November 27, 2024 • 18 mins
Couch Talks is the bonus episode of You Need Therapy where Kat answers questions that listeners send to kathryn@youneedtherapypodcast.com. This week, Kat is answering some questions about stressful parts of the holiday season. Question number one is about how to find a way to fairly split time between families, in laws, and people you love during the holidays. Question number 2 is about how to handle and prepare for harmful comments about food, body image, and weight during a season heavily influenced by food!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of Couch
Talks on You Need Therapy Podcast. My name is Kat
I am the host. If you are new, welcome. Couch
Talks is the special episode of You Need Therapy Podcasts
where I answer questions that you guys send in to
me and you can send those to me at Katherine
at you Need Therapy podcast dot com. And before we
(00:31):
get started, I like to remind everybody every week that
although this is a podcast where I answer your questions,
especially on couch Talks, and I'm a therapist sin it's
called You Need Therapy, that this podcast does not serve
as a replacement or a substitute for actual mental health services. However,
it's still allow of help and be helpful. So it
(00:52):
is the day before Thanksgiving. Happy Day before Thanksgiving. Also
Happy Thanksgiving, because I probably won't be talking to you
guys on Thanksgiving unless you save this episode to listen to.
In that case, Happy Thanksgiving. I'm sure there are a
wide range of feelings between all of you guys right now,
as the holidays are some people's like favorite time of year,
(01:13):
and there are some people's least favorite, and then there's
people that are in the middle and people that are
just basically neutral. And I have promised you, guys some
content around the holidays and family and stuff to do
and help cope with the times that might be tough
for the ones of you that kind of don't like
this time of year or even like it and just
(01:34):
notice some hard things about it. And so today Couch
Talks is dedicated to that. I am going to talk
about two different things today. And honestly, as I was
doing this, I was thinking this really would have been
more helpful like a month ago, so you could prepare
and make plans and kind of work on stuff. But
(01:55):
I am going to tell you, guys, better late than ever.
You have this episode for next year as well, So
let's get into it. Going through some of your questions
that you had specifically for the holiday season, there were
some themes that the questions were a little bit different,
but they kind of centered around the same kind of themes.
We are going to talk about two of those themes today.
(02:17):
One is about splitting time between families, and one is
about feeling safe around food and family members and just
people in general. Because you know, diet culture is the
holiday's best friend. You know, I feel like a lot
of things are diet culture's best friend because diet culture
just infiltrates everything. And we're going to talk about it.
So we're going to start with the family time question.
(02:40):
So a lot of the questions that you guys sent
in were, how do I find a way to split
time with in laws? How do I find a way
to do what I want on the holidays and not
feel guilty? How do I find a way to make
it fair when it comes to time with different family members?
And let's talk about that. And maybe you don't have
in laws, but you have divorced parents, or you have
(03:00):
multiple friend families, or you just have in general different
options in places that you want to be or you're
expected to be during the holidays. An easy solve for
this is switching holidays each year. That's not always possible,
but that's one way you can do it. You can
also when location allows spend a little bit of time
at each person's or groups of people's experience or home.
(03:24):
That's also not always possible, and there are so many
different circumstances. I don't really think it's that important or
helpful to give you ideas on how to split things
because I just think it could only apply to a
small margin of y'all. I could go on and on
and give you a million scenarios and plan them out,
but again, life is too nuanced for everybody to do that.
(03:45):
So what I think would be more important is to
help you think about how splitting these holidays should work.
What I want to do here is give you, guys,
some mantras. I'm going to give you some words of wisdom.
You can keep them in your front pocket, you can
keep them in the back pocket, you can keep them
in your hand. I don't care what you do with them.
I just want to give you these things that you
can come back to when you end up having those
(04:07):
moments of fear or anxiety, or like you're doing something wrong,
you can come back to these ideas. Because spoiler alert,
there is no perfect way to handle this kind of situation.
Number one, There's no way on earth I can perfectly
please everyone Like that is such a simple thing to
(04:28):
hear and such a hard thing to actually accept. No
matter how you slice it or dice it, there is
no way that you can perfectly please everyone. And so
if that is our goal, we're always going to be disappointed.
So I I want you to start with accepting or
attempting to accept this idea that there's no way on
earth I can perfectly please everyone. Number two, just because
(04:52):
someone is upset with me, it doesn't mean I did
anything wrong. And that is something that I think you
guys hear me say a lot, and it's something I'm
going to continue to say a lot. Just because someone's
upset with something that you did or a choice you made,
it doesn't mean that you made the wrong choice, that
you did something wrong. Number Three, I am allowed to
(05:13):
make decisions that make me happy. That's why I said earlier,
like all of this stuff should not negate you having
an experience that is joyful or fun or just midline enjoyable.
You are allowed to make decisions that make you happy.
That's okay. You combine that one with just because someone's
(05:33):
upset isn't mean you did something wrong, and you will
just be set up for some success. Here. When it
comes to families and when it comes to having multiple
groups you're trying to satisfy at the same time, the
deal is, no matter what you do, someone is going
to feel left out or like they didn't get what
they wanted or like somebody else got a better deal,
(05:57):
like that is just usually the case. It's really hard
to make everything fair because life just actually isn't fair
most of the time. And that's also a hard pill
to swallow. And often what we do in these moments.
I see this all the time, where it's like, if
we can't make anybody happy, then I'm just not going
to do anything, and that kind of sucks because then
everybody loses. Rather, what would it look like if we
(06:19):
entered these situations with the attitude of I'm going to
do the best I can to accommodate as many people
as I can, including myself, and we will all need
to make compromises for this to happen. This kind of
thing is not about winning. This thing is not about
picking sides, picking people that we like the most. This
(06:41):
is about accepting the rules of life. One hundred percent
of people cannot be one hundred percent satisfied all of
the time. It is impossible for that to be true
or the case, or whoever you want to say it.
So if we adapt this attitude of I'm going to
do the best I can, I might learn something and
(07:03):
want to do something differently next time, and I know
that people, including myself, might be disappointed in different areas.
That doesn't mean I'm doing something wrong. It doesn't mean
I'm being unkind. And not getting exactly what I want
or not giving somebody exactly what they want does not
take away the ability for us to have a good experience.
(07:23):
So I know this stuff is hard, and it really
is hard. Is because families always are changing, right, So
first you have your family, and then I don't know,
maybe you're a sibling gets married and they have multiple families,
and then other sibling gets married and they have multiple families,
and then maybe somebody gets divorced, and then there's multiple families,
and then so you are navigating your stuff, and then
(07:44):
you find a partner, and then you are navigating in
their family, and then all the different navigations of your family.
Things are always changing. You have kids, then your kids
grow up, and then you have to