Many times, I work with people that bring up “stuff” for me. I am fully prepared for “stuff” to come up. In fact, I feel gratitude because that’s where the work is, quite frankly.

This last week was an important one, where sexual abuse survival and processing came up for the first time since I’ve started this trauma and grief recovery work as a coach.

I am a sexual abuse survivor, and I was reminded (and shared) that when I was 10 years old, I looked in the mirror after a victimization and thought that there must be something really wrong with me for my own father to treat me like that.

Heartbreaking. I know now that this is a survival strategy. My brain was trying to keep me safe. My literal, physical survival was on the line, and it’s much safer for children to internalize abuse than to put responsibility where it belongs.

The Body Image Shame Showed Up

Since I looked in the mirror at 10 years of age, body image shame has been a reality in my life. Even when I was sick with Covid over the last couple of weeks. Trauma responses have shown up there, as they show up everywhere. Cycles of survival strategies that I no longer need.

This is what I noticed:

Being a woman is that when I get really sick and can’t eat for a week or so, I think to myself that maybe I can parlay this into more weight loss. No, not think, more like vow. I can do this, is my reset, I can make this work.

Not about how my body is littlelarry starving and dehydrated. Not about how hard my body has fought to survive and recover and heal. My body has battled on several fronts over the last week, and instead of care and feeding, I place my feet on a scale that announces my perceived worth in neon blue numbers.

After a week of battling and hunger and dehydration, the numbers are the same as always, the numbers that my body has been returning to for a decade. Up-down-up-down.

The Presence of Shame in Trauma Recovery

Anger and shame yo-yo, updownupdown. “You can’t even get sick right to lose weight,” my inner critic sneers.

I nod. I see you, I think. I see the shame and helplessness and pain and trauma and abuse and grief. The self-consciousness and the awareness and – above all, bigger than anything – the desire to know what it means and feels like to “love my body,” to accept it in all of it’s pale, bumpy, curvy, softness and strength.

How do I deal with this shame? I’m learning, just like you.

Softening Body Image Shame

What I’ve been thinking about over the last week or so is that our cycles of survival strategies are valuable. This body image shame is valuable, in that it helped me to survive. There is inherent power and direction and wisdom in these cycles.

Over the past 30-ish years, I have struggled against this shame. But now I’m wondering what would happen if I stopped fighting against body image shame. If instead of criticizing myself for feeling what I feel about my body, I softened against it.

What if I reached out to myself? What if I reached out to that 10-year-old girl who looked in the mirror and concluded that something was terribly wrong with her, and I hugged her and told her that absolutely nothing was wrong with her? What if I hugged her and told her that as many times as she needed to hear it?

Do you feel the grief in that? I do, too. And I also feel my little girl collapse against me in relief. I am her witness.

I see me. I see you. I am your witness. Compassion to counter shame.

This is the work. I’d love to talk with you about what’s possible in trauma and grief recovery. Book a free discovery call and let’s chat!

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