I recently went to a lecture on how religious trauma may affect the brain. “Religious trauma occurs when a person’s experience in their faith-based community is stressful, degrading, dangerous, abusive, or otherwise harmful. Many forms of religious trauma are not associated with specific events but instead accumulate over a long period of time through harmful messages enforced by their community.” Such indoctrination strongly may cause people to fear being greedy and gluttonous,  believe they desire too much, and that they’re undeserving of what they eat as well as of many life pleasures. Some highly religious women starve themselves in order to look perfect (aka culturally acceptably thin) to get or keep a husband. Mary Anne Cohen, LCSW, Director of the New York Center for Eating Disorders, explains that, “in highly religious homes with rigid rules, the best, cheapest, legal, socially sanctioned way of burying feelings is with overeating, bulimia, self-starvation, compulsive...

After a session talking with a client about (finally) breaking up with her abusive boyfriend and hearing about the “great new guy” she’d found (not), I had a flash of her speeding down a highway in the wrong direction crashing into oncoming traffic. In my vision, while everyone was going north, she was going south and didn’t know it. Some onlookers were aghast or looked terrified, others were waving their arms and honking their horns trying to get her to see what was wrong, while still others looked stunned or shook their heads in wonder that a driver couldn’t see they were heading the wrong way. Catch my drift here? This is how my client lived her life—and not just her romantic one either—barreling down the road in the wrong direction. Lest you think I sound like I’m blaming her, I’m not. With her upbringing by two abusive parents who were...

I’d never heard the term trauma dumping until I read an article about it, but I’d certainly come into contact with the behavior. Clinical psychologist Carla Manly explains that “Unlike venting, trauma dumping is done in an ‘unsolicited, unprepared way, where a person dumps traumatic thoughts, feelings, energy onto an unsuspecting person,’ whether it be a close friend or a stranger.”  Trauma dumping may be something you do to others or someone does to you. It’s neither venting nor oversharing. Generally short-lived, venting is meant to release powerful emotions, we often feel better after doing it, and no one’s the worse for it. Oversharing occurs when someone pours out grievances inappropriately—in the wrong setting, for example. Neither behaviors need necessarily involve traumatic experience. Manly explains that “an issue arises when serious information is shared without permission, in an inappropriate place and time, and to someone who may not have had the capacity to take in this information."...

One day a client, Conny, came in talking about feeling broken, a topic that was often at the center of our discussions. Whether she was at work, with family or dealing with the multiple institutions we interact with regularly, she usually came away feeling that something was wrong with her and she was defective.  The problem was her expectations of herself and making false assumptions about others. Here’s an example. Connie was asked by one of her spouse’s doctors to have him seen by a cardiologist before his upcoming surgery. After 30 minutes on hold with the cardiologist’s office, she was told there was no cardiologist available to see him until several months later. She explained that her husband’s surgeon had asked that this happen before his upcoming surgery and wondered if the cardiologist’s office could speak to the surgeon’s office. No can do, came the response. My client hung up...

If you don’t understand why you habitually get yourself into relationships or situations that turn out badly for you, consider the concept of neurotic repetitive patterns, aka the repetition compulsion. These are complicated psychology terms expressing a simple concept: we repeat behavior because that’s all we know from previous experience.  Here are some examples. Joe grew up in a family where both his parents worked long hours and weren’t able to give him the attention and help he needed, so he often felt neglected and overwhelmed. Now he manages to find jobs where he’s left pretty much struggling on his own feeling he’s going under. Sandra was abused by her father and all the men she finds attractive mistreat her even when they’re sweet as pie at the start. Domingo’s Mom drank heavily and somehow all the partners he’s had also ended up having substance abuse problems even the ones who...

When you think of trauma, do you think that what happened to your grandmother or mother is only passed down to you emotionally? It turns out that the legacy of trauma is passed down in other ways and involves more than emotional inheritance.  How Parents' Trauma Leaves Biological Traces in Children | Scientific American describes how trauma may be passed down through generations via genetics, that is, on a physiological level. “Epigenetics [the way genes function] potentially explains why effects of trauma may endure long after the immediate threat is gone, and it is also implicated in the diverse pathways by which trauma is transmitted to future generations. The implications of these findings may seem dire, suggesting that parental trauma predisposes offspring to be vulnerable to mental health conditions.” But there’s also “evidence that the epigenetic response may serve as an adaptation that might help the children of traumatized parents cope...

