10/10/19 Due to technical difficulties you can access updated mini-blogs and postings at E-K Daufin & Associates on Facebook, and/or follow my public Facebook posts at E-k Daufin.  You may also send me a Facebook friend request with a simultaneous Messenger DM letting me know your reasons for wishing to access my friends-only Facebook posts if you wish.  THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR VISITING DAUFINATION, following us here and on Facebook. Peace and Prosperity Be With You!

"Big, Black and Beautiful Women: Health at Every Size Offers a New Paradigm" New Chapter

PROFESSOR WRITES ANOTHER CHAPTER 

THIS TIME IN BLACK CULTURE BOOK

Alabama State University communications professor Dr. Rev. E.K. Daufin is the author of a chapter in a new book, “Black Culture and Experience: Contemporary Issues,” published by Peter Lang Publishing.

Daufin’s chapter is “Big, Black, and Beautiful Women: Health at Every Size Offers a New Paradigm.”

The book, which will be out later this year, is about the African-American culture and other issues impacting the black community.

Daufin is a national expert about weight as well as race, gender and class in the media. Her chapter stresses that you don’t have to be thin to be healthy and that the “war on obesity” is just another war on those who are already the most stigmatized and discriminated against – predominantly African-American women.  Her chapter offers a new paradigm – HAES or Health At Every Size, which she argues is a more effective and compassionate alternative to weight loss, dieting, exercise and surgery. It encompasses self-acceptance, moving and eating for pleasure according to internal cues of hunger, satiety and appetite.

An educator, performance artist and a social activist, Daufin is the founder of Love Your Body; Love Yourself workshops. Her work has been published in several academic journals, newspapers and magazines, and she has a chapter in five other anthologies. Daufin also has been featured on radio and television programs. She is a columnist for the international nonprofit Association for Size Diversity And Health's online "HAES(R) Matters” and an officer of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s (AEJMC) Minorities And Communication Division. Daufin presented research on media and women in the “Black Power Movement” and moderated a panel on race and entertainment media this month at the AEJMC annual convention in San Francisco.

Daufin graduated from The Ohio State University where she earned her Ph.D. in mass communication and film.

ASU Professor writes chapter in new book about ‘Fat Acceptance’

Re: ASU professor writes chapter in new book about ‘Fat Acceptance’
Date: Jan.  15, 2015

ASU Professor writes chapter in new book about ‘Fat Acceptance’

Alabama State University communications professor Dr. Rev. E-K Daufin is the author of a chapter in a new book, “The Politics of Size: Perspectives from the Fat Acceptance Movement,” published by Praeger Publishers Inc.  

Daufin’s chapter is “Black Women in Fat Activism.” The book supplies readers a frank overview of the issues surrounding how to deal with the many levels of discrimination against fat people – and reframes the discussion about obesity from a "diet and weight loss industry driven medical issue" to a social and political one.

Daufin, a national expert about weight as well race, gender and class in the media, was invited by the editor of the book to write the chapter after seeing Daufin's works on the subject.  The chapter itself takes a look at what black women face as a result of weight stigma.

“Eighty to 90% of any person's weight is caused by genetics.  The reasons for the higher obesity rate for African-American women are also genetic, along with other factors including socioeconomics and the environment,” Daufin said, “But even more women of color are joining the front lines of activism in changing the indirectly racist ‘war on obesity' to the 'war on weight stigma' instead.”

Daufin said the essays in the book serve to correct misinformation about obesity and fat people that is commonly accepted by the general public, such as the idea that “fat” and “healthy” are mutually exclusive. Subject matter covered includes fat-friendly workplace policies; fat-dating experiences; and the intersections of being fat and also a person of color, a person with disabilities, a transgender person, or a member of another sub-group of society. 

