Kyira Wackett | Collateral Damage to Adversity Rising
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Imagine identifying your parent for a crime, knowing that what you disclose will send your only parent to prison. Imagine moving 11x by the time you were in the 5th grade. And imagine being the child of a parent who, for most of your childhood, was struggling with undiagnosed bipolar disorder.
Kyira was no stranger to chaos and uneasiness. She was the only child of a parent who turned to substances to cope with her mental health challenges and, in many ways, was the adult in the relationship. Perhaps to compensate for her shortcomings, her mother had no boundaries in her parenting, and Kyira pretty much dictated many decisions that had to be made; from which bedroom she got to have in a new place to if a man would get a second date with her mom, the buck stopped with Kyira.
What you may think would lead to entitlement instead laid the foundation for Kyira to be a high-performing, academically thriving student who would develop an eating disorder for eight years.
There are many twists and turns in Kyira’s story. And what’s most fascinating about Kyira’s story is how she managed to go from being collateral damage to rising from the ashes of the adversity she experienced in her life.
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk 0:00
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. If this is your first time listening, welcome and if you’ve listened before, thank you for coming back. Today my guest is Kyra whack. Whack it. She is a passionate therapist, facilitator and creator. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, Jordan and her daughter Everly. She is the founder of adversity rising, as well as sees patients in a private therapy practice with a specialty on eating disorders, anxiety disorders, and trauma. She has been speaking on topics related to mental health and wellbeing for over 10 years and focuses much of her current research and trainings on shame, forgiveness, burnout and grief. She developed her own model to support people in this work called live and live on purpose, wherein she walks people through five phases, identify, build, define, clarify and do to get them from a state of pain and stuckness to one of intention and freedom. She believes that all of us have the capacity to author our own stories, and relinquish the holds of shame, fear and anxiety, if we can learn to do the hard work, sit in the discomfort and face our true selves and trust the process. Thank you so much for being here. And that must be I think it is one of the best BIOS I’ve ever received. I couldn’t have written it better myself. Oh, that’s so kind of you. So thank you for being my guest today. And I’m really excited because there’s an aspect of your story that has not been covered, actually two that have not been covered on this podcast. And one is being the child of an undiagnosed parent with bipolar. I mean, it took many years for her to get diagnosed, and also eating disorders. And so I’m, I’m looking forward to diving deep into those topics today. And so let’s start with your childhood and how it shaped the work that you’re doing today.
Kyira Wackett 1:54
Yeah, it’s it’s always one of those interesting things. And I think everyone’s story is like, what is the starting point. And when I think about the trajectory of what my life kind of entailed I start with when I was born, so my mom was a single mom, she had me at 35, she had been told that she had had three miscarriages and a stillborn prior to having me and had been told by many doctors that she was never going to carry a pregnancy successfully to term. She wasn’t going to have kids, things were never going to work out for that specific dream that she had. And so my mom, obviously unbeknownst to me at this time, and unbeknownst to her, was living with what we found out when she was caught in her 50s, I think is when she was diagnosed, but with bipolar disorder. So my mom was already struggling for the first 15 years of adulthood, with substance use with kind of not sleeping just this sort of hyper fixation on stuff. When she got pregnant with me, my mom, it was kind of this like, sobering experience. She got pregnant, she was again, not expecting to have a kid she had, she was kind of just sexually free doing whatever she wanted to do kind of living her life. Like there’s, there’s nothing left for me. So I think there was kind of a depression within that. But she had me her whole world became about me. And she went back to night school, she got a nursing degree, she got sober pretty much immediately. So she found out she was pregnant about three months, I think into being pregnant four months, maybe, and stopped using any substances at that time. But obviously, for the first three, four months, I had no idea she was pregnant. So kind of had this benefit of finding out that nothing had happened to me, that would be traumatic for me in terms of, again, not being able to carry the pregnancy, things like that. And then I think about for the first 11 years our life was now I see that it wasn’t necessarily amazing all the time. But it felt amazing. It was me and my mom, my mom was always there. We had I was the fun house that everybody wanted to come spend the time at my house, she always wanted to do fun things with me. She worked a lot. So that was one thing that I remember kind of picking up on early in life, like my mom can work days on end, that doesn’t seem necessarily normal. And then she’d have days where she didn’t get out of bed. That also didn’t seem necessarily normal. Like I remember for things my 10th birthday, she had gotten out of bed for like four or five days. And then suddenly it was the day on my birthday party and she was up and she had ordered chocolate malt ice cream from the swans man that was being delivered and had all these pizzas and a pizza oven and costumes and all this fun stuff to do and she just kind of jumped to this high and then she’d crash again. And then when I was just about to turn 11 I think it was like maybe a month before my birthday. I started to notice that things were getting worse. We I had my mom would move on I think by the time I was in fifth grade, which was the year that I ended up leaving my mom, we had moved, I think 11 times. So again, these little things that now looking back, I go, Oh, this would make sense for somebody that struggled with bipolar disorder. And this sort of activity, this heightened activity in the brain. But she ended up coming back to get me from school one day, and she said, we had to go, we have to leave right now. And she had bought sunglasses from a gas station. She was not she didn’t make sense to me at all there was it was kind of this look in her eyes was like, What is wrong with my mom. And it had turned out that my mom had relapsed. So prior to having me, she used cocaine, she used a lot of substances. I don’t remember her drinking, doing any substance for the first 1011 years of our lives. But what happened was she as a nurse was working in home care and hospice care settings. And she started to take meds from patients, and then eventually started forging prescriptions. And so she was getting bike it in under other people’s names, and then taking the bike it in. And for my mom, for people with bipolar disorder, sometimes drugs affect them differently. So Vikatan was like cocaine for her. So it was working like speed in her brain, and she could go go go, well, everything started to crash down. And I remember her telling me like, we have to go now we’re going to drive till I don’t I don’t remember the full plan. But again, she had sunglasses for both of us, we were leaving, because things were crashing. And I was like, Mom, we can’t go. That’s not okay, we can’t do this. And that was this kind of kind of moment, when I remember stepping into the parents seat fully of what it meant to take care of my mom, because it clicked to me, my mom’s not okay. And whatever is going on right now I have to be this quote, unquote, strong one for her. And that was about two weeks later, I ended up leaving, I ended up moving in with family, my mom ended up going into she somehow got a deal. And I’m assuming through the courts in some way that you end up going to a treatment center as opposed to going to jail. So it’s kind of a condition of what had happened. And that I pretty much credit is like the onpoint of when most of my grief started. And most of my trauma history really started to kind of hit the fan. And again, where I crossed over from being a kid to being an adult.
Victoria Volk 7:17
I think a lot of young children growing up in that environment, even adults that well, adults that grew up having to be the parent. Yeah. Do you hate the word resilient? As much as I do, like, are resilient when people say that, like children are resilient? Like they’ll bounce back? Like I absolutely just want to slap people when they say that, like don’t say that. That’s my opinion, because children don’t choose to be resilient, right?
