Jodi Strock
“What would you do if you walked into a castle and suddenly a dragon popped out and wanted to eat you?”
I was in first grade, pausing from a game of tag on the playground. Some classmates and I were eagerly discussing this very question. Some kids said they would run. I remember thinking that was pointless. Why would I want to anger him by running away? A big dragon would easily catch me, blow fire on me, and burn me. Other kids said they would fight and kill the dragon. I thought that this was grandiose. How could a small child kill a big, fiery dragon? I distinctly remember thinking I would help the dragon find other food. I would talk to him. I would become his friend so that he would not want to eat me.
In the Dragon’s Den
It was Christmas break and some girlfriends and I went to a dive bar. I was the sober driver that night. Not only was I underage but I was the only one too afraid to attempt using a fake ID. As we entered the dive, I spotted my dragon; only I did not know it. He was incredibly tall, strong, and attractive. My friends and I joked about who would have the courage to approach him. I was just young enough to confuse an ego challenge with confidence. So, I gathered up my sass and walked right over to him.
He was friendly and invited me and my girlfriends back to his dorm room.
We arrived at his small, one-person dorm. I had to use the bathroom and, because it was down the hall, he insisted on walking me to it. I was flattered. He seemed to want to steal a moment alone with me, though I felt some alarm when I had to ask him to leave the bathroom to give me privacy.
As I emerged from the bathroom, I felt a twinge of uncertainty when he suddenly kissed me. Then I thought, Wow, a really attractive guy is kissing me. This can’t be so bad. Another red flag went up when he started moving me back toward the bathroom door with the pressure of his body against mine. He gently pushed the bathroom door back open and guided our kissing bodies through it.
I’m not sure what prompted me, but I stopped him to tell him that I would not have sex with him. He said “okay” and kept kissing me. Something didn’t seem quite right. All at once, he pinned my hands behind my back and hoisted my body onto the counter. The next thing I remember was watching my body get raped, almost like a ghost floating in the upper right hand corner of the bathroom.
Floating above the body is a commonly reported trauma response. It is called disassociating and is a form of the freeze response we undergo as mammals when fight or flight are not a viable option. As a licensed professional and as a result of my own therapy for years, I now have a better understanding of the various responses my body and mind underwent that night. I now understand that those kids on the playground who said they would either run from or fight against the dragon were responding with their fight or flight response. Never did it occur to our innocent, young minds that we could be so ridden with terror that our body would instinctually freeze and our minds would wisely remove our consciousness from the situation. A true testament to how incredible our bodies and minds are.
When he finished with me, I looked at him and whispered, “But I said no.” His response terrified me to the core. He said that if I told anyone that this was rape, he would find me and my family and kill us. In an instant of panic I reassured him that I wouldn’t tell anyone. I think I even told him I enjoyed it. I went on to ask him all about his family, his past relationships, and childhood. We spent about thirty minutes in the bathroom with him telling me all about how his last girlfriend broke his heart.
As he went on about the intimate details of his family and past relationships, I felt my fear wane. I started to breathe again. I started to feel safe. “The dragon isn’t going to kill me if I am his friend.”
Dr. Shelley E. Taylor developed the “tend and befriend” theoretical model resulting from her research at UCLA.10 She found that some animals, primarily female, engage in this behavior as a response to threat. When I first read about this theory, it was a good ten years after I had been raped. However, I immediately felt a sense of ease and relief. It was the first time I was able to understand and release some of the guilt I felt about being so nice to my rapist, moments after he violated me. As a clinician, I have seen this same pattern played out in various stories told to me by clients who have endured rape and other traumas.
Before I came to this understanding I was stuck with this very scary, life-changing thing that happened to me. As an athlete, head of my university’s group fitness department, and a sports medicine major, it’s no surprise that I turned to exercise to cope. Running myself to exhaustion, lifting weights and then teaching group exercise classes, followed by playing basketball seemed to be the only way I could escape the anxiety, fear, guilt, and anger I was holding deep in my body.
It started as a desire to become stronger and faster in hopes I could keep myself safe. However, exercise quickly became an ample excuse to isolate myself from my friends. If I had to get up early to run or teach an aerobics class, nobody really questioned why I didn’t want to go out to parties and bars anymore. The truth was that every time I went to a frat party or out to a bar I became overwhelmed with anxiety. I looked at every single man as a potential threat. Finding joy became impossible. Exercise was one of the only ways I knew how to release this tension. This, mixed with a long history of an eating disorder, body image issues, and struggles with my self-confidence became life-threatening. In my new identity as a personal trainer, fitness instructor, and top student, it became easy to block out that the rape even happened. I remember even thinking, Wow! I’m really doing an amazing job of not going into my old eating disorder patterns. I must be handling this rape well. I soon realized, however, that what seemed like a healthier coping skill on the surface was, in fact, exercise bulimia.
