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Editor’s note: This story contains details of eating disorders and sexual abuse. If you are struggling with disordered eating contact the National Eating Disorder Awareness hotline by calling 800-931-2237 or by going to https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/.

This past weekend, seven speakers took the stage in the Underground at the Schine Student Center as a part of the TEDxSyracuseUniversity event series. In front of approximately 40 attendees, presenters spoke on topics including the trials and tribulations of their upbringing and the influence of game shows. Here’s a rundown on what each of the speakers talked about:

Nicki Cox – Women and Weight Training

In her TED Talk, Nicki Cox shed light on the tribulations of living with and recovering from an eating disorder. Cox, a senior at Syracuse University, lived with anorexia for three years as a teenager, spent a month in the hospital for it and is now five years into her recovery journey.

As a child, Cox saw fitness simply as playing and being active with other kids. Yet, as Cox emphasized, no one can escape the weight and influence of beauty standards: she began picking apart her body and comparing herself to other girls in class at just 7 years old.

“From the time we can read, we see magazine covers and ads about weight loss, how to lose 15 pounds in one month and less than 200-calorie meals,” Cox said. “We see which types of bodies are celebrated, and which ones are ridiculed.”

Cox’s idea of fitness shifted as she grew older, seeing exercise as the direct path to losing weight and that happiness would come with thinness. But the more she ran on the treadmill, snuck in secret workouts and restricted her eating, the sicker she got, she said. On the day her mom finally dragged her to the hospital, her resting heart rate was at a strikingly low 32 beats per minute.

Even as people around her expressed their concern, and even after she was hospitalized, Cox said she couldn’t admit to herself that she had a problem. She left the hospital with the same mindset she came in with and still prioritized being thin.

Eventually, Cox found comfort and healing in weightlifting — she said it saved her life. At first, she didn’t see results and quickly became frustrated. So, she made the brave choice to start eating more, to really fuel her body for the workout. Cox now funnels her energy into bettering her mental and physical health through lifting weights.

“Nowadays I still compete with myself, but ‘just a few more pounds’ means something entirely different,” she said. “I love seeing how strong I am, seeing how capable my body truly is, seeing just how many more pounds I can add onto that barbell.”

William Khabbaz – When There’s a Will, There’s a Way

As a first-generation college student, a fraternity brother and a gay Lebanese man, William Khabbaz described himself as a person with a lot of adjectives. Those identities, especially his recovery from his eating disorder, shaped who he is today.

Khabbaz said he first began to feel self-conscious about his body when he had to take his shirt off at the beach. Persisting into his teenage years, his struggle with his body image overtook his thoughts. On a class trip to Orlando, Khabbaz “took the leap of faith” and decided to make himself throw up after enjoying a hibachi meal.

“At that moment, I knew I was making a decision,” he said. “One that I didn’t know would affect my life for the next five years.”

Khabbaz said that about 42% of gay men are diagnosed with an eating disorder and that gay culture places particular emphasis on physical appearance. Khabbaz found that he not only wanted to be thin for himself, but for the men he wanted to attract. His drive to lose weight only increased when at age 16, he got a Grindr account.

His relationship with food was especially complicated, considering that in Arab culture, “one of the most disrespectful things a person can do is not eat their mother’s cooking,” Khabbaz said. So he ate his mom’s food, but always ran to the bathroom afterward.

Khabbaz knew he needed to make a change when his father asked him to take him to the hospital amidst his battle with pancreatic cancer. Khabbaz was stunned to see his father, who had been in chemotherapy, at the same weight he was.

“It’s never going to be something I can just wake up and fix,” Khabbaz said. “It’s been a long battle that seems to just never end, but the moment of peace I have when I look in the mirror is something I can never take for granted.”

Danny Khan | Design Editor

Geena Matuson – Reject the Disconnect

Characterizing her childhood as “ping-ponging between abusive households,” Geena Matuson turned to social media as a safe space to be herself. On Myspace, Matuson ran a group about hair and style that attracted 15,000 members also passionate about the subject.

But when the Myspace groups disappeared overnight, Matuson’s safe space diminished. When she went to art school, Matuson stayed true to herself and stuck up for what she thought was right — she reported unwarranted sexual attention from a professor and voiced concern for accessibility on campus for people with disabilities.

Yet, compared to the community of support on her Myspace page, being herself wasn’t as well received at school. Matuson even said one student tried to get her expelled.

“My feelings were used against me,” she said. “Because of the trauma I had suffered in the silent system, I no longer had the credibility to speak about the system.”

As a result, she then told the story and crafted the image that others wanted to see, hiding her feelings and just making herself appear better. Her once safe space of social media became a weapon against addressing her own needs and being her authentic self.

Because we are often ingenuine on various social media platforms, Matuson said, we usually feel disconnected from others. But, it’s not the tool — it’s how you use it.

We can “reject the disconnect” by sharing our stories, especially the moments that are most meaningful to us, and being true to ourselves. When we make that choice to accept ourselves, we can find the people who are like us. Acceptance is the key to connection, Matuson said, and we’ve had these tools inside of us this whole time.

“I gave myself permission to be transparent without shame, and now I’m building my own community of people who’ve accepted me because I’ve accepted me.”

Bob Boden – What Game Shows Teach You About Life

When Bob Boden was little, his mom took him to a taping of “Password.” In awe of seeing the show in color as opposed to his black-and-white TV, Boden was captivated, and thus began his love affair with game shows.

Whether we realize it or not, game shows have shaped American culture, and by extension, our lives, Boden said. The simplicity of competing for a prize can be compared to some faculties of life; Boden presented five things that game shows can teach us.

To offset each list item, Boden pressed a plastic white button that made the same noise as the “Family Feud” buzzer.

The first is to do your homework. While we might reduce “Jeopardy!” to winning money for answering a few trivia questions, Boden assured that preparation to appear on that show typically includes memorizing an encyclopedia, thousands of articles and various lists of statistics from the internet. So, Boden asked, what’s the lesson here?

“Before you take on any challenge, study the rules, expectations, the people involved and how you would achieve your dream scenario,” Boden said. “Success is hardly ever an accident — preparation holds the key.”

From the classic “Family Feud,” we can learn to be a team player. The next lesson is to “suck it up” — whether the disappointment is selecting a Zonk prize or something larger in our lives, we’re better off when we can look and move past our failures.

The fourth lesson is to focus on outcomes; we should think strategically, plan ahead and do our best to avoid traps. A prime example again comes from “Family Feud” — electing “pass” or “play” requires quick, critical thought into what would be best for the situation. The final lesson, Boden said, is to enjoy the ride.

“Play hard, play smart, and play fair,” he said. “And if you do, you’ll most likely make it to the bonus round. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll win the grand prize.”

Danny Khan | Design Editor

Shari Alyse – The Great Escape: The Power in Being Wrong

As Shari Alyse drove back from Starbucks at the beginning of the pandemic, she became overwhelmed with panic, knowing that people were all around her. But then a wave of calm washed over her, and as odd as it was to hear her own voice using these words, Alyse said, “Thank God for my trauma.”

Alyse was a victim of sexual abuse in her childhood, and unsurprisingly this shifted her whole perspective on life. She described her trauma as four walls that boxed her in — the four walls, Alyse said, were shame, guilt, fear and mistrust.

“Nobody cared for me. I wasn’t important enough to protect,” Alyse said. “Nobody saw me, it was my fault. The world out there wasn’t safe.”

Because she experienced trauma so young, Alyse only knew what it was like to feel all those negative emotions; she didn’t know she could choose a different lens in which to view the world. Alyse realized that she wasn’t sentenced to living this way. And from there, a metaphorical window opened up from the four walls that confined her.

Even so, she spent years afraid to leave her comfort zone and change her mindset. But when she finally chose to take the leap of faith — jumping from the opening in those four walls to a world of possibilities — the rewards were everything.

“You might be wondering, what changed for me? Well, my circumstances didn’t,” Alyse said.
“But the way I looked at them did, and then everything changed. My imperfections became the most beautiful parts of me.”

To all those in need of a change in perspective, Alyse said the first step is to recognize that your beliefs no longer serve you, and secondly, to question if they are even your beliefs, as opposed to beliefs from an influential figure in your life. We should also be willing to think one new thought, even if we don’t believe in it, to break out of a certain way of thinking.

Lastly, we must take responsibility and accountability for our own lives. Instead of blaming people or circumstances for our mindset, we should look within ourselves and regain control of our lives, she said.

“My room is now decorated with four new walls — self-compassion, self-trust, hope, and I leave the last one blank for growth, however it wants to appear,” Alyse said.

Krystol Austin – Schizophrenic Architecture

When Krystol Austin was a child living in Jamaica, her family lived in a converted garage. She would often complain to her mother about how cramped and hot the “insufferable” space was, how there was no natural light and little to no insulation. Her mother eventually told her, instead of complaining, to find a way to reduce the heat in the space. This is where Austin’s passion for architecture began.

As she learned more and more about architecture, Austin realized just how mentally draining the areas typically assigned to lower-income families are. She said the connections between buildings, poorness, density and design were just too strong. When her mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Austin wondered, were the inequities of architecture to blame?

“It’s been well documented since the 1900s that urbanism is at the locus of the schizophrenic epidemic. To many, this provides evidence that cities are universally bad for our mental health,” Austin said. “The effect of architecture and urbanity on our human psyche is often casually overlooked as causal factors, as opposed to the genesis of it.”

Seeing her mother live with antipsychotic medication’s side effects, Austin wondered if there was a more natural way to improve schizophrenic symptoms. Austin proposed reconnecting with nature through strategic architecture to combat the growing mental health crisis tied to city living, as a study showed significant increases of dopamine just from spending time outside.

After examining a bridge in India, made naturally and entirely of tree roots, Austin wondered how bamboo, a widely honored resource in Jamaica, could have a similar use. She offered the concept of a dynamic structure of bamboo that could be bent or molded as it continues to grow, with the purpose of psychosocial rehabilitation.

“We need to build cities that have a greater potential to act like nature,” Austin said. “We need to transform the architectonics of forest therapy to building design.”

Ava Notkin – The New Social Currency & Its Effect on our Mental Health

After going viral as theflowerpoweress on TikTok, Ava Notkin said she noticed she was feeling more depressed. As she relied on TikTok as a job and gained her popularity in the midst of the pandemic, Notkin felt more isolated than ever.

Because she uses her platform to support women and educate others on topics she’s passionate about, people often turn to Notkin as a friend or confidant, she said. In taking such an active role in social media and amassing a following of over 300,000, she pondered what her impact is or could be.

“There was one question that haunted me — was I a part of the problem, or the solution? Or, frighteningly, both?” Notkin said.

Notkin said that social media, once regarded as a safe space in earlier years, has become a place of conformity that doesn’t really celebrate differences and therefore prevents real friendship. Especially with the rise of cancel culture, people are afraid to truly speak their minds.

Yet, with all the negativity surrounding social media, we keep coming back — this is because of the infamous algorithm, Notkin said. Social media algorithms are based on dopamine responses. Dopamine rewards us for doing things that benefit us, and it encourages us to repeat it. This creates a loop, an addiction of sorts, that keeps users clinging to social media for hours, because unlike other dopamine stimuli, social media has an unlimited supply of content.

Realizing the algorithm had gotten the better of her, Notkin tried a “dopamine detox” where she stayed off social media for a day. This period turned into a week, then a month, because Notkin felt more passion for everyday activities, like cooking a meal or going on walks, than the typical scrolling on TikTok.

Even still, Notkin had a responsibility as a content creator, so she couldn’t entirely cut out social media from her life. Instead, she made conscious choices to be a reliable source to her followers — she researches everything she includes in her videos, doesn’t speak on topics she’s unfamiliar with and treats herself with kindness so that younger users know to do the same.

“I can sleep soundly at night knowing that maybe I made at least one person feel a bit less alone, or a bit more empowered,” Notkin said.

Published on April 11, 2022 at 12:30 am