Kyira Wackett 7:44
I mean, I think there’s this way that we’ve kind of, I think we’d like to craft stories in a way that feels more digestible. So I think sometimes we say that about like, oh, kids are so resilient as a way to saying, What happened to that kid was incredibly unfair and traumatic, and I don’t know how they’re doing how well they’re doing. And the other thing I hate about that is, so I will get into this, I’m sure in this discussion, but my reaction, my response, the role that I took, and the way that my brain is wired is I took the sort of in the all or nothing approach the all approach. So I became the parent I, I remember, for periods of time, even before the kind of breakdown happen of like, I would be the one getting myself ready to school, I was missing so much school, I wasn’t aware of it. Because that was so normal, I was thriving in all these areas where I shouldn’t have because that was my response, I became the perfectionist, I became the hyper performer. What I hate when you think about the term resilience is somebody like me would have been labeled as resilient. But a kid that went through the same thing that developed a substance use disorder that struggled in school that ended up having, you know, quote, unquote, the problem child, they wouldn’t have been labeled resilient, because they didn’t come out doing the behaviors everyone thinks would have been more convenient and better. So I think I do I have reactions to that, because I think resilience is a really important topic, but we took it out of context. And now we use it in a way that I think doesn’t actually match what people went through. And as a way of kind of absorbing the pain of what it took to get to that point for sure.
Victoria Volk 9:11
Bingo, yes. I pretty much raised myself too. And I became the emotional parent. Yes. And yeah, so totally, it just just gets me a little bit, for sure. And during that time, too, though, like your whole upbringing, your father obviously was not in the picture.
Kyira Wackett 9:34
No, and, and so there’s some debate. So one of the struggles with having a parent with bipolar disorder, but also with I mean, she defines herself as an addict. She used that term I don’t like I like the person first language. I don’t know if that’s the therapist in me or what but, you know, she’ll talk about being an addict. She’ll talk about these things. Her brain is wired as such that she’s lived for so long in her life to preserve the story. She’s trying to uphold that I don’t always know what’s exactly true and what’s not. So the stories I was told about my dad, they changed all the time. I remember at one point when I was little, she told me if I ever wanted to meet my grandparents, I could. But then there were times where it was like your dad’s one of three people. And then there were times where I was like, I don’t know, I was having sex with anybody. I don’t know who your dad is. I think the story is that she was having sex with a small number of people, she got pregnant with me, and then whomever she was all dating, or not dating, sleeping with whatever, that sort of ended. I don’t know why I don’t know any of that. And I don’t honestly think she knows either. But it is apparent to me now that she doesn’t know who my dad is, or was. And it wasn’t until I have a now that she just turned two in February. It wasn’t till about six months before she was born, that I even knew anything about my racial and ethnic background. So I found out then, that I am half Middle Eastern, which didn’t come from my mom. So now I know when my dad’s Middle Eastern. I know nothing else about me and my dad’s heritage, but that and so yeah, I mean, I’m jumping obviously, decades into the future. But that was the sort of weird kind of coming back to grieving, like growing up, I felt like it was a grief every time somebody like, Oh, what do your parents think, you know, or is your dad doing this? It’s like, a few. I don’t have that like way to make assumptions. But then when I got older, it was realizing there’s so much about my life that I don’t know, and even my genetics to know. What’s my daughter’s story? What’s the experience she has? So yeah, not around. She dated, but had poor boundaries. So again, I was I was her everything, I still am like, in an unhealthy way, she would drop anything to do anything for me. And I think probably part of that is some codependency, some traumas she went through as a kid some some things that she hasn’t had the opportunity to deal with fully either, but like, I would go on dates with her. And I got to decide if she went on another date with someone like that is not an appropriate role for you know, a 6789 year old kid to have, where I dictated everything in the household, we would get three bedroom apartments. And I would have a play room and a bedroom, the master bedroom, and she would have the smallest room like she made everything about me. And one of the surprising things is I don’t know how I didn’t become more entitled, I think I have an entitlement sometimes around maybe unrealistic expectations of people being able to be there for me emotionally and I think that’s more trying to sometimes get what I didn’t get from her as a kid. But I think she couldn’t do that. But like her bipolar mixed with her kind of codependency a mesh met with me, she would buy me I mean, I had probably at least five 600 Beanie Babies, you know, like every Barbie that would get released if there were Polly Pockets, like I’m buying every single one of them. And so it was it was an interesting lifestyle. And I think I was present defied much more than I even realized. The veil just like kind of completely came off that day that I was like, No, Mom, you’re doing things that are not safe and good for the world. And you need to be held accountable. And that’s when I think I became aware of what I had been conditioned to be for her since I was born.
Victoria Volk 13:22
And how old were you in that awareness hit you.
Kyira Wackett 13:26
Just it was just before my 11th birthday, when that became really apparent to me. And I look back now and think my entire fourth and fifth grade year. I mean, I was doing all the grocery ordering. I was I was making food, making food was Lunchables. And again, we ordered from the swans, man. I don’t even know if that was a thing across the whole US. But it was a big thing in Wisconsin where I was from. And so I’d get like the swans man to deliver food. And it was obviously like frozen meals and chocolate malt ice cream is what I remember except eat that for breakfast in the morning every morning. And she wouldn’t know she was either working or she was depressed and crashed, you know, and looking back on it probably also coming down from Vikon high if that was the case, too. And so yeah, I mean, I think that just was my normal for so long. There are things now that I’ll still say to my husband. And he’s like, that’s not the average childhood experience. And I I just don’t know, different even being a therapist now and hearing dozens of stories, hearing hundreds of 1000s of people’s childhoods, it’s still weird, but I think again, that moment where it’s like No mom, you need to go like you should go to jail. Like that was a weird thing. To be telling my mom that she needed to be held accountable for something and I think that was the moment where I was like, Oh, I’m the adult here, not her.
Victoria Volk 14:49
So what happened after that?
