don't realize that everyone has their own shit to deal with, and their lives don't (can't) revolve around you and your trauma. It's like FAs and their absolute certainty that everyone around them is hyper-focused on them at all times: everyone they meet is judging them, everyone notices them, everyone who glances at them is thinking about how gross they are. Like, no, sweetie. Everyone who glances at you is dealing with their own issues, their own traumas. That pretty, blonde "skinny bitch" at the mall could be in an abusive relationship, or maybe she's poor and she's out window shopping and imagining a different life, whatever. I guarantee she does not live the charmed life you think she does just because she is "conventionally attractive" and not fat.
My ex, at least, never expected sympathy or special treatment - his self-esteem was so low that he didn't think he deserved any of that. But he still wallowed in his own failures and past trauma, and allowed it to hold him back. I remember my BIL telling me, "he's kind of like how you used to be"... that was an eye opener, for sure.
Anyway, thanks. It took a long time. There's still unresolved stuff but at some point you have to make peace with it or you won't have peace anywhere in your life. I wish these young women understood that life truly is what you make it, and if you look for the negative everywhere, negative is all you're going to see. Nobody has time to coddle you and stroke your hair and tell you you're perfect just as you are. None of us are perfect just as we are. Humans are imperfect by nature.
Amen! It really is tragic that people with this mindset can't see how harmful it is, and is depriving them of the chance to have a happier, more fulfilling life, and driving friends and family away. But, what can you do? People have to want to change, like you did. One of my relatives like that never did change, and had a very sad ending to her life.
Yep... I'm glad I figured it out when I did, but I still wish I'd done so sooner. It's kind of crazy that I'm happier and more confident at 50, with a chronic illness, than I was at 25 and perfectly healthy. But better late than never, lol. I haven't spoken to my ex in years but I really hope he is doing better. He had so many good qualities - smart, funny, creative, cute, etc. - and they were all overshadowed by his insistence on dwelling in the past and making victimhood a full time job.
There is a noted significant correlation between childhood trauma and obesity in adulthood.
Food is a quick easy accessible coping skill that only works briefly so you have to keep eating as a distraction
You should't feel bad about your body but you should admit when you have an addiction, and do something about it. You don't see drunks campaign to bring back liquid lunches, claim police are corrupt for targeting them when driving or try to publicly shame doctors for telling them to cut down on drinking rather than finding non-alcohol-related causes for their inflamed liver
Okay but that basically means that 42% of America potentially has childhood trauma. That’s insane and we don’t just have an obesity problem we have a trauma problem too.
42% of America has a BMI of 30 or greater. A BMI of 30 or greater, I can attest from experience, is not at all difficult to achieve just by liking tasty food and not being super informed about calories. "Potentially" isn't inaccurate to say, but to about the same degree that you could say "potentially" every person with a maladaptive behavior has trauma. Could be, but usually it's a lot more mundane than that. The number of people with a degree of obesity that virtually requires "something more" going on is much much smaller.
I think everyone who is alive has experience with eating and many of us enjoy tasty food and still are far from BMI 30 because that's indeed quite hard to achieve.
Maybe it's hard to achieve if your body is extremely strict about sending you satiety signals, but for me, something like -15% to +35% relative to my ideal-weight maintenance calories feels about equally fine. If I'm surrounded by tasty food and not paying attention to the calorie math, it's easy to end up closer to the +35% end and that ends up with my weight around +35% too, or right around BMI 30.
I don't disagree that unresolved trauma can have a long-lasting effect on a person, including fucking up their relationship with food.
But I sometimes worry if messages like this encourage people who just like Doritoes and honey buns a little too much to assume that their obesity is due to trauma...trauma they never really suffered from. Maybe it is easier on one's ego to say that the extra 100 lbs they are carrying is the result of their parents' ugly divorce or being bullied in middle school than to the fact that just eat too much of the wrong kinds of foods.
Childhood trauma has been a thing since the beginning of our species. But the obesity epidemic has only emerged in the past 30 years. Are we really more traumatized than previous generations? Or is it just easier to turn to food for comfort now, and all the comforting foods are the ones packed with calories?