An educator, performance artist and a social activist, Daufin is the founder of Love Your Body;Love Yourself (R) workshops. Her work has been published in several academic journals, newspapers and magazines, and she has a chapter in three other anthologies. Daufin also has been on radio and appeared on television. She is a columnist for the international non-profit Association for Size and Health Diversity's online "HAES(R) Matters." 

Daufin graduated from the Ohio State University where she earned her Ph.D. in mass communication and film.

My column in the ASDAH Thanksgiving Holiday Special

If you missed my column in the Association for Size Diversity and Health special you can view it here: http://healthateverysizeblog.org/2014/11/

HAES Business Mastermind Holiday Blog Hop Schedule

HAES Holiday Blog Hop Schedule

HAES(TM) Business Mastermind Holiday Health Blog Hop - Self-Support

HAES^TM Business Mastermind Holiday Health Blog Hop

12 December 2014

Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin

If you HATE that song, “What do the lonely do at Christmas,”  and want to obliterate whatever device that has the audacity  to play such a melancholy tune to you during the holiday season – This Blog Hop is for you.

I don’t have a significant other (other than my dog, who is great but really….), or functional family or nearby friends who have time for me, or far away friends who even have time to talk to me very often.  So the overwhelming cultural myth of the happy extended family gatherings and romantic findings and celebrations from the last Thursday in November… to New Year’s Day, can really bring me down.  Do you feel me?

In addition to those factors, the holidays -- whether you’re a religious devotee or an atheist, have an, “eat mindlessly, stuff yourself and pledge to starve yourself come New Year’s Day,” sort of mandate that doesn’t mix with HAES^TM. 

Here are a few hints for those of us for whom the holiday just rubs in our face all the good things, people, support and connections we DON’T have in our lives that makes it even harder to be grateful for the good we DO have:

Ѽ There’s a new commercial this year whose refrain is, “Eat a snack,” sung to the tune of “(If you’re happy and you know it,) Clap your hands”. If you hear this commercial TURN IT OFF IMMEDIATELY.  Unless of course you have a clapper for the device it’s playing on, then you can actually clap your hands.  Or, if you can bear to listen all the way through just one last time, do so and note the product it promotes. Google the maker and send their consumer affairs office an email that says basically, “I’m not buying your product because of this commercial that promotes mindless eating and stuffing our emotions even if it is candy-coated in a catchy commercial tune that harkens back to my childhood. And SHAME ON YOU.”

Ѽ Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer was alone and dissed during the holidays.  But the very characteristic that made him a pariah was finally deigned by the Big Guy (Santa or insert your own deity.) to be the PERFECT one to save the day.  You’re alone, take advantage of it.  Sing Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer at the top of your lungs and dance wildly around the house, while thinking about the above.  It makes me feel better.  And even if it doesn’t work for you, if you keep doing it, you’ll get tired as heck, go to sleep, BINGO – one less day in this season to feel miserable.  No self-criticism about your voice or your body during any of these exercises, or any other time, any time of the year – is allowed.

Ѽ If you have a pet who will play with you (a dog or a cat who is ready to roll when YOU are rather than the other way around), set a timer and play with her for at least 10 minutes.  If you don’t have a pet who will play with you, or at all, do a little online research about what kind of dog would suit your circumstance (Tiny apartment? Tiny budget? Allergies?).  There’s plenty of helpful techniques online you never even thought of and you’re a blog hopper right?  Finish reading this and then hop on over there and see.  Or volunteer for your local Humane Society.  If there’s no opportunity to be trained to work with the animals until after the holidays, sign up for when it is available, put it on your calendar and do another round of Rudolf. BTW ALWAYS ADOPT. If you wonder why I say this, Google, “Why you should adopt rather than purchase a pet.”

