Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Recently, I’ve been reading about the trials and tribulations of being viewed as fat. For example, in a Psychology Today article titled “Is Your Child Being Teased About His Weight?” the author, Edward Abramson, Ph.D., tells us that,

“Although the medical consequences of childhood obesity may not emerge until adulthood, the psychological effects are immediately present. Studies have shown that discrimination against overweight kids begins in kindergarten or earlier. One study of five year-olds found that they described an overweight child as ‘lazy, dirty, stupid, and ugly.’ A new study found that 4 – 8 year old children were less likely to help overweight peers with everyday tasks like picking up toys. Another study reported that virtually all overweight teenage girls had been verbally abused. College students when asked to rate the desirability of a potential spouse rated cocaine users, embezzlers, and shoplifters as better marriage partners than an obese person.”

In another article, this one titled, “Being Called FAT. It Hurts. And You Don’t Forget,” Cassey Ho, a fitness instructor, tells us about a teenager who described her experience as follows:

“I was at a family birthday party, we were all eating together at this long table with all sorts of wonderful foods laid out. I was thoroughly enjoying my plate along with my mom and sister. Then this little girl who was probably a year or two younger than me looks at me and says ‘Why are you so fat?’

“I stopped chewing. My eyes welled up with tears. The edges of my lips curled and I fought the quivering frown overcoming my face. I dropped my fork. Ran into another room. Cried. The kind of crying where you can’t stop and you can’t breathe.”

When we meet someone we care about who is dealing with this kind of challenging experience, is there anything that we can do that can be helpful? To address this question, I’m going to present a little scenario that kinda describes what I have done over the years when I found myself providing counseling to someone dealing with this issue. In saying the scenario “kinda” describes what I have done I mean to indicate that it really is, by necessity, a shortened description of what actually occurs in my actual counseling sessions. More specifically, in real life sessions I spend distinctly more intervals of time listening in a caring way than we will see in the scenario. I ask more questions to clarify what specifically occurred in any event being described. I am more likely to slightly rephrase what the person had said so they see that I understand what I have been listening to, thus reassuring them I’m really deeply listening. A full rendition of such a counseling session would be a fifty-minute read, way too long for our purposes.

In presenting the scenario, I hasten to mention that it is not my intention to declare that it presents the ideal approach to being helpful. It is merely offered as a useful way to set up a model that can be critiqued. I encourage readers to freely suggest any improvements, and to point out where, in their estimation, I went astray.

The Counseling Scenario

Heather, a 17 year-old high school student, arrived for her weekly counseling session.

“How are you doing?” I ask as she sits down.

Heather folds her arms as if she’s holding herself. Her mouth curves downward. There’s a slight twitching at its corners. Her eyes begin to water.

“You’re looking mighty sad,” I say. “Did something happen?”

“While my mom was driving me here, I took out a candy bar, and she told me I shouldn’t eat it because I was getting fat. Do you think I’m getting fat?”

“Heather, I like you just the way you are.”

“How can you like me? Look at how fat I am!”

“Oh, it’s very possible for me to like and respect people who weigh more than the average person. One of my favorite actresses is Hattie McDaniel who surely weighed more than you. She played parts in numerous movies such as ‘Gone with the Wind’ and ‘Show Boat.’ It wasn’t just me who delighted in her character portrayals, many producers must have liked her too because they selected her to play in over 300 movies, and her peers selected her to win an Academy Award. She wasn’t just a movie actress, she also was a singer and song writer as well. The United States honored her with a U.S. postage stamp for her contributions to the arts.

President Taft

“William Howard Taft weighed far more than you, well over 300 pounds. Despite that, the American people selected him to be our 27th president. After that, he was selected to be Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, certainly one of the most respected positions in the country. So, people can surely like and respect people who weigh more than average.”

“You, and others might like and respect some people heavier than average,” Heather hastens to say, “but I bet you didn’t ask them out on dates.”

“Well, when I first started to date, I did have in mind asking out only women who matched the ideal Hollywood romantic lead image, and they did tend to have narrow waistlines. They also had faces that can lead one to drift into a dream. As it turned out, there were not a whole lot of such women around my neighborhood, and yet I did start to date. On some scales, those that I dated did not match the perfect Hollywood type here or there but I found I was still attracted to them. In time I got to know things about them that transcended mere looks. When I met my wife, she was wearing braces on her teeth, hardly a classic Hollywood look.

“And judging from my observations, most women that I knew during my dating days were willing to go out with guys who didn’t look exactly like Cary Grant or Robert Redford. After a while they found someone that had looks that fell short of what some might think of as perfect in every way, and nevertheless, they fell in love and got married.

“So, that’s my take on these questions you’ve been posing to me. Perhaps more important is how you have been feeling and thinking about these issues. Would it be okay if we switched to focus on this?”

“I guess.”

“Good. So, tell me a little more about how you felt when your mother said you were getting fat.”

“It felt awful.”

“You don’t like the idea that you might be becoming heavier than you would like?”

“I hate it!”

“Do you think you are becoming fat?”

Here, Heather pauses, and her face starts to turn a bit purple. After a few seconds, she says, “Lately, when I see myself in a mirror, I view myself as being fat.”

“I see.” I pause here for a few seconds, just experiencing within me strong empathy for what Heather has been going through, and also seeking a way toward some peace with it.

Then I say, “I think it would be helpful if we tried a little mindfulness exercise here. It’s quite simple. I’d like you to close your eyes for one minute and just focus on the physical sensations that you experience when recalling how you felt when your mom said you were getting fat, and how you have been feeling when you look in the mirror. I’ll also close my eyes for that minute and focus on my own physical sensations when I recall someone saying something to me that I found stressful and how I’ve been feeling when I look in a mirror. Would you be okay if we tried this little exercise?”

“Okay, I guess. What good would that do?”

“The exercise comes from several ancient wisdom traditions. It is part of what has been called ‘mindfulness.’ There is a theory that it deepens our stressful experiences in a way that perhaps leads us to take some positive actions to deal better with them.”

“Well, I guess if it will only take a minute.”

“Good. So, let’s close our eyes and focus on the stressful experiences we have just been talking about, focussing more on the physical sensations in a non-judgmental manner. I’ll keep track of the time. If you desire, at any time, to open your eyes, feel free to do so. You don’t have to keep them closed, but it is more relaxing and less distracting if you have them closed most of the time.”

“Okay.”

When the minute is up, I let Heather know that it was time to open our eyes. Then I ask her to describe what she had experienced.

“As I thought about what my mom said, I felt a tightness in my stomach and I noticed my hands squeezed very tightly into fists. When I thought about looking into the mirror, I felt like crying.”

“Anything else that you noticed on a physical level?”

“No. That’s about it. How about you, Dr. Rubin? What happened on a physical level with you.”

“I recalled when I was young I had the opposite problem than you, because people called me, in a nasty way, a ‘Skinny Marrink.’ I found, on a physical level I felt a kinda twisting sensation in the center and upper chest, and a tightness in the back of my neck. And when I thought about how I’ve been feeling when I look in the mirror, I felt a grieving sensation about my hair thinning and how much older I look, and I found on a physical level that I let out a long sigh, and then my lips tightened, and I sighed once again.”

At this, Heather smiles, and then she catches herself doing it, and she says, “I didn’t mean to smile at your distress, it’s just, well I guess I felt a little comforted hearing that even you can be stressed out about your looks.”

“Even me?”

“Well, that you’re a doctor and all.”

“I see. I suppose that’s understandable.”

Then Heather says, “When I was focussing on my physical sensations, I did think that if I don’t like how fat I’m getting, I oughta do something about it. It is healthier to not be overweight. Can you help me to come up with a plan?”

“If you like, we could work on that together. I think we would want to include not only eating less, but also eating healthy foods and getting sufficient exercise.”

“That makes sense to me, Dr. Rubin.”

Conclusion

So, there you have it, a scenario of one counselor’s effort to be helpful when someone was dealing with being viewed as fat. I hope that it was apparent in the scenario that I sought to listen in a caring manner, and remain supportive, respectful, and accepting.

Did I ask the right questions? Did I say something that you feel is wrong? Do you have any suggestions for improving the session? I encourage you all to speak up and express your views in the comment section. No one is going to bite you on this blog, I can assure you of that.

In any case, may you all find someone who will show you kindness as you meet up with all of your challenging experiences.

Jeff

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

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