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), though not included in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5, is a more serious form of PTSD. You can recover from it, but first you need to know you have it.  According to the Hanley Treatment Center, with CPTSD, “you constantly feel on edge; nothing seems to help. The emotional trauma gets physically stuck in your body.” The body (memory) keeps reliving memories that intrude into reality as if they’re happening in the present moment—like a needle stuck on a record (for those who remember records). CPSTD may start in childhood or adulthood and is the result of “a series of traumas over a long time.” The key is that trauma is not one and done, but recurrent so that you never really get to recover from it and it can shape your personality.  Complex PTSD causes may include: Sexual abuseIncestOngoing physical abuseChronic neglect or abandonmentMedical...

Many people are surprised when they learn they were emotionally abused as children. Maybe they kind of knew it but didn’t want to believe it or maybe they truly had no idea that what was done to them is considered maltreatment. It’s important to recognize if you were emotionally abused growing up because that understanding will help you resolve your current emotional issues, not to mention your eating problems. An article on how adults shouting can be harmful to children’s development really hit home for me. My parents frequently argued and it wasn’t so much their loudness that got to me but the upset behind their disagreements. It felt like they were shouting even when they weren’t because I could feel the anger gushing out of them. Raised voices are disconcerting and make children feel frightened. Even today, I feel myself immediately emotionally dysregulate when people are arguing loudly around me. ...

Here are situations you might find all too uncomfortably familiar. My long divorced client Philip is frustrated that he can’t catapult himself back into the past and change it. Filled with regret about things he did and didn’t do in his marriage, he feels a need to atone for his perceived transgressions. A personable and attractive man, Philip could be dating other women. Instead, he cedes the present to the past, immersed in a shoulda, woulda, coulda reverie he’s likely to regret in the future. Middle-aged Moa has convinced herself she ought to have been able to save her younger brother from going down a self-destructive path which led him to being in hospice care today. She and her three siblings all suffered in various ways in their highly dysfunctional family, but her rebellious brother got the worst of it. Now, she keeps thinking that, though he abused her when they...

My client Ronni works as a barista at a coffee bar that’s poorly managed. Managers come and go, her schedule is changed from week to week, and she’s often asked to fill in for missing employees. Her goal has been to try her hardest to be flexible and do a good job to please her managers. My goal has been for her to return to college. My client Marlena always seemed to find jobs where she was physically abused by a boss or co-worker. She was never badly hurt, just a shove, light slap or having keys or the like thrown at her. It was almost uncanny how this happened in job after job. When I made comments about unwanted touching, especially with aggression, being totally unacceptable, Marlena would shrug and say, “Oh, it’s not so bad. I’ve had worse.” Want to guess what these clients had in common? They both...

I blog a lot about abuse: how to recognize it and deal with it. Somehow I haven’t written much about one particular type of abuse and that’s called emotional smothering. It begins when parents stifle your wants by trying to make their desires yours and vice versa. They often don’t do this intentionally but, nevertheless, smothering literally takes your breath away. And along with your breath go your rights and power to make your own decisions and take pride in them or suffer the consequences. Children and adults in this situation may become so used to the blatant and subtle ways parents smother them that they fail to realize what they’ve given up until they have no voice left to govern their lives. When this occurs, they may act out in anger at others  or themselves because they feel robbed of making choices. Or they may become depressed that they’re defective...

While reading about trauma’s imprint on our minds and bodies in “Invisible Legacies: The Ubiquity of Trauma” by world renowned physician Gabor Maté (Psychotherapy Networker, Mar/Apr 2023, pp. 53-55), it struck me that clients sometimes make either too little or too much of trauma. By the latter, I mean they think of trauma as so overwhelming they believe they’re powerless to stop it from scarring them for life.  I’ve had clients that have been abandoned as children, abused by parents, or sexually assaulted in adulthood who were surprised when I labelled these events as traumatic. Though I could tell in initial sessions they’d suffered from something (or several somethings) having gone very awry in their lives, they acted as if it nothing had gone wrong. I’ve also treated clients who had a hard time giving up the belief that past trauma had ruined and always would ruin their lives. They felt...

