I have told a lot of stories about food over the last year. This one is not about food at all, and I think that is exactly why it matters.
I was the youngest of six in a South London house, and I was a sickly child. Chest problems, skin problems, always something. The doctor had me on steroid tablets for asthma and they were working. Then one day somebody said they are making her fat, and the tablets went in the bin.
I want to be fair about that moment, because it was not cruelty. Nobody sat down and decided to harm me. It was a decision made in about four seconds by an adult who had absorbed the same ranking from somewhere else and never questioned it. But a child does not learn the reason. A child learns the order. What went in that day was that being large was a bigger problem than being unwell.

What the book says about this

https://disree.gumroad.com/l/dont-eat-that-audiobook

In Chapter 1 of Don’t Eat ThatI write about where disorganised attachment comes from, and one of the roots I name is unpredictable caregiving around a child who is physically unwell. Asthma. Eczema. A body that needs looking after. When the care a body receives depends on how that body looks, the child does not conclude that the adults made a strange choice. The child concludes that the body itself is the problem to be managed.
That is where the push and pull starts. I need looking after, and my body is the thing that gets me into trouble. Years later that same split showed up in my eating as strict control followed by indulgence, over and over, and I genuinely believed it was about willpower.

What I see in the therapy room

In fourteen years of practice I have heard some version of this story more times than I can count. The detail changes. A comment at the dinner table, a doctor’s appointment, a school photo. The lesson underneath is almost always the same. My body is the emergency. When clients find that moment, something loosens, because the shame stops being a character flaw and starts being a lesson they were handed before they could argue with it.

If this is you

Try this. Write down the earliest moment you remember your body being talked about as a problem. Not the worst moment. The earliest. Then write one line underneath it: what did I learn about the order of things that day? You do not have to do anything with the answer yet. Seeing it written down is the first piece.

Your bit

Add your own bit here. What do you remember about the room, the light, or what you were wearing that day? And what would you say now to the child who watched the tablets go?