It’s unconscious

A few weeks ago I was in a group presenting some of my material from my book-in-progress. I am always a bit anxious when I talk about it with new people. This time, as has proven to be the case every time so far, rather than being at all hostile or critical about my ideas about fat, the group was interested, curious and supportive. In the portion I presented I shared my experience being a fat person. I talked about the assumption that fat people are compulsive eaters and said that I personally had no such history. One of the members of the group asked me if I were going to write about how and what I do eat as she was curious, especially in light of saying I am not and haven’t been a compulsive eater.  I immediately recognized the unconscious assumption that she was making — that as a fat person, I must eat differently from the way she eats or I would be slender like she is. I recognized it as unconscious as she was truly curious and overall not hostile to what I was saying. She was simply echoing the commonly held view that in some way, probably by what and how much we eat, fat people must be very different from slender people. 
Source: Jung At Heart - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs