When Trauma Changes the Way You Love Yourself

This week on Trauma Candy Salad, we’re talking about the complicated ways trauma can change our relationship with our bodies, food, sex, love, and even ourselves.

Anonymous brings Twizzlers to the salad bowl to share her experience with postpartum depression, body dysmorphia, extreme calorie restriction, and compulsive exercise. What started as an attempt to cope with how she felt after having a baby ultimately landed her in inpatient treatment at 5’7” and 105 pounds, severely anemic and with her liver struggling. Her road to recovery took more than two years—and she’s honest about the fact that healing still isn’t always easy or linear.

Then Lana brings Sweet Tarts and shares a deeply painful story of childhood sexual abuse, a mother who refused to believe her, and the ways that trauma has continued to affect her relationships and attachment as an adult. She opens up about abandonment issues, hypersexuality, favorite-person relationships, ethical non-monogamy, and the intense emotional highs and lows that can come with feeling wanted, rejected, and pulled back in.

Two stories. Two very different coping mechanisms. And one big question: How much of who we become is shaped by what we had to survive?

⚠️ Trigger warnings: Eating disorders, body dysmorphia, postpartum depression, extreme calorie restriction, compulsive exercise, childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, BPD, abandonment, hypersexuality, and emotionally unhealthy relationship dynamics.

If you or someone you know is struggling with any of the topics discussed in this episode, please check out the resources in our show notes or on our website.

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Because no matter what you’re going through… there’s always room for a little sweetness.