This would be a good time to connect with that little boy. What would you tell him? Do you see him as shameful? Are you able to comfort him at all?

My new thing is to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. My therapist explained to me that all the negative things that were said to us in childhood over and over again carved deep pathways into our minds. Now we have to try to carve new pathways with positive thoughts. When you feel this shame, please tell yourself how proud of yourself you are. Proud of yourself for surviving all that you survived. Proud for never giving up. Proud for not turning mean and destructive.

Or maybe you could tell me. What are you proud of yourself for? What are you proud of that little boy for?

Fat-shaming is...very common, and really toxic.

I believe you have worth. I don't think your worth has anything to do with your waist size.

Your dad was a warped and hateful man.

I agree with Donna. Try to replace the poison in your mind with positive things...accomplish something, however small, each day to bolster your feelings of self-worth. It seems to be the only thing that works for me.

People who shame the disabled are scum. Never listen to scum.

Thanks

For many years the biggest issue I was upset by was having to wear shorts for sport in intermediate school that were far too small and I could barely get them on. It's so funny what is top of your emotional list! and they come off your list in their own crazy order. No rhyme or reason to it.

I think if you truly look at the idea of fatness equalling worthlessness, it kind of falls apart on its own. I'm fat. My daughter's fat. She's still getting hit on. What is fat? What does fat mean? How does fat affect your morality?

And here's the real curiosity (I'm learning about my own brain and how it thinks) - why listen to someone who obviously doesn't know much about functioning as a human (your father), on any topic at all, let alone what part fatness plays in value.

He sounds damaged to be honest: talking about being shot in germany; was he a WWII survivor? Because that messed a lot of people up. There was a lot of starvation and afterwards a lot of people with very strange attitudes to food.

I agree with Bridgie about attitudes toward food. I was raised just after the Great Depression by parents who lived through those bad times.

It's hard for us to imagine it. People were literally starving, they would wait in lines that stretched for blocks just for a little bread. My mother had a food allowance to buy groceries, but she spent a lot of it on beer. So we were always eating the least expensive things, especially when the money ran out before payday.

Needless to say, we didn't eat in restaurants or go buy food in burger places except as a special treat. Mostly we ate a lot of potatoes and bread, I remember that. My father was very tight with money, he had to watch the purse strings and keep his brothers and sisters from spending too much when he was young. Those are hard lessons not forgotten, they used to talk a lot about the "wolf at the door" in those days. Everyone knew what that meant.

Dad ran our household with an iron fist, as they said back then. So yes, I would say that people of former generations have a very different attitude about food. We had food rationing during the War, we ate a lot of beans instead of meat.

If we didn't eat something at suppertime, we were expected to deal with it as leftovers. People did not throw food away, they made it into something else. I see the way modern people throw food away by the ton, that seems horrifying to me. I only throw food away if it's got something wrong with it or it's spoiled because I forgot about it in the fridge for too long. That's a rare thing, I almost always eat everything I cook.

@ richie it's amazing the difference between those raised poor and those raised rich. My kids if I burn something won't eat it. They will want something else, and their father always would expect another meal cooked. Me? I ate it even if it was charcoal. There was nothing else and we weren't expected to like the taste. The idea of eating food that you like the taste of, because you like the taste - and not eating something because you don't like the taste - those ideas still confuse me! "it's fuel, there to keep you alive, liking it's a luxury!" was how I was raised. And yes, I remember one horrible burnt omelet when I was six that I refused to eat which was put in front of me, cold, for the next meal, and the next meal, and the next, until I ate it. The really extreme part about that was that my mother had run away from my father at that time: she took the omelet with her on a plane, with 2 other children, to make me eat it. haha.

I've gone back to that survival mode of eating as a senior. With my limited income, I can't afford to buy things at the store on whims.

What we may see as cruelty may have been an effort by a parent to teach a child how to survive through hard times. "Waste not want not" was a favorite saying when I was young.

I grow most of my food on the property Dad left me in his will. If it's not in season, I don't go buy it in the supermarket just because I have a yen for it. I eat what's in season, when it's time to pick it. Salad greens don't grow here in the hotter months, so I don't eat salads then. I eat lightly cooked veggies instead.

This is the way people used to live, we ate what was in season. Seems like you enjoy things more when they're only around for a "limited engagement".

what POS father you had and how stupid the other people were.....
Yeah toxic shame is a huge residue of child abuse. Its a hard one to get rid of.

I ended up in a psyc unit a few weeks ago. I was told I could go voluntarily or I would be forced to go. I went voluntarily. I was suicidal.

I've had spells of being suicidal. It's like a bout of the flu, it comes and goes for me.

If you really think about it, suicide is the ultimate irrationality...it makes no sense whatsoever. But of course when we're in that frame of mind, we're not being rational.

I hope you've gotten some help with this, it's a very dangerous state of mind. It's like walking along the edge of a cliff. What you need is anything that will pull you back from the edge until you stabilize yourself.

Ioum: never forget that this life is your life, and it's the only one you get. Don't let anyone or anything take it from you! :)

How can it be logical to let them take your life, when they are the bad guy? You are not the bad guy, therefore you owe it to good guys everywhere to WIN. :D

Write down all the horrid things these people said about you, and burn them. These words are the sign of who they are, not you!

:) I've been suicidal twice in my life, the 2nd time lasted a year. I still have the odd twinge, but nowadays I realise that this need to end it all is some kind of brain fart. The brain tries to find a way out of misery: if it can't find one, it will suggest death because that is a way out of misery. Brain is not very bright. It's best to just nod and smile at brain, but never listen. :)

You're right I am in a lot of emotional pain and I don't want to be in that pain. I feel trapped. I hate being alone with my thoughts and fears. I don't want to kill myself I just want to escape being me.

I wish you could throw the shame back where it belongs. Back with the unfeeling people that have no heart. Why should you wear their shame.

Ioum I don't think you want to escape being you: I think you simply want the emotional pain to end.

You don't have to escape being you to do that. I think it's Nietsche who said that anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I would add that anything you can physically overcome you can emotionally overcome.

I prefer to see emotional pain as electrical signals. Electrical signals attached to a memory that every time you remember that thing, you get the electric shock.

There's two ways to get through this: block the memory so you never experience the pain; or let go of your blocks and let the pain wash through you. It earths, and disappears for ever.

For every single memory. Every memory is a separate electrical shock and has to be accepted with its charge of pain, so that the pain can go through you, earth, and be gone forever.

The end result is a you that is happy no matter what has happened to you in the past. Those things simply become experience, they become wisdom, they become understanding and emotional sophistication.

But they no longer hurt.

Look at the things that were said and done to you: look at them, let the pain happen. Cry yourself to sleep and you will see you wake in a new space. Things that hurt you enormously yesterday no longer contain that charge. They become irrelevant. :)

You can do this! One thing at a time. One memory at a time. Earth them and get them out of your life. You have too many but there is no short cut: each one has to be dealt with separately.

:) Try it and see how you go. If it works then you are okay, and you don't need to think of any more drastic moves.

Take care! :)