I sought “perfection” my entire life. I wanted to be seen as a “fun” girl, while still being able to surprise and delight people with my intelligence and top grades. I wanted to be thin but be seen drinking beer and eating whatever I wanted. I wanted people to see me as a joyful person but know there is a depth to me that could awe them. And, in my mind, all of this came down to what I looked like. I felt so very empty all the time and it seemed that whatever people wanted me to be is what I would fill myself up with for that moment, as an attempt to become their vision of perfection. Thin was the baseline measure of this “perfect girl” I had constructed in my mind thanks to a variety of influences.
When I was six years old, I heard a grown-up say that “metabolism” was something that equated with how much food one could or should eat. In my case, I was told I shouldn’t eat as many Oreos as my brother because his was faster than mine. From that day until rehab sixteen years later, I stopped eating Oreos. But Oreos were just the beginning of a long line of foods that fell into the “do not eat” category.
And then, one day in high school I collapsed. When my parents took me to the hospital, they put IVs in my arm to give my body the nourishment it desperately needed. I remember being so angry inside! They are undoing all of my hard work, I thought. However angry I felt on the inside, I smiled politely and left the hospital. The next days I brutally punished myself through restriction in an attempt to get back to the place I was before they “undid” all my hard work with those IVs.
I do not know how the rape would have impacted me if all of my negative and dysfunctional body image issues had not processed it. Feeling connected to my body was a foreign concept from a very young age. Being raped simply deepened the groove that was already set in place. People often ask how anyone can starve themselves. For me, I was so disconnected from my body that I simply didn’t notice anymore. When discomfort would arise, I would restrict a little more, smile a little harder, and try my best to be a “good girl.”
The Many Paths to Healing
I now know, as a licensed marriage and family therapist and rape and eating disorder survivor, that trauma and recovery have their own timeline when it comes to processing and healing. Just because I went to therapy and wanted to deal with the issues right away didn’t mean that was the way it happened.
It would be nice to say that I went to a yoga class and all of a sudden the sky opened up and everything turned out wonderful. That is not how it happened for me. And, I don’t really believe that is the way it happens for most of us.
Here is what did happen …
About two months after I was raped, a girl from one of my sports medicine classes approached me and told me she was a yoga instructor. She was interested in teaching yoga for our campus fitness department. Since I was in charge of the department, she asked if she could audition for me. This was my first experience with yoga. It was quite a difference from my usual high-intensity experience that took place in that aerobics room. Part of me absolutely hated it. It felt unbearable to be in my body. I couldn’t wait for the end. Time seemed to be moving so slow in comparison to my racing mind. I must have looked at the clock 100 times in that hour. Yet, as she guided me into savasana, I found a place of peace that I had not experienced since I was a little girl when my mom tucked me into bed. I walked away from that class confused. I hired her and began a semi-regular practice.
A year after I graduated college, approximately three years after my first yoga class, I checked myself into rehab for my eating disorder. It was here that I started gaining a deeper understanding of the trauma I endured from the rape. I also started to look more honestly at my dependency on the approval of everyone outside of myself.
At the inpatient program, I was put on exercise restriction for the first two weeks. The very first day of no exercise I remember sitting on a bench in the common area feeling more discomfort than I had ever felt in my life. I felt as if my muscles were frozen sticks of butter slowly melting away in the heat of the fear in my body. I was so uncomfortable.
Over time, I gained weight, trust, and the privilege to move my body again. The upside of wanting to be seen as perfect is that it provided quite a double bind between my eating disorder’s desire to be thin at all costs and my ego’s desire to have the staff at the rehab think I was the “best patient ever.” Ego worked in my favor here. I started to redefine my definition of desirable. Desirable had now come to mean being more balanced and nourishing my body. While this definition was based on the standards of the treatment center, it was the beginning of what I slowly internalized over the years.
As exercise restriction was lifted, I took the movement class that the rehab offered. The class was a dance and yoga class. This was the first time I experienced yoga as empowering. It felt good to have a space where I could take care of myself and exercise in a way that was gentle and nurturing (instead of a way to manipulate my appearance).
When I got released from the treatment center, I went back to South Carolina, where I had moved after college, and started exploring yoga studios in the area. To my surprise, the type of yoga I found was full of sweaty people (and different from the yoga I was allowed to practice in treatment). The closest studio to my house was an Ashtanga studio. The compulsive exerciser in me was ecstatic to find something that was called yoga and could physically exhaust me. It felt safe and I felt strong.
I did feel a twinge of concern. What if such a high intensity class could become a new way for me to engage in my old, addictive patterns? However, I decided not to worry too much about the conflicting views in my mind and started showing up regularly to class. The idea of finding a discipline that allowed me to tune into my body both terrified and appealed to me.
In the months that followed, I noticed that I was starting to cultivate an interest in caring for my body. This was a concept that had previously been so foreign to me. Further, I was beginning to have faith that if I could continue to care for myself I had a lot to offer others.
