I believe that childhood trauma is the root cause of dis-ease–uneasiness, discomfort, anxiety. As a former junk food addict who had a nearly lifetime struggle with obesity, I manifested this uneasiness physically and emotionally. Today, I’m sharing my story with you because I hope it will help you heal from your own trauma, regardless of how it shows up in your life.
The Birth of a Junk Food Junkie
I am a recovering junk food junkie. In fact, I gained 50 pounds in high school. I used to be able to pack away a double cheeseburger, a large order of fries, a milkshake, and a hot apple pie. I couldn’t go into a mall without buying fresh chocolate chip cookies. Soft serve ice cream, pizza, and submarine sandwiches topped off the list of my favorite treats. Throw in pan dulce from the Mexican bakery and I was all set. Although I was temporarily satiated, it was as if I had a bottomless void in my soul that I needed to fill with junk food.
Early Attempts at Solutions to My Childhood Trauma
The more weight I gained, the harder it was to lose it. So I resorted to extreme diets like Cambridge (a low-calorie protein powder starvation diet) and Stillman (lean meat and eggs, super low carbs diet) that in some cases, actually killed people. Sadly, they resulted in my weight yoyoing up and down and my frustration with myself growing. In short, I believed that I was a fat, ugly, worthless human being with absolutely no willpower.
Intellectually, I knew what to do. Quit eating junk food and start exercising. Easier said than done because my whole chaotic, alcoholic family had a sweet tooth, especially my physically abusive father. I’d bake my heart out, hoping to please my aloof, emotionally unavailable dad. He was happy and I had his tacit approval but I was miserable as my weight ballooned out of control. If only I could have just made the goodies without eating them. Not possible for a sugar addict! It was like asking a chain smoker to watch other people smoking without indulging in the habit herself. No way José!
Initial Success at Addressing My Demons
Flash forward to grad school. At this point, I knew that if I continued my bad eating habits, I’d end up a grossly obese diabetic. Fortunately, a friend told me about her cardiac surgeon dad putting his patients on a macrobiotic diet that improved their health. That was a little extreme for me but I decided that I could give up red meat and sugar. Then around the same time, my slim, athletic roommate influenced me to start exercising religiously. I finally began to lose weight and keep most of it off. Not because I went on a “diet” but because I radically changed my lifestyle. Or so I thought.
However, despite my initial success, my body still clung to anywhere from 15 to 20 pounds of excess weight. Luckily, I was pretty healthy—low blood pressure, low triglycerides, and good cholesterol numbers. I figured I’d just have to accept myself as I was—a little chunky but not obese.
Effortless Weight Loss
Then in 2010, I started losing the rest of the weight effortlessly. The drive to fill my bottomless emotional void with food suddenly went away. I could even eat a tiny piece of dark chocolate and be satisfied. I couldn’t figure out what had happened. It was as if someone had filled the hole in my soul with unconditional love.
The pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place in 2011. I had been estranged from my abusive father after my mother died in 2001. He remarried and moved to the Philippines and I lost contact with him. After checking the Social Security register, I found out that he had died on January 17, 2011.
It was as if a light bulb suddenly went off. The extra weight I had been carrying around was to protect myself from my father’s abuse. On an intuitive level, even before he died, I realized that he was no longer a threat to me and I could let my protective shield down. It was now safe to be vulnerable.
Childhood Trauma–Real Root Cause of My Dis-Ease
Upon examining my story, most people would stop at the physical cause—eating too much of the wrong foods and not exercising. Just go on a diet, problem solved! Yet for me, dieting was only a temporary fix. On a deeper level, the emotional cause was an unconscious desire to protect myself from physical abuse with layers of fat, not a lack of willpower. However, the real root cause was early childhood trauma. I had a constant fear of being hit and humiliated, even though my father, the abuser, could no longer strike me once I became an adult.
Dr. Gabor Maté, a renowned expert in addiction, childhood trauma and mind-body health, says that “…So much of what people suffer from, whether it’s a physical illness, a mental illness or an addiction, relates to childhood experience [trauma]…Trauma is a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically that then interferes with your ability to grow and develop. It pains you and now you’re acting out of pain…”
Consequently, my childhood trauma, the root of my dis-ease, caused me to subconsciously numb my emotions with food. If I couldn’t feel my feelings then I couldn’t feel my pain. Unfortunately, the wall of fat I built to protect myself only led to shame. However, once I acknowledged that the abuser could no longer harm me and I felt it with every fiber of my being, I finally healed, emotionally and spiritually. As a result, I let go of the belief that I was a fat, ugly, worthless human being.
The Moral of the Story
Because of my personal experience, I believe that all dis-ease is caused by trauma. Putting a band-aid on a psychic wound may bring temporary relief but it won’t stop the wound from festering. Hence, when I help my clients identify their original trauma and take steps to address the limiting beliefs surrounding it, then, and only then, can they truly heal.
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