Kyira Wackett 14:51
Well, the the promise was, you know, I’ll go to treatment. I think it was a the initial one I believe was like a three months residential program and In northern Wisconsin, and I was going to go live with family during that time. And I ended up moving in with an aunt and uncle of mine, about an hour and a half, two hours away from where I was, I was moving schools again, I was moving in with my three cousins, and I only child, so that was a big transition and change for me. And I also had a big, pretty big fear of men, adult men growing up, there was some trauma that I had with guys that she did date not, I don’t think that was the only dictating reason why I was scared of them. But there’s a lot of stuff I went through that again, sort of wasn’t normal and men that I would spend a lot of time with that my mom hadn’t maybe fully vetted that shouldn’t have been in a parenting or caregiving role. But I also think on the opposite side, I didn’t really ever have solid male figures in my life. So they were just sort of unsafe for me. So I moved in with my aunt, uncle, three cousins trying to navigate three other kids who have no respect for their stuff, have no like very opposite of me. Because again, I’m the perfectionist, I took care of everything, everything is organized. And I’m sharing a room with a kid who is six years younger than me. So so she must have been just have turned six, or she was turning six, and I was 11. So it was maybe five and a half years difference. And going to a new school, navigating all this stuff. And having the primary parents that was doing the coordination stuff was my uncle. So now I’m around an adult meal all the time. And so three months, and I was like, okay, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. Three months turned into I never lived with my mom again. She never got sober during that period of time. So from 11 until my early 20s. She was in and out of jail prison treatment centers. On the streets. She when she left that treatment center. I don’t remember all the specifics. But very soon after that one. She was back in the Milwaukee area, some Waukee, Wisconsin was where I was living. And that had been a play. She had spent a lot of time when she had used cocaine in the past or used other drugs in the past. She ended up back there and she had relapsed back to cocaine. And that was really where the downfall happened. And yeah, we never I never lived with her again. Two years later, I was kicked out of my aunt’s house was a very weird. Honestly, that was something I grieved more than a lot of what happened with my mom, I woke up one morning, and there was a note on the table that said that I needed to call her immediately when I woke up and my best friend at the time, Sam was with me. And we called her and she told me on the phone that I had six hours to pack and get out of her house. And she was going to be dropping my stuff off. She had called my grandma I found this out later basically called my grandma and kind of said something to the effect of if you won’t take her I’m dumping her stuff on your lawn and you can call Child Services. Now I know decades later, my aunt had a lot of her own mental health stuff she hadn’t dealt with. So I think that I was just collateral damage in that and she just couldn’t absorb everything she was doing. But I was moved then. Well then I think my grandma was going to Spain, like a few days later for two or three weeks on a trip. So she’s like, I can’t take her What am I supposed to do is actually moved in with my friends, Sam, she was there during this period of time she called her mom, she’s like, Mom, I don’t know what to do. She’s panicking. I’m sobbing in the background. We’ve got all these empty boxes. I moved in with her for a few weeks, and I moved in with my grandma. And my grandma basically became my mom. She was the stable parent that I needed. But she was 60 years older than me and had been done raising kids. And so her now learning how to parent, a kid and a very different generation with very intense trauma, who also has her own trauma past who also now has had her own mental health diagnoses that we didn’t necessarily know about at the time. And she has an incredibly enmeshed relationship with my mom, a very codependent relationship with my mom, too. So it was a very interesting dynamic between the three of us and but it was stable. My grandma acted like a parent, she didn’t need me to take care of her in the same way, I transitioned more into a parent role kind of in my 20s When my grandma’s mental health sort of declined, but I got to at least be a kid as much as you can. Once the veil has been lifted. She tried to keep putting it back on my head to at least allow me to have a little bit of that through my high school experience through the start of my college experience. But I honestly I think, you know, I remember my mom would dip in and out. She would show up sometimes coming down from a cocaine high. I would get calls from drug dealers because we thought it was a good idea at the time I had gotten our cell phone and our phone numbers were the exact same except the last two digits at the end so people would displace the digits and call and think I was my mom. So I’m like 14 on the phone that drugged you Hillary is demanding money, she would steal from clean my savings account out, she cleaned a grandma out several times. It’s very, very hard. And then she, I can’t remember what year it was, it was eighth grade or freshman year. But she ended up in sort of a desperate state broke into our house. But we didn’t know who it was. So all my brain has held on to is my house was broken into. And there was a threat. There was somebody that was with her that that called out to us and threatened us that we better not come downstairs. And so my grandma and I were upstairs, she had somehow gotten a window open and stole my grandma’s Purse has kind of a last attempt to I think, pay off somebody she owed for drugs or something. And then I made a mistake somehow unused on my grandma’s credit cards. So then there was tracking. And that was when everything crashed for her the most significant she ended up going into prison for almost three years, it was two and a half years, she didn’t get out until my senior year of high school. And the hardest part, honestly was I had to identify her in the stills that they had from the gas station. And that was again, another one of those moments of I’m the parent here. And and I’m responsible for sending my mom to prison. And that was a really hard thing for me to let go have because I think I don’t, I don’t know why if this was healthy coping skills, now it feels like it’s been helpful. But I think it was also maybe not wanting to shame her. But I was always trying to see my mom and then see the addiction as two separate things. And so it was a weird place to be in to be, you know, 15, maybe I was going on 16 At the time, identifying like, this is my mom and the photos, knowing I’m going to be the reason my mom, because my grandma press charges, she was like, we can’t keep doing this, at least if your mom’s in jail or in prison, she’s safe. And the best part was, that’s where she got diagnosed with bipolar disorder. So when she was in prison, there are a lot of things that are terrible about the prison system. My mom is white. My mom is, you know, this like charming, middle aged white lady. So her experience is very different than a lot of people in our countries that have to go through terrible things in the prison system. In her case, probably some of those factors played into it. But I have a lot of gratitude for her having gone there because that’s when she didn’t get sober after that. It was still about five, six more years before she was like fully sober from cocaine use. But she she got diagnosed and at least we started to have some answers, at least we had information to work with. And it made more sense to me why my mom couldn’t be the mom that I needed her and wanted her to be.
Victoria Volk 22:49
So it wasn’t until you were about 23/24 where she was actually diagnosed.
Kyira Wackett 22:55
No, she got to know she got diagnosed before the end of high school. So before she left, and she just didn’t get sober. She I mean, it didn’t. She got meds to help manage the bipolar disorder. She got all sorts of things to help her but she was still not ready. And able, you know, not like it was all a choice, her brain was still not healed in a way that she was able to give up substances. And I think she had so much pain that when she left when she was leaving prison, it was too painful. Life was way too painful for her. She came out she got an apartment she was out for a few months before she relapsed. And the relapses started because I remember when I had bought a bottle of coconut Malibu rum, and it was like a coconut something flavor and I was 18. And I had hit it in my mom’s car because she had had the basically like a work release. She was in a lower level prison. So she had been able to work so she had gotten some money. And then she had a job when she left working at a sawmill and it was the place she had worked out while she was in prison. So she had had some money. So she got kind of a beater car. She had an apartment, a transitional living apartment, and I had gotten some alcohol and I was like I had it in her car for some reason. I don’t remember exactly what it was it was going to hang out with my friends. And she found it and I remember waking up in the middle of the night when I was staying over one night and she was selling DVDs to a neighbor for drugs like I saw it down the hallway and that was kind of a she’s leaving again, sort of awareness. And there were a lot of instances during college like I remember getting called from my uncle that my mom had shown up at my grandma’s house Hi. Turned out she had overdosed on her she was she was I don’t know if her intention was to end her life. But she had taken a lot of medication in response to being quote found out it’s kind of what she talks about is like I couldn’t handle being found out. I didn’t know what to do. So I remember having to email a professor saying I was going to miss a final exam and I had to take an incomplete class because none of my family could deal with what was happening with my mom. Um, so I had to drive home to be like, alright, this is what we’re doing. You know, I had called the police on the way there said that she had had, you know, ingested substances took her to there was a behavioral health mental health clinic associated with the main hospital in Milwaukee got her checked, and they’re going through the paperwork like that was still my college experience. And I don’t, I was right around the time I was turning 2122 that she got sober from cocaine for good. So I was right before I graduated college, because she was able to be at my college graduation, she was able to, she was sober at the time she was present. She was still using other prescription drugs. The downside was they were they were being prescribed to her by providers. So I still think that that was not sobriety. I think now 1012 13 years later, she’s recognizing that wasn’t full sobriety, and still isn’t, in some ways. But that was, that was different. There was a difference. She was at least present and not on the streets. I didn’t have to go try to find her, you know, in inner city, Milwaukee, things like that.