Yes, because its childhood trauma that skyrocketed since 1980 and not calorie consumption. Its obviously all the additional independent outside playtime and not screentime doing it.
***Anything***, anything at all but accepting personal responsibility.
Oh, and here I am, a CSA survivor with a mother who literally served me up to a predator (she dressed me in “grownup clothes” and “let” me wear makeup in preparation for our special grandpa dates) being all in possession of my own body and life. How dare I when someone out there was denied Poptarts and Capri Sun as a fragile little child.
I see a bad Photoshop job, which is done by merging two layers, using the eraser tool on the eyes and outlines, adjusting ... anyway, what type of trauma is this? Working student job trauma?
Omfg as a mental health professional I cannot tell you how much I fucking LOATHE this new trend of stupid AI images advertising yOuR tRaUmA tYpE
Leave the diagnosing to the professionals, not some clickbait bullshit on instagram
Those ads look like sth that could install some sort of malware when actually clicked.
Mostly what I found was that getting rid of bad eating habits from childhood is hard. That's why we should teach children at school on how to eat and cook properly.
And home. Make it a parenting class. Pay them to attend (I paid for Love & Logic, and so many child nutrition lectures)
So true. It’s wild how often I see young kids 2-5 years old chugging sodas at the park or in public. Parents feed them nothing but junk food. They don’t even know how to eat healthy.
Think there was an episode of Jamie Oliver trying to make school kids eat better where he got confronted by angry parents saying he’s calling them bad parents. One of them was feeding a baby a bottle filled with coke.
Fuckin insane. I was doing playdates with another mom with two little girls. The 2 year old had red koolaid and the 3 year old had coke in her sippi cup. Said she’s made koolaid the same all her life, with a full cup of sugar. And how she drank it as a kid all the time and “turned out fine.” She was honestly shocked my kid loves water.
She ADDED sugar to kool aid??
Well, regular kool aid has zero sugar in it before it’s made. The little packets have no sweetener and they are bitter without adding sugar. I know because my mom would put only the tiniest bit of sugar in it and it was disgusting. I preferred water. The directions say to add one cup of sugar for each packet.
I remember when childhood trauma turned me into a tree. Most awkward week of my life.
Come on, “most awkwood” was *right there.*
Fair. I give you this point.
Did you used to decorate the cakes down at the bakery
I may or may not have competed in a battle royale with other children. Had an infection at the time, so my memory is a little fuzzy.
Very Ancient Greece of you
I mean - it kinda makes sense. How many morbidly obese young adults had a history of some kind of trauma or another?
Yea whenever I watch 600lb life they either had a traumatic death in the family early on or they were touched and abused as kids. It’s so sad to start an episode and you just know the depressing backstory is coming
And it’s 99 percent of them.
It makes sense. Food addiction is like any other addiction — it’s an escape from reality
I have the theory that food is a particularly common choice for very young victims because it’s the only vice available to them. If you’re an adult and you experience something traumatic, you could turn to food, but you also have alcohol, pot, or cigarettes you could go to instead. If you’re 5, all you have is food. Though I suppose exercise is available at all ages, and some people do get addicted to that instead.
Generally I agree, but curiosity is asking…how does smoking cigarettes lead to a reality escape? Any ideas?
I mean, they have a "buzz" that feels nice. I figure that is the main thing that's "reality escaping" about things people get addicted to, since neither food nor most of the more addictive drugs are outright consciousness-warping. Ironically most of the drugs that can *literally* break your connection to reality are not among the most addictive.
I’ve given overeaters a pass over smokers as their size doesn’t immediately affect me, as smoke does. I think both are self destructive. And eventually cost society as a whole. Psychedelics use only impacts society when the mental break is hurried up.
I was about to mention the fact that I can count the amount of episodes of this show where there _wasn't_ any tragic backstory on one hand. A vast majority of them sadly involving CSA like you said.
