Issue # 9

The voice that's doing the most damage isn't your aunt's

Hi Reader,

This week on Substack I wrote about Maya — a woman seven months into her tirzepatide journey who lost forty-one pounds and spent a holiday dinner eating less than she already had been eating, because her aunt made a comment loud enough for the whole table to hear.

Maybe you recognized her immediately. Maybe you've been Maya at a table, or in a break room, or in a comment section, or in a doctor's office where the reaction to your medication choice was something you had to absorb quietly and carry home alone.

The external stigma around GLP-1s is real, and it is unkind, and it deserves to be named plainly. But there's something I want to say here, in this space, that I kept shorter in the essay.

The voice doing the most damage usually isn't your aunt's.

It's yours.

Not because you're unkind to yourself by nature. Because you've been handed decades of messaging about what weight means about a woman — about her discipline, her worth, her seriousness as a person who manages her health — and that messaging doesn't disappear when the medication arrives. It goes quiet on the surface and keeps running underneath. It shows up as the apology you attach to your own progress. The caveat before you accept a compliment. The whisper that says you wouldn't have needed the drug if you'd just been more committed.

That whisper is not a fact. It is a message that was installed a long time ago, by a culture that never had your wellbeing in mind when it decided what your body meant about you.

You are allowed to uninstall it.

A Path Forward

This week, I want you to do something specific with the "Who Gets a Vote" framework from the article — not just think about it, but write it down.

Take a piece of paper or open a notes app and draw three columns.

Label the first column: Cares about me AND understands this experience. Label the second: Cares about me but doesn't really understand. Label the third: Neither.

Now think about the last few weeks — the comments you received, the opinions you absorbed, the voices that are still living rent-free in your head. Write each one in the column where it belongs.

Then look at the third column. Those voices have been shaping how you feel about yourself. They were never supposed to have that kind of influence. You gave it to them — not because you were naive, but because no one ever told you that you could take it back.

You can take it back.

The last step: at the bottom of the page, write this sentence and finish it honestly.

My own experience of this journey tells me ______.

That sentence belongs in the first column too. In fact, it belongs at the top of it.

With you in this,

Dr. Jen

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Want to go deeper?

This newsletter gives you something to do. My Substack gives you the why behind it — the psychology, the research, the reason what you're experiencing makes complete sense even when it doesn't feel that way.

If you want the fuller picture, you can find me at After the Noise on Substack.

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This newsletter is for educational purposes only. Nothing here constitutes medical or psychological advice, and reading it does not establish a professional relationship between us. If you're finding that you'd benefit from more personalized support, I encourage you to reach out to a licensed mental health professional. You deserve personalized care from someone who can truly know your situation.