Hi all!
I stumbled on a post elsewhere about how children of Ns can have or develop negative body image. It was very interesting and I thought I would begin this new topic.
Let me once again relate a personal story:
As far back as I can remember I had a "normal" body. Although my mother has frequently commented that when she brought me home from " the orphanage" ( my brother and I are adopted) I had bad skin and I was poorly fed. She recounts how she undertook to feed me back to health. In fact I remember my mother feeding my brother and I plenty. My brother remained slight and I grew fat.
I was sent away to boarding school at a tender age " because your brother is a liar" etc. etc. and tons of other reasons given to us at the time. My parents used to send care packages full of food. Naturally I identified affection and their not being there with food. I progressively got fatter. The school's headmaster had to tell my parents to stop sending the packages because I was just getting too fat. Naturally I processed this as the nasty headmaster wants to further deprive me of my parents..and so I found food elsewhere, it brought me comfort and did for a very long time.
In a twisted way , my adoptive father was chubby when i was small, and he didn't like this..he began very early on to project his weight problem on me ..he would deny his fatness and by name calling and cautionning me to be careful of my own weight before I even had the problem. On the one hand a father denying his weight problem and a mother who fed me like crazy and delighted in my getting fat and fatter. Of course this leads me to tell you that I identified more if not totally with my N mother because she gave me her full acceptance..my father rejected me almost totally except for occasional bouts of guilt on his part.
And so it went on.
Now at forty and since I have been severing the links to my parents I have miraculously lost much weight. Picture this: I had baby fat that I could not get rid of despite diets, I had a boy's body up until about two years ago. I was until then and despite being married, my parents' little boy and my morphology reflected this. The actually positioning or placement of fat deposits was like you would see on a child!
Now at forty and yes because I excersise ( always have really!) my body has totally changed.
I now have a man's body. My brother who had never really identified with my mother ( she hated him and said so frequently) never had a weight problem. In a weird, strange turn of events, and because he now identifies more with my mother than ever ( she loves him now!) he has gained as much if not more than I have lost! It is so freaky. My wife and I both have noticed this..
My questions to the group are:
Have you ever had this kind of experience? Can you relate to this experience?
Can you point me to some articles on this?
Can I please get some validation..that is can someone tell me i'm not making this up? Is it possible to in some way "stunt" your physical development in an unconscious way because you don't own your own life?
A bewildered Nic.
