But it sure does help!

In my post graduate training at university, I completed a horribly pretentious, lofty course in “Critical Theory”. I think I idealised the professor and was consciously and semi-consciously seeking his approval. With the wisdom of hindsight, I’d subliminally seated him at the right hand of Freud (he even physically resembled Freud!), and then looked to him to validate my existence, and worthiness as a prospective psychologist (aren’t our 20’s fun?!).

Well that didn’t work.

He remained the aloof ass he’d been throughout my studies (said somewhat tongue-in-cheek), and never really warmed to me. And I learnt a few interesting academic principles along the way, one of which was
“solipsism”. The bare bones of this (again, pretentious, haughty) concept is, “Do you have to BE one to KNOW one...?”. 

So, do I need to BE a 36-year old gay man to understand and do meaningful therapeutic work with a 36-year old gay man? Do I need to BE a burnt-out corporate executive with a side-show relationship and a
drinking problem to understand one...?

Or is there something about the human condition and the way we respond to life, more than life’s challenges, that unifies our empathic possibility.

THE HUMAN CONDITION IS COMPLEX… Shared experiences Don't Equal Shared truths.

The answer, obviously and predictably, is “no”.

NO, one doesn’t have to have experienced an identical situation in order to have a meaningful empathic response.  Moreover, it’s commonplace that six people with identical circumstances will process these circumstances differently to each other, and so our truths are infinitely more than a sum of demographic and circumstantial realities. And I agree and am grateful for that truth nugget!

Goodness, can you imagine a world in which we can only be held and contained by people dented and bruised in the exact same ways as we ourselves are?

I have learnt, though, some twenty years on from this, that the challenge of solipsism has a more complex answer. That we don’t have to be one to know one, but, in some circumstances, it really helps… And I’ve learnt, in my own clinical and therapeutic work, that if I DON’T know much about a certain subculture, best I LISTEN really intently to my patient, and best I LEARN.

I speak in the video (above), about my own long-term psychotherapy prior to my bariatric surgery. I tell of how my psychologist, who I admired so much, just seemed to have no frame of reference for obesity and bariatrics. I am absolutely certain that she understood me on the whole, so please don’t infer this as a criticism of her. She is highly skilled, well-regarded and helped me through mammoth traumas and
tragedies and minor ‘issues of becoming’ for close on a decade.

BUT, Bariatrics…

But while I was grappling with the science of obesity and bowing my knee to ‘set point theory’, she was talking about self-esteem, about exercise, about mindful moderate eating (as though that would ever work
for someone with more than 20 pounds to lose), and self-acceptance. She seemed to think that I was being extreme and dramatic in considering a surgical solution. But, in truth, I had been exposed to a science that made the world of sense, that therefore logically had to change everything about my approach to accommodate this new knowledge. And I didn’t need to be encumbered or frustrated with the task of getting her up to speed, on my running tab…

My late father, in speaking about religion, once told me his view that “if you truly believe something, you will change”. Seems pretty obvious, I know. He said that an appraisal of the lives of people would indicate how strongly they subscribed to the views they purport. Once I had learnt about metabolic set point, I simply had to act on it. The theory, first presented to me in a TED TALK, completely and utterly mirrored my own struggle with weight. (For those not familiar, Set Point Theory states that obese people can lose 8-10% of their body weight with relatively little struggle. But thereafter, their entire physiology throws an epic tantrum, revolts, and causes desperate and dramatic cravings which lead to a feeding frenzy to return to their starting weight, and higher. Basically, that the body seeks equilibrium at its highest historical weight. And that the only way to override this, or reset it, is medical. Surgical).

I needed my therapist to know this. But she didn’t. I needed her to understand that my struggle had probably begun as comfort eating and problematic responses to stress and anxiety. Faulty coping mechanisms. Lifestyle challenges. But that, decades on, the solution wasn’t resident there. And that I could frustrate myself until the cows come home, working on self-love and balance, but science had set me up for failure, and science had a solution.

It’s for this reason, and permutations of it, that I created my BARIATRIC MIND MASTERS Facebook group… I wanted to offer a psychology-focused platform for bariatric patients (pre- and post-surgery), who want basic truths to be taken as self-evident. And then to move beyond that, into figuring out how to sustain and maintain post-surgery successes. Science shows that there is a window of opportunity, after surgery, during which weight loss is dramatic and unprecedented. But that bodies will eventually re-adjust. And when they re-adjust, hunger will return, and set points can become a factor again. (Even now, my dietician is of the view that I have ‘moved up’ one set point from my ideal goal weight… That I was 120 pounds at my least, and am 123 pounds now, and that larger number is the one that my body is gunning for. And that I need to focus on re-setting it to 120 pounds).

But I digress…

In sum, what I’m trying to express is:

All therapy and self-development endeavours are useful. And no, a therapist does not need to be bariatric, or to have bariatric family and friends, to be effective. (But it would help).

I wholeheartedly subscribe to the benefit of slowing down, stepping out of one’s day, and reflecting on where in our journey we find ourselves. And any help-seeking initiative can provide this.

• Therapy and self-development endeavours, useful as they are, can be frustrated by
  facilitators who have significant gaps in their knowledge about the content
  being discussed.
• This frustration can be anecdotal and arbitrary, and thus easily navigated around.
  Or it can be rather destructive in its ignorance (and “ignorance” is an
  unintentionally vicious word, and so I use it for want of a less malignant
  one).
• A bariatric life is a bold and courageous reality to step into and deserves its
  own careful consideration.
• The psychology of obesity, and bariatrics by extrapolation, is often the psychology
  of addiction. Of compulsivity. Of anxiety and depression. Of mood upsets and
  systemic pitfalls. But there’s a science to it that needs to be understood in
  tandem, or we let ourselves and our patients down.

Bariatric Mind Masters

For these reasons, then, I welcome you to engage and benefit from my BARIATRIC MIND MASTERS online platform. This exists under the umbrella of “The Shrink on Your Couch”. I created “The Shrink on Your Couch” some time ago, to write about common trends emergent in my experience, and to create transformational digital programs for people to work through in their own homes, at their own pace, without having to travel to a psychologist.

Bariatric Mind Masters is a subsidiary of that… I publish articles as often as I can about the mental, emotional and practical challenges inherent to our bariatric journeys… I publish short videos. And I create courses for bariatric patients. I currently have two on offer – a really intensive, premium offering by the platform’s namesake, “BARIATRIC MIND MASTERS”. This is really all a person would ever need to know and absorb to master head hunger, heart hunger and compulsive eating… And then, for people not ready or able to subscribe at that level, I have a BACK ON TRACK MASTER PLAN Mini Course, which is a special and profound methodology to get us BACK ON TRACK, when we’re feeling a bit ‘wobbly’ in terms of weight loss, maintenance or regain.

Engage at your level of interest, and please put up your hand or pop me an email and let me know if you are deriving benefit!

Much love,

Debbie