TAMMY KAY CHOW
Sacred Attachment Guide

I spent a third of my life riding the highs and lows of extreme depression, bulimia, body dysmorphia, low self-worth, sexual trauma, and suicidal ideation. I confidently assume that I could have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, ADD, and borderline personality disorder. 

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However, I was never "diagnosed" with anything because I was raised in a Chinese family where mental health was never really discussed. I never made it into a therapist's office in my adolescence.

My dad was an alcoholic, and I was told that he was destined to be an alcoholic forever. And that was that. 

I had no language to explain the cocktail of emotions I experienced in my teens as a result of my dad's alcoholism - the sneaking around, lying, explosive arguments with my mom, gaslighting, depression, and rage. All of this mixed with the loving, funny, child-like spirit that he was when he was sober.

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I didn't have the knowledge to make connections between my family dynamics and my own behaviors, blaming myself for being a complete failure of a person. 

When I moved to New York for college, my concoction of drugs, alcohol, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, promiscuity and Vyvanse were my escape from the emotions that I had yet to process.

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I went through many tumultuous relationships, and used my body sexually as a means to receive the "love" that I craved so badly. But the deep feeling of emptiness that I'd always felt only magnified, while re-triggering sexual trauma I experienced throughout my early adulthood.

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I was exhausted living in the prison of my restrictive eating disorder, but my stomach would not hold food down and extended to three times its normal size for months at a time. Any doctor I went to told me that this bloating was “normal.”

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