From Estefanía Vanegas Pessoa, an advice column for anyone who’s ever thought, Am I the only one feeling this way?
.
‘What Advice Do You Have for Someone Struggling With an Eating Disorder?
Hello Queen Tefi,
I work in an eating-disorder-treatment center for adolescents and adults and I truly, wholeheartedly love my job. The mental-health field is what I have wanted to work in for so long, and it feels like I finally found my home. So my question doesn’t really have anything to do with my career because, honestly, this shit is great. It’s this: As someone who struggled with an ED, and has gone through treatment as a teen, what advice or words of encouragement would you give my clients who are going through the same thing? Or just anyone in general going through this?
I can go on and on about my thoughts on how society puts such pressure on people to look a certain way and how families can truly be so harmful to each other, but I’ll save my TED Talk for another day.
Thank you, and all my love,
Mental Health Mama
Hi Mental Health Mama!
I am so honored to be asked this question. When I was in treatment, I struggled a lot with dysmorphia and trust. Learning I couldn’t trust myself with what I actually looked like tortured me. I still take body-type quizzes to this day; I would give anything to know what I look like. I ask my girlfriend all the time, “Do I look like her?” when we’re watching a movie or a show. “Is that what I look like in a bikini? In a dress? Should I wear dresses like that?”
What calmed me the most in treatment was evidence-based facts and statements — if feelings and thoughts couldn’t be trusted, science could. And learning about the brain from my counselors helped ease my shame. I think the thing that fucks with me the most about having an ED is remembering that my brain is constantly trying to appease me, and my brain picks up on patterns. When I used to smoke cigarettes (sorry, Mom) (sorry, everyone) (it was the 2000s!!!), I would always light up as soon as I pulled out of my driveway. So when I quit, the hardest part was getting past the driveway. Similarly, my brain is used to the negative self-talk the moment I look in the mirror, so the hardest part of leaving the house is looking at myself in a full-length mirror. It got so bad that I now do not own any full-length mirrors in my house, and I haven’t for more than a decade. I check my outfit in my window reflection at night. Seriously.
So that’s what I wish someone had told me about my brain: It loves patterns more than it loves me. My brain is not me, it’s just learning me all the time and trying to keep me “safe” in the only ways it knows how: the ways I taught it back when I was just trying to survive the fucking day. Back when I thought beauty meant “safety.”
The cruel irony is that the more I listened to the voice that told me I would only ever be loved if I looked perfect, that a thigh gap was something worth chasing, the more my brain accepted those thoughts as a kind of home because they were familiar. And the brain will choose the familiar over happiness every single time — but familiarity is not the same as safety.
The voice that says you are only worthy at a certain size is not your protector. It is just a very old, very loud pattern, like a box-spring mattress that pinches you in the rib when you toss and turn. You tell yourself, But I’ve had this mattress since I was a kid! But just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean it actually feels good.
So to anyone sitting in one of those treatment-center chairs right now, I want you to know: Your brain is not broken. It is doing exactly what brains do: Trying to keep you safe using the only map it was ever given. Your job, the hardest and most radical thing you will ever do, is to hand it a new one. And to the people who love you and are reading this: Your words are also patterns. Every time you tell someone they are enough, exactly as they are, you are rewriting something in them. You are building new roads.
After treatment, I learned that the voice I was hearing was not my own. I found that I was listening to the voice of a very small child, asking me to keep her safe, to let her express her anger before telling her she was rude and to shush, begging me to tell her everything was going to be okay and I would never ever leave her. Now, when I look at myself in the mirror and I hear that little voice tug at the hem of my dress, I tell it, I love you — trust me to keep you safe.
All my love and all my unlearned patterns,
Tefi Pessoa at 35
.
‘How Do I Build a Friend Group and Stop Living Every Second of My Life So Alone?’
Dear Tefi,
I’m Colombian, and grew up in Miami (305 till I die). I moved to New York City in 2018 but ended up moving back to Miami in 2020 because of COVID (I lost my job, etc.). I eventually returned to the city because I was lonely and bored in Miami — and because everyone there was married. Like, full-families and pastelitos–at–8 a.m. married. Here in New York, I got a solo apartment in the cutest neighborhood and started living the Carrie Bradshaw life … but I don’t actually want to be her. And I don’t have her friends.
I’ve struggled so much to make real, lasting friendships. I’ve texted, called, scheduled. I’ve practically begged people to get coffee with me. I’ve reached out to old friends (who are also now married and having kids too?), asked new friends to introduce me to people — and yet nothing sticks. We meet once and then poof. It fizzles. I go back into forgotten mode. Am I the problem? I’m also so single it hurts. But I’m trying to put a pause on dating and focus on building a full life I like!
I’m 30, and I know I need to be outside, mingling, socializing — but I’m so tired of showing up to places alone or practically uninvited. I’m sick of feeling like the extra. Help me shift this. How can I build the kind of friend group that makes me feel seen, rooted, wanted? How do I stop living every second of my life so alone?
—A Lonely Miami Mami
Dear Lonely Miami Mami,
305 TILL I DIE!!!!! Okay, here’s what I think is really important to name: Miami is its own kind of animal, where everyone is either getting married, having a baby, or opening a restaurant. It operates on a completely different timeline than cities like NYC, and that timeline moves fast and it moves in pairs.