Victoria Volk 26:10
So how did you? I mean, did you know like when you entered college, and or were you thinking about college, did you know that you wanted to be a therapist?
Kyira Wackett 26:20
No I Well, I guess on some level, maybe I thought I was going to be a doctor. Part of that was because again, if we go back to my persona as being a high functioning human, I mean, I’ve I’ve incredibly high functioning high performing anxiety. So it seems amazing on the outside, but it’s all anxiety and shame driven. So as a little little kid, I remember telling people, I was going to be a doctor. And I think that’s purely because my mom was a nurse, and I was around medicine for a period of time. But then I got grades that would suggest I could do those things. And I was very academically talented. And so that was kind of pushed and pushed. So that was kind of the storyline I came into college with, it’s like, you’re going to be a doctor, I did make a decision that I wanted to do psychiatry, because I wanted to, and that was towards the end of my college experience. And looking back on it, I think a lot of it was tied to and I still think she’s still her prescriber. Now, I think he’s crap. And he’s renowned, he does great things. But I don’t think he’s held my mom accountable. And he pushes her, I think that her therapists don’t hold her accountable and push her. She is convenient, because she doesn’t cause any ripples and problems. So I think people let it be and they don’t push people sort of beyond that, at times. That’s not a fair blanket statement to make. Obviously, it’s coming a little bit from less of a professional hat and personal hat. But I remember thinking I wanted to be a psychiatrist because I wanted to change the way that people actually helps their patients. Because I didn’t like the idea of taking somebody that was a disturbance to society, because they’re using drugs or doing this, and then medicating them to the point that they’re just numb. And that to me was not good healthcare. And then it was a year or two later, I realized that I hated the idea of being a physician. The irony is I’m now married to a physician. And so I’ve walked through I’ve been with him since he before he started medical school. And I got to see the whole process. And I’m so grateful that I gave up that story. But it was a lot of grieving because it felt like again, go back to that resilience piece. Everybody thinks I can do it. What does it say about me? If I can’t do this, instead of what does it say about me if I choose something different. So there was a lot of kind of mental prisons that were built in this idea of look how good she can handle all this traumatic stuff that happens to her is then there’s it says something about me if I’m not the person that achieves at that level. And then it wasn’t until I didn’t go to school to get my Master’s until I was 25 or 26. And not a lot of time from college, but a few years after college, and that really came about after my cousin was killed, who’s the cousin I moved in with and lived with. And he was two weeks younger than me and we were best friends. And after he was killed and seeing and processing the loss of somebody so young, I had a lot of time to really think about what do I want to do in this world? In a way that’s not just about serving my ego and not just about serving my shame, and that’s where therapy kind of came to fruition for me.
Victoria Volk 29:30
So while people on the outside would have looked at you and thought how spectacular of a performer you were what was really going on, on the inside. I mean, I spoke to the anxiety piece a little bit but what what did that look like?
Kyira Wackett 29:45
Yeah, I mean, I think it started obviously middle school high school I described myself because I’ve moved so much as a kid. I knew how to be a chameleon I knew how to fit in. I mean I still know how to do that. So you know exact actly what to say to somebody, it’s, it takes a lot of work for me to come into less now, but I still have to come out of I don’t need to please somebody and perform in a way that elevates them, I can just be me. So that started to happen even before her relapses even before I left her. So that was a very lonely feeling. Because I was always performing to some degree, I always wanted to fit in with the right crowds, I knew how to say the right things. As I got older, you know, I remember in high school, I was never the one mad at my friends, it was always okay, if they were mad at me, I could handle that because I could do something about it. But I never got mad at anybody, because that could be a threat. And they might leave. I allowed a lot of people to do a lot of things that was not okay, in terms of the way they treated me. I had a lot of codependency pieces, I think that showed up as a result of that trauma. And I never talked about myself. I had, I had one friend that I was really honest about stuff with and the only reason I shared anything with her is for there was a period of time when my mom went to prison. So from sophomore year to senior year, whatever it was in high school, my family cut my mom off said she couldn’t write to me anymore, we couldn’t have a relationship. And I was not okay with that. And so I worked out a system with her dad, that my mom could write letters to her house. So I stayed in contact with my mom behind my family’s back. And we would write letters, and he would send out letters for me, and she would go to his house once or twice a week, her parents were divorced, and I would get my letters. And that was the only reason I let her in on anything was because I needed her. So I only let people in on the story if I needed them to serve a purpose. Otherwise, it was never safe to share anything. Because the story I had as people leave. So I think part of the performance was around, I need to be better than everybody in the room so that they need me, but I can never need anybody else. And, and I still struggle with that I still struggle to be like, Oh, I screwed up, I did it. Last week, I led an event and I made a choice. And it didn’t go as well for everybody as I wanted it to some people loved it seems like not for me. And I’m still holding on to that feedback, because it feels like my job is to be perfect for everybody at all times. And that’s safer. That is a much safer place to be in. And you know, I know we were talking about this a little bit offline, you kind of alluded it, alluded to it even in the beginning, but I do think that was where my eating disorder started to develop and take shape too. So it didn’t come out of any desire to control anything. Honestly, I hung out with mostly guys in high school, I had a few girlfriends, and they all had eating disorders in high school or very severe, disordered eating. I didn’t. And I was always the quote unquote, fat friend. But I was really funny. And I had all these other skills like, I knew sort of my role, but I didn’t think much of it. And I think because I always hung out with my guy friends, I identify as heterosexual, like I was always interested in men, I had a tension in a way that always felt like it filled the roles, I never thought much about my body, I knew it looked different than my friends. Like I remember, when we would go to volleyball practice, they would wear a sports bra on shorts, and I would wear my gym uniform, which was like, you know, if anyone had to wear gym uniforms, the worst fitting thing that it had my body because it’s different. But in college at that was right around the time when they started posting nutrition information. So I would eat like Wendy’s I’d get you know, takeout food with my friends, I do all that then I went to college and I’m buying my meals, I’m paying attention to these things. And I was on a program for students that were disadvantaged in some way I was got onto the program. So I didn’t have any parents, and or active parents was how it was deemed and I didn’t have any support. So what it was was basically a program to help you develop the skills to be financially emotionally physically independent. In all these ways. There’s tons of cool aspects of the program. From a financial standpoint, you’ve got a decreasing amount of money every year your tuition was funded. But every year you got less and less money to cover other things. You had to learn how to budget and then build up your work in a job setting to learn how to manage that. That sounds amazing. But yeah, it was wonderful. It was it was called the Fast Track program. I don’t know if they still do it at UW Madison. But it was amazing. But I think I became aware of things differently at that point. And when I stopped eating in that way, and I started walking to classes and doing those things, my body changed pretty dramatically. The reaction from everybody around me because now I’m not only the a student, I’m not only the one that can be hyper productive, that can do all the things but now suddenly, I have a very ideal body that everybody wanted. That was also around the time that sticks straight hair was going a little out of style and hair that had a little