Taking it out on your body - exploring possible roots

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

This post emerges from a conversation started on another thread about the possible links between various conditions involving hurting one’s body, that I have called collectively “taking it out on your body”.

I thought a useful backdrop to this discussion is this:

The essence of radical feminism is the highlighting of the subjugation and marginalisation of women, by frequently consigning them to roles defined by men. This can mirror enslavement. This socialisation of women starts very early - I would contend in utero. It can certainly start early in the family and is fostered at societal and cultural levels and now is very heavily fuelled by social media.

These remarks are taken from Sheila Jeffreys at the recent Inconvenient Women WNTT event:

It is on the basis of sex that women are oppressed and on that basis that women rights are founded. It is in international law that sex is the basis of the granting of women’s rights.
..

The idea of gender arises from the oppression of women and cannot exist without it. Gender comprises behaviour and appearance norms required of men and women. Femininity is one half of gender and is the enforced behaviour of the oppressed, that is women. It includes humiliating clothing norms such as high heels, decoration, body exposure, body covering as well as the restriction of body movement, for example not taking up much space and so on.

It is based on the notion that women’s brains are somehow different from those of men, in ways that make them suited to such behaviour, make them rightfully subordinate and suited for doing the housework

The sparking comment on the other thread was this one:

user1499173618 Thu 14-Jun-18 08:43:48
BowlofBabelFish - the common thread between anorexia, bulimia, self-harm, trichotillomania, nail biting, gender dysphori (and, perhaps,tattooing, piercing) etc is deep-seated failure of recognition and denial of emotions. Human emotions are very real things but the gaslighting by society at large of human need and emotion causes immense confusion that results in people turning on themselves when they are not equipped to deal with the onslaught from the world at large.

To which I responded:

Emotional and psychological abuse targeting women, at family and societal level and now pervasive on SM, denies, discounts and coerces women away from their rightful autonomy and freedom of thought and being. This abuse can be somaticised by many women into blaming themselves, as the only tolerable, psychological alternative at an early age. This can lead to various manifestations of self harm and/ or taking it out on one's body. That is not women's fault but the environment they were raised in, where abuse is normalised and they are scapegoated.

From that point it was decided to start a separate thread.

I have massive difficulty with anger.

I have a cycle re eating. Stress stress stress undereating (well starving) being overwhelmed by stress overeating.

I am currently in stress phase and haven’t eaten since Monday night. It’s not so much a conscious choice as a sick feeling when I eat and a feeling of overwhelming ravenous hunger when I overeat.

I do however like the tight feeling I have in my stomach right now. It is making me feel like I exist.

I have come to believe I do not have anxiety or depression TBH I just have a shitty life. A psychiatrist told me that last year after I took an overdose. He told me to come off the ADs too and he was right I think.

I drink to cope with people.

I have replaced smoking with vaping.

I have however decided that I am going to stop focusing on how all these things make me dysfunctional but how all these things help me function.

Small but important change.

I have massive difficulty with anger.

Me too. Mine automatically directs inward. I read somewhere that depression is anger without direction, or something like that.

I think women in general have a chronic problem expressing anger.

Anger without motivation I think it was

Offred

I think so much of femininity is celebrating denial of the self. A good girl is someone who doesn't take up space, doesn't ask for anything, doesn't put others out, acts a silent support, achieves perfection without showing the effort. I bought into it wholeheartedly as a child and still do to a certain extent although I'm trying to change my thinking.

I'm so out of touch with any of my pain, hunger, emotional responses from a lifetime of learning to ignore them because I was taught not to bother people. I've ended up hospitalised because I didn't recognise pain to be serious, I've fainted because I'd forgotten to eat or drink for days whilst on projects and didn't get hungry or thirsty, like PPs I've finally learnt to recognise that I was angry for a lot of my childhood but it was just compartmentalised.

Awfully, when I hear about girls who think they aren't girls because they hate their bodies, my first reaction is to scoff. "Hah, who are they thinking they're so special? You're not supposed to like yourself. Idiots." And then I remember this isn't supposed to be normal - it's just I was raised to believe being female means hating yourself.

I don't have a problem expressing anger in the sense of being able to be angry, I'm probably over capable of expressing anger especially if I get to meltdown.

People do respond somewhat apathetically though, and then that leads to me directing it inward

Good point Beyond. For me it’s the socialisation not to express anger combined with everyone’s inability to respond to female anger.

I'm so out of touch with any of my pain, hunger, emotional responses from a lifetime of learning to ignore them because I was taught not to bother people.

A few years ago I burnt my finger on the kettle at work. I was due to have a meeting and I sat through it with my finger hurting rather than inconvenience anyone else by taking time to run it under the tap.

It’s a really small thing but it has stuck with me.

YY molten lasagna. Except I often think ‘this is obviously just a particular way of expressing alienation from yourself’.

I know exactly when I became unable to express anger and it was a particular beating my dad was giving me and I became so angry that I would have stabbed him past the point of death. That scared me so much that I haven’t been able to express any emotion properly since.

I have realised that I feel like I am totally out of control when emotions burst out but I have been told more than once that I come across as justifiably emotional but rational and appropriate.

I don’t remember expressing emotions when I was a child really, they came out when I wasn’t in control but I don’t know whether that is an innate thing, an abuse thing or a sexist socialisation thing or a combination.

