Scorpiosis, thanks for sharing your story. Your family sounds so mean in their comments about your weight and getting plastic surgery! Have you ever tried to establish some boundaries with them in what they may and may not comment on to you about your personal appearance? As I read your story, I kept thinking if it were me, my T would probably be helping me learn to set boundaries so my family would come to understand they couldn't say those things to me anymore. (I am terrible at setting boundaries so need a lot of help with this.) I did set some very firm boundaries at about age 30 with my mom. She was consistently mean and awful to me, just like she had been when I lived at home as a child. I told her I was done with that, I was no longer a child, and if she couldn't be civil and polite to me, she would no longer be able to see me or her granddaughter. That cured her! It was an overnight change, like night and day. Perhaps she still felt mean towards me underneath, but as long as she treated me differently, it was possible for me to be with her. (Maybe she couldn't change her feelings, but she could change her behavior.) At some point I learned that my family thought I was one of the dumb ones in the family. (They thought 2 of their children were smart and 2 not so smart.) That surprised me since I know I'm smart. But they never harped on it, thank goodness.

One thing that made me feel yucky was that he stated he felt that way about overweight women. No mention of men, as I recall, at least in the story I read. It made me feel that he sexualized his female clients--only the thin ones need apply. I would have felt better about his aversion if it were for both men and women. I think Yalom was very honest in his revelation about fat women in his book. And he spoke of how he realized this was countertransference and worked hard to not let it affect therapy when he had such a client. I am sure he never told the overweight women he felt that way. If I was a former client of Yalom's and then read his book, I would have felt pretty dang awful, though, to know that all the time I was having therapy with him, he felt repulsion towards me. So glad he was not my therapist! (And I hope my T never writes a tell-all book. There are just some things I don't want to know!)

One of the new issues I would like to talk to my T about is weight loss. We've never discussed this before. I am thinking I may be able to have this discussion if we keep it about weight loss and not my appearance. I really would not want to talk to my T about my appearance. I hope he doesn't think I want to talk about that if I introduce weight loss. I guess I could set boundaries on that if he tries--probably I would just gently try to turn the conversation, though.