Steps Family Therapy

  I once hit a roadblock in therapy with a woman struggling with an eating disorder. I was trying to instill the belief that our worth does not depend on our appearance, but she stumped me with the hard data of all the guys that now slide into her DMs, the new friends she has, and the easier conversations with her family, all who pay her more attention and validate her with compliments since she started starving herself. It looks like looks matter. In which case, maybe she should continue her 400 calorie/day diet? I’m trying to spread a belief that society doesn’t seem to share. We know body fixation is toxic, but we so often fall into the trap ourselves whenever we are critical of our own bodies, or complimentary of others’. That isn’t to say compliments should be banned, but that they need to convey the message we are actually trying to send: “I love and value you, and validate your efforts and feelings,” as opposed to, “You are more worthy of my attention now that you’ve changed...

  I kid you not. It was the hardest I’ve cried since my childhood. And I learned about myself as it happened. I won’t tell you what sent me over the edge, but once I got over the edge, I leaned into it. I recalled many experiences that I haven’t thought of in a long time; experiences that hurt me just a little bit, but never enough to cry about, and some never enough to talk about. But they came back to me, and I let them out. Crying is the body’s natural way of processing trauma and relieving emotional stress. If you can do it with a safe person, or in a safe place, without fear of injury or invalidation, it will actually make you STRONGER. When the brain accesses emotional pain and exposes it to a safe experience, it lets go of fear and shame. It gives you more capacity to do hard and scary things. It gives you more capacity to enjoy things. Very few people needed to learn how to cry as babies. But many of us learned how to NOT cry (and must now relearn). This may have served a u...