FWTW S4E04 How Patty Cabot Discovered Binge Eating Hid Her Childhood Abuse | With Barbie Moreno

Writer and survivor Patty Cabot spent decades in a brutal binge–diet–regain cycle before one confronting therapy session connected her weight struggles to unresolved childhood sexual abuse. In this powerful conversation, we explore how trauma hides in eating disorders, why food becomes both comfort and punishment, and what it really takes to reclaim your body, your story, and your life.

Suggested Keywords
childhood sexual abuse, trauma and eating disorders, binge eating disorder, bulimia and trauma, body image healing, EMDR therapy, healing from childhood abuse, emotional eating, food and trauma, CPTSD and eating, Not That Girl Anymore, Patty Cabot, Barbie Moreno, Oprah Winfrey, bulimia, anorexia

Broader chapter sections
How Trauma Hides in Eating Habits
What Really Drives Binge Eating
Childhood Sexual Abuse and the Body “Keeping Score”
EMDR, Therapy, and Breaking the Binge Cycle
Why Survivors Use Food for Safety and Numbness
Body Image, Self-Loathing, and Aging in Recovery
What Patty Learned Writing Not That Girl Anymore
Wisdom for Survivors Ready to Heal

GET PATTY CABOT'S BOOK HERE: https://www.amazon.com/Not-That-Girl-Anymore-Childhood/dp/B0CKCVQ3VX

VISIT PATTY CABOT at: pattycabot.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattycabot/
Instagram | @patty.cabot
https://www.facebook.com/p/Patty-Cabot-100063599580134/

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Season 2 
Unraveling the Mind: From Mental Struggles to Inner Strength. 

Transcript

Patty’s Story And Core Reveal

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Imagine spending 20 years gaining and losing up to 75 pounds convinced your body is the problem. Only to discover it was never about the food at all, but about a childhood secret you tried to outrun. That's Patty Cabot's story, and today on From Wounds to Wisdom, she's revealing how binge eating became the calling card of unresolved sexual abuse and what it really took to break the cycle and fight her way back into her own worth. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Because I was sexually abused as a child, and even though any rational person can tell you that it's never the child's fault.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Because of that sexual abuse, I also didn't want to be, I didn't want relationships, I didn't want to be touched, I didn't want to be seen, I didn't want to be available, but then the the person inside wanted to be loved, right. Today on From Wounds to Wisdom, we're joined by Patty Cabot, uh writer, survivor, and author of Not That Girl Anymore. After decades of struggling with body image and the hidden wounds of childhood sexual abuse, Patty began a deep healing journey that spanned therapy, EMDR, body work, and more. Her story is one of courage, truth, and reclaiming the happiness every survivor deserves. I am very excited to have you here just because your story is extremely important to me in a personal journey. So welcome, Patty.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Thank you, Barbie. I'm very happy to be here. So thank you for uh opening up your community and your podcast to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Absolutely. So when we first spoke, we talked about eating disorders and that's what your um specialty is. I would like to get a little bit of your history, but then I'm really, really like um intrigued by the concept that you have about what traumas are associated to which eating disorders. So if you wouldn't mind kind of sharing about the beginning of your journey, and then I'd love to learn about how what you've learned.