Unfortunately, most women I talk to have been victims of sexual assault or harassment at some point in their lives. I’m sure many men have been as well. These events occur on a continuum from minor to major and can do lasting psychological damage. For survivors of such incidents, it’s important that you don’t simply push them out of memory or take on the shame that you are in any way to blame. How you view what happened to you is part of how you relate to your body. Here are some do’s and don’ts for survivors that also need to be understood by those who are close to them. I speak as someone who has encountered sexual assault in various forms over my life-time—an attempted rape in college, in my 20s narrowly escaping being forced into my apartment building by a man who was trying to assault me, a doctor...

If you’re still carrying around some terrible story about being a bad, defective, unworthy person, please take a minute to read this blog. Our culture is big on individuals taking responsibility. Sure, it makes sense that at some point in your life you stop blaming your current problems on your history and become accountable for your actions. But what actually makes us who we are as adults?  No one as a child decides to become an angry drug user. Or a thief. Or an abusee. Or an ignorant person. So much of who we are started before we were born. For example, when you were a fetus in your mother’s womb and kept fidgeting and moving around so much that it prevented her from sleeping night after night. Was that your fault?  What happened was that a particular sperm and egg randomly got together and spawned you. It was an act...

I’m sure many of you read the title of this article and had no idea what I was talking about. I’d never heard the term “breadcrumbing” either until I read How to Tell if You’re Being Breadcrumbed in a Relationship, Friendship or at Work by Amy Beecham but I certainly recognize the behaviors described. I bet some of you will too. Breadcrumbing is a manipulative technique used by unhealthy (often not nice) people to keep you hooked into them or your relationship with them. It involves giving you just enough love, praise, time, attention, good will to make you happy, but not enough to really satisfy you. In clinical terms, it’s called giving you intermittent reinforcement.  According to Beecham, “‘breadcrumbing’ involves leading someone on, and keeping their hopes up through small and superficial acts of interest. A breadcrumber might be flirtatious, complimentary or seem engaged with you at first, but will...

I could swear I’ve blogged about victims of abuse thinking that defending themselves against mistreatment constitutes abuse. So here are my thoughts, perhaps again. My client Judy’s wife, Dee, blows up at the least little thing. She has a whole litany of criticisms about Judy and demands she listen patiently to every last one of them. If Judy tries to leave in the midst of Dee’s tirade, she’s accused of being self-absorbed and ignoring Dee’s needs. Finally, one night when Dee started screaming at Judy the minute she came home from work, Judy yelled back, “Shut the f*** up.”  In our next session, though, rather than be proud of speaking up, Judy felt awful, insisting, “I’m just like Dee. I can’t believe I cursed her out. Shame on me.” A generally soft-spoken person, it’s hard to even imagine Judy cursing, so she clearly had been pushed to the brink. Her retort...

Many clients who’ve suffered dysfunctional childhoods either over or under respond to trauma. Easily stressed by typical family and work problems, when there’s major mayhem or abuse in their lives, they either don’t recognize it or act as if nothing’s wrong. The goal is to have a healthy window of tolerance for stress and stressors. Over-reacting to situations only causes more stress. For example, when you need to keep calling repeatedly to get information from a bank or doctor’s office, this is simply how life works. Bureaucracy takes time as well as a toll on us. But if you quickly get frustrated, you can make the situation worse by being verbally abusive or giving up on finding out information that’s crucial to your well-being. Alternately, when you let your Mom or Dad scream at your children for no good reason and make excuses for their abuse, you’re under-reacting which will cause...

Many dysregulated eaters were raised in chaotic environments and suffer from the emotional and physical aftermath today—hypervigilance, excessive body tension, substance abuse, high anxiety, control issues, denial, lack of self- or other- trust, panic attacks, poor interpersonal choices, fear of abandonment, indecisiveness, stress-related physical conditions, perfectionism, and difficulty calming down and feeling care-free.  Talking with clients about their experiences growing up in chaos helps them understand what happens in this debilitating cycle. One was raised in an upper-class city family with three siblings. Mom was severely depressed and Dad, though often loving, suffered from alcoholism. My client recalls few occasions when Dad was sober, and Mom wasn’t feeling depressed. Instead, she remembers what she calls chaos: feeling anxious going out because Dad might over-drink and embarrass the family, never knowing if Mom would be together enough to remember to pick her up after soccer practice, fearing walking into their apartment and...