About 20 years ago I had a couple of operations with absolutely minimal anaesthetic. Recently I had some dental treatment and I realised that the fact that I now want to feel no pain when in the doctor’s or dentist’s chair is a sign of great progress. I won’t tolerate unnecessary pain any more. I take care of myself.

Another point. I know that my mother (born 1930s) believed that the solution to societally induced female distress was education (university) and a “career”. She did quite a lot to make that happen for her daughters and was totally nonplussed when it didn’t work out.

MoltenLasagne

Yes. You're absolutely right. And it starts early - I remember being about 4 and thinking how good I was to sit quietly for long periods of time instead of running around and shouting like the boys.

I also convinced myself that I didn't get hungry, tired or cold - of course I was happy in just a miniskirt and top in December! Looking pretty was far more important than being warm.

As for pain, I broke my finger in three places during school PE at 13. The receptionist told me to stop making a fuss and go back to class. It was over a week before I went to hospital, and by then it was a complete mess - needed several operations and have very little movement in it now. I can remember just thinking that the pain and swelling would have to go away eventually, and someone in authority had said it was fine and I was making a fuss, so best to ignore it. It was my dad (who I didn't live with at the time) who eventually had to say hey, maybe get that X-rayed.

This thread is amazing, as are the women posting in it.
So much of it resonates for me. I grew up the daughter of an alcoholic father and a narcissistic mother. Both had suffered various forms of abuse themselves as children. There’s sexual assault, emotional assault, and physical assault across my lifetime, from various people - some strangers, some not.
I self-harmed between the ages of 13 and approx. mid-20s. I used sex and drugs to self-medicate during those times. And food, god yes.

It’s strange, because I haven’t self-harmed in the typical sense (I was a cutter, mostly) for years, but there are still times in my life when pain might be involved (injections, the ear-piercings I finally got “for me” because I loved them, not for the pain) and the internal me has raised an eyebrow.

I don’t think it’s ever far away. You can’t outrun female opression, and god knows I’ve tried.

*You can’t outrun female oppression, and God knows I’ve tried.”

So well put

Very true, writers

The book that Offred mentioned, the Body Keeps The Score was massively helpful to me in understanding what was going on. For years I thought I was depressed, but actually I had a problem with emotional regulation. A childhood consisting of various traumas (to be honest not even things that people might consider "serious") with a father with a personality disorder who had an explosive temper, was very controlling and was incredibly inconsistent and a mother that relied too much on me for support meant that I never learned good emotional regulation. The emotional pain sensors in our brains are in a similar place to our physical pain sensors, and I think this left me feeling things too strongly. This isn't a "thinking error" as CBT would like us to believe, it's a structural issue in our brain - if we do not grow up around people who have good emotional regulation, the neurons in our brain don't develop in that way either. You live with "danger" whatever that is for you for so long it's like having an over-sensitive smoke alarm that triggers you at things that other people would just ignore.

When we rely on inconsistent people for caregiving it's a logical reaction not to blame them when we rely on them to stay alive, so we keep ourselves "safe" by blaming ourselves. It works (in a way) when we are in that situation but then we leave and there's no reason to do it anymore but it's the only thing we know. We have never learned to feel safe so we don't feel safe. My worst period was just after I left home and it all came out, but I still didn't have any support. I'm pretty much okay now after many years, but I think I still have the hyper-vigilance thing going on, I never really relax, I never learned to relax!

Learning that it was the physiological structure of my brain massively helped because all of a sudden I realised it wasn't my "fault" that I couldn't change just by thinking about it. The emotional regulation bits of our brains are not well connected to the rational thought bits. This helped me to forgive myself and to be able to think about it a bit more instead of pushing it down because it was too shameful.

There is much more recognition of the effects of trauma now, there's some good work going on in women's organisations, though not all are up to speed. My experience of the NHS understanding of it is still pretty poor though.

The biggest thing for me is about hanging out with people with good emotional regulation (when you want to drink you hang out with people who also want to drink, who aren't the people who are sorted and sussed!) - though stopping drinking is good too.

I think there are lots of us around. I have been toying with the idea of writing a book telling women's stories of healing from trauma but not quite made the leap yet!

There is so much wonderful stuff in that book IMO!

Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger and the Gabor Mate books are good too. And Stephanie Covington does a lot of practical work around trauma. It's just not widely known enough about.

I have BPD. Love piercings and tattoos. Recovered self-harmer and anorexic. Used to do a lot of drugs to cope with shitty impact of childhood, now I am on ADs and self-medicate with weed in the evening before bed. Also ex-sex worker (teenage)

This is such an enlightening thread. Thanks for starting it, Woman.

Thanks. It's really helpful to know you are not alone in trying to sort this sort of stuff out. At night when you are staring at the ceiling it is all to easy to imagine you are the only one.

So if some of us know what CAUSED the behaviour, does anybody know how to actively make changes that last? That is the one thing I cant seem to do. I might change my diet and it lasts brilliantly.....I can loose 20lb in 6 weeks but then one slip up means im off the wagon and bingeing on cake and snorting pasties. BOOM- 30lb weight gain

^ that describes my current weight loss efforts to a T.
Then I end up looking back at my historical food restrictive times with rose tinted glasses :(

Interesting thread