“You’re fat, honey, you’ve got to take care of yourself.”

My mom approached me while I brushed my hair and said, “Esta gorda Mamita, tiene que cuidarse.” [You’re fat, honey, you’ve got to take care of yourself.]

I’ve been visiting my mother with my sister and boyfriend in Costa Rica this past week. As I recently wrote, I love, admire, and embrace several of my mother’s traits, including her generosity, quickness, and preference for keeping a small social circle. I see all of these in me and plan to continue to nurture these qualities.

However, body shaming’s grasp is something I’ve been working on releasing myself from slowly. My grandmother practiced it, and my mother did, and sometimes with good intentions (but terrible results). In my life, I’ve decided that I won’t let body shaming be a reason to drink or eat emotionally, neither will I do it to others simply because that’s what I was taught. Our elders don’t always have it right.

I am a grown 38-year-old woman who has been sober for over two and a half years, doing lots of work to care for myself, and generally feeling pretty good about myself. Yet, when my mother called me gorda the other day, I STILL felt the same physical sensation of shame that I felt when I was yelled at for grabbing second servings of food as an overweight kid or whenever I was caught drinking too much and feared being outed as an alcoholic as an adult. It was brief, but I went back there.

As Bessel van der Kolk says, “The body keeps the score,” No matter how much work I do or how long it’s been since my last drink, my body has not forgotten those physical sensations of shame. And when it feels them, it thinks it’s being threatened and grasps at whatever quick way to escape the discomfort of those sensations.

For me, it feels like getting the wind knocked out of me and then a rapidly sinking feeling in my stomach. It’s like going down a roller coaster without going to an amusement park.

So, in the past, old me would have done several of the following options:

Gotten defensive and argued with my mother. “But I DO go to the gym! Don’t you see my muscle.”
Started crying REALLY hard right in front of her so she could feel bad.
Started crying really hard and gone into the old narrative of not being good enough.
Overate or consumed alcohol to “show her.”

This is what I did instead:

I walked away from her and went into another room. She’s 84 and more delicate, so I wasn’t going to sit there and tell her not to talk about my weight because she’s older and very much has a fixed mindset. Also, a reminder that when we set boundaries, we don’t change other people’s behaviors. We address our own in response to an undesirable behavior, so I left the room.
I allowed myself to feel uncomfortable and felt the roller coaster sensation in my stomach because I knew it’s just a feeling that’s temporary and it can’t hurt me.
I used self-talk to soothe myself, and this was some of what I thought: I’m safe. There is nothing to be ashamed of. My weight isn’t a reliable measure of health because when my weight was at its lowest, I drank a fifth a day. I am heavy because I am strong. My mom is projecting old thinking passed down for generations that she hasn’t unlearned.
I celebrated my win by telling my sis and boyfriend how I didn’t lose my mind. Woooooooo!

Another win was that I didn’t drink or eat emotionally due to this interaction which was an old trigger of mine. Also, I reminded myself why I practice intentionality when speaking to others and choose not to comment on others’ weight.

Family dynamics are so complicated, and what worked to keep me sober may not work for you. Still, I invite you to try the following if you feel emotionally set off by a family member’s comments about you:

Set and hold a boundary by either saying you’re not accepting what they said or removing yourself from the conversation.
Remind yourself that the unpleasant sensation is just your body perceiving a threat and that you don’t have to drink or use some other maladaptive coping strategy to deal with it.
Use self-talk to debunk whatever nonsense your loved one just said, or use a somatic strategy like breathing or grounding to soothe your body.
Share your win of not reacting how you usually do with someone else!

I hope my lovely uncomfortable situation was helpful to you. It’s hard. It sucks sometimes, and we have to get through it to show up for ourselves how we deserve.

Published by Jessica Dueñas