Diet Cycles And The Real Root

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Sure, sure. My journey, I feel like, really begins when I started therapy. So for many years I struggled with my weight. Starting in my teens, I would gain or lose 50 to 75 pounds every two years. And I did it for 20 years. And I honestly, I am a fantastic dieter, but I could never figure out how to maintain the weight loss. And it's really not rocket science. And, you know, I would go through the cycle up, down, up, down, up, down, and I finally kind of had an epiphany in my late 30s where I thought, if I don't figure out why, I am gonna do this for the rest of my life. And it's exhausting, it is just exhausting. And so at that point, I had started looking for a therapist, and I ended up finding somebody, I did a search for a therapist that specialized in eating disorders, and I met this woman, and you know, she kind of mined my history. And for anybody who has never been through therapy before, at least in my experience, when you meet with a therapist, they want to kind of get to know you, what's happened in your life, kind of what your issues are and what led you to where you are now. And, you know, straight away I went there to deal with my weight. I was at the heavy end of the spectrum again, and I felt that I was unacceptable to men. I wanted to be in a relationship. I felt like my weight was the barrier, and I wanted to solve it once and for all. And we went through my childhood and my life and all the rest of it, and we talked about my childhood sexual abuse, which was never hidden from me. I always knew it was there. I never thought about it, I never dealt with it. I just tucked it away and moved on with my life. And basically, after we kind of talked, she said to me, She's like, you know, your weight is just a symptom of the abuse. And until you deal with the abuse, you will struggle with your weight all of your life. And that is really where I feel like my journey begins. And as you and I had talked about uh last week when we spoke, I could have been locked away in a room by myself for a hundred years and I was never gonna stumble on that. I I never viewed it as anything more than somehow me not understanding how to diet or how to maintain weight loss. Like I was never gonna land on the root of the problem.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

So the root of the problem was your sexual abuse?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

My childhood sexual abuse. Again, in that I never dealt with it. I never addressed it. I just I just it happened and I moved on with my life and tamped it down, which I think is very common for people to do. But you know, here's the thing about trauma, whether you think about it or not, if you don't resolve it, it's always there. It's always just bubbling underneath the surface. And I think it drives people, it certainly was driving me in ways I couldn't possibly begin to understand.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, and your story touched me because as I uh shared with you, so obviously I was uh I've talked about it before, um, sexually abused as a child as well. And I know that you're gonna talk about the various different abuses and kind of what um what eating disorder they correlate to. Uh, but one thing that we talked about is the binging, right? So people who are sexually abused generally tend to binge, and I'd love to hear like what that is, but based on our conversation, it was because you never feel full, right? So you binge eat to feel full, and that was what I did. So when you said that, I was like, huh, that like

Trauma’s Link To Binge Eating

SPEAKER_00 5:20

that completely like click, right? So the the constant trying to fill yourself up with food, and then it wasn't until I was 24 where uh I had gastric bypass surgery, which was I was one of the few first people to have it. Um, that's a whole different story. I don't think they should have done that to a 24-year-old, but whatever. Um, and so because I couldn't hold the food in my stomach, I began the binge purge, right? What people would call bulimia. But prior to that, it was just the benching, and the same thing, like I would lose weight, gain weight, lose weight, gain weight. And at one point I be I was at 315 pounds. Um, and it was a protection, it was like layers to keep the men away from me, even though I wanted relationships because of that sexual abuse. I also didn't want to be, I didn't want relationships. I didn't want to be touched, I didn't want to be seen, I didn't want to be available, but then the the person inside wanted to be loved, right? So can you give us like um I just loved your kind of summary of the various different eating disorders and what abuse is generally attached to them.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Sure. Uh first of all, I am very sorry to hear about your experiences. I it's I think it's tragic. And as you and I also discussed, one in three girls, one in five boys are sexually abused by the time they're 18, which is just a horrifying statistic. Um so really look left, look right. It's one of you, right? It's just horrible, and that it still happens. Um, so I will say, so I am 58, so when I started my therapeutic journey, it was 20 years ago, I was 38 years old. So the world has a lot evolved a lot since then. So, and even the internet has changed a lot in terms of what information you can find now versus then. Um, so when I really started looking for information about childhood sexual abuse, there was no correlation between it and anything else. It was just kind of like, and there's really was very little about childhood sexual abuse. And as the years have gone by and I started digging a little deeper, particularly as I was writing my book, which we'll talk about later, um, I was kind of mystified. I was just surprised by the fact that there was this correlation between trauma, excuse me, and different eating disorders. And they all kind of had their own calling card. And eating disorders such as ours, binge eating, was most commonly associated with childhood sexual abuse. And I think it's really fascinating because while food can serve a lot of purposes, for me personally, it was pleasure and pain. Like it was the best way to comfort myself, it was the best way to hate myself. Like, and I think it covered the full spectrum of emotions for me. And when I started in therapy, I was 252 pounds. So I was 112 pounds from my goal weight. And over the course of three years, I lost it and I've largely maintained it. And it's been almost 20 years, um, which is great, which is not to say I'm still not tortured by the way I look, right? And I think part of that is society, part of that is it's just never good enough. I think that that's always that, you know, could I be better kind of a thing. Um, but I think that again, when you really look at so somebody had told me something fascinating, it's gonna seem a little bit off topic, but it was that in the early nine nineties, Kaiser Permanente, which is a medical, like a medical group, like a United Healthcare or one of those, a big medical administrator, they had a program in place and it was for people who were obese and who wanted to lose weight. And they really were not having a ton of success. And so they started doing this thing where they started interviewing the participants to try and figure out. I take it back, they did have a lot of success. People started to lose weight, and then they just kind of dropped out of the program and they couldn't figure out why. And so they started interviewing the participants, and they had a whole series of questions, like, you know, how do you feel about this? How do you feel about that? And one of the questions