A year later, I moved out to Los Angeles to pursue a master’s degree in psychology. I was both overwhelmed and overjoyed to find that there was no shortage of yoga studios. I found a studio that became my home and my community. My love for yoga grew, as did my love for my community. This studio was a safe place where I could quietly battle my inner struggles. Many days (perhaps, most) were still filled with self-judgment, insecurity, and tears in front of the mirror. I wondered if I would ever “get better.” When would I love myself, accept what I saw in the mirror, and not be terrified to breathe into my belly? Despite being tormented with a competitive desire to be “the best yogi in class,” I was committed to fostering the voice that was growing inside of me that reminded me this is not about competition. This new voice was hardly loud enough to call a whisper, but it was reserving space for the self-acceptance that I did not yet embody.
I continued to show up on my mat. Slowly, I noticed that when asked to lift all ten of my toes or soften my fingertips, I could feel it. I could actually feel my body. I was in my body. And best of all, it was a safe place to be. And for that moment, I enjoyed it. I found that I started to prefer a yoga class over a run. My interest was peaked by a quiet knowing that the greatest challenge was not manipulating my body into any inversion, arm balance, or pretzel pose but to sit with the discomfort. I started to notice my inner experience range from anger that I wasn’t stronger to shame that I may have to come out of the pose before others to frustration that I cared about any of that and so on.
I was amazed at how much the mat was a microcosm for life. There were days I would push myself too hard and days I would get injured. I would show up some days tired. Some days, I would show up and surprise myself with the courage I had to try something new. Other days, I would attempt what was easy the day prior, only to find that I was not able to do it this day. It was through these very literal and physical experiences on my mat that I started to practice how I handled such events outside of the yoga studio.
Befriending the Dragons Within
I got better at being honest with myself. Part of being honest was admitting I was tired. Resting in child’s pose stirred a deep discomfort. Yoga gave me a place to practice being with discomfort in a safe way. The combination of watching how my mind would avoid discomfort and the reminder to return to the discomfort with kindness was a practice that my soul desperately needed and devoured. As my ability to be with discomfort increased, my reactivity seemed to decrease. What I could physically do in a yoga class became far less important than how I was able to care for myself.
Through yoga, meditation, and therapy, I gained an understanding that the freezing, disassociating, and tending and befriending I underwent the night I was raped is proof that I can afford to trust my body/mind/self deeply. Let me explain: it is those responses that kept me safe. There is a wisdom and will to survive that reaches beyond our consciousness. I am grateful to that part of my being. This is one of the many ways in which I have come to have a deeper trust and respect for my body and mind. It is as if there is a wise being inside us all that has our best interest in mind and works toward that even when our conscious mind is not aware. I feel a deep peace when I remember that this is always here inside of me.
In recent years, my practice has been cultivating an internal friendliness that allows a turning toward my insecurities, fears, and self-rejection. I spent so long thinking that I had to get over these parts of myself to find peace. However, in truth, the deepest healing began when I welcomed the challenged parts of myself in. I work to tend and befriend the dragons within.
And in doing so, I learn to love my gifts and care for my shadows.
There was no one yoga class, one dharma talk, one teacher, one spiritual practice, or therapist that I credit for the love I have for myself today. It was the accumulation of all my experiences—the complete journey. Through rehab and therapy, I first learned to recognize and tolerate discomfort. Through yoga and meditation, I learned to practice tolerance and grow it into sitting with discomfort. Once I learned to sit with discomfort, I learned how to be compassionate and kind to myself when I experience it. And through the process of it all I have come to make peace with my body and love myself, fully and completely.
Compassion, humility, and acceptance is where my practice lies these days. Taking the yogic path in my recovery has helped me love and trust my body, transform my anger, and nurture myself. This has resulted in me being a better mama, partner, friend, sister, daughter, and therapist. I think it is important to say that meditation, therapy, and yoga do not equate to easy life. In fact, there are moments when my newfound awareness has left me sitting with pain and discomfort that is gut-wrenching. In the past, I would nip this discomfort in the bud by obsessively exercising or restricting my food. Yoga and meditation provide a space for me to practice the important art of self-care. While I no longer struggle with an eating disorder and I enjoy being in my body, there are many other life issues I continue to need this practice for. As it turns out, self-care is never a bad idea.
Yoga was the first space and continues to be the space I return to practice all the things I need to in order for this healing, forgiveness, compassion, and deep change to prosper and evolve. As a result, I am able to carry these gifts out into the world every day.
Jodi is a licensed marriage and family therapist working with individuals, couples, and families. She has been trained in the Humanistic Spirituality approach and has a private practice in West Los Angeles. Her background as a family systems therapist incorporates many modalities, including mindfulness, meditation, and inquiry. Her approach combines traditional forms of psychotherapy with Buddhist teachings and yoga practices as well. Author photo by Justin Strock.
10. Shelley E. Taylor, Laura Cousino Klein, Brian P. Lewis, Tara L. Gruenewald, Regan A. R. Gurung, and John A. Updegraff, “Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, Not Fight-or-Flight,” Psychological Review, vol. 107, no. 3 (2000): 411–429.