FOOBS Fighting
Soul Sabbatical, a book by Yolanda Harper is out now, get your copy here!
At Harper Therapy, we use the acronym FOOBS – family of origin bullshit. It’s our colloquial term for another acronym, ACES – Adverse Childhood Experiences, which is a long-standing study about the effects of childhood trauma like physical and sexual abuse, emotional and physical neglect, parental substance abuse, mental health problems, divorce/separation, and incarceration, among other markers.
You might not think of yourself as having experienced trauma because most of us think of “Big T” trauma when we hear the word. But take a look at what “little t,” or relational trauma, looks like (and these often leave deeper wounds emotionally, mentally, relationally, and even physically than the others that come to mind when we think of trauma).
It’s growing up in an environment where we didn’t feel
Safe (physically and emotionally)
Heard
Seen and Understood
Soothed and Comforted
That we mattered.
Homes that didn’t offer
Nurture
Guidance
Healthy and Loving Limits
Relational Traumas that were
Intrusive and Disempowering, like physical and verbal abuse.
Intrusive and Falsely Empowering, like physical and emotional caretaking of a parent.
Abandoning and Disempowering, hello, my dear Scapegoats who are the Black Sheep of the family.
Abandoning and Falsely Empowering – a loving nod to my fellow Hero children, who carried the heavy expectations of making the family look good.
Over the years, I have worked with countless high-functioning, super successful women with these kinds of backgrounds. And their lives are unraveling.
Because they had never dealt with their FOOBS.
Because they didn’t realize it was a problem. (really, they did. We just don’t talk about it, and the shame of it made them think that they were the only ones. So they minimized it.)
Because they got really good at shoving it all down. And piling the hustle and perfectionism and performing and people-pleasing on top, hoping that it would make the rest of it
go away.
Or at least get smaller.
Because they were afraid to face it. Afraid of opening Pandora’s Box.
Without realizing that they were LIVING in Pandora’s Box.
But, since we don’t talk about it, we don’t realize how it’s impacting us. Or that there’s anything we can do about it.
And as I looked more closely at the things that fuel my exhaustion, burn out, and overwhelm, I look at my own FOOBS and how that fuels the half-living.
There’s an opportunity for each of us, when we’re brave enough to do so, to take a look at our own unexplored inner landscape. To recognize that, just like Luke Skywalker, Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter, Dortothy (from the Wizard of Oz), Bilbo Baggins, and countless others, we are on our own Hero’s Journey.
And we’re each incredibly stronger than we ever imagined.
Explore your own Hero’s Journey in Soul Sabbatical, available now on Amazon or at www.yolandaharper.com