bit more texture was coming into play. And now I know I’m Middle Eastern, which is why I have the texture. But suddenly I was like my hair was the kind of hair people want. It’s like all these things. Were kind of working in my favor. And then I was seen I know There are things that I was given different opportunities. Because of my body size, I was given different opportunities because I was high achieving even, you know, we think about resiliency, I had a friend who had a very similar experience with his dad really struggled with substance use lots of trauma growing up lot of dynamics between him and his, his dad and his mom. And he developed in a very different way. He never struggled, I don’t think a ton. He did use substances, but he just he became the problematic kid. He was the troublemaker, he was the one that was processing his grief in a different way. And one day, I remember that we got into food fight at school in high school, and I started it, I was having a something that happened with my mom. And I remember, just like, I just was so angry. And he said something, and it pissed me off. And I picked up food, and I threw it at him. And it turned into a huge food fight like the movie scene, food fights. We both got sent to the office, he got an out of school suspension, and I basically got a slap on the wrist. And I remember speaking up and be like, This is not okay, this is not supposed to happen. And they’re like, Okay, well, then you can have a suspension too. And I was like, dammit, that’s not what I meant. What I meant was give us both the other one. But in reality, again, it was because I was seen as my quote unquote, resilience, my quote unquote coping was favorable to the system. So that I think all of my coping skills were what’s favorable to the system so that I can keep this performance up. And I’m sure I’m still doing it in some ways, even today that I’m not even aware of
Victoria Volk 36:31
I think that’s true. And so many aspects still in society that, you know, males don’t know what to do with that anger, right? Yeah, comes out in print, they projected out or they become substance users, right? Yeah. And females were more in touch with our emotions. So maybe we’re processing a little bit differently, but we’re probably good chance either, like you said, either high performing, or have that added anxiety or stress in our on our lives and in our bodies. And, or we express it, we which also can be anger, right? Or using substances. So that’s, I’ve asked this question before, but what do you think, is like the, the key difference in what, what is the descriptor? Do you think or like, what, I don’t know how I want to word this? I know, I’ve asked this before in different podcasts of like different experts, but it interests me, because how does one person take one path and another person, a different path?
Kyira Wackett 37:31
I think about that all the time. Because I think about, you know now raising, she just turned two. So now raising a two year old and thinking how many things are happening now that dominoes are going to fall in the future that I’m not even aware of? And is it as simple as one interaction with her sometimes I think I then get hypercritical I’m like, I can’t have any instances where the dominoes could deviate from the plan. And then sometimes it’s thinking like, would they have fallen anyways? Would I have been this kid? Either way? Would you know? Would my friend have struggled with those things in the same way? What I think is the similar thing, and I don’t think it’s fully answering your question. But I think it’s that when we experience these insecure attachments with our with our parents, figures, caregivers, whoever it is, there’s a loneliness that only somebody that’s experienced that can understand and relate to, you know, so you’re sitting on the other side of this talking about this parental vacation that you had to, you know, that type of loneliness when you don’t get the safety and security that only a caregiver can truly provide to us. And I think our brains just don’t know what to do with it. And sometimes I think, probably culturally, you know, so girls are conditioned to cry, to be sad to talk about their emotions are also conditioned to be nurturers and to take care of everything. So some of this is like what roles have we been indoctrinated with from the time we’re born? Because honestly, sometimes if I could have punched something, it probably would have felt more cathartic in the moment than going to take care of somebody else. But it was sort of this like system aligning with maybe, as soon as you find something that works a little bit, it’s, it’s just like a drug, it’s a hit. So every time somebody needed me every and it still feels that way, I have to decondition myself all the time, every time I get the positive feedback, I have to remind myself not to put too much weight on that. Because then when I get the negative feedback that then it crushes me, but it’s the hit every single time that all feel like, gosh, this really good thing is happening, this amazing thing is happening. I feel less lonely. And in his case, I think there’s a hit that his brain got every time that he would do X, Y or Z. But there was this weird sort of I had several people that I had friendships with over the course of my life that had trauma traumas similar to mine in different ways, of course, but there’s a weird familial bonding that happens in that I I remember being called by a drug dealer one time and I was really scared, I was working at an ice cream shop. And I was the like, manager or whatever you could be it, you know, 17, shift lead, something like that. But I was by myself, and I got a call from a drug dealer thinking I was my mom threatening me, I know, looking back at it, now there’s no way they would have known where I was, they wouldn’t been able to find me. But I was panicked, that something’s going to happen. And I called my friends the same verse I’m talking about. And he immediately called every single person, every drug dealer that he knew, every person that had power in that system that he knew, and they all came to my work and stayed there until I was done with my shift. And like, took care of me in some way. And so there was this weird way of like, I think both of us were just seeking a sense of connection and belonging, and safety and security, we just happen to find it in different ways. First, probably because of how we were conditioned, but also because of, again, that first hit and then you stick with it had I found something like that, I probably would have stuck with it. That’s why I think the highs that then came with the eating disorder, led more to, you know, almost, what 567, maybe almost eight years, almost eight years of an eating disorder, because of the hits of power that I would get in that too. Or even the hits when you’re sitting in front of the toilet. After you’ve just made yourself through up and you you somehow feel less lonely, even though it’s the loneliest feeling you could ever have. I know I didn’t answer your question. But that’s like the depth of where it’s kind of going in my brain.
Victoria Volk 41:30
No. And actually, what came to my mind too, is I kind of thought on the other side of this too, that cutting came up, in my mind, like cutting is a form of I could see if it wouldn’t be, you know, if it wouldn’t have been an eating disorder would have been something else, don’t you? Don’t you believe that?
Kyira Wackett 41:48
I mean, I think now it feels like that’s the only solution in some way. I mean, I think all of us are self soothing. I mean, I have a friend now who, for the first 15 She’s almost 40. So I honestly like the almost all of her adult life, every time something really traumatic would happen, she’d get a tattoo, which is a form of self harm. In the same way, it’s just a more socially acceptable form of self harm. my eating disorder like taking laxatives, restricting my food intake, making myself throw up like, nobody saw it. But it wasn’t again, like it was all entirely self harm. In some way. It was a shaming of my body eventually, again, initially it was it just happened to be that these things were adding up to my body changing but then it did become this like punishment system and reward system and my brain and body. And I think that’s what it is. And it’s the physical and physiological highs we can have from those experiences are so strong, you know, like somebody that does engage in other forms of self harm, whether it’s cutting, whether it’s burning, whether it’s picking, there is a chemical release in the brain that makes that so intense, that that’s why we stick to that it’s a different type of like, I will never get the same experience ever again, as I got when I would binge and then the immediate release, after I would go make myself throw up, I will never replicate that. Again, I don’t want to do it anymore. But there’s a high from that, that you can’t I can’t explain to anybody else. Even though the downfall was that I would feel more depressed, more lonely, more shame than I did before it happened.