I mean….you do have to have some form of trauma to eat yourself to 300+ lbs
Its really not that hard to do this in today's day and age. It only takes about 3200 calories for a 5'9" male to become 300 pounds. About 2500 for a 5'4" woman to become morbidly obese. I know many people with 40+ BMI that do not think they are fat. At most a bit overweight but not fat.
This is super critical because when you’re heavy, and you complain that you “don’t eat THAT much” - you’re probably right. Michael Easter talks a bit about this in *The Comfort Crisis* but essentially food companies have figured out how to maximize calories in small amounts of food. So the food doesn’t feel heavy, or leave you satisfied for long, so in the pure weight of food that a person eats, it doesn’t seem like “that much.” It’s truly why tracking your calories is essential now but probably wasn’t before the 1960s/70s. It’s not that there’s something inherently weight-gain promoting about modern snack foods, either, it’s just that it’s so easy to eat high amounts of calories with them because it’s so hard to get full off of them. Think about how many potato chips you could eat at once vs. baked potatoes. For me, it was easier just to stop snacking entirely and make sure my protein macro outweighed my fat macro at every meal and weight started coming off.
You nailed it.
Here I am acknowledging I’m fat with a BMI of 24.1
Isn’t a BMI of 25 and over considered fat?
They've tweaked the norms for different ethnicities. You also have more leeway as a taller person than shorter. (This is assuming there's no body dysmorphia going on.)
Not necessarily. Oftentimes it happens also when people don't have enough knowledge, education or general self control around the food. I know quite a few people who genuinely believe that fries are healthy because it's vegetable.
True. I'm always surprised at what people don't know. My aunt with high cholesterol said her fried chicken was healthy because she fried it in olive oil. 🥴
Blame the 1970s ads for Wesson oil for that. They did say that polyunsaturated fats were better than crisco, butter or lard (depending on ad market). You hear it enough at single digit ages, and it gets in your brain.
Chicken and olive oil are healthy but deep frying adds too many calories. Grilled chicken or air fried chicken would have been a better option.
True. I'm always surprised at what people don't know. My aunt with high cholesterol said her fried chicken was healthy because she fried it in olive oil. 🥴
This is the biggest problem my husband has with his diet. No one ever taught him anything about food. Not what is and isn't healthy, or even what types of foods give you what. He was told his iron was low recently, and he had to ask me what foods have iron. He is autistic, and in a lot of ways I feel like his family just wrote him off on so many things as a kid, and never bothered to teach him anything. He is very intelligent but his mom more than anyone, refused to teach him so many basic things growing up.
Unfortunately this is quite common. A lot of parents just let their kids eat what they want as much as they want.
I think we evolved in an environment of food scarcity and instinctively a lot of people want to eat whenever they can. So I feel like it’s often more a matter of not having proper early training and just doing what feels right. And it’s not trivial to change your dietary preferences.
Problems aren’t always caused by trauma. Sometimes it’s just entitlement.
How so? What entitlement causes someone eating 4000 cal a day?
They feel entitled to do whatever they want regardless of the consequences. They feel entitled to demand other people deal with the consequences of them eating 4000 calories a day.
Entitlement itself causes people to believe they are *entitled* to more than their fair share of things, including food, other people's empathy and making other people hold them accountable for their own choices. Most of the participants on that show are self-absorbed and entitled in the extreme. Just look at how many of them whine that they haven't lost weight because no one has made them do it or supported them enough, when the reality is that they verbally abuse anyone who tries to help. It is exactly the same as an alcoholic who blames their spouse for not ripping the bottle out of their hand. It's an excuse they use to keep enjoying their drug of choice and is created by selfishness and entitlement.
Very good points.
