Jody is a young woman who is struggling with her eating and knows she needs help. She suspects that she has an eating disorder and is wondering if she can find the courage to speak to someone about it. She is studying at university – something she has always wanted to do – and finds connecting with others and concentrating in lectures difficult. She feels incredibly visible as she experiences herself as a thinner woman amongst her peers and reports that people steer away from her as if she is unacceptable as she is. At the same time, she is isolated, lonely and yearns for connection. She knows she is underweight and she wonders to herself, ‘Why would anyone want to talk to me or be friends with me?’
She knows she needs to seek help. Her family have helped her find a therapist to speak to. She finds it incredibly shameful to attend therapy as she feels exposed by physically attending – and this shame is evoked and happens for her before she’s entered her therapist’s room. She finds her therapy very difficult and yet she perseveres. She continues to struggle with being seen and yet at the same time feels listened to and heard by her therapist.
Following long discussions in her therapy, she finds the courage to approach the pastoral care support team at the university. She hopes the university will offer her extra support at a time when she is struggling with her studies. The pastoral team tell her she needs to stop coming to university and that she is not well enough to attend. Shame fills her and she feels so small and inadequate. She feels rejected. It took so much courage to ask for the help she needed and she feels less than as a result. This is a significant setback for her on her journey. She experiences stigma for her weight in all aspects of her life and feels so completely alone.
There may be genuine concerns about a student’s health and whether they are well enough to attend university. Yet how those concerns are communicated, the empathy and support offered, matter deeply. How can we respond to someone asking for help in a way that recognises the person beyond their body size and preserves their courage, dignity and sense of belonging?
This piece of narrative about Jody is a fictional account but it is built on many years’ experience of working with shame and weight stigma in clients struggling with their shape and size.
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