Pleasure, Pain, And Self-Loathing

SPEAKER_01 9:15

was, how much did you weigh when you first became sexually active? And when they started looking at the responses, there were responses like 40 pounds, 60 pounds, and they realized, oh my God, it's children. It's they started, they became sexually active as children. And that was kind of the first big study that linked obesity or eating disorders to childhood sexual abuse. And the great tragedy of that is that it's how many years later, and still there's not enough conversation about the fact that we have an obesity epidemic and how many people is it related to some kind of trauma, whether it's verbal, mental, physical, sexual, you know, trauma. There's a book, the body keeps the score. Like trauma wants to be soothed, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:03

That's one of my favorite books. Um, as I absolutely love that. Um, and I anybody who hasn't read it, I suggest they read it because you really can see the various different um symptoms that trauma creates in the body. Binging, so overeating. Uh you said pain and pleasure. So talk to us about that.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Yeah, so I think that there used to be, and I used to be a big pothead. I used to smoke cigarettes, I used to be a pothead, and I used to love to binge on my treats. Like it was my trekta, trifecta of like the most perfect environment. I would lock myself away in my apartment. I would have all of my favorite things, and I'd be in this cozy cocoon of smoke and sugar, and I'm all about sugar. Like I could never eat a tomato chip or a hamburger again in my life, and I'd be fine. Um, so I really loved these things. And um, so it was really very gratifying and it was a lot of pleasure, but I always hated myself afterwards. I I hated when I binged, I hated the way I looked, I hated the behavior, I hated everything about it, right? Because it made me, it just filled me with loathing. And it was interesting as the longer I was in therapy and kind of the more and more progress I made, I really started to explore like how I felt when I binged and how I felt afterwards. Because I will say straight away for me that Weight Watchers used to have a saying that was one is too many and a hundred is never enough. And that perfectly described me. I never got sick of eating when I was eating. I could polish off a dozen donuts, I could polish off a pound of candy, like it was never too much. So I never felt sick or too sick to continue eating. And but I always felt horrible the next day, physically horrible, like it's just it does a number on your body. And I would also really struggle with how much I hated myself. And my goal was always to try and forgive myself for binging. And the longer I was in therapy, I really tried to think about what does the forgiveness relate to? And I think for me, because I was sexually abused as a child, and even though any rational person can tell you that it's never the child's fault, children see the world through their eyes, everything's about them. I thought it was my fault, which is very common. And I could never forgive myself for what happened to me. And I started to think that binging was an opportunity for me to forgive.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Like that I thought you were forgiving yourself afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Yes. So I was forgiving myself for what happened, and I thought it's a proxy for me for forgiving myself for the abuse. But I did it over and over and over again because it never stuck, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Like because, like for me, when you say that, like in my experience, I think it was more of a almost like a punishment and a hiding, and or like uh trying to feel something because you're almost numb, right? So it's almost like that overeating causes you to to fill up, so you're feeling you're you're actually feeling like you know, you you're getting something out of it, and then the uh the pain of it, which sounds silly, but it causes you pain oftentimes when you overeat, right? Is was just at least a feel.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Well, that's interesting. Um, because I would say my thing was definitely I did not want to feel, which is why I was always high, right? Like I was always looking for an escape, and I like to combine them. I like to get high and binge. Um, and I didn't want to feel, and you know, you one of the things you and I had talked about too is that I really did kind of go through life not feeling anything. I would feel pleasure when I was binging, and then I would feel this enormous like hatred when I was done. But in my day-to-day life,