I had a middle-aged client decades ago in Boston who grew up smack in the middle of seven siblings. She never could get a word in edgewise and was trying to make up for lost time by talking nonstop as an adult. When she didn’t have the floor, she took it and when she did, she kept it. I understood her intense need to be heard and listened to, but her behavior only pushed others away, leaving her in the same boat as she was in childhood: no one wanted to listen to her, and this made her feel invisible. Here's another example. I have a lovely client who can’t recall a time when she didn’t have suffocating, overwhelming anxiety. Her grandmother and aunts who also suffered from it because it ran rampant through her family, would tell her not to make a big deal of it and that she was...

Reading an article on maladaptive behaviors due to early abuse, I came across the term splitting. It’s used a great deal when talking about Borderline Personality Disorder, but most folks have never heard of it, which is too bad, because it’s a useful concept. Splitting happens when someone has difficulty integrating aspects of themselves or others. For example, how you’ve felt after a binge—like an entirely bad and disgusting person. In splitting, you forget all the other wonderful qualities you have, all the behaviors that make you valuable and lovable, and see only the negative ones.  Or, you meet a potential romantic partner and only see their best qualities, ignoring that they sometimes treat you poorly. You don’t see them as fully human. This happens with people who are different from us ethnically, religiously, etc. as well. We see us as good and them as bad. Or when you put someone...

Many people think that if they didn’t suffer trauma in childhood or adulthood, they’re trauma free. But it’s interesting to note how many of these people suffer with anxiety, depression, chemical dependency, or are victims or perpetrators of abuse. How trauma becomes intergenerational through our cells and DNA is more complex than I’m able to do justice to (though I’m reading a book on the subject and will soon blog about it). For now, I want to talk about how intergenerational trauma affects people and may be one of the causes of their dysregulated eating. Here are two examples. When Devon’s grandparents who were farmers came over from Ireland, they were dirt poor. With eight children, two of whom who died as toddlers, they could barely scrape together enough money to migrate to the U.S. when Devon’s dad was 11. All the children arrived here malnourished and were put to work...

What’s the difference between a scar and a sore? In my mind, a scar is something that once hurt but is no longer painful, while a sore is something that hurts right now. You view a scar as being about something that happened to you and recognize that it isn’t happening now. A sore is different: it’s an active wound that keeps hurting. It’s helpful to think about events in life as scars or sores in order to distinguish what’s active and really needs our attention and what’s a memory to ignore. Here’s an example. My client Lloyd was the oldest of six children and their unofficial caretaker, what we call the parentified child. Growing up, his mother was on disability due to a heart condition and his father worked two jobs to support the family. Good natured Lloyd tried to do all that was expected of him, but that was...

Every once in a while a client latches onto a phrase I’ve said because it speaks to them. This happened when I suggested that it’s time for my client Jill to “live for what you fought for.” What I meant was that she’d struggled through an abusive childhood only to live like she’s still stuck on the battlefield.  The truth is that many clients feel and act this way. The war is over, but they can’t seem to climb out of the trenches and delight in freedom, clear skies, and the calm of inner peace. Dr. Jon Connelly, founder of Rapid Resolution Therapy, describes it this way: It’s as if you’re walking forward but always looking over your shoulder. How can you move ahead without looking ahead? How can you leave memories of the past behind if you’re always glancing back at them? Jill, the client referenced above, is a great...

If you’re being abused and having difficulty breaking away from your abuser, you may be experiencing traumatic bonding. A destructive form of attachment that occurs when, in spite of mistreatment, you still want to be with the person hurting you, it may happen with family, friends, or co-workers. According to Wikipedia, “Trauma bonds are emotional bonds with an individual that arise from a recurring, cyclical pattern of abuse perpetuated by intermittent reinforcement through rewards and punishments. The process . . .  is referred to as trauma bonding or traumatic bonding.” Hotline explains the difficulty of breaking free from abusers as recognizing that they “exhibit ‘good’ behaviors too.” That is, they’re not abusive all the time, but may be kind, caring and loving between abusive episodes. Some partners are even described in glowing terms when they’re not being abusive. Here’s the thing: Intermittent reinforcement is what creates the bonding part of trauma bonding,...

When awful things are going on around you, do you ever feel disconnected from them, as if what’s happening has nothing to do with you? Do friends or family ever try to get you to see that you’re being grossly mistreated and you insist that everything is fine or will be? These are both cases of having become desensitized to your painful emotions.  Desensitization occurs when you suppress (consciously) or repress (unconsciously) feelings of fear, anxiety, hurt or anger which are meant to warn you that something in your life is very wrong. I often blog about the difficulties of feeling too much and being too reactive in situations. Desensitization is the opposite, when you don’t feel enough. For example, a client we’ll call Don, who’s separated from his wife, has two teenage sons who frequently act out, screaming at each other and cursing their parents. Once, son #1 threatened family...

