Fat experiences

Maybe it’s the terminology. Maybe it’s not a fetish, or even a lifestyle (which implies choice), but a core of one’s being (as it is for me).

To the others who’ve posted slamming psychotherapy: partially agree, partially not.

Originally (decades ago) i picked therapy over a few hours in jail. First in my family to ever have any sort of mental health work. I found it to be very helpful in terms of my evolving into a more whole person, overcoming generations-baked-in family issues.

My (unplanned gainer) True Love was undergoing it too, and switched from the city almost-free clinic to an LCSW-level practitioner. I did too. Even better: more progress (determined by me, not the therapist).

Most of the work centered on depression and low self-esteem.

Fast scan forward: years and years of mental health work, with some years-long gaps. All kinds of different letter suffixes/titles/trainings/backgrounds. As a sweeping generalization, i found that the PhD-level ones tended to actually be better (more efficient: fewer sessions needed for results) than the master’s level, who were better than the lesser training levels. One or two Oh No Way! one-session duds, but mostly i found value… initially.

The pattern that kept happening: really great at first: obvious benefits i could sense. Perceived benefits gradually fading over months at a slow enough rate that i didn’t notice the degradation. Never any goalpost for an ending. Eventually many months too late i’d reach the “This isn’t working for me any more” point and end the work. Like the point that someone made about feedees who delete accounts and keep crawling back, i kept thinking finally i was healed enough to function well and could be done with therapy, but months or years later would not be functioning well enough and sought more mental health work.

Did some psych meds too—SSRI family—for awhile. Those i found close to worthless—for me. Every one of them: side-effects worse than my base issue(s).

As others have posted, i’ve never had a problem with my fat attraction in therapy because i’ve never brought it up as a problem concerning me in any way, apart from my near-zero skills making friends/dating/finding love. (Once i find it, i tend to do great. It’s the initial connection stage where i’m an Epic Fail.) Those things aren’t fat-related: those are my socialization issues.

The only time my life-core attraction has edged close to being an issue is when i work with SSBBW therapists. Most recent one (trauma specialist; 2 years ago) i wanted to date. Beyond being Rule 1 NO for mental health professional ethics, i got the sense that i was an “Ummm, no” to her as a love interest. She’d undergone WLS years earlier, and sadly there were repercussions in terms of her quality of life (nutrition, food, health), and specializes (besides trauma) in counseling people seriously considering WLS (of which despite her personal outcome, she’s in favor). I was forthright from the start about my core FA nature and the fatosphere being central to my life—all good, nothing to work on there—and she was fine with that.

Mental health work has been helpful for me, but i don’t think it’s enough of a controlled/controllable science yet (the meds part isn’t even!). So i can’t say that the skeptics are wrong, other than there’s enough there that i’d not dismiss it 100%. I guarantee you y’all wouldn’t want me around at all if i hadn’t undergone the work i did over the years.

Oh, and i’m still dealing with depression and low self-esteem, helped but not resolved after all that work.