Invisibility, Safety, And Home

SPEAKER_01 13:35

I really the only emotion I ever like really recognized was anger. And I grew up in a house full of anger. So I think for me, it's like a way of ghostwalking through life, right? And I used to do this thing, and my shrink had even said to me at one point, she is like, I have never had anybody with a homing instinct like you. Like I you had talked about like wanting to be invisible and hide. I would literally I live in New York City and I would literally go in, and if I had to be somewhere, I would break everything down in stages. And it was always like the first step is getting to the subway, the second step is being on the subway, the third step is getting to where I'm being, and then it starts over again. Then it's me being wherever I'm being, then it's me leaving wherever I'm going, it's me getting back to the subway. It was always about what steps am I kicking off so that I can get back home. Like I just always wanted to be home.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Because home was safe.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Which is interesting because my household was anything but safe. But as an adult, my apartment truly became my castle. There is, I, you know, I rule, right? It's mine. It's mine. And I deny or you know, accept entry for whoever's coming or going, right? Like I am the gatekeeper. And yes, I feel very safe in my apartment, and it is my castle.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

I want to go back to the numbers because I I we talked about this too. I actually think that the numbers are significantly higher than one in three um girls and one in five boys. I think that that's what's reported. I think that there's a lot of unreported um sexual abuse. Right. So I I I mean, I personally think that that number is significantly higher. I um but that being said, we see this in um famous people. So, like Oprah, she admits to being sexually abused as a child, and she has fluctuated with her rate weight her entire life. I mean, this woman has access to everything, everything, and yet still she suffered, you know, with um weight issues. And if what your theory is is true, it would make sense, right? Um, talk to me about people who um are bulimic. What is their general um abuse history?

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah, you know, and unfortunately, I really never explored anything else because I only was a bit trader. I was never bulimic and I was never anorexic. But but I will say this. I think what's interesting about anorexia, which I think does stem from very different kinds of issues, is that you can be overweight and be anorexic because it's the same starving mentality, right? And it's like, again, I I would think as a general whole, and I am certainly no expert, um, but I think as a general whole, you know, it's about control, right? Weight is something you can control. Food intake is something you can control no matter what you're doing, whether you're binging, purging, or just starving yourself. You are in control. And I think for me personally, I and I'm gonna assume you too, when you grow up without having agency over your body, you take it wherever you can find it. And as a child, what else do you have access to? I mean, unfortunately, some children have access to drugs, which is horrible. But you know, and again, a lot of people don't have access to food. But if you're fortunate enough to not be, you know, impoverished that way, food is readily available, and even as you grow up, it's very socially acceptable. And even think about as a young woman, as a teenager, as a young woman in your 20s, your thirties, your forties, it's very socially acceptable to be out with other women and eat. Right. Right? You can do it anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Right. And and then we go back to body image and stuff too. There's, I mean, we could go down this rabbit hole another way, too, right? Like how we're shamed on our body all of the time. Women have to be a certain way. There's like this um cartoon, and it has like uh a woman looking in the mirror, and she's just got a great body, right? She's looking in the mirror and she just sees this really heavy woman, and then a man who has like this beer belly and all of this stuff, he looks in the mirror and he sees like this muscly man. And it's just the way that women see ourselves. So I think that outside of the abuse part of it, just the social expectations for women to

Body Image Distortions And EMDR

SPEAKER_00 17:20

look a certain way add on top of that. I did look up after we talked the bulimia, so the binging and purging, and it said that it was associated to bullying, actually. So I thought that was very interesting because I have a person in my life who is who has suffered through bulimia, and her story matches up to the um bullying thing. So it wow for people who have had eating disorders, I would say just go in and look, and you can see like, you know, anorexia is assigned to this, bulimia is assigned to that, like as far as like correlations and who has what, right? And just like an interesting concept.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