Have you heard the saying, “We don’t know what we don’t know.” If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you likely don’t even realize all the life skills you lack and the viewpoints that those who were raised in more functional environments have that you don’t. So, here’s what you might not know but need to. You can trust people.       Obviously, you can’t trust everyone for everything. You can’t expect everyone to know how to fly an airplane, cut your hair, or advise you on investments. When we talk about trusting people, we usually mean that we can trust them emotionally: Are they honest, ethical, dependable and reliable; will they validate our feelings, be there for us and take care of us? Not everyone will, but many will try their darndest to do so.      If you grew up with parents who couldn’t (because of their upbringing)...

Here are stories clients tell me by the truckload. “I never had any luck with dating, so I gave up eight years ago,” “I tried intuitive eating when I was younger and couldn’t do it,” or “I haven’t worked since I lost my last job because it was too stressful for me.” What do all these scenarios have in common? Each one uses the past to predict the future. Why do we do this? Although we’re the only animals we know of who have consciousness about our actions, our brains are still built to use past experience to guide current and future behavior. My cat knows that when she gets too near the pool she loves to drink from, she’s going to get a spritz of water in her face as a deterrent because she’s fallen in twice. This is how cat mind teaches itself what to do and not do....

Here are excerpts from a client’s letter showing her triumph over trauma from a highly abusive father. I hope her growth inspires you to continue on your path to healing. “I finally get it. I get that my father is incapable of loving me, feeling empathy by putting himself in my shoes, caring about my feelings, etc. I see that he is sociopathic and a malignant narcissist and it feels so very painful. I see that I have believed the lie that I am not worthy of being loved as he continues to put others needs over mine. I see that I have believed that I was crazy, wrong, a trouble maker, too sensitive, etc. I see that I have been abused. That my mother was abused and afraid and numb and couldn’t protect me. I see how I have been codependent in my relationships with men and friendships with women...

“Boy,” said a client, “this childhood stuff really can mess you up!” I couldn’t help but chuckle. In fact, we had a long, shared laugh about the validity of this statement. What’s as true is that you might not realize in which ways and to what degree your upbringing is messing with you. The good news is that it’s never too late to learn. To do this, you must first erase blame from your brain. Your parents may have caused your problems, but they too had childhoods and parents, so it’s useless to point fingers at them. Who else is there, you might wonder, to blame, so you fault yourself for not realizing earlier in life that you’ve been barreling through it ill-equipped. Once you get blame out of your system, you can look objectively at how “this childhood stuff” might have messed with your head and heart. Here are some...

I haven’t been able to get a phrase out of my head that a client said a few months ago. It went something like this: “. . . and then the safety net turns into a spider’s web.” As a writer, I found the allusion to be brilliant. As a therapist, it was chilling. Sadly, my client was talking about her marriage. It’s common for victims of abuse, especially women, to partner up with abusers in same sex as well as heterosexual relationships. The path starts in childhood when, through no fault of their own, they suffer abuse as children—physical, emotional, sexual or, worse, all three. Parents or other caretakers are emotionally unhealthy and more concerned with meeting their own pathological needs than rearing healthy children.  As children, these individuals have no idea that they are not causing the abuse and, instead, are perfectly normal and whole, while their abuser is...

I feel fortunate that I learned so much in social work school (thank you Simmons College in Boston) that I use now. One of the concepts is about abuse and it’s very simple. I hope it helps you see the relationship dynamics around abuse differently. The child and parent form a dyad which is the smallest social unit. When a parent abuses a child, the child makes sense of it in a certain way. And try to make sense of it we do, as humans are meaning-making creatures. We think that there are only two positions in life: abuser and abusee. Not a pleasant thought, but one that helps us understand the relationship between people.  The abused child then perceives they have two choices. They have no reason to believe there are any others. There are actually four choices, but we’ll come to them in a minute. The first choice is...

