Mind your words

The mind is a crazy, mixed up thing.  Well mine is anyway.  I have a tendancy to remember all the shit stuff and have a hard time remembering all the good stuff.  I'm reminate on stuff constantly.  In laymans terms I am Stewy Mcstew.  I find it really  hard to let stuff go and negative words have a way of drilling down into the depths of my psyche and taking up residence.  It's something that I really need to work on. 

 An article on Psychology Today says:

The environment that children are raised in molds not only their mind, but also their brain. This is something many long suspected, but now we have scientific instruments that show us how dramatically childhood experience alters the physical structure of the brain, and how sensitive we are as children to these environmental effects. Words--verbal harassment--from peers (and, as a previous study from these researchers showed, verbal abuse from a child's parents) can cause far more than emotional harm.
 

My biggest struggle and thing that plays on my mind constantly is my weight.  Something that my mother would constantly comment on. As well as the volume of food I was consuming while a child.  I wasn't a massively overweight child but yet every hairbrained diet that my mother went on, I was put on as well.  From about the age of 8.  At least that is as young as I can remember.  My mother is overweight and has always always been overweight.  Yet if we were to say anything about her weight, it was the end of the world. It still is.
 

Through my teen years I really struggled with the whole putting food in my mouth and not feeling guilty about it.  To the point where I started starving myself.  My mother was oblivious. Acting dumb whenever my Dr or Psychiatrist mentioned that I hadn't been eating.  From the age of 14 until 18 I only ate one meal a day.  I rarely if ever ate at school.  In Grade 12 I lose 25kgs in 3 months and she didn't think there was anything wrong with that. Even commenting when seeing me eat that I 'better be careful or you'll put all that weight back on'.  To this day I still tell myself that I 'deserve' to eat when getting something out the fridge. There is always an internal dialogue going on when it comes to food.
 

One would think that someone would learn from their experiences with their first child. No, not my mother.  I have just come back from two weeks staying with my parents and my 13yo brother.  My brother got all the good genes and is a bean pole.  By no stretch of the imagination is he overweight.  He is taller than me and so at his weight is well within his healthy weight range.  He's a grazer, I don't think I have ever seen him eat a big meal in my life.  While he was rifling through the fridge one day mum says to him 'Stop eating, you're going to get fat'.  My brother is a lot like me at that age.  He takes things in and stews on them.  What was his response to mums words? He went for a 2 hour walk.  Mum thought this was hilarious saying that he takes things so literally. 
 

Children's minds are so delicate.  Please be careful what you say.  You never know how deep they are burying the harsh words you use.