It it's fascinating. It is fascinating. It's fascinating too that you know, so many things that you think one of the most beautiful things I think about the time we live in now is that there is so much access to information. Whereas again, when I was growing up, there was none. The internet didn't come around to like the late 80s or the 90s. So it was a very different time in terms of finding out information. And I think me personally, I you know, my secret was so shameful. I didn't share it with anybody until I was in my early 40s. And I think now you really can find people just like you. And a lot of things that I thought were unique to me, I'm not unique at all, which is not a bad thing in certain ways, because it does lead you to think, oh, there's there's so many more people like me.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

There's not something wrong with me. There's so many people like exactly something simple, it's not personalized anymore, right? Because what we're looking at is oftentimes like, what's wrong with me? Um, I find it interesting because I empathize and sympathize with this too. You said even through all of your um maintaining your weight for you know 20 years or whatever, that you still struggle with body image. Yeah. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

I I do. I do, and I think you know, it's funny when you were talking about how women see themselves in a mirror one way that had maybe has nothing to do with reality. My therapist and I, we had done EMDR, which is eye movement desensitation reprocessing, and it's a kind of therapy that's really very helpful for trauma, and it kind of brings you back to certain emotional states so that you can resolve them. And one of the, but it also is a certain amount of kind of your subconscious kind of leading the way, as opposed to you asking me a very direct question. It's kind of like you lead through to find out kind of things that are just kind of out there. And one of the things that we were doing one day is we were talking, and it was like I was seeing myself kind of in in a mirror, so to speak. And I knew even as I was looking at it that it was a distortion, right? Like that that it wasn't my body, that that was not what I looked like. Like I I knew that, but yet it was still how I saw myself. And I think one of the reasons that I've always struggled with the way I look is that. That I really did view my body as the scene of the crime. And I hated myself for it, and I hated my body.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

And I think very yeah. Yeah, I like I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I the scene of the crime is just very it hits home.

unknown 20:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

It is because it's where everything happens, right? It's your body. And even if you disassociate, and I think I did, it started when I was very young, and it happened, you know, I I don't even know when it started, but I think it was before the age of four, and it continued until I was 10 or 11. I mean, so for a long time, and I think I was kind of checked out, and I think that's a very common escape as well. You're not there, right? Like it's happening, but you're not there. But your body is still there. Yeah. But your body's there. And it's like we're talking about your body keeps the score, your body knows everything. So your body reflexively, and I used to just like you, I hated it when people touched me to have people hug me, couldn't stand it.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

But it's quite repulsing, but like then, like in my business, like everybody, you know, they'd come up and they'd give you a hug and stuff like that. So you have to just force yourself

Control, Agency, And Food

SPEAKER_00 21:05

to do it. Um, but it was just like every time it was like a cringe, you know, and and stuff. And it's interesting because I've done a lot of work on myself through my journey. However, weight has still always kind of been an issue. And when I get up in the morning, I've noticed that like the first thing I do is look in the mirror and criticize myself. Like, oh, look at like your you know, your thighs look a little chunky today. You're oh, your tummy's hanging out more than it was yesterday. Like, even though I've done all of this work, the first thing I do, because there's a like right outside of like when you get out of my bed, you see these big mirrors, is look at myself and criticize myself, and then I have to consciously say to myself, like, stop criticizing your body, you know. But it doesn't go away in your mind. I think that you can, you know, work on the symptoms like you you have and stuff, but I don't know that the criticism ever really goes away, no matter how much work you do on yourself. Like, what have you experienced there?