One day I had two sessions in a row in which clients expressed fear that the “rug would be pulled out” from under them. One talked about how anxiety about things going wrong drove her straight to the cookie jar and the other shared that it made her go over and over things she’d done and planned to do to make sure things would work out. If you ever have constant fear that a rug will be whipped out from under you, read on. I also recommend that you read my blog Are You Often Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop. When either Mom or Dad is poorly attuned to their child’s needs, there may be loss of consistency, stability, security and predictability. Sometimes this is due to parents being narcissistic or ill-suited to having children. They tire easily with and become frustrated from having to meet the demands of...

Many clients with eating disorders report that they were bullied in childhood. Are you one of them? Are you sure you even know what bullying is? Truth is that many people minimize the mistreatment they had at the hands of peers or family members and don’t realize that what they endured is bona fide bullying.  Kate Baggaley in “How Being Bullied Affects Your Adulthood,” says this about adult post-bullying syndrome, or APBS (not a clinical diagnosis): “Bullying is corrosive to children’s mental health and well-being, with consequences ranging from trouble sleeping and skipping school to psychiatric problems, such as depression or psychosis, self-harm, and suicide.” She says that “roughly 1 in 3 students in the United States are bullied at school” and that “Years after being mistreated, people with adult post-bullying syndrome commonly struggle with trust and self-esteem, and develop psychiatric problems . . . Some become people-pleasers, or rely on...

Although biology and genetics play a huge role in our development, the way we were treated in childhood is foundational to our emotional well being. Here are some startling statistics from “Resurrecting therapy: putting Big Pharma on the couch” by Erick Kuelker, PhD (Psychotherapy Networker, Sep/Oct 2019, pp 45-49) showing that when it comes to mental health, we hardly grow up on an equal playing field, that is, some of us really are far more unlucky and unfortunate than others.  Such as, “Someone fortunate enough to have grown up in an emotionally healthy home had an 18% chance of developing depression by middle age. But having just one adverse child experience (ACE) boosted the risk by 50% . . . three to 84% and five or more to 340% greater risk.” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study by Robert Anda). Children of angry, narcissistic, unpredictable or poorly emotionally regulated parents...

It will help your emotional and social development to recognize the stages you’ve gone through to get to be who you are emotionally today. More importantly, it will help you understand that you can, within obvious limits, pretty much be whoever you want to be now and in the future. The point is that you can change, so why continue to struggle and suffer. Why not invent the self and life you want? Stage 1: Your thoughts and actions are determined by your parents and other adults—by what they say and don’t say and do and don’t do      When we are children, our parents and other adults seed our minds and the seeds simply, naturally grow into something we accept as us. They believe that people aren’t to be trusted and we believe it too. They act as if their needs are more important than ours and we accept...

Until you make correct meanings of old, distressing events, you’ll be stuck in a mental time warp and at risk for emotional eating because you won’t feel in control when you’re triggered by them. Triggers are no more than old perceptions that something is wrong. Nothing need actually be wrong, but we think it is. Here are two examples. You were the middle child among five siblings. Your older brothers were close in age  and hung around together, your younger sisters were bubbly extroverts, and you were and remain an introvert. Your siblings teased you (though lovingly) about your shyness and mostly left you alone, and you grew up feeling invisible as if you weren’t interesting or important. When you socialize now, you view every rebuff as proof that people don’t want to talk to you or find you likable. You mostly do things alone but yearn for friends.  You could...

Conspicuously absent, that is what I’d call the care, attention and love that’s missing in the narratives of many dysregulated eaters toward themselves. I know this because clients come in talking about all they’re doing for everyone else in their lives and, if or when they shift to a self focus, it’s to talk up their shortcomings. I can almost see the outpouring of energy that they give to family and friends and feel how parched they are for care and attention. This manifests itself in several ways. One is that we may give others what we want but fear asking for (https://www.karenrkoenig.com/blog/giving-others-what-you-want) either because we believe we shouldn’t need it or are ashamed that we do—we give in the hope we’ll get back, rather than ask directly for help, support, care, or attention. The other issue is that people who tend to take care of others and not themselves are...

A client and I spent a session getting to the roots of an upsetting reaction she couldn’t shake after a dinner out. Her intense feelings are typical of what happens to us when events that are over and done with rear their ugly heads in the present. We’re unsettled in two ways: first, by whatever happened to cause our distress and, second, by the immensity of our distress over a situation that we know intellectually is no big deal.  Here’s what happened. My client had dinner with friends at a restaurant she loved but hadn’t visited in a while. She enjoyed her selection—mahi-mahi corn tacos with jasmine rice and vegetables—and ate mostly the fish because she craved protein, thinking she’d take the rest home and eat more of it during the night or save it for another time. Satisfied and pleasantly full, she asked the waitress for a doggie bag. At...

