The Other Side Of Body Shame

Live Class Recording - Body shame is more than not hitting the scale at your desired point. I want to share me story with you and how I overcame my body shame in the hope to help you ease yours as it can be very exhausting thinking about what you don't have ALL THE TIME.

Transcript

We talk about body shame today and I find body shame is,

On social media it's very big and almost everywhere I go,

If I meet with friends or family or just go to the pub,

Yeah there's always at one point some sort of talking about body image.

But here's the thing,

For my own experience and for personal and professional,

I know that the body image isn't the only body shame that there is.

And today I wanted to share with you two stories that put me in to the place where I felt body shame.

And it wasn't about weight loss,

It wasn't about weight gain,

It wasn't about cellulite,

So it wasn't about the way I looked.

So I want to start with my first experience and that actually started from birth because I was born with celiac and what that means is that I have this autoimmune disease that my lower intestine can't digest gluten.

So it's not gluten intolerance,

It's not gluten allergy,

It's an autoimmune disease and when eating too much gluten it literally kills me.

But it's more for me the subtle way that I don't notice anything until it's too late.

But anyway,

So got that from birth and when I was a child all was fine because I didn't know any other way.

But I remember when I was in third grade,

Maybe second grade and at the time,

I'm 45 now,

So back then the word gluten or gluten free,

It wasn't very popular,

It wasn't very common.

People didn't even know what is it and apparently at the time the doctors told me that I was one of five in all of Germany that had celiac.

So food of any kind wasn't very common and easy to get,

We just had this one shop that was,

I don't know what it's called in English,

We called it a reform house,

So where you get all the organic stuff nowadays.

And there was one aisle,

There was one package that was the gluten free bread mix and they also had cookies and my mom,

She gave me cookies that I took to school and I was watching and observing my classmates and they all had these sandwiches or they went to the shop at school and they got a Knoppers or anything they desired.

There was one situation when I stood in line because I wanted a Knoppers as well,

Knowing I shouldn't,

But I wanted it.

And then one of the teachers came and said,

Anna,

You can't have that,

Go away,

You don't get it.

I was like,

Let me be.

And so I was standing there with my gluten free cookies and I was so ashamed of me having to eat these cookies now because no one else had them,

No one else wanted even to try them.

And I remember walking to a corner of that schoolyard and just throwing them away.

And I didn't want anything to do with it.

I didn't want to be that person that can't eat what others eat.

And that continued into going to high school and being a young adult.

And every time I had a relationship explaining to my boyfriend,

Yeah,

I can't eat that.

I can't eat that.

Knowing when we go to a party,

Oh my God,

What do I eat?

When do I have time to eat something?

Because at the party,

There won't be anything that I can eat.

Or when we got invited for dinner parties,

I was like,

I don't want to tell them that I can't eat.

I don't want to put them through the hustle of cooking something for me,

Finding out what there is to eat for me and then making this special arrangements for me.

So I tried to hide it and I didn't say,

And I just ate what was there and I got sick.

I literally got sick.

My hair fell out,

My eyes got worse.

And I felt so ashamed of my body that it wasn't capable.

Like,

Why can't you just be normal?

Why can't you be other people's body?

Why can't you just eat and digest like every other person?

That was my thinking.

Everyone else is normal and I'm the freak.

My body,

My body can't do this.

And later on,

Even when I was in my thirties,

I remember with my current partner,

We went to Italy and we had such a great day and we driving around with the scooter and we found this little place.

They had the most amazing smelling desserts.

And we said,

Let's go in.

Maybe they have something that I can eat.

And we went in,

We got the menu and I looked at the menu and I knew that there's nothing there.

And I felt so ashamed to having to spoil this moment for him,

To sitting with me in this cafe,

Having all these desserts and enjoying them and trying them and talking about it.

And I felt so ashamed of myself,

Of my body for not being able to give that to him.

And he,

On the other hand,

He reacted amazingly.

I just said,

Oh,

There's nothing for you.

Let's just leave.

And we left.

And that was beautiful.

But I felt so ashamed of my body again,

Having created this situation where I didn't want to say anything,

Where I wasn't fitting in,

Because that was a big thought of,

I want to fit in.

I want to be the same.

I want to be like all the others.

And I wanted my body to change,

To be different.

And how I overcame that,

I wrote it down here.

I overcame it through,

What am I actually ashamed of?

Is it actually my body that I'm ashamed of?

Is it the words that I'm using that I'm ashamed of?

Is it the circumstances?

Is it the eyes?

When people look at me,

When I tell them I can't have that,

It's like,

Well,

What's wrong with you?

The pity that they feel towards me because I can't have it.

And I was thinking about it.

And I just let my brain do its magic,

Asking the question,

What am I ashamed of when it comes to my celiac disease?

And it turned out for me,

It wasn't my body at all.

It was the idea that,

It was the idea that I am sick.

That I walked around and my parents,

My family,

Friends told me,

You are sick.

You have this disease.

You are a sick person.

And I noticed that that is what makes me ashamed,

Makes me feel ashamed,

Being that sick person.

Everywhere I go,

I'm one of the sick ones.

And I didn't like that.

I thought,

What can I do?