The fact that you felt out of step means you noticed the current was pulling you somewhere you didn’t want to go, and you swam the other way! That’s brave, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. Also, you sound very fucking brave in general: You are putting yourself out there and doing the work, trying to make connections, and that’s more than most ever do. I usually get questions like “How do I ask someone to hang out with me?,” and you’re killlinggggg it.
I remember moving to NYC and also feeling relationship obsessed — or more love obsessed. Culturally, I think that’s very Latin, and characters like Carrie Bradshaw make us feel it only more intensely, right? Then there’s the fact that New York is one of the only places on earth where being 30 feels like 25 and being 40 feels like …. 25 too.
Back to Carrie Bradshaw: I have to point out that the show’s first season begins when she’s 35. Thirty-five!!! When I see a 22-year-old telling the internet she’s “in my Carrie era” I’m like, No? That era is 13 years away. And (!) Carrie was 35 and she was still a mess! So if you’re using her as a benchmark, at least know you’re ahead of schedule.
When I was 30, I was engaged to the wrong person and calling people my best friends whom I would not trust to watch my pastelito, let alone spend my Saturday night with. The women who are my BFFs now I met through the strangest, most unlikely chain of events that I never saw coming. There was no blueprint. There was just life happening to me, I guess.
You are not the problem!!! You are just not done yet. And New York City in particular gives you permission and more grace to still be in progress. Whenever I feel like I’m falling behind, I imagine I’m a YouTube video buffering. Let it load.
Yours in pastelitos and persistence,
Tefi 🤍
.
‘I Learned That My Fiancé Was Having An Affair Before We Met. Now I Don’t Know What to Do About Us.’
Hey Tefi,
I need your wisdom: I am/was engaged to my former supervisor. But we didn’t start dating until I left that job and we were both single, because I don’t fuck co-workers! I knew I wanted that man from the start. He was dependable, strong, kind, a good boss all around. Objectively, he is less attractive than me.
It was common knowledge at our previous workplace that he was in a long-term relationship. When we got together, he would naturally tell me about his past girlfriend. He also told me about how one of his friend’s girlfriends had a crush on him, but I didn’t think much of it. Flash-forward: He proposed within four months, he spoiled me and took care of me, and it was a dream. A year later, we had a pregnancy loss that shook both of us but also made us stronger together.
Then I find out that his past relationship was actually an affair with his friend’s wife. He lied to me about it over and over again until I asked him to pull up their text thread.
“I deleted them,” he said. “Well … they’re not deleted off of your MacBook,” I replied.
So I pull up his laptop and find an extensive history of their affair that only ended literally the day that I went on a date with him. I discovered that he waited and waited until she would leave her partner (his friend!), and she never did. It was an accumulation of lies and in turn, disgust, that hit me all at once. And yes, they continued to be friends after.
I snapped his MacBook in half, not before texting the other woman on his laptop to tell her that I knew. I made him call his friend and confess about the affair in front of me. I’ve ended the engagement.
He’d already persuaded me to quit my decent-paying job and focus on school. I stupidly believed him because I was (1) pregnant and (2) pursuing another career. He is paying all of our rent and bills. I don’t know what “we” are anymore, but I am navigating it while still mourning my pregnancy loss, mourning what our relationship once was, and continuing school.
It literally keeps me up at night that he had no self-esteem or self-respect whatsoever. The fact that the affair ended because I showed up makes me feel like the home-wrecker. I don’t want this man; they deserve each other.
I would love to know your thoughts about this situation. I am miserable but trying to make the best of it.
Love you, Tefi! You give me the strength to still unashamedly be a bad bitch, whether these men try to fuck with me or not.
— Heartbroken and Heated
Hi hi HH!!
I wish I could have recorded my face when I read the words “affair with his friend’s wife.” Oh my God.
My thoughts are this: You are not the home-wrecker, I think you’re his karma (so hot). You cannot wreck something that was already on fire when you arrived. He handed you a beautiful-looking house and forgot to mention it was built on someone else’s foundation. Ew.
So many women would not have ended it and would have tried to make it work because of the circumstances, but you ended the engagement. I think a little part of him thought that if he made you completely dependent on him and you found out about the affair or whatever else he’s ashamed of, you would stay (and not because you wanted to but because you had to. There’s another word for that; it’s prison).
Also, if it had worked out and you had had a child with him, would he have raised a child that also lacked self-esteem and self respect? My mom always tells me to raise a child with someone you’d want that child to be just like. He sounds like an energetic diarrhea shit.
Go finish school. Let him pay the bills while you do it. You didn’t lose a good man. You just found out sooner than most. You are divinely blessed and protected and petty. I love it.
Big hug,
T
Send your questions to asktefi@thecut.com (and read our submission terms here).
More From This Column
- ‘I’m Invisible in My Boyfriend’s Open Marriage. What Do I Do?’
- ‘He’s Emotionally Unavailable Right Now. Do I Walk Away?’
- ‘I’m Turning 30, and I Don’t Feel Ready. How Do I Get Over the Anxiety I Feel?’