  Common reactions to trauma include flight or flight. But many trauma victims and survivors also react with a freeze response. According to Stephen Porges, professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, what we call the freeze response is immobolisation, “…the critical point of the experience of life-threat trauma events.” (“Stephen Porges: ‘Survivors are blamed because they don’t fight,’” by Andrew Anthony, The Guardian/The Observer Psychiatry, 6/2/2019, accessed 6/6/19). He describes it as “… this inability to move, the numbness of the body and functionally disappearing.” When you ask trauma survivors what they felt going through an initial trauma or reliving it through later threatening experiences, they’ll often say they felt paralyzed or dumbstruck. For example, a client whose childhood and marriage had been filled with emotional abuse underwent psych-testing with a large, rather boisterous psychologist who kept firing questions at her without giving her time to think or...

  In order to stop being triggered by painful memories, we need to recognize that our stories about events change as we age and learn. Fortunately, our brains mature and add new features that make us see things in a different light. When we’re 4, we may believe in Santa Clause, but this is unlikely at 14 because we understand and know more about life. If you’re older than 25 and still buy into an interpretation of harsh events you formed as a child, it’s time to update your story to better sync with reality. Our interpretation of events at any age drives our actions adaptively to survive. Childhood interpretations are simplistic, naïve, and lack complex, critical thinking. Because our frame of reference is narrow due to circumscribed life exposure, especially before we enter school, we often know little more of the world than our family’s dynamics—we generalize and conclude that...

  If painful memories trigger you turning to food for comfort, recognize that your memory of an event is a recording of how you perceived it at whatever age it occurred—4, 11, 15. The memory is your immature brain’s interpretation or story of and feelings about the event at the time. The mature brain, which develops in the late 20s, provides a more realistic and valid explanation of human nature and mental health and reinterprets painful events more rationally and accurately. Here are examples of childhood events and their “immature child” and “mature adult” interpretations, meanings and emotions. You’re 7 years old and Dad has promised to take you to the circus—again. You’ve rarely seen him since your parents’ divorce, begged him for weeks to get circus tickets, and are excited about the outing even though Dad didn’t want to go and yelled at you to stop nagging him it. Driving...

Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People--and Break Free Image of Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People--and Break Free Reviewed by: Karen R. Koenig (Originally published at New York Journal of Books) https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/gaslighting “Although this book might be painful to read for gaslighting victims and survivors, it will bring them out of the darkness and into the light, helping them heal . . .” With or without our knowledge, most of us have met a gaslighter or two at some point in our lives or know someone who has been deceived by one. The scary truth is that these master manipulators are often our neighbors, friends, spouses, children, siblings, parents, co-workers, bosses, or political leaders. We may call them difficult, challenging, crazy-making, morally corrupt, narcissistic, power-hungry, or abusive because we don’t know enough psychology to give them the more precise label they warrant. The term gaslighting, a type of psychological...

I often blog about Rapid Resolution Therapy to treat trauma memories, and encourage readers wishing to resolve old issues quickly, or simply improve their lives, to learn more about it at http://www.rapidresolutiontherapy.com. In the meantime, try this practice next time you’re upset or don’t want to feel so emotional. Some background: We often feel distress when we confuse actual events going on in the present with emotion-laden memories of events that are stored in our amygdala. Its job is to automatically warn us of incoming threats by being alert to situations and events which are similar to ones we’ve experienced as fearful and disturbing. Casting an ultra-wide net and using general criteria, it triggers a warning every time an event in the present comes close to being like a scary one from the past. The problem is that when the amygdala gets triggered, memories from previous painful situations flood through our...

Whether or not you’re a fan of Jane Fonda as an actress or an activist, she has a lot to teach us about recovering from bulimia and body image disorder, discovering and expressing one’s authentic self, and achieving self-esteem. At 81, she’s far from past her prime and actually may just be reaching it. Or, so I thought, after watching Jane Fonda in Five Acts (https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/jane-fonda-in-five-acts). Growing up in a highly dysfunctional family, she was a sad child. Her father, the actor Henry Fonda, was far from fatherly and she wanted nothing more than to please him. Her mother suffered from depression and died by suicide when Jane was 12. Jane says that her perfectionism began at a very early age, based on the belief that if she did everything right and flawlessly, she would please and get the love she needed from her parents and others. Toward this goal of...