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Um, I think that's an interesting one. And you know, because I am getting older, I'll be 59 in a couple of months. And it's like I try, I look at myself and I'm like, uh, like I'm getting soft. Like your body changes, it does. It's just that's that's life if you're lucky enough to continue living. And I try to extend myself a little bit of grace and think, you know what? I ran six miles this morning. I look freaking great. I'm doing fine, right? Like I'm doing great, and I don't need to compare myself to a supermodel. I don't make my money that way. That's not how I make my living. And so I think there there is that, it's that constant reminder. But I also do think, excuse me, I weigh myself every day. And I know that is very triggering for a lot of people in their life. I had to stop doing that.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah, and you can weigh like three different pounds from one day to the other, depending on how much water you're retaining, whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

I you absolutely can. And one of the things that I I feel like I have made a lot of progress in certain ways, and it's like you had even said it before, you take the personal out of it. It's data, nothing more. It's a number, it's not a judgment. The judgment is what you and I apply to it. So I can very objectively look at my weight and say, you know what? I'm up two pounds. Should I be up two pounds? What did I eat yesterday? Oh, I had something that was full of MSG. Okay, it's water, it'll go away. Or I can say, I ate, you know, six donuts. Okay, it's fair, right? Like, like you know, when you I had sent my sister this card once and it was very funny. And it was a woman on a scale, and so the bubble out of the woman's mouth is liar, and the bubble out of the out of the scale's mouth is cheater, right? Like, and it's funny because you know, I always know does my did I eat in a way that is reflected on the scale? And if I've been doing my thing, if I've been eating in a healthy way and I've been doing my thing, it's like I really have a much better sense of being able to look at it as it's just a number, it's just data. It's not indicative of yesterday, it's not indicative of tomorrow, only now. And I think one of the things that I did in my therapeutic journey was meditation. And I have found and I have done a lot of things. I have found meditation to be the single most transformative thing I've done because meditation is about now, not yesterday, not tomorrow, just now. And I was never in now, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Yep, and most of us are not. And it's funny, almost everybody who I talk to, various different fields of work and different things that have happened in their life, almost everybody who's on a healing journey says the same thing about meditation. It's just this, it's this beautiful and so many people say, I can't meditate, and I always tell them to start with one minute, right? Exactly. But it's such a beautiful, um, connected connection to oneself and the present moment. So, my question is as we're talking, and and I want to talk about your book, but when you are working on your whole weight thing, when we're we're obsessive about, you know, when we're overweight and stuff, but do you feel like the information data, the

Meditation, Data, And Daily Weigh-Ins

SPEAKER_00 25:12

making this part of your life, the all of the weighing yourself every single day, d is there uh an obsession that went the opposite direction?

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Um, yes, that's a great question. So um you can be obsessed with anything, good or bad, right? And I feel like I'm a very obsessive person. Like I find things and I latch on. And one of the things I started doing, it came out of EMDR was I started running. And I am not a physical person. I am now, I take it back, I am now, but I wasn't. I was not a physical person. I would dabble, I would do this, I would do that, but it was never a kind of a religious kind of thing for me until I started running. And running came out of EMDR when I was in a session with my therapist, and we were talking about, you know, we were talking about the abuse, and she's like, if you could do anything, what would you do? And I said, I would run, I would run so fast. And that was always my thing. That if I wasn't, again, I was a child, but it's not rational, I felt like I wasn't smart enough to extricate myself from the situation, right? Like that I I somehow was outnumbered from a a brain's perspective, that I couldn't figure out how to get out of the situation I was in. And I thought, if I ever found myself in that situation again where I just couldn't somehow get myself free, if I could run away, right? And and it really did start a what has been now like 20 years of running, close to 20 years of running. And I was at a point where I was really obsessive about it. I ran marathons and I was like, everything was about the running, but it is funny, anything can become an obsession if you let it, right? And I would run when I was injured, which is crazy. And it took me many times to learn that that's a bad thing to do. Like pain means stop. And you know, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't stop, I would keep going.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

So talk to us about your book and uh what it's about in general and uh how it came to be. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