Victoria Volk 43:22
But then society comes in and oh, you’re looking so good. And all the terming affirming what you’re doing.
Kyira Wackett 43:30
All the time. And it is now again, my commitment with raising, you know, at this point, we’re assuming, you know, she is will identify. However she identifies but raising her at least female at this point and trying to raise her with this neutrality about her body. You see it all the time, somebody commenting on her hair, somebody commenting on Oh, you’re such a good eater, or you did this and it’s like, how do we condition that out of the way we talk about things. And if I had had a disorder, an eating disorder, where it was purely binge, to sort of binge eating disorder, or something where my body was gaining a lot of weight, I would have been treated very different. But I still and now I never knew what my body’s natural size was because during trauma during childhood trauma, your body your weight is a factor that is affected by the trauma. So there are periods of time that my body held a lot of weight, and then periods of time that it didn’t. But now I see that my body’s natural frame is a smaller frame now that I’ve been in recovery for almost 10 years. But at the time, it was like this is the only way that the doors are going to stay open now because I I get it and I still now now have the privilege of even seeing my body being in recovery. Doors open and people treat you differently because of the culture that we exist in. And so I think that is that was the hardest part for me was seeing now guys want to take me out. Now. People want to do all this stuff for me now. I can go up and I can speak and I can present and the jokes people make and the way they talk about things, or the idealization of me as a person has increased exponentially, and it still happens, I wish I could look like you, I can’t believe you had a kid. And that’s your body. The reality being that is one of the most triggering things you can say to me, because I have had to spend 10 years of trying to tell myself that when and if my body changes over time, my body is not less valuable. And I as a person, I’m not a failure. But we condition that for people even without eating disorders, to believe that they have to be dieting, they have to be on a journey to weight loss at all points in time, unless their body is the ideal type in order to be accepted. And I think that is going back to the the whole essence of grieving that is one of the hardest things to grieve and recovery is, I’m always going to be having to choose to live a lifestyle that goes against the culture that we exist in. I agree, the culture is effed up, I agree. It’s not what I want to live in. But every day, it’s knowing that I’m going to knock off some energy right off the bat, because I don’t have the ability to think about those things in the same way. Or I’ll relapse, and I don’t you know, my mom’s silver from cocaine. And that’s amazing. And that’s a very different beast. My mom can function without cocaine, you can’t function without food or without your body. And I think that is one of the most painful sort of long term grieving processes, I think I’ll always go through no matter how far into recovery I am.
Victoria Volk 46:24
I do want to circle back to well, there’s three things I want to talk about. So I’m gonna say it out loud. So I don’t we don’t forget. But yeah, and your relationship with your mom now to finding love and choosing to have a child, you know, knowing the traumas that you went through. But three, what I’d like to talk about right now, because I think it’s a good segue is what can we change in our language, as parents, I have two teenage girls and the teenage son, all of which are slim, my oldest son, he’s going to be 17. And he’s very skinny. And now he’s like, now he’s got it. Like it’s bulking season, he’s gonna put on weight. And he’s got to be bigger, because otherwise he’s skin and bones. And people think well, don’t you feed? I’ve had people ask if I feed my kids protein? Mm hmm. What are some things that we can change in our language? As parents? Can you? Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll definitely send you a link.
Kyira Wackett 47:26
I just wrote a two part post on some of this, too, for people of, you know, what are some of the daily habits we can change? What are some of the conversation ways we can change my goal when I talk to anybody. And now because I’ve worked in eating disorder since I started my master’s program, and I’ve worked at all levels of care and with kids up through people in their 80s. And so one of the things that I really focus on with people is how do we develop a sense of food neutrality, body connectivity, I love the concept of body positivity. It’s also like somebody seeking positive self esteem, that’s not an attainable destination. We all have esteem, esteem towards the self. But that ebbs and flows, the goal is to spend most of our time in the neutral to neutrally positive zone. So what I really like to think about is for all of us, how do we, you know, for anyone that’s apparent, first, taking a look at what were you taught about bodies? What were you taught about food? What were you taught about what it means to be healthy? You know, all these things that many of us were taught either by our parents and caregivers, or by the world at large? And how do we let go of those things? How do we allow the possibility that we don’t have to, because we, as humans, we spend a lot of time here, trying to logic our way through and control everything. I mean, grief, everybody wants, these are the five phases, how long am I going to go through these phases? Exactly? What is that going to look like? And tell me this? Isn’t this one of the steps to get through it? That’s not how it works. But we want it to be that way. You know, how are we going to raise healthy kids? How are we going to raise kids that don’t have eating disorders? But also aren’t you no morbidly obese because we have an obesity epidemic? So we go up here too much that we sort of decondition ourselves to have that connection to our body. And so for parents who have really little littles, you know, it’s it’s starting with how do you help them trust the natural cues that their body is giving them? You know, some days, my two year old eats more than I do in a setting? And some days, she eats a couple of bites, and that’s all she needs? How do you find the balance in learning to trust that without over controlling or panicking a little bit as they get older? I think a lot of it has to do with starting to have some conversations about how they feel in their body. What is that like for them? So I’m just going to use your son because you mentioned that and a lot of people that identify as male it is it’s an out this sort of fixation on musculature, and in particular, these things. So we know, by five years old it is I forget what the stats are most recently, but it is an ugly number of kids that talk negatively about their body by five. By the time that they’re in middle school, it is dieting is already happening more so for biologically female girls, but we see it across all identities, all gender identities, when we see them kind of around puberty is it’s the onset of what’s your body doing. And so one of the things that I think is really helpful is just to talk about those changes and transitions and how that feels for them. What does that like for you as your body’s changing? And you know, for your son, it’s like, why I have to bulk up, I have to look like this. Otherwise, what’s wrong with me, I’m skin and bones as if that means something, you know, like, he’s less capable of functioning in the world in some way. Or you are somehow not a good parent, because that’s what they look like. And so I’m a big proponent of hard conversation. So I think just talking to them about it and being like, what does that like for you? When you hear somebody say that, or when you see these things? What does that feel like? What are the messages you’ve been told? And what are these ingrained ideas, especially because of social media, about what you’re supposed to look like? And what is it that your brain is assuming, will happen when you get there? Because I think a lot of it is, and this is the really hard reality, we can’t prevent this from happening. Again, go back to body connectivity, they’re all going to have bad body image, all of us do, the goal is to not get stuck there or to become dependent on behaviors that are about either trying to get out of it or punishing ourselves for it. So instead, just normalizing like, you’re gonna feel like crap in your body, sometimes more than others. And you are in a world where you have been getting messages from 70 to 1000s more entry points than I did, and I hate my body half the time. So really just normalizing that conversation, because I think the body connectivity piece that I like to focus on is how do we talk to them? Through this hard stuff to give them skills, tools, ways to navigate that, what