How do you view your “broken” spots? Are they embarrassing areas of your life that you can’t bear to think or talk about? Do they make you feel less than and as if you’ll never see yourself or be seen as normal? When you think of your mistakes and failures, do you cringe and hope that no one ever finds out about them? I seriously hope not, but if you do, this photo and the explanation that goes with it may shift your view and make you feel a whole lot better about yourself. This beautiful bowl is unique because of its fractures. I love that idea. For example, part of my uniqueness (and, oddly, my professional success) comes from having had eating disorders galore—chronic dieting, overeating/emotional/compulsive eating, and bulimia. At the time, I felt horrible about my behaviors and incredibly defective and broken. Now I look back and proudly think...

I work a good deal with women who’ve been abused emotionally, physically and sexually. When I meet them, they’re usually trying to leave or have just escaped an abusive relationship. Sometimes divorce fails to end the abuse, which continues because they need to have exchanges about finances or children. My goal for clients is to move from victim to survivor to thriver, to go from fractured to healing to whole. Note that though I use “him” for abuser, the “him” could easily be a “her.” If you’re a victim or survivor of abuse, I hope that by laying out the elements of each stage, you’ll be inspired to move forward. If you’re not a victim, you may know someone who is, and through understanding the change process they need to go through, you’ll be able to give them hope and whatever support they need to cope, heal and prosper. The victim mindset involves...

I don’t wish to fall into the quagmire of politics here, but I need to speak out about the dire consequences that happen when children are separated from their parents. If you don’t believe me, read what British psychologist John Bowlby, American-Canadian psychologist Mary Ainsworth, or American psychologist Harry Harlow wrote about attachment disorders and separation. Their research is downright chilling. Better yet, look at your own young children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews and notice the profound distress they feel when they are—or even think they are—separated from you. Or think back to your early life and consider how enforced separations shaped how you relate to people today. You don’t need to be a therapist to understand how attachments and separations are likely to adversely affect mental health for a lifetime. If you want to delve into some heart-breaking psychology to understand the primacy and legacy of attachment and separation, consider Harlow’s...

Many dysregulated eaters are affected by traumatic events and may not realize it. These events, called “adverse childhood experiences” or ACEs, are, unfortunately, so commonplace in some families and sub-cultures of society that it may not occur to you that they could have a huge, negative impact on your life—or your eating. Though these events happened long ago and you may have minimized, suppressed, rationalized, or repressed (unconsciously forgotten) them, by recognizing them, you can better understand your emotional (and eating) dysregulation and reactivity today. ACEs include: “being sworn at, insulted, or humiliated by parents; being pushed, grabbed, or having something thrown at you; feeling that your family didn’t support each other; having parents who were separated or divorced; living with an alcoholic or drug user; living with someone who was depressed or attempted suicide; watching a loved one be physically abused.” (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture In...

Although they may not recognize it, many dysregulated eaters are trauma survivors. I can sometimes intuit a history of trauma when clients see themselves as having something gravely wrong with them that makes them irrevocably defective. For those of you who view yourselves this way, here’s how to get beyond trauma to resilience. The central question you must ask and answer is: Is there something wrong with me or did something bad happen to me? Take a moment to notice if your first reaction is that there’s something wrong with or bad about you. Don’t judge your reaction; simply allow yourself to be curious about it. In fact, what you’ve internalized as self-badness or defectiveness is nothing of the kind. The truth is that bad or, maybe, terrible things did happen to you. Through no fault of your own, you were the recipient of poor parenting through abuse or neglect or mistreatment from...

“Being ‘fat’ is the most common reason children are bullied” according to Roni Caryn Rabin in “Extra weight makes kids a target for bullying” (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 7/28/15, E20). I’m blogging on this subject for two reasons. The first is for readers who were bullied as children because they were fat to get validation on how hurtful and damaging it was. The second is so that readers can talk to their kids about what to do about such bullying whether they are perpetrators, witnesses, or victims of it. According to the article, fat as the most common reason for bullying comes from a study of “thousands of adults from four countries who, when asked why children are bullied, said the most common reason was not race, religion, physical disability or sexual orientation, but weight.” Most state anti-bullying laws don’t protect children of high weights, nor do federal laws “guarantee equal treatment of...