I often see these reports offered in the spirit of making people take depression more seriously by pointing out its physical manifestations. That’s fine. (However, isn’t the fact that someone says zie’s suffering significant enough, even without measurable physical manifestations?) But it can be a singularly unhelpful point for me, personally.

Yes, THIS! Ha! As a thin woman, I promise this is not the case. So does my back.

I have done that. Usually when I’ve been sick, with allergies or a cold, then get winded while doing something I can normally do. My mind always jumps to “ZOMG IT’S BECAUSE I’M FAT!” and only later comes around to “…um, self, you’ve had RESPIRATORY ILLNESS, maybe your lungs aren’t quite back up to their usual capacity yet?”

I’m off for the summer, and with only one child and a very small home, I have a LOT of free time, and last week I thought it would be fun to challenge myself exercise-wise. I normally walk about 3 miles every day, either all at once or 2 in the morning and 1 at night, which I enjoy a lot and which does wonders for my emotional stability. Last week I decided to push myself and so I did a 4 mile walk/run every morning. Then, on Friday, my fifth 4-mile day, I barely stretched because my son needed something just as I was finishing up, and then sat down at my computer to play The Sims, where I remained in the same position for about 3 hours.

When I got up from the computer, a muscle in my lower back was so cramped up that I was literally hobbling around the house and in really bad pain. And, my first thought? Not, “Hmm, maybe I should have stretched more” or “Maybe walking 20 miles in 5 days wasn’t the world’s greatest idea” or “Shouldn’t I have learned from my husband’s back going out several times after extended sits in the desk chair that vegging out in that chair is a bad idea?”

Nope, it was, “OMG, I’m too fat! My body can’t handle carrying around all my weight! All of those dieters I’ve had random encounters with over obesity-related topics on the internet who’ve insisted that, despite my being active and healthy, my body would one day give out under the massive strain of the 200 lbs. on my 5’8″ body were right!” My first conclusion was that the problem must be that I was too fat, and not that anybody, thin or not, who works out a lot for days, fails to stretch adequately, then sits in an uncomfortable chair for hours might cramp a muscle. Because, of course, the bodies of thin 31-year-old women never ache, hurt, cramp up, or give them signals that maybe they should be just a little bit gentler to them.

Luckily after two days of really mild workouts (just to get my muscles warm and then give me a chance to stretch them) and resting, the pain went away completely, and I’ve been feeling good the last two days doing my normal workouts. My husband, who is far closer to his “ideal” weight than I am, did 45 minutes of Wii Fit the other night then spent the next day on the couch pleading immobility, so that made me feel a bit better, as well. And now, I realize how silly it was for me to attribute to my weight something that was far more easily explained by other things, and my assuming that if I were thin, I’d be routinely doing hour-long aerobic workouts every day without so much as a sore muscle. But at the time, the first explanation that came to my mind was “I’m too fat!” And, given that we’re led to believe that anything and everything that goes wrong with our bodies, if we’re fat, is because we’re fat, I don’t think my conclusion was particularly hard to understand, even if it wasn’t based in reality.

Actually, I don’t agree with this. I’m a fairly pessimistic sort, but I tend to think the other way round – if something goes right it’s because I’ve worked to make that happen and if something goes wrong it’s in spite of my efforts to avoid it…

Ack @ the Secret. My DD’s dad’s mother gave me a book once called “excuse me, your life is waiting” and it was full of the same kind of crap, apparently little old ladies who get attacked while their homes are being burgled are also bringing it upon themselves by expecting such things to happen (and yeah, I think the Holocaust was mentioned…) Unfortunately the book was “from her and DD” so I had to pretend to like it for a bit until DD forgot about it and I could safely throw the damn thing in the bin.

But still, “placebo” is not another word for “magic healing through the power of the mind” as it’s sometimes presented as shorthand for. More like “the effect of thinking we *should* be getting better so we describe ourselves as getting better even though we’re not.”

I just went to a seminar about mindfulness and compassion on Friday where I heard John Kabat-Zinn tell the audience that we all need to befriend our bodies, just as they are. I thought a choir of angels might just begin singing, I was so excited.

My response to this, obviously, would have to be “SPEAK FOR YOURSELF.”