Obesity Surgery: Stories Of Altered Lives

Chapter 4 Deconstructing the Self Who Was I and Who Am I Becoming?

chapter 4 Deconstructing the Self Who Was I and Who Am I Becoming? What did I become because of the obesity? And now what can I become? —Penelope You get wheeled into the operating room, and the surgeon’s scalpel dramatically alters your gastrointestinal system so that when you exit, it is physically impossible to eat anywhere near the amounts you ate before. You simply get violently ill if you try. The result is rapid weight loss. Great! Fabulous! The ultimate fantasy! At least for a while. But as Mona so aptly put it, “When the doc does this surgery, he doesn’t do a lobotomy—he changes your body, not your brain.” Obesity surgery is most definitely not brain surgery. Your personhood remains untouched by that scalpel, at least initially. The way you define yourself, your self-concept, your hopes, your insecurities, your strengths, your weaknesses, the mental and emotional effects of having been obese for a lifetime—none of those things are excised or stapled or reduced during those few hours in the operating room. mona: Ninety percent of the fat is between your ears. It’s in your brain. I think that’s what I have to work on: changing the fat mentality. I mean, I’m a size 10 and I still think I’m fat, and that’s insane. As you lose the weight, your mind has to process the experience of your new body. Readjusting to a new body means readjusting to a different way of living and to a multitude of changes in the way the world reacts to you. For 131 132 O B E S I T Y S U R G E R Y this reason, obesity surgery is often followed by much self-reflection and a reevaluation of both past and future in regards to self-concept. This surgery is not like getting a polyp excised or a mole removed. Those surgeries don’t make us wonder what we became, who we really are, and who we want to be. Obesity surgery radically changes us on a dimension that others are both highly conscious of and judgmental about—the way we look. It seems inevitable that that change would shine a spotlight on questions of self. Beauty may be only skin deep, but tell that to our interviewees. They’ll tell you that the effects of obesity and then weight loss went far deeper than that. The effects went down to their very cores—to the essence of their self-definitions. In the past couple of chapters, we focused on the dramatically different way that both strangers and intimates related to our interviewees. There seems little doubt that many relationships experienced significant adjustments . However, the most significant psychological impact of the surgery was on the individual’s construction of self—their self-concept. The word construction here is important because part of what the surgery brings to light is that our self-concept is something we, in part, build. It is not exclusively an essential aspect of who we “are”; self is also a lifelong work in progress shaped by what happens to us and how we interpret it. Research shows that certain basic aspects of our personalities may be biologically determined.1 Characteristics such as shyness or extraversion or emotional reactivity are witnessed in infants very early on, and these characteristics seem to be personality traits that are fairly constant over time. Some characteristics, such as reactivity, which is essentially high emotional sensitivity, can be evidenced in babies only days old. Research that follows people over many years (longitudinal) indicates that these characteristics persist and are, to some extent, surprisingly unaffected by parenting and other environmental influences. So it seems pretty clear that we may be born with a tendency toward some of the broadly drawn lines of our personalities . Shy children are more likely to grow up to be socially anxious adults than children who are not shy. However, the specifics of a person’s life also affect biology. Whether a child is born with a predisposition to shyness or to extraversion, both of these traits are going to be impacted to some extent by environmental influences. So an emotionally reactive child reared in a secure, calm, and loving environment is going to have this emotional reactivity attenuated in adulthood. This kind of environment will calm that person down. On the other hand, if the...