Nutritionist in New avatar: A Good enough mother
I just finished watching two seasons of Netflix series “The Umbrella Academy”. A story of Superheroes, Time travel, threat of apocalypse, saving the world, family drama, different personalities all facets blended together. Character of Grace “the care giver and the robotic mother programmed to be a protector, to intervene if someone’s life was in danger portrayed the role of perfect mother and care giver. Eventually children (adults) started speculating involvement of robotic mother in murder of their father due to hardware malfunction. The robotic perfect mother was no longer the perfect mother and was shut down.
I am a nutritionist and a student of psychodrama, an action-based technique to explore ourselves with dramatic expression to gain behavioural skills and insights. I think there is a deep connect between relationship with one’s mother and food. Some of us share close relationships and others may need to work on it.
Lot of ladies have the queries about what makes a good mother?
Mother should always be relaxed, tolerant, present, understanding, courageous, strong. Oops let me just breathe.
And what makes a bad mother? A mother who is
· Full of advices
· Reproving
· Absent
· Comparing
· Unsympathetic
· Careless
Do you want to add more?
Pandemic and lockdown have brought families spending much longer time together.And the need to perfectly meet all the challenges, the children, expanded workload, augmented hunger, swelled direct and indirect mental pressure of pandemic, worry for aging parents. It can easily take a toll and exhaust anyone.
When a child is small, a baby, we need to be attentively present to his/her physical and psychological needs with love and care. As child grows up it simply is not possible to be present at every call and it may also not be healthy.
Few days back a friend asked me exasperatedly how did I manage my teenage boys and I said by moving out of their lives as lovingly as I moved in and that doesn’t by any chance mean being absent. When my boys were small, I always had my hands full with job, household chores, cooking, playing with G.I. Joes toys and car fights. I was just an ordinary mother.
“I would rather be the child of a mother who has all the inner conflicts of the human beings than be mothered by someone for whom all is easy and smooth, who knows all the answers and is stranger to doubt”. Words of famous paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald woods Winnicot.
Most of us have “the love and hate” relationships with foods and nutritionists. Relationships can be superficial or deep depending upon the efforts we put in them.
I have met countless people with strong affliction for certain foods. I have conducted many experiments on myself and my husband and exhausted many of his notions such as rice gives me headaches. Any one with food and medical background may relate drop in blood sugar as trigger for headache or allergic reaction. I had doubt and need for more answers. Hence, for one full year we all ate rice at night without gaining a single kilo and same blood biochemistry and no headaches.
Many clients who come to me with wheat intolerance end up eating wheat happily without complaints and symptoms.
Food has deep association with emotions. Our first introduction to food when we are born is through our mother. The quality of relationship a child has with mother in initial years affect the ability of the person to form good relationship with self, others and society in later years. Have you ever observed when babies are picked up with strong hands, they start crying? The way a mother picks up and puts down a child forms a major part of looking after a baby according to Winnicot. The more delicate a relationship between a mother and child, better emotionally developed a child might be as an adult.
When I connect with a client and plan their diet, I take their dietary recall and the way they share the information say a lot about the relationship they have with food. Mother’s synonym can be unconditional love and that is the role needed when I help them follow a diet. It helps to be loving, kind and patient. The role of good enough mother in the body of nutritionist.
Another important insight I have gained is when a patient or a client is struggling to lose weight the struggle is much deeper and not only weight issues. May be it is better to look beyond keto diet, low carb diets, fasting diets. The need here might as-well be care, patience, understanding and motherly concern. According to Winnicot:
The foundations of health are laid down by ordinary mother in her ordinary loving care of her own baby.
Few abilities which can be of great potential to help us look in to our relationship with foods are:
· Listening deeply to our own selves and people who matter in our lives
· To be more fascinated about our food behaviours and choices
· Be the first to give a pat on your back
· Laugh off the failed attempts.
· Openness to yet another attempt with more clarity
Please feel free to add more. It will certainly benefit me.