Ѽ Okay, here’s the last one.  Write/journal about what you would be doing right now in your FANTASY relationships with ideal family, friends, lover/spouse… if you had one.  Many folk say this will help manifest these situations in your life, if you do it consistently and allow yourself to believe, the same way allow everything outside the movie you love… to slip away when you watch it. Or…just go watch one of those movies…If it’s sad you can cry, not for yourself mind you but those poor, unfortunate characters in the story.  You can laugh too if you’ve got a funny one.  Back to that manifestation thing…hasn’t worked yet for me but I’m still livin’.  So who knows?  It sure doesn’t hurt.

So maybe one of these ideas catches your fancy and works for you.  Maybe reading this reminded you of something you used to do that helped and you’re going to try it again.  May be you haven’t heard any new ideas here to make the holidays less painful for you (Sorry!  I tried!).  Remember in any case, you are not alone in your aloneness.  Many put on a good face but are not connected to the people they do have in their lives the way they appear to be or talk about.  The very reason the media messages that say everyone’s loved and in-the-loop (except me…or you) become media messages is that they reinforce a cultural myth that few if any real people have completely. 

Though others may have bigger pieces of the pie, I don’t think anyone has the whole pie.  But if you’ve been practicing mindful eating you already know that you aren’t really hungry for the whole pie, usually just a dab will do ya’.  Even if that dab looks darn far away today, keep plugging and shine that gorgeous red nose of yours.  Santa may be calling on you soon.

______________________________________

Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin is a member of the HAES^TM Business Mastermind, a HAES^TM feminist minister, performance poet, author and college professor specializing in race, gender, size and the media.  

Book Review "Keepers of the Garden"

If you want to read my short book review of  Keepers of the Garden see: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3NCAMKP17BEF9?ref_=pe_620760_65501210

Weight Stigma in the African American Community @ the BEDA Campaign 2013

Link to my article in the BEDA Weight Stigma Awareness Campaign 2013

http://bedaonline.com/wsaw2013/weight-stigma-diverse-populations-rev-dr-e-k-daufin/#.UkH0sNJJOPB

Biannual National Association for Size Diversity and Health Conference in Chicago this June PART II

You can find the second part of my article about the biannual national Association for Size Diversity and Health conference in Chicago this June at this link:
http://healthateverysizeblog.org/?s=e-k+daufin

Duke Study Regarding Black Women and Weight Maintenance vs. Loss

I'm discussing an  interesting that this article about a Duke University study recommending that higher weight Black women maintain their weight (http://today.duke.edu/2013/08/bennetobesity).  

It's progress from the lose weight at all costs perspective however:

1. It still promotes the balderdash that Black women have fewer social pressures to lose weight.  They don't realize that we have just as much pressure but we are bigger as a group and the pressure may start bearing down on us at a size 8 vs. a size 6.  

It also assumes that social pressure HELPS anyone lose weight when we know it's just the opposite.  Maybe THAT's why Black women tend to gain even more weight at we age vs. other race/gender groups.  

2. The study acts as though dieting and exercising makes everyone lose weight (It DOESN'T -- we know that. 

3. The study apparently done by an African American thin man, seems to still subtly put Black women down as though we are lazier and less disciplined than other race/gender groups.  For these reasons I hate this article.  It's more beat down for Black fat women.

4.  This article doesn't mention that it's dieting itself that makes most folks gain weight.  Higher weight people who aren't on a diet tend to keep stable weights.

On Mothers, Weight and Race

Re: the article "Mothers are most important influence on daughter's body image" www.indystar.com: 

A few notes re: media impact and "intersectionality" -- The media ARE incredibly important because of their profound influence on those mothers and a girl's peer group, I LOVE the picture of the higher weight mom and daughter running and it reminded me how my mother shamed me for my shorts riding up in the middle between my "fat thighs,"  African American girls in particular are shamed for naturally kinky hair (as I was)...My mother was angry when the money and time she spent trying to keep my hair straight was sabotaged by sweating during exercise and swimming was not an option.  The doctor in the article is really ignorant about eating disorders and body image causes and effects.  She should NEVER be sources again in this area!

