Author: Charlotte Wilkins, longtime meditator and retired psychotherapist
Repost from Food For Thought 2019
“What a smart and resourceful little girl you were to figure out that food could comfort you when no one else did. You figured out that food could help you endure your father’s abuse of your body and soul - could numb feelings, thoughts, words, pain.
What an amazing and strong little girl you were. You figured out how to survive. Let’s not throw that strength out the window. Let’s use that strength to grow in the direction you want to go.”
She sat stunned and motionless, staring at me. Her lips slightly open, her usually sleepy eyes round and fixed on me as though I’d spoken in a language she didn’t understand. She blinked rapidly, and then her eyes filled with unbidden tears until they spilled over her cheeks and into hands. “Strong. No one’s ever called me strong before.”
She had been berating herself about sneaking down into the dark kitchen late at night when everyone was asleep and “stuffing her face.” She hated her stashing of food under the seat and in the trunk of her car, in her underwear drawer and under the bathroom sink. She hated herself. She hated what her father had done to her those many decades ago. She hated that she had done nothing to stop him. She hated how he was still winning, even though he was dead.
What do we see?
She saw only weakness.
I saw strength.
She saw only darkness.
I saw light.
I saw the shadowy, flickering spark that she had instinctively protected as a child. The one thing no one could touch. An inextinguishable will to live within her, which was stronger than any effort to destroy her soul, had found a way to keep the ember burning, like cupped hands around a match in a windstorm.
Life.
Sacred.
Hers. Something that was hers.
It is in our work with people who have suffered abuse or neglect of their body and soul by others, and subsequently abuse or neglect themselves, that we are humbled. The human spirit is a fierce and strong contender when it comes to surviving physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual abuse. When we, as the professional, realize our teacher is sitting right in front of us disguised as a patient or participant in a mindful eating group, their wisdom and strength warrants our deepest respect.
Women with trauma histories and disordered eating patterns are the strongest women I have ever sat with.
The secrets, shame, anger, and desperation can fester into a snarled web of suffering that consumes not only the bearer but often the professional she has sought help from as well. The torturous emotional pain comes with suffocating intensity that demands or begs for relief. This heart-wrenching urgency that is sometimes implied and sometimes vocalized as “You’re my last hope!” can cause even the best of counselors and mindfulness teachers to lose their balance, either tipping into saving mode and causing us to push the survivor too much, or falling back and abandoning because we believe we are not doing enough for them.
Mindful acceptance is the practice of meeting the too much/not enough part of you without judgment. You, thinking you are not doing enough—not offering enough techniques or tools for the tool belt—are mirroring your patient’s fears. And it’s not just a thought, it is also a physical sensation that can be felt in the body. If you can allow yourself to feel this uncomfortable sensation in the moment, you can acknowledge it for the fear it is and meet your own feelings of “not enough” with compassion. When this practice becomes second nature, you will be better able to meet your patients’ fears with equanimity.
Recognizing the strength in our patients and participants
One of the values of a personal mindfulness meditation practice is that it can help us develop a patient, steady equanimity as professionals. When we can observe impartially the fear which often arises as judgment, irritation, or disappointment within ourselves or our participants, we cultivate our own internal wisdom and strengthen our ability to meet the unwanted or unpleasant thoughts, emotions, and sensations in the body. From this stance, we can choose how to respond rather than react to what those we care for share, as well as to our own internal biases. Learning to titrate between one’s own inner landscape while at the same time being present for a client or participant is an acquired skill that requires practice.
This is a particularly important skill to develop when we are working with survivors. Otherwise we may misinterpret the strength with which they cling to habituated ways of thinking as stubbornness or resistance. But from a mindful viewpoint, we can understand it is fear and won’t mistake it for resistance. We may think of clients like this as fragile, but you don’t survive because you are insubstantial.
We dishonor their life force when we do not honor their strength
Survivors of trauma and neglect are resilient, determined, and courageous. Mindfulness doesn’t ask her to get rid of anything- skillful or unskillful - that helped her survive. Instead it asks her to embrace what is difficult, a not unfamiliar companion, but now the embrace is a conscious choice within her control. I have found that survivors inherently understand that it will take courage to practice meditation and to remain mindfully aware of the thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations in their bodies. They also understand that these practices call on the same strengths that kept them alive by dissociating, bingeing and purging, starvation, or other extremes. They know meditation and mindfulness will challenge everything they believe about themselves and that it will benefit every part of their lives, not just their relationship to food and eating.
Mindfulness offers a steady, compassionate path to freedom. Freedom from and freedom to. Freedom from the tyranny of the mind. The freedom to eat for pleasure. To be able to eat, not to sooth the heart or suppress emotions, not to punish the body or numb the mind, but to nourish the body.
Theirs is a story of strength, not weakness. What they think they need, they already have within them. Our role in their journey is to help them use the tenacity, courage, and strength that fueled their unhealthy survival strategies, to trust their own self-worth, have faith in their innate wisdom, and believe that they are enough just as they are.
About the Author:
Charlotte Wilkins is a longtime meditator and retired psychotherapist, currently working on her memoir. Her writing has appeared in Memoir Magazine, Brevity Magazine, and Social Work Today. She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two ridiculously precious cats who do nothing to earn their keep.
You can find more about her current doings at Char Wilkins
Other articles on Trauma:
Integrating Mindfulness And EMDR In Treating Complex Trauma
Further reading:
Bays, J.C. (2017). Mindful eating: a guide to rediscovering a healthy and joyful relationship with food. Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Ginsburg, L. and Taylor, M. (2002). What are you hungry for? Women, Food, and Spirituality. St. Martin’s Press.
Hollenstein, Jenna. (2019). Eat to Love: A Mindful Guide to Transforming Your Relationship with Food, Body, and Life. Lionheart Press.
Roth, G. (1991). When Food is Love. Penguin Group.