would that be like to say, I could totally understand, you know, somebody said to me, because I remember, my grandma said to me, well, beauty is what’s on the inside, not what’s on the outside, things like that, what she knew which that was helpful. But we’re a visual and physical world. So yes, beauty is there. But also we treat people different. And even if you have visual impairments based on that physical experience of touch to and there’s a difference in what it means to touch and feel and see bodies in different sizes. So really thinking about, I can understand how suddenly you’re getting this attention that reinforces to you that now your body is better, because why would your brain not go there? And let’s talk about where that comes from. Let’s talk about these systems. Sometimes it’s easier to access it in relation to other topics like racism, or sexism, things like that, that people might feel are more accessible topics. And then you say, so what do we do with that? How do we help you through that? What we do know for kids overall, is that one of the things that we can do is to empower their choices, rather than dictate for them what to do and put a label on it. And really, this idea of can you adopt in this, it’s pretty polarizing in the eating disorder field. But the mindset that many have is the all foods fit idea. So there are certain things that I as a parent, won’t give my kid certain processed foods, things that are genetically modified in some way that like I couldn’t pronounce it, if I read it on the back of you know, a label, but also realizing that my kid knows what to do. If she has ice cream in her body, her body can handle that and break that down. Maybe I make a choice to get ice cream that’s locally made. And I know where the ingredients are things like that, but not labeling that food is good or bad. One of the other big things is not making food, a motion dependent. So this is hard for me even now she like she gave up her pacifiers like how can we celebrate? Let’s do this? And it’s like, no, no, how do you do something that’s not food related? You know, the like, when you’re potty training? Again, I’m using references only to my kids age, but like, how do you do it without treats? How do you not suggest that treats are associated with good behavior or treats are associated with a negative emotional state, for your son or for your daughters? How do you say your body is changing and evolving? And there might be a time that it’s not thinner like this? What would that feel like for you if it was different? What would it feel like for you if it’s this, like just opening that door and trying to as much as we can stay as neutral as we can about food to realize, in the course of my lifetime butter has been good, bad and everywhere in between? You know, over the course of my lifetime, sugar free was like the thing and now we know what it does for us. So realizing we only know what we know. And the only thing that we know to be truly true is that foods that we know where they come from and how they’re sourced tend to be better processed in the body because our body can do things with natural things that are different than, you know, genetically modified processed things. Again, I know I’m jumping but yeah, keep going.
Victoria Volk 55:09
No I love how you said food neutrality because I was actually listening to something just recently, I can’t remember maybe it was in a conversation, where we talked about this pursuit of happiness. And even if you’re not happy if we Yeah, neutralize our emotions, get like get into a state of equilibrium. Mm hmm. We wouldn’t feel like we need to pursue happiness, we would be happy. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it’s like this embodiment, like you mentioned. Yeah, that and that word has come up a lot in the last few days in bonding. What if like an example, if there’s a picky child, picky, picky eater? Five, you know, that four or five, six age range? What do you say to that?
Kyira Wackett 55:55
Well, I think there’s a spectrum of, again, so there’s something called failure to thrive, which is a diagnosis that can happen if if a child is not getting adequate nutrition or their body is not able to maintain adequate nutrition and energy. And so they start to have a decline in their physical growth, cognitive development, things like that, is a pretty extreme, it does happen. A lot of times, though, kids go through a phase of picky eating, kids will go through a period of time where they don’t like things, they’re exploring different textures, they’re exploring different tastes, different temperatures, you know, whatever it might be. So one of the things I think is super helpful is nothing that bad can happen in a day, or a week, or a month, when it comes to that, like, if your kid is only eating these few things, but they’re at least taking something in nutritionally notice the pattern and the trend. And then if it continues to be a trend, and it’s starting to have an effect on their energy levels, their mood, that’s when we start talking to a provider, you know, and in particular, really think talking to a dietitian, who specializes in working with kids and kids that experience picky eating is helpful. But not everybody has that luxury. So even starting with a pediatrician and just be like, this is where we’re at. What are your thoughts? Because I think we have this thing that sort of blows up. I mean, I do this, I do this all the time, a day, she doesn’t eat very much, she doesn’t poop one day, or her moods really off, or She’s coughing just a little bit too much for my comfort, something must be happening, you know. And so we, we tend to, in particular, people that have experienced trauma or experienced, you know, high negatives, we write stories really quickly, that take us to that level. So maybe for a week, they’re like boycotting food. I remember one day she sat down, she was maybe like, 1516 months old, she would she refuse to touch a thing. She said, there’s like, No, thanks. No, thanks. I was like you little, so many words that I want to say out loud right now, but I won’t. And it was so hard to just be like, okay, okay, because in my mind, I’m like, she’s not gonna have enough food, and she’s gonna be hungry overnight. And what about this? What about that, like, she’ll be fine. She’ll be fine. For whatever reason she was doing that, I think at her case, a power struggle. And then like, a day later, it was fine. But I think really trying to pause in that moment and not getting reactive and saying this is data. Trends are where the concerns are not these like one off, you know, a week, whatever the case may be. One of the things I do think can be really helpful is to have conversations with kids about energy, and about what it’s like to give their body energy to do the things they want to do. So the other thing that starts to happen at the 456 marks, is their brains are excited about, you know, I remember at that age, like I didn’t want to stop to go to the bathroom. How many of us didn’t want to have to come inside to pee, we wanted to play with our friends, you know, we might be hungry, we might be starving. But I am not coming inside, like I want to play or I want to do this. So there’s so much distraction. And their brain is going through such a period of development to that it’s even just being able to think about the set and setting for these things that are happening. And again, just thinking about it as data collection saying hmm, all right. So this is what’s happening. How do I stay neutral about this? Because the reaction is then what reinforces there’s something good or bad about it? Now there’s a fixation on they’re not eating enough, or they’re eating too much? Or what about this and this food is bad or they need to eat this or whatever the case may be just notice it. And take take note of the trends. And then I think starting to find answers that respond to the trends and the shifts that seem more long term. Typically, most things with kids and I’ve worked again, with kids as low as five and six years old with eating disorders. Most things with kids will even out there will be some kids that that is the onset of developing some very extreme whether it’s avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, some other really severe picky eating things like that. But it doesn’t happen in a week. It doesn’t happen in you know, over the course of that it happens over those periods of time. And my default now is fine. I have providers that I trust, and they’ll tell me when I need to worry, I do a great job of writing stories to worry. But that’s not the most efficient use of my time. And what that will do for my daughter, as we go back to those dominoes, I am setting off dominoes for her in the future that will not lead to where we want to go. You know,
Victoria Volk 1:00:18
Thank you so much for that insight. Yeah, I think it’s important now circling back to when things changed for you, you know, after you know, your masters and, and things like that.