The Long Road Home (to the ASDAH Conference)

See my latest Health At Every Size (R) blog on ASDAH's publication. Here's the article link:

http://healthateverysizeblog.org/2013/08/13/the-long-road-home-to-the-asdah-conference/

Regarding RADIANCE and Editorial Racism

Regarding the previous post -- I am no newbie to getting rejected by publishers.  What readers should know is that I did NOT submit or query RADIANCE to do the article, the editor sought me out, pursued me and begged me to do not just an article but a series on "the experience of being a fat Black woman." Only she expected this happy, Black fat fairy-land of her imagination (and too many others I met at NAAFA, not you or Lynn but others) where Black women are loved and accepted as we are and aren't victims of the pervasive, vicious fat bashing of the broader culture.  

When she read the first series installment that did not support her fantasy, she questioned my credentials to write about my own experience though I have a doctorate in communication from The Ohio State University. She said I needed a doctorate in psychology if I wanted to write what I had written.  And if I remember correctly, she told me she didn't go to college undergrad and had no "credentials" to be a magazine editor and publisher.

I asked her who were the "plenty of happy, fat Black women" she knew and that's when she told me that she always saw happy, well dressed Black women on Sundays going into a church she'd never attended.  She never talked to these women.  She didn't have any  "happy fat Black women friends"  (and we know the superficiality of the "some of my best friends are" non-sense when people do make that claim).  She had never talked to a fat Black woman about the experience of being fat.  

I am sorry that editor, who invested so much time in a magazine that was positive about large women, at least large White women, did that to me and displayed such racist discrimination and ignorance against fat Black woman.  There are always exceptions in groups (When covering a disabled man for a Cincinnati Post story the subject said, "Just call me gimp." I didn't .  Most disabled people find that a nasty term.).  But the editor pursued me and asked me to write representing my group but then had some illogical reproofs because my experience didn't fit a White privileged fantasy she had about us.  This is the problem that drove me out of NAAFA all those years ago.

A Note on Fat Black Women Who Love Ourselves "Too" Much

 A note on Black women "being too accepting of higher weights,"  most of the studies that even include Black women and media/self-esteem/weight issues, don't seem to understand that because Black women as a group are statistically much larger than White and Asian women, our self-hatred kicks in at higher clothes sizes but those small sizes (say a size 10 for a Black woman, where Black "plus size" models are typically size EIGHT to 12) are, for us as a group, just as unreachable and depressing as say a size 4 or 6 for most "fat" White women. That doesn't make the self-hatred and the hatred we experience from media-empowered, fat-hating folks who think HAES (Health At Every Size) is "haze," any easier/lighter.  That doesn't mean that Black women have higher body/self esteem because our reference point is different.  That doesn't mean there isn't vicious fat hatred in the Black community...because there is.

Also in the Black community, there are roles (those of service to others with no self-hood, sexiness, beauty, deference or support) for fat Black women such as a race woman, a church woman, a mama to all.   But to only be able to get any accolades for being a person without personhood, where even the desire to be loved, pampered, considered beautiful or worthy to be helped or assisted is considered selfish and bad...where now the fact that those who have chosen those roles to have a place at all, are condemned for being "unhealthy" and thus threatening to end their source of service to others supposedly pre-maturely, is not an alternate Black universe where fat is accepted.

 I also think that some (most?/nearly all?) Black women may not be entirely honest when we do report to researchers how much we love our fat bodies (or at least without saying how much we have to push back against the fat haters to do that, to breathe, to lift our heads up and live another day) because it seems additionally demoralizing or shaming to have to admit to such feelings or discrimination if the interviewee is a white woman of any size or a slim woman of any race.

