Shame Spiral Kitchen
I was on John’s Pass with my 8 year-old son when a group of young musicians set up shop on a street corner and started playing their folky, picker-style music.
The band, Bear Foot, hailed from the Pacific northwest and they were touring Florida in a van. Their catchiest tune called, “Good in the Kitchen,” was sung by the female lead in a sultry kind of beckoning style.
“And if you want to XXX. Good in the kitchen. Good in the kitchen. Good in the kitchen. Give you somethin’ to eat.” Went the lyrics.
This quick connection between a valuable woman and cooking ability was not lost of me or my 8-year old son.
“They’re pretty,” he said.
A few years later, my friend Mary who professionally sings, runs a business and writes books, expressed doubt over her worth because she thinks she is not “good in the kitchen.”
I started to see a connection between some women in my life who carried low confidence in the kitchen. I sensed a direct correlation between cooking ability and overall confidence.
Erroneously, this whole female/kitchen/cooking/value/quality is baked into our collective culture.
I have been cooking, thinking about food and writing recipes since I was 8 years old and practicing nutrition professionally since 2016. In that time, I have seen several patterns emerge about food and human behavior. The longer I do this the easier it is to predict where my clients and patients have been, what got them there and what motivates them.
I suppose that is the way with any kind of practitioner be it law or dentistry or social work: patterns emerge that shape human behavior and the professional can design a program for the typical person in need.
Human behavior is fascinating. I have always been interested in how we change – or not. Motivations for change and the barriers for it are complicated. Since we don’t exist in a bubble our environment shapes us. The American food environment is difficult and people fall into routines and habits that the environment shapes.
I noticed in non-fiction books I have read that it’s the personal stories that I always gravitated to first. That’s why I have included so many. It is my hope that you see yourself these men and women and glean from their honesty.
I changed names, details, places, situations and other identifying details. Each story is gleaned from a basic framework of a person’s experience with food as it related to menopause. I think what you will find is the common thread of mindfulness.
We are each always floating among these three areas of change:
Unaware of the problem/issue
Contemplative where possible solutions are being considered
Mindfulness where change is actively afoot
There is no right or wrong way to enter or exit these phases. Each person is on their own path.
Once I spent enough time in practice I started to look past all the reductionist arguments like this. Day-to-day behavioral consistency and nutrition adherence is so much more important than the brand of fish oil someone supplements or the few ounces of meat.
Chapter: Building Resilience to Shame in the Kitchen
One of the things I like best about my older age and the enormous help my 12-step meetings have provided me is something I call “bounce-back time” or as Brene Brown calls it, “shame resilience.”
I agree with Brown when she says shame cannot be avoided. It’s part of the fabric of who I am. However, the amount of time I spend in a shame spiral is significantly less than it used to be.
Truth is, back in my drinking days I never crawled out of a shame spiral. I just bounced from one shame crisis after another drinking along the way to quell it.
Brown believes that shame resilience is a muscle that can be developed. That by recognizing shame when it appears, calling it by name and working through a process to understand it helps us move through it with authenticity and build stronger relationships.
So what does this have to do with cooking?
My ex-husband, Kevin, can fix or build anything. Anything. He loves going to home improvement stores. He says the store talks to him. He is inspired and motivated to dream of new projects.
Once we went to the Home Depot for a few nails. When we approached the “wall of drawers” that must number in the hundreds I watched him walk right up to a drawer, open it, take one nail out, put it back and go for another drawer. He did this five or six times until he found the exact nail for his project.
The entire process took three minutes.
I looked upon the wall of drawers with sheer panic. In fact, I fall into blackout, tunnel vision when I walk in the store and a terrible feeling of shame overwhelms me to the point that I will only visit the garden center. I won’t actually enter the store.
Where does my shame come from?
I realize now it comes from being a girl. From being raised in the 70s and 80s when girls were not taught how to use tools to fix or build anything. I feel shame for not understanding the basic tenants of home repair.
It also makes me vulnerable as a homeowner. That vulnerability drives fear which manifests in anger. That’s my shame spiral.
I have worked with countless clients who tell me they hate to cook. For some this is true. They simply don’t enjoy it. But for many it comes from a place of shame that began in childhood.
Stacy, 41, tells me her mom was in and out of the picture during her childhood and no one in the home ever cooked. She was raised on fast food and casseroles the neighbors brought over out of sympathy and concern. Now as an adult she deals with food addiction and doesn’t know how to cook for her own family. Cooking brings back a flood of bad memories and deep shame over the way she was raised.
Marley, 34, feels cooking creates panic and anxiety in her. When she starts to think about gathering ingredients and prepping she becomes overwhelmed. What will people think? They will laugh at my terrible skills. I won’t be regarded as a complete woman if I can’t cook. And if I can’t cook how will I ever take care of a family?
Mary, 56,
When I saw my ex choosing nails with joy and expertise, I realized that is how I feel in every grocery store I enter. I feel like a total master.
And I simultaneously realized that when many enter a grocery store they feel panic and shame just like when I enter the Home Depot.
This realization helped me understand the fear and loathing that many feel while grocery shopping.
The choices are numerous and expanding every year. The packaging claims often don’t match the food inside. The prices are high and getting more expensive. And there’s the fear that your will mess up the food that you bought resulting in more shame (and nothing good for dinner).
Intuition. Flow. Efficiency. Confidence. Joy. These are the words I hope to introduce to your cooking and help instill the belief that you are good (enough) in the kitchen.
hunch; pandemic shifted things; we turned to food as entertainment; our portions have been re-normalized; we became accustomed to or addicted to big industrial restaurant flavors; story of Panda Express; we think our cooking isn’t good enough; how could we ever compete when Panda Express fries the chicken twice and coats in five kinds of sugar?; or 12 grams HFCF in tuna fish?; food network started it; how could we ever compete with professional chefs and the magic of television? We said “if I can’t do it like the food network I just won’t at all”