Again,

Asking my brain,

What can I do about it?

How can I let this go?

And me being a firm believer in NLP,

In the words you use,

Create your reality,

I thought,

Okay,

The disease is there.

Yeah.

I probably,

If I put more energy in it,

I might even be able to change it in some way.

But I know that I won't do that.

So,

Hands up.

This is the disease.

But I thought,

I want to word it differently.

I don't want to be the one who has celiac disease and can't eat.

This can't eat.

Like,

No,

That's a blockage.

I don't like it.

It doesn't work for me.

So,

I changed it to,

I'm on a gluten-free diet,

A gluten-free lifestyle.

And that to me sounded free.

It sounded like,

Whoa,

These are all that now that I have all these opportunities to have a lifestyle.

It's a gluten-free lifestyle,

Something that I chose.

And just by changing that from I can't eat to I choose to eat,

It changed the way I looked at my body.

It changed the way that I just judged my body.

It was just like,

Now I'm choosing it actively.

And I come to your question in a second when I finish,

So no worries.

So,

That's what I did.

And that's how I overcame my body shame when it came to my celiac disease.

And another story is that I had five miscarriages.

And again,

That body shame came up.

It came up in the sense that my body now can't do these things.

Millions of women have done it for thousands of years.

And my body,

Again,

Can't do this simple task.

And there was shame.

Again,

My body,

Why can't you do this?

What's wrong with you?

So,

I told myself,

What's wrong with you?

Why can't you do this?

But my body didn't answer.

My brain did though.

And it said,

Okay,

Go back to the basics.

What is this telling you?

And I've written here again,

How did I overcome that body shame?

And maybe that is something that you can take away from this lecture today.

And I want to explain it through my gap philosophy,

The philosophy that I created that explains,

Or that is literally the step-by-step thing that how I help my clients and how I help myself.

And maybe it helps you.

So,

Gap is gratitude,

Acceptance,

Perspective.

And for me,

In my situations with my body not being able to keep pregnancy,

Gratitude was to be grateful for what my body can actually do.

For my body waking me up every morning,

For my body breathing,

For my body pumping blood,

For my body letting me do this,

Be here for you,

For my brain being there and can put these words together and I can share it with you.

But being grateful for these little mundane things that it does every day,

Every second,

Of my life.

And when I caught on that idea,

It was like,

Oh yeah,

I forgot about that.

I forgot that my legs are carrying me to places and that my hands are writing stuff,

That all the things that I do,

It's my body.

And I forgot that my body is still amazing.

But I was so focused on what it can't do that I forgot all the amazing things that it can do.

And when it comes to acceptance,

I wrote,

It's not in my cards.

And that sounds for when you hear it first to say,

It's not in my cards to have children.

And it seems like giving up or just justifying or just pushing it away.

But what I did is it was a journey from questioning,

Asking myself,

What does motherhood actually mean to me?

Why did I want to be a mother in the first place?

Why did I want to be pregnant?

Why did I want to give birth?

What's behind it?

And the I redefined what I found out for me is I wanted to be a mother because I wanted to share my knowledge,

My wisdom,

My love,

My everything that I have to share it with that little person.

And also,

Of course,

Curiosity.

See what what's coming out to when you put my genes and for my partner together.

Here's this little surprise.

What is it?

But most of all,

It was this desire to share.

And it turned out there's always also a lot of you're a female,

You have this age,

And now it's time for you to have family.

So there was this pressure that I felt that this is in the normal way and I'm supposed to walk this normal way.

And then,

Oh,

My body says,

No,

No,

No,

No,

Not for you.

And realizing and redefining what motherhood means to me and me alone,

No one else and no one has to share this with me and believe in this like I do.

But for me,

It was like,

Oh,

That's why I wanted to be or that's what motherhood means to me.

What way?

What other way is there that I can do that?

And here we are.

This is what I'm doing.

I'm sharing my knowledge.

I'm sending you my love.

I'm here for you to support you and guide you and help you grow and be stronger on your own.

So I'm doing exactly that motherhood means to me.

So that's the acceptance.

The perspective part is seeing the bigger picture in life.

There was society that I believe that I need to do this.

This is how normal people do it.

And the perspective of seeing the bigger picture,

Like,

Yes,

If I would have had those children,

One of them,

Two of them,

How many doesn't matter.

But how would my life be?

Totally different.

I probably wouldn't sit here.

I probably would have done something else and would have focused my energy,

My time,

My love somewhere else.

And now the question is,

Am I okay and happy with where I am?

And the answer is yes,

I am.

And by having that gratitude for my body,

Having the acceptance that this is actually what motherhood means.

And then having the perspective of saying,

How can I do this?

What is the bigger picture here?

That helped me to become okay with it and close that chapter to not wanting to kill any pregnant woman anymore.

Like I wanted to when shortly after my last miscarriage,

Every pregnant woman,

I just wanted to destroy.

But that's gone.

Now I can do it.

I can have friends' babies and play with them and then give them away and say,

This is okay.

This is okay.

I don't feel that I miss anything.

There is no longing inside me because I have the gratitude and I have the acceptance and I have the perspective.

And that brings me to the end of my talk.