Sometimes after heated exchanges with some White women about how a fat woman can be beautiful, a fat woman can be healthy, a fat woman can be physically active, etc., I feel the carpet pulled from under me again because the fat-hating woman will then say, "Oh well, it's easy for you -- you're Black."  I usually don't have the energy to go anymore rounds at that point!  Some thin or thinner-than-me Black women have been just as bad but they just conclude I'm crazy -- period.  I don't know which is worse...Except that the Black women like that I've encountered so far had no power to affect me professionally, such as killing a magazine series they strongly solicited as did the RADIANCE editor I mentioned in a previous post..

Let me stress this about being fat...

When asked by Mary Handzus: The stress from stigma from society, especially the one that a person was born into, can be crushing.   The medical community has learned a lot  about the effect of stress on health.  I wish that they'd wise up and see its role in the health problems of fat people in a society that worships thinness.    One thing that  comes up in conversations about this is that someone will say, "Oh, I know a number of people who are overweight* and  seem quite happy - outgoing, upbeat, usually smiling.   You're probably just too sensitive."     I'll usually reply that we don't really know what's going on inside with  those other people inside - they might really feel hurt. What do you say in response to this?

I said: A SERIES on being a fat African American woman that I was ASKED to do for RADIANCE back in the day was rejected because the editor said she saw a lot of happy fat Black women on their way into (not her) church on Sundays.  I told her they were probably happy because they were going to see the only man who loved them fat.  I wouldn't be able to say that comeback today with all the sin-fat connections made in so many religious communities these days.  Black churches, populated with a majority of Black women,  many fat, are a focus for dieting campaigns these days.  Administrators at my HBCU shamed me for objecting to a lose-weight prayer walk where we were supposed to walk and pray to get thin.  I was all in for the walk...but with all the things that require prayer in this world, we should focus such energy on ending our fatness?

Health At Every Size is What I Wish Were "Epidemic"!

Health At Every Size www.haes.org (sign the pledge please) is the site I recommended if you are looking to stop the self hatred that is so increasingly foisted upon women of size and is only getting worse, not better for men -- health at every size. Also the Association for Size Diversity And Health www.sizediversityandhealth.net is a wonderful organization to join to get the real scoop from scientists and health professionals who AREN'T part of the weightloss-diet-marketing industry that rips us off of more than our money and self esteem.

I am sending out a prayer to find more sacred places and people in my life who are comfortable in their own skin, who can see the beauty and health in every size and see that in me, who don't hate their body and step out of the circle of shame and hostility that swallows so many of we of size.

I spent part of Saturday literally begging, more than once that a group of people, especially the otherwise wonderful women would stop praising one for fitting into size 4 jeans (and acting as if I too should be in agreement).  I just wanted to be at peace and in a safe space which cannot happen if size and weight and dieting is the topic of conversation, along with the hostility I feel from those who hate their own bodies and by projection seethe hatred for my body too.  Life is too short.  It's a holiday too.  Everyone at every weight is potentially beautiful at that weight, lovable at that weight, healthy at that weight.  As Marilyn Wann says, the only thing you can diagnose about a fat person is your own level of fat prejudice!

Flying While Fat! So?: This fat girl couldn’t fly home without a fight

This fat girl couldn’t fly home without a fight. 

On Easter Sunday I was flying home after having participated in a National Popular Culture Association Conference in D.C.  I had presented a Fat Studies/Media Studies research paper titled, White Supremacy, Fat Hurdles and Thin Privilege in Media Representation: A Layered Model for Media Hegemony and Effect, as well as attended many Fat Studies division sessions. One of those sessions had been a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop where we improvised and acted out strategies to fight size discrimination.  Perfect preparation for the not so fat-friendly skies…Do you hear the suspense thriller music rising in the background?

I pass most of the time on airplanes, and waiting for airplanes, catching up on important books I’ve bought but haven’t been able to squeeze in the time to turn the pages.   Flying from the PCA conference in DC to Atlanta, I was reading the rather fabulous Fat! So?: Because you DON’T have to APOLOGIZE for your size!, by the incredibly fabulous author, Marilyn Wann (who I had the grand honor to meet for the first time at the conference couple of days earlier).