Kyira Wackett 1:00:28
So I had my eating disorder, up through starting my master’s program, I was in my recovery at that point. I remember a lot of lows in the course of my eating disorder. I do think so I’ve been with my husband since I was 22. And that was the first relationship. I remember it was very early in our relationship, like maybe a couple months and where he I said something to him about how great it was like that we needed each other and all this stuff. And he said, I don’t need you. And you don’t need me. I want to be with you. But I don’t need you. And I remember being like fu like this was this terrible thing. But again, codependent relationships and measurement and no healthy boundary setting that was ever modeled to me, it was so new. So early in my relationship early on, I think I was still trying to preserve a certain image with him. I remember having no opinions for a period of time about music preferences, or where we would go eat or things like that. And I would I would wear clothes to look a certain way that I thought was like the most attractive that I hated. You know, like, I hate dresses, hate skirts, I hate all of that it feels way too vulnerable. I don’t know how to sit with it. I don’t like it. But I would wear things like that. It’s like, oh, no, that’s this like, very feminine, attractive person. And, you know, I need to stay at this certain level of my body size, whatever it might be. So I remember going real deep in my eating disorder for a period of time. And he never I don’t I don’t understand like this is just an innate thing about who he is because he’s had to work through so much himself to but he’s never had a reaction about that. That wasn’t from a place of neutrality and love. And so, and I even remember at one point being like, my body’s changing when I started my recovery, and he’s like, I don’t see it. I’m like, I’m sorry, but I’m like, I’ve gained X amount of pounds. I’ve done this, like how do you not like you can’t still find me attractive, like, I don’t want to be naked in front of you. Like all these things. I don’t see any of this, like I don’t understand we’re reading different books. And, and so I think there was some healing that happened not because of him. But because of the active decision that came from being in a relationship with Him. That meant choosing to detach from a lot of codependent relationships I had been in previously, I had been in a relationship when I met him. And I knew when I left that relationship, I was going to lose all my friends that I had had from middle school in high school, they’re very close knit, everybody stays in the same town, nobody leaves their parents went to high school together, I knew that would be a betrayal of the story I was supposed to exist in and making that decision was so painful. But it was it needed to happen if I was ever going to get away from those things and, and a lot of other choices like that. And so I eventually got into recovery. I wish I could say it’s because I had an amazing therapist and treatment providers, but they I didn’t have the good fortune of finding them. I think that’s part of the other reason I decided to be a therapist and watch a psychiatrist was like, VA actually most of them kind of suck. And like I’ve learned now there’s more than a few that are good. But I still think a lot of them aren’t great. And that’s you know, whether it’s a coach, a therapist, or you know, whatever, there’s a lot of people doing this work that are not ready for it or aren’t the right fit for it. So when I got into my program, I remember thinking I don’t want to be one of the therapists I’ve seen that’s made it about them. That’s made it all about their story. And I really wanted to work in eating disorders because I felt like I wasn’t getting what I needed to heal. I wasn’t being seen. I remember one person found out I had had these like, in the inside of my mouth, like right in here. I had had they were called plugged mucus glands, which sounds so disgusting, but they were these like giant like Penny size blisters in your mouth, which is disgusting. And it was the last year before I left my mom because we were living in Berlin, Wisconsin, I’d have surgery on him because it was so bad to get rid of them because it couldn’t eat things. It couldn’t do anything. So she found out about this and she talked about some oral fixation, some Freudian BS and that’s probably why my eating disorder have developed and like also and I walked out in the middle of our first appointment. I was like, This is so stupid. I had one other person telling me I couldn’t exercise again which I am a firm believer in Exercise is something you need to talk about exercise was never a part of my eating disorder, even now, I love to exercise. When I’m like a salad, give me 15 minutes. And I’m good. Like I have never struggled on that side. But it was putting her story of her recovery onto me. And so I started my training and was like, I need to do several internships, you typically do one, over the course of your master’s program, I did one in general mental health and one as an eating disorder therapist so that I could get feedback from two different supervisors, I could see I don’t ever want to leave somebody worse off in an unhealthy way. Obviously, we know I’m sure you have that with people that you work with for like some sessions, they feel worse off than they started, but it’s helpful. But I didn’t want to hurt people because of blind spots that maybe I had. And so I learned over the course of my training, because of the other setting that I had that I couldn’t work with female, that column female offenders. I hate that term. But I couldn’t work with women that were incarcerated, that had kids, it was too close. That was too I still had too much grief. I still have anger. That’s a part of my grief that I’m working through. So I learned I couldn’t do that. But eating disorders. I was great at it. I could do it. I didn’t. I never. I’m sure there are times I’ve probably overstepped in terms of things. I’ve said we all do it. But it felt like I had come home to myself in a way that I didn’t need my ego to be seen. I just was able to show up for their people. And so and similarly now it’s why I specialize in anxiety and trauma is I found that I love working with the people that are like, No, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’ve got it all together. Look at this, look at how many more balls I can add to this pile, you think I can’t do it. Watch me. And then I like to just go up and swap the balls out metaphorically and be like now what? What do we do with that, and that is the correlation. What with what I’ve seen with a lot of the eating disorders that I work with are people’s stories and high functioning anxiety is they function very similarly, they become all about an achievement, comparison level living and now I’ve learned I can help people dismantle that I’m not completely through it myself. Again, I still do this all the time as a business owner, as a mom as a partner. But I am now able to see that that’s a process a lifelong process of disentangling. And I can show up for other people and just be the space to do that now.
Victoria Volk 1:07:29
Would you say that these are typically type A people?
Kyira Wackett 1:07:32
Um, yes absolutely. I know a lot of people now I’ve heard. I don’t know if this is a newer thing. I only recently have been reading that people don’t necessarily like to use the like type a type B type, whatever anymore. I still think it’s a system that helps people make sense of how they show up in the world. So yes, this the high functioning high performing perfection driven human. Most people that seek me out as a coach or a therapist that want to work with me. That is the experience of what they have. And it’s the I just can’t let anything fall. And what you know, I can’t let my eating disorder go, I can’t let this thing go. I can’t there’s such a fear and such a deeply rooted shame of believing there’s something inherently wrong with me. I am unlovable, I am unworthy. This is the only way I can achieve that. Please don’t take that from me. And then that becomes our path together is how do we grieve that feeling of false security that these things have given them? Make space to validate it, honor it, and then figure out how to let go of those systems that don’t serve them.
Victoria Volk 1:08:36
I love it. I think we could talk another I know. Where can people this has been amazing. So thank you so much. Where can people reach you if they’d like to check out your work and things?
Kyira Wackett 1:08:48
Yeah, so I will definitely send you those couple of posts I mentioned about the topics we hit on really, I think going to my website. So it’s adversityrising.com. The best way to kind of stay in touch with what I’m doing is to sign up for my email list. You can do that right from my website. I don’t do anything on social media anymore. I made a decision for myself, it was not serving me. So that’s really the place I focus is there and YouTube. So going to my website, they’ll find access to all of that I also answer every single email people send me. So if somebody has like, gosh, this really resonated or I want this, or do you have tools on these things? Or do you know anyone that does this? My biggest thing is we don’t know how to help people until they’re able to ask for it. And if I’ve helped somebody feel safe enough to ask me then please do it so I can be a part of your support journey.
Victoria Volk 1:09:38
Thank you so much. And I appreciate your time today. And thank you Ray. Yeah, I just yeah, I really love this conversation. So thank you for being my guest today. Absolutely. Thank you. And remember when you unleash your heart you unleash your life. Much love.