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Extra pounds are never accidental. Where are they from? To understand this, it is worth looking into the history of your family and thinking about what is happening in our lives. Stories from the practice of psychotherapist Ekaterina Mikhailova.
Extra pounds are most often the result of our eating habits and unhealthy habits. However, you can talk about the problem not only with a nutritionist, but also with a psychologist. Being overweight can have other causes as well, ranging from recent changes in our lives to long-standing events and conflicts rooted in a person’s family history. “In the process of psychotherapeutic work, you can see the origins of many of your problems,” says psychotherapist Ekaterina Mikhailova. “Then a person has a chance to change the situation and, in particular, to see how those extra pounds disappear.”
Complete happiness
Words and symbols, sayings and metaphors influence our lives more than we think. Our unconscious reacts directly to what we say allegorically. So, the expression “gain weight”, associated with an increase in status, a high position, is involuntarily perceived by us in its direct meaning: having received a promotion, we (in our opinion, for no reason) begin to gain kilograms, becoming “solid”, “prominent”.
“Before perestroika, I and three other friends of mine, former classmates, worked as engineers,” says 47-year-old Andrei. Now everyone has their own business. For several years in a row, a couple of times a month, we all go to the bath together and weigh ourselves. This is such a game: whoever got fat the most, he won. In this case, the weight, which has not yet become a problem, seems to confirm to Andrei and his friends that their life has been successful. From childhood, we remember the caricature symbol of contentment – a fat bourgeois in a top hat, sitting on a bag of dollars. There is also the expression “music of the fat” that came from Soviet times – this was once called jazz, one of the symbols of a prosperous America inaccessible to our compatriots.
Words and symbols, sayings and metaphors influence our lives more than we think.
The unconscious idea of the connection between fullness and well-being can be overcome with the help of psychotherapeutic work with one’s family history: special techniques make it possible to “meet”, re-establish contact with one’s ancestors and find out how their ideas about life influenced us. “Andrey must have had some wealthy great-grandfather – a merchant or a banker, whose considerable weight in those years was evidence that the person was doing well,” suggests Ekaterina Mikhailova. “And if we started working with Andrei’s family history, then his great-grandfather would allow him to lose weight, while maintaining his status and wealth.”
stop and think
“There was a period in my life when I worked in four places at once and constantly ran from one to another,” says 46-year-old Elena. – I told everyone that I was “running”. It’s even strange how, at such a pace of life, I managed to gain 9 kg in a year. Two projects had to be abandoned, because it became difficult to move at the usual speed. ” “For Elena, excess weight became a signal that life is oversaturated, there are too many activities in it,” explains Ekaterina Mikhailova. “The time has come for her to decide, to choose the most important thing for herself.” Weight in this case seems to “slow down” us, forcing us to slow down the unbearable pace, fuss less and think more about our own lives.
Journey to the past
Long-standing problems, grief experienced by distant ancestors, rules that developed many years ago that still bind us … In the process of psychodramatic work with family history, you can learn and do a lot. In particular, “meet” with long-gone family members, playing their roles in the presence of the therapist and often with the help of other members of the group. “This method is suitable for people who explain their conditions by psychological reasons and are determined to work with family history, feeling a special meaning in it that is not readable at first sight,” says psychotherapist Ekaterina Mikhailova. It’s hard to believe, but during such “meetings” with loved ones, you can hear answers to important questions from them, see many problems from an unexpected angle, and as a result, feel freer and do what hasn’t worked out for a long time. For example, lose weight.
Private questions
Some people do not get fat with their whole body, but “in parts”: the hips, stomach, and collar zone change. Having learned the opinion of an endocrinologist, it is useful to look into the past of your family.
Many women suffer from the fact that their hips and stomach have become plump, have become the same as those of the ancient goddesses of fertility. “Such completeness is often associated with reproductive function,” says Ekaterina Mikhailova. – In my practice, there were cases when it turned out that in a woman with full hips, one of the older relatives died from childbirth, in terms of medicine of that time – because of the “narrow pelvis”. The doctor will understand that this is not the case, but in such cases words are very important. A “narrow pelvis” is dangerous, and a woman unconsciously seeks to “expand” it.
Working with family history reveals various life stories that are repeated over several generations. A fat childless woman may, for example, discover that all her grandmothers and great-grandmothers at her age already had children – and with her fullness she seems to join them. Or, on the contrary, it defends itself with the help of a large, as if pregnant belly, from the demands of its mother, who dreams of grandchildren.
Often that which is devoid of movement grows fat. “Remember the colloquial expression “don’t turn your back”? Ekaterina Mikhailova asks. – In some families, an uninhibited gait is regarded as a sexual provocation. It often turns out that in such families there were rapes, illegitimate children, and the memory of this is conveyed by strict requirements for the behavior of girls.
In some people, the collar zone becomes “heavier” – earlier it was called the “widow’s hump”, associating with irritability and sexual dissatisfaction. “Often this area grows fat in hyper-responsible, anxious people: they are not satisfied with their life and work and suffer from hypertension,” says Ekaterina Mikhailova. – Doctors ask such people what their parents were ill with, but it would be worth asking about how their ancestors treated their business. It may turn out that hyper-responsibility is a common feature for many members of such a family.
body as protection
“When I became the head of the department at our clinic, I gained as much as 15 kg,” says 36-year-old Elvira. “They seem to protect me: each patient has his own pain, you let it go through you one way or another, and it’s important to save strength.” Having replenished, a person feels his body worse, becomes less sensitive. “Victims of sexual or emotional abuse can also gain weight,” says Ekaterina Mikhailova, “they seem to be protecting themselves from the world that made them suffer. After psychotherapy, excess weight goes away: a person understands that he has other ways to protect himself.
Ten good reasons
The unconscious reasons why we gain weight can be very different.
- We feel defenseless. Once the word “stomach” meant “life”, and what seems dangerous to us, this area of the body is the first to react, protecting itself with kilograms.
- We suffer from being abandoned. The soul seems to freeze: the movement of life stops, metabolic processes slow down, and excess weight becomes a tribute to this immobility.
- We remember deprivation. Lack of warmth, love, food – this feeling can live in our memory. The desire to save “in reserve” materializes in “reserve” kilograms.
- We want to draw attention to ourselves. It seems to us that a fat person will be noticed sooner and they will react to him differently than a thin person – this is how the expression “big man” works.
- We are loyal to someone who is no more. Not having the strength and desire to start a new relationship, we “hide” behind being overweight so as not to be attractive.
- We are trying to divert attention from another problem. Hiding something from others, we act by the Stirlitz method: everyone will notice the completeness, but they may not notice the other, the main thing.
- We imitate our loved ones. We love our (full) parents or are afraid that they will reject us, and therefore we involuntarily try to become the same as them.
- We give up our femininity. Parents wanted not a girl, but a boy; mother “presses” on her daughter, considering her her rival … And femininity is hidden behind rolls of fat.
- We give up our masculinity. The domineering father seeks to raise his son as a “real man”. Growing fat, the soft young man becomes like a girl, and the father will not make so many claims to the girl.
- We are going through a period of sexual dissatisfaction. We “eat” dreams of sex and therefore we get fat. But, when this period ends, kilograms are dropped easily.
Nowadays, fullness is no longer considered a sign of well-being. Successful people around the world monitor their weight, using all available opportunities for this. One of them can be psychotherapy, which will help you to know your history better, understand yourself and live according to the principle “a good person should have as much as he needs”.