As the plane docked in Atlanta, I knew I would be lucky to make my connecting flight to Montgomery, at the opposite end of the massive airport, in time.  So I stood as soon as I could to get my overhead bag from where I had to stow it, several rows in front of me.  I ended up standing next to an affable passenger in a Delta pilot uniform who was also standing, prepared to leave. 

The pilot, a Jewish family (the father and son wore yarmulkes) and several mature women and I were joking about the reputed selective hearing of some husbands and fathers.  I told the pilot the story of the time my father stood waiting for a northbound train in Baltimore’s Union Station.  Every other person left the previously crowded platform on which my father stood and moved to another.  My father’s train came, took all the people on the other platform and went to New York.  My father was left to swear repeatedly that no announcement had been made about the train’s platform change.  Everyone else just “intuited” to move to another gate.  Right… The pilot laughed, then a lull in the conversation.

I mentioned how doubly safe I’d felt on the flight with him, a pilot, sitting a few rows ahead and surrounded by a couple dozen young, jovial DC Emergency Medical Technician recruits, headed for an Anniston, Alabama hazmat training.  The smiling Delta Airlines pilot agreed I had nothing to worry about with the EMT recruits sitting near the emergency exits.  And then he decided to go to a nasty, dark place…

“What you really have to worry about is when some big, fat guy is sitting there and if there’s an emergency, you have to get out behind him through a whole about this big,” he said, making a gesture with both his hands about the size of two oranges. 

“The hole’s a lot bigger than that,” I retorted good-naturedly, “And the good thing about fat,” I said laying a loving hand on my own belly roll, "...is that it’s soft and can squeeze through some tight places.”

Now the pilot’s laugh had an indignant tone that hadn’t been there during our jokes about selectively deaf- husbands who couldn’t hear their wives or children when they didn’t want to.  

“Yeah, right…” the pilot continued laughing, “Take a look at those seatbelt extenders.  In big block letters it says, ‘FATSO.’”

With the flash of a French fencing champ, I pulled the Marilyn Wann book from under my arm and held it up to him like a placard (…Here’s your sign…) and said, “Yeah!  Fat! So?”  The look of shock on the fat hating pilot’s face was one I wished I could immortalize in stone.  Eyes wide, staring from the book cover to me, and back again, motioning toward the book with cupped hands, in a begging gesture, he sputtered,

“What the…?”

Perhaps from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed work, my subconscious immediately knew what to do without conscious thought.  I began a mini, righteous rant,

“I’ve just come from a workshop where we’ve worked on healing and protecting ourselves from fat hatred and discrimination that is so prolific in the media and in the airline industry (One of the scenarios we had worked on was about a woman participant, who on the flight to the conference, was manhandled and female strip-searched from the waist up, because the man working the scanner said the woman’s fat was, “too dense” to allow the scanner to make sure she had no hidden weapons on her upper body. Back to my verbal defense…),

“It’s hateful people like you, who despite your talents and friendliness, use your unearned thin privilege to cause so much damage, so much pain, to so many paying customers who are just trying to get from one place to another…And to do that on Easter none-the-less, is even more reprehensible,” I paused, realizing that perhaps I wasn’t being religiously inclusive enough and asked the mother of the Jewish family, “Is it still Passover?  Is he doing this during Passover too?” 

She assured me that Passover was still going on, “We like to suffer a long time,” she said, I corrected her, “Oh it’s not that Jews like to suffer a long time but that they were made to suffer for a long time, just as fat hating people with power like him make the zaftig suffer for a long time.”  She laughed in affirmation.  Did I hear murmurs of, “You tell ‘im,” or was it just my imagination?

The pilot loudly said, “Okay!  Okay!  I’m sorry.”  He said it in a way that made me think he just wanted me to shut up but I said, “I accept your apology.”