So what uh as I told you, I found my abuse so deeply shameful, I didn't tell anybody. And I started therapy at 38, and nobody knew. My mother knew, my sister knew, but even that was never discussed as an adult. It was just kind of as a child, but nobody knew my story. And so I have had friends for I've had some friends for 35 years who never knew my story. They just knew my weight went up and down. I had issues with men, but they didn't know what they were. And when I was in therapy, um, again, I went in thinking I was gonna talk about my weight, and I came out learning I was gonna talk about something completely different, which I was not prepared for. And it's it's overwhelming, right? It's it's overwhelming. And I am actually a writer, like I do communications for a living. And so what I would do is I would come home after every session and write down what happened and how I felt as a way to process it because I wouldn't talk to anybody about it. So no matter what kind of mental state I was in, I I shared nothing. And I did that for 12 years. And I tried a lot of people. Is that because of the shame? Yeah, yeah. And it was just that I was so conditioned to never telling anybody how I felt ever, ever. Like, so it wasn't I didn't talk about me. I could talk about lots of things, but there were certain things I would never talk. I could talk about my job day and night, right? I could talk about my apartment, I would never talk about my weight, I would never talk about my issues with men, like I never talked about like really the stuff that was constantly churning in my head. And so I started writing it all down. And I did a lot of things over those 12 years, always working with my therapist. But I did EMDR, I did this thing called chiropractic care. I went to see a sex therapist, I did group therapy for sex abuse, like I did a lot of stuff, and I just wrote about it after every session as a way to make sense of it. And um, you know, and again, the weight was the easiest thing to manage. And at the end of it, I had gone in because I wanted to lose weight because I felt unacceptable to men. And then when I had left no stone unturned, I finally did have

Running, Obsession, And Injury

SPEAKER_01 29:00

the relationship I wanted. I finally like kind of broke through to the other side. And part of the issue with me continuing through therapy all these years was all the progress that I made, I still didn't have a relationship. I still didn't have what I wanted. So I kept going and going and going. And I finally had this relationship. And I remember I was walking home one day and I thought, who else has walked this path but me? That I tried everything, and but I got here. It wasn't impossible. Like I did it, and I thought I should write a book. And I had 12 years and it was 1200 pages of my notes. So my book really is about when I started therapy to kind of when I ended therapy, and everything in there is about all of my experiences, so it is all true. I didn't make any of it up. And it's so if anybody's interested in therapy, it talks all about EMDR, it talks all about chiropractic care, sex therapy, child, you know, group therapy. Again, from my perspective, right? Based on my own participation, but it really is like the intermachinations about all those different kinds of therapies and how they helped me.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

I love that. Um, I did EMDR, I've done TMS, I've done all of these various different things, right? Um, and so I do love when people share their experiences because then then other people go and say, well, that doesn't sound like something I want, but maybe that sounds like something I can do, right? Um, again to everybody, I would say definitely start meditating if you can, make the time for yourself. But yeah, there's a it's a beautiful journey. I would imagine that the unfolding of the journey and the unfolding of your feelings after each one. Um and I'm sure sometimes it was like this was terrible, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

But not everything works for everybody, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:42

And then sometimes it's like, oh, this was so enlightening, but just to watch a journey of somebody going through that would be um absolutely amazing. So if people find want to find you, first, what do you do for a living? Like, do you coach people in this? What do you do?

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Actually, I don't. Um, I am a writer and I do communications consulting. I live in New York City. Um, but you can find me. I have a website, it's pattycabet.com, and my book is available for free. It's called Not That Girl Anymore. Um, and like I said, it really does kind of talk about all of the therapies that I explored to kind of get to the other side.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

I love that you offer it for free for people as a resource that they can just look, you know, touch into and and not not like you're not selling your experience, you're just sharing it.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

You know, I am, and to be to be honest with you, when I first decided to write a book, which was, oh my goodness, it's been a long time. I want to say it was nine years ago when I had thought, maybe eight or nine years ago, so a long time ago, and I thought I should write a book. And I thought, well, what am I gonna do with the book? And I thought, I don't know, but I because I meditate, I'm like, I want what the universe wants. I feel like the universe wants me to write a book, and it was like terrifying for me. So every day that I worked on it, I would put my hands on my heart and think, is this what I want to do? And I was like, yep. But I gave myself kind of, I didn't box myself in at all. I was like, I don't know what the purpose is. Maybe it's just for me. And then I thought, well, maybe it's for me to share with my friends because they're I've been so

Writing The Book And Telling The Truth

SPEAKER_01 32:10

closed for so many years. So it really evolved. And it was two years in, which again, considering I had all the raw material, who knew how hard it was to write a book, but it's really difficult, or it was for me. Um, and it was two years before I thought, do I want to actually write the book and make it public? And again, that was that is this what I want? And every day when I thought about it, it made me smile. And I was like, yep, this is what I'm supposed to do. So no matter how it comes out in the end, this is what the universe wants, and I want what the universe wants no matter what. And so again, I didn't know anything about writing a book, and I had shared it with a friend of mine who has been published, and just giving her a few pages to read, I have psoriasis, I had an outbreak. Like it was very traumatic for me because I felt so vulnerable, so exposed. And um, you know, but I kept getting better and better and better. And when I started like soliciting agents, I actually had several that were really helpful. And one of them flat out said to me, He's like, It's not that I don't think that this isn't a great story. And he's like, There's no way I can sell this book. It's like there's just no way because I'm not famous, right? So if I were famous and I I don't have a million followers, like I'm not on social media. So it was like a hard sell. And I thought, well, does it matter? And I thought, no, it was never about money or fame, or I just felt like this is what I should do. So I self-published it.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

I would imagine just writing the book itself was healing.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

It it was, it was, and I think what was really interesting is that because it did evolve over several years, that in the beginning there were certain sections of it, and interestingly enough, not about my abuse, but about my relationship that I had that were really very painful to keep revisiting. And I will say, and I know I said this to you already, I want what the universe wants no matter what, and I do believe that because there have been things, not that I wanted my childhood sexual abuse to happen. So let's take that off the table. But as an adult, there are things that have happened that have been so painful, and you know, it's like they've still been so incredibly beneficial to me and such a blessing that they've let in more light than I ever could have imagined. So it's like, I feel like sometimes painful things happen, but it's to teach us something we need to know.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

I absolutely believe that. Yeah. So what is if you had to give, we always talk about the wounds and the journey and stuff. What is a piece of advice for wisdom to our listeners that you would tell them?

SPEAKER_01 34:36

So there's a couple. Um, one is that if you constantly find yourself repeating the same pattern. So whether it be alcohol, drugs, whatever you might be struggling with, if you find that you can't break free of it, you might need to go deeper. It might be caused, the root cause might be something other than what you've expected, just as mine was. Mine was never about dieting, mine was about my childhood sexual abuse. So if you do find yourself in that situation and you can't break the pattern, it might behoove you to like check out. And there's plenty of really reputable online resources available for free to help people struggling. And then the other one I would say is the one that was the hardest for me to learn. And that is that no matter what happens to you as a child, it is never your fault. Right. And and it really that was the one thing it was my belief that I thought was intractable, that I would never be able to forgive myself. But something happened in life that was very painful that made me see it was never my fault. So for anybody out there who has suffered physical, mental, sexual, emotional abuse, you know what? It's not your blame, it's not your shame, and it's not your secret to keep. So secrets become corrosive. And for me, I think a lot of my issue was is that I kept the secret so close inside and so tamped down, and it just festered from the inside out. And it was really hard for me to let go of the secret to the point where the secret became more important than the secret itself. And I think that's really common too.

Letting Go Of Shame And Secrets

SPEAKER_01 36:05

So it's not your secret.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

It's not your blame, it's not your shame, and it's not your secret to keep. We'll end with that. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Yeah, good.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Well, thank you for coming on. And um, we will put all the contact information for your website so people can download your book if they're interested in it. I think that again, it's amazing that you're just giving that to people um and sharing your journey, uh, which I'm sure has helped other people heal. Um, so thank you.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Thank you so much, Barbie. It was a pleasure chatting with you, and thank you for sharing your story too. I know how difficult it is, but I think to your point, it helps people when they hear somebody else has gotten to the other side and been successful. So congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

Thank you. If this story spoke to you, let's keep the healing going. Visit BarbieMoreno.com for my online course, Awakening Your Worth in Healing Energy Sessions, one on one coaching, and your free healing guide. Your next step is waiting.