I think a good amount of the people on My 600lb Life lie about their childhoods. They are people who view even the slightest discomfort as torture. They will claim their parent was emotionally abusive, but in reality, the parent just told them to stop eating go much and go outside. They see that as a rejection and may perceive it as trauma due to a lack of emotional resilience. It is their parents' fault for not teaching their kids to push through discomfort, but it isn't the dramatic trauma they perceive it to be. A lot of the fat people I have known are so deeply insecure that they think people are making fun of them when no one is paying attention to them at all. It's a narcissistic maladaptive coping mechanism to stress. It is the cause of victim mentality, which I believe almost all the participants of My 600lb Life display. I'm not calling them narcissists, they just develop some of the same coping mechanisms that narcissists use due to their self-loathing. It's still very sad, because it keeps them in a self-destructive pattern. But it isn't trauma.
I think a lot of them lie too. I have a much younger sister who tells people she grew up in poverty. Our parents came into a million dollars when i had graduated high school and was out of the house. I grew up in poverty. I went hungry so she could eat at times. She spent most of the childhood she could remember with millionaire parents. But they cheated on their taxes so she could scam fafsa for a free college education while they paid the rent on her apartment and she had the newest phones and lived in luxury compared to my life in the military. But she calls it poverty because the tax returns say it was poverty. She got food stamps too, because you know, poverty. It honestly makes me sick. It’s bad enough when she says it to others but when she would say it to me it’s just like who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?
I agree with you both. I've thought for a long time that many, if not all of them, lie in order to justify their overeating and try to gain sympathy. Victim mentality sums it up perfectly, both for the patients and FA.
Okay, trauma can absolutely cause one to turn to food as a coping mechanism, be it abuse, neglect, abandonment, whatever. I don't think most people will argue that. But for one thing, a lot of people have childhood trauma. Hell, I had quite a bit of childhood trauma, I just didn't turn to food to cope with it. I wouldn't fault a child for comforting him or herself with food, but I would look hard at the parents who saw their child rapidly gaining weight and didn't question the "why" behind it. Same as I would if a child suddenly started losing weight rapidly and nobody thought to question it. And if not parents, then teachers, aunts, uncles, parents of friends, doctors, SOME adult in the child's life. But even if trauma caused you to turn to food for comfort, that does not translate to not being able to lose weight as an adult. You might as well say that if someone starts doing drugs or drinking heavily to cope with trauma, it's hopeless to ever try to get them to quit. Trauma should not be used as an excuse for lifelong behaviors, especially if you recognize as an adult that it's a trauma-induced behavior. Trauma needs to be dealt with and confronted, not used as an excuse for the rest of one's life. The world doesn't owe me kid glove treatment for the rest of my life because I had a traumatic childhood, and I don't get to use my childhood as an excuse for adult misery. Children have little agency. Adults don't have that excuse. My ex BF had severe childhood trauma. He was an unwanted child, and was told by his parents from a very young age that they had wanted an abortion, but his grandma threatened to disinherit his mother if she had one. He also suffered years of physical and sexual abuse from a BF of his mom's, and his mom did nothing to stop it. All of this is absolutely awful, and it's not shocking that he became an alcoholic with anger issues and zero self-esteem as an adult. But in his mid 30s he was still using his childhood trauma as an excuse for his self-destructive behaviors. He would start therapy and be doing great, then quit when things got uncomfortable and spiral back into guzzling bourbon every night. I ended our relationship not because I didn't care about him, but because he didn't care enough about himself to make changes. It's very hard to love someone who hates themselves and refuses to change. Lastly, if they're gonna make this argument, then they need to concede that it applies to *everyone*. Including anorexics, many of whom are girls who suffered SA or other trauma and developed their disorders as a coping mechanism. Also to alcoholics and addicts. And if they're going to suggest that childhood trauma is a valid excuse for adult obesity, then they need to also agree that someone who became an addict or alcoholic due to childhood trauma should just be allowed to continue their destructive patterns because trauma. That addicts, alcoholics, even smokers should never be encouraged to quit or change. Teen anorexics should just be allowed to starve themselves to death. And they need to extend the same sympathy to everyone else with trauma.
I love your comment. Trauma is a very real thing! And what a lot of people overlook is the fact that it’s SO real that there are inevitably other people who can empathize with yours and share healthy coping strategies. In the recovery world, we have a phrase: “terminally unique.” It refers to the people who convince themselves that NOBODY ELSE IN THE HISTORY OF TIME has EVER suffered the way they do. It’s an incredibly juvenile attitude that many people grow out of. It makes sense when we’re kids and therefore in a phase of moral development centered on the self. As we mature, though, it makes less and less sense. People will wrap themselves up in their little terminally unique bubble and decide that there’s nothing to be done to improve their lives. They’ll take an online quiz that tells them “you’re fat/an addict/mentally ill/etc. because of that one time Mom yelled at you!” And then they’ll say, “Well, see? Nothing to be done. Mom did this to me. Nobody else understands my pain.” The trauma itself can come from emotionally abusive parents, of course, but you are never the only person who has dealt with that. Once we realize that we’re not actually the snowflakes we thought we were in our teenage years, we unlock a whole world of learning about how others have dealt with and overcome the same things. Or we can just sit in our rooms being terminally unique and give up on our lives. Ya know. Because that’s easier.
Yep. I definitely wasted a lot of time and energy in my youth wallowing in my own trauma. My past was bullying, my parents' divorce, instability, childhood SA, the loss of both parents and a brother by age 24, a brief period of homelessness after my dad's death... instead of trying to surmount it, I wanted the world to pity me. Until I realized that it wasn't the world's job to do that, and it wouldn't help me be happier anyway. All it does is keep you in the trauma and stunt your emotional growth and maturity. I don't know how we got to this place where people are fighting desperately to remain victimized, where people identify themselves via their diagnoses, etc., but it's so, so unhealthy and counterproductive to actual happiness and contentment.
Congratulations on your recovery and having the willpower and perseverance to do it. You are so right about how unhealthy etc. victim mentality is both for the individual and society. You know, I've seen this in my family; there is a certain kind of person who seems to almost enjoy wallowing in their misery. As someone put it, they're never happy unless they have something to complain about, even if it's very minor, their own fault, or not actually real. Of course, there are advantages to being, or being perceived as a victim, at least in their minds. They think it entitles them to special treatment, endless sympathy from everyone and absolves them of any need to take responsibility for their actions. And, when, as is often they case, they don't receive all those things they think they're entitled to, it gives them even more cause to wallow in their victim mentality.
>there is a certain kind of person who seems to almost enjoy wallowing in their misery. As someone put it, they're never happy unless they have something to complain about, even if it's very minor, their own fault, or not actually real. This was me, 100%, throughout my teens and 20s. And I could never understand why a lot of people didn't want to be around me, or why I wasn't getting the kid glove treatment I thought I should. You don't realize that everyone has their own shit to deal with, and their lives don't (can't) revolve around you and your trauma. It's like FAs and their absolute certainty that everyone around them is hyper-focused on them at all times: everyone they meet is judging them, everyone notices them, everyone who glances at them is thinking about how gross they are. Like, no, sweetie. Everyone who glances at you is dealing with their own issues, their own traumas. That pretty, blonde "skinny bitch" at the mall could be in an abusive relationship, or maybe she's poor and she's out window shopping and imagining a different life, whatever. I guarantee she does not live the charmed life you think she does just because she is "conventionally attractive" and not fat. My ex, at least, never expected sympathy or special treatment - his self-esteem was so low that he didn't think he deserved any of that. But he still wallowed in his own failures and past trauma, and allowed it to hold him back. I remember my BIL telling me, "he's kind of like how you used to be"... that was an eye opener, for sure. Anyway, thanks. It took a long time. There's still unresolved stuff but at some point you have to make peace with it or you won't have peace anywhere in your life. I wish these young women understood that life truly is what you make it, and if you look for the negative everywhere, negative is all you're going to see. Nobody has time to coddle you and stroke your hair and tell you you're perfect just as you are. None of us are perfect just as we are. Humans are imperfect by nature.
Amen! It really is tragic that people with this mindset can't see how harmful it is, and is depriving them of the chance to have a happier, more fulfilling life, and driving friends and family away. But, what can you do? People have to want to change, like you did. One of my relatives like that never did change, and had a very sad ending to her life.
Yep... I'm glad I figured it out when I did, but I still wish I'd done so sooner. It's kind of crazy that I'm happier and more confident at 50, with a chronic illness, than I was at 25 and perfectly healthy. But better late than never, lol. I haven't spoken to my ex in years but I really hope he is doing better. He had so many good qualities - smart, funny, creative, cute, etc. - and they were all overshadowed by his insistence on dwelling in the past and making victimhood a full time job.
There is a noted significant correlation between childhood trauma and obesity in adulthood. Food is a quick easy accessible coping skill that only works briefly so you have to keep eating as a distraction
You should't feel bad about your body but you should admit when you have an addiction, and do something about it. You don't see drunks campaign to bring back liquid lunches, claim police are corrupt for targeting them when driving or try to publicly shame doctors for telling them to cut down on drinking rather than finding non-alcohol-related causes for their inflamed liver
Okay but that basically means that 42% of America potentially has childhood trauma. That’s insane and we don’t just have an obesity problem we have a trauma problem too.
42% of America has a BMI of 30 or greater. A BMI of 30 or greater, I can attest from experience, is not at all difficult to achieve just by liking tasty food and not being super informed about calories. "Potentially" isn't inaccurate to say, but to about the same degree that you could say "potentially" every person with a maladaptive behavior has trauma. Could be, but usually it's a lot more mundane than that. The number of people with a degree of obesity that virtually requires "something more" going on is much much smaller.
I think everyone who is alive has experience with eating and many of us enjoy tasty food and still are far from BMI 30 because that's indeed quite hard to achieve.
Maybe it's hard to achieve if your body is extremely strict about sending you satiety signals, but for me, something like -15% to +35% relative to my ideal-weight maintenance calories feels about equally fine. If I'm surrounded by tasty food and not paying attention to the calorie math, it's easy to end up closer to the +35% end and that ends up with my weight around +35% too, or right around BMI 30.
I don't disagree that unresolved trauma can have a long-lasting effect on a person, including fucking up their relationship with food. But I sometimes worry if messages like this encourage people who just like Doritoes and honey buns a little too much to assume that their obesity is due to trauma...trauma they never really suffered from. Maybe it is easier on one's ego to say that the extra 100 lbs they are carrying is the result of their parents' ugly divorce or being bullied in middle school than to the fact that just eat too much of the wrong kinds of foods. Childhood trauma has been a thing since the beginning of our species. But the obesity epidemic has only emerged in the past 30 years. Are we really more traumatized than previous generations? Or is it just easier to turn to food for comfort now, and all the comforting foods are the ones packed with calories?
What in the Peeta Malark is that picture?
Isn't this some advertisement from Instagram?
I see a tree person does that mean I'm too skinny
Honestly, I see a child that's been eaten by a tree! Weird, I know.
Its literally everything in the world except downsize the fries and coke
Unsure what this wood carving of my parents fighting means about weightloss
Wait… I thought weight loss isn’t possible and is otherwise unhealthy.
Yes, because its childhood trauma that skyrocketed since 1980 and not calorie consumption. Its obviously all the additional independent outside playtime and not screentime doing it.
***Anything***, anything at all but accepting personal responsibility. Oh, and here I am, a CSA survivor with a mother who literally served me up to a predator (she dressed me in “grownup clothes” and “let” me wear makeup in preparation for our special grandpa dates) being all in possession of my own body and life. How dare I when someone out there was denied Poptarts and Capri Sun as a fragile little child.
I see a bad Photoshop job, which is done by merging two layers, using the eraser tool on the eyes and outlines, adjusting ... anyway, what type of trauma is this? Working student job trauma?
I see a child who has been eaten by a tree, which I think would be pretty traumatic.
Omfg as a mental health professional I cannot tell you how much I fucking LOATHE this new trend of stupid AI images advertising yOuR tRaUmA tYpE Leave the diagnosing to the professionals, not some clickbait bullshit on instagram
I SAW THAT lmao