I turned to a chubby African American female flight attendant (I am a fat African American woman too.) who had overhead the entire conversation.  She was beaming with what seemed like relief and thanks.  I raised my book to her in a silent gesture of the famous shout out, “This is for all the fat girls (and guys),” as the 1998 Emmy Winning Actress Cameron Manheim said when she accepted the award for her work on The Practice.

Instead of leaving the plane ahead of me, the tall pilot scurried forward to an emptied row ahead of us, stooped into it to let me pass while he starred directly into my eyes.  Did he fear as I followed him up the aisle, I might hit him in the head with the book literally, after having done so figuratively?  Or was he doing me a favor to make up for his earlier disrespect?

This was certainly not the first time I had to defend against such a verbal assault.  But I think it was the first time I didn’t feel traumatized, frozen, and beat-up afterward.  Perhaps it was because part of me was amazed that the nasty, thin pilot was not directing his venom at plump me personally, but at some composite corpulent man with a seat belt extender, sitting at an emergency exit window.  But I’ve been amazed at Whites who have denigrated Black people while speaking to my obviously African American face, usually followed by the even more insidious, “Oh I don’t mean you…You’re not like other Black people.”  And I left those encounters shaken and in a state of post traumatic shock, no matter how well I may have stood up for myself and “my kind.”

Maybe because of a few days of scholarly and interpersonal support, acceptance, empowerment (Dare I say love?) I received from so many people at the PCA Fat Studies sessions that some part of me was strengthened and no longer stripped by such hatefulness?  I certainly hope so. And I hope to the friendly skies, this feeling is forever.

How watching Hoaders can help heal rather than just disgust

     A friend of mine said regarding my last post that she hates to watch Hoarders because it disturbs her and this was my response:
     It is probably the tapping (EFT, see the free info at http://www.eftuniverse.com/) I do that helps to heal in me what is disturbing in the (Hoarders) program.  When I see some adults whose parents are obviously acting out their on mental health problems and behaving or speaking in an unloving manner to their children who are just trying to help them...just trying to love them and be loved -- that disturbs me because that's the way both my parents treat/treated me most of the time.  The tapping helps to reprogram my brain regarding that "tape" or trauma and helps to heal me a little.
     When I saw an episode where a hoarder mother's childhood sexual abuse trauma was triggered by the clean up process I tapped because I am a survivor of that kind of abuse and doing my milder/smaller clean ups trigger a milder form of the same.  The same mother spent a lot of time on the 2-day program assisted clean up doing the boys rooms but refused to do the girls' even when the therapist on the scene tried to get the mom to so so and had the older girl ask herself.  Tapping to that helped to heal me from the many times my parents did kind things for my abusive brother just because he was the male child and neither of my parents ever though I, as a girl, deserved those kindnesses, privileges, assistance.

Hoarders -- the A&E Series You Can't Get Enough Of!

Hoarders Series Review

 I watched the Season 1 discs twice.  I only got to see one of the season two discs because the other is missing from my DVD by mail service.  I feel I am somehow helped and healed by this series.  I am an Emotional Freedom Technique Practitioner and I tap all the time while watching these gripping stories.  Watching them also helps me have that extra motivation to get up and wash the dishes before bed no matter how tired I am.  But for the grace of God go I ;-).  Highly recommend for all those with trauma in their early lives who sometimes find themselves drifting toward buying/keeping what they don't need because it makes them feel oddly secure. Deep. I would love to see MORE (of the series…NOT more stuff in my house!) on DVD vs. sitting at a computer viewing from the series website.

You can stream some episodes from A&E here: http://www.aetv.com/hoarders/video/?bcpid=740859023001&bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAEK2ejU~,Ai-tVL3JZg3H3EXylNuBzevaAq0JeRZZ&bclid=910141054001&bctid=901566044001

You can rent/buy  the 1^st season & half of the second from blockbuster here: http://www.blockbuster.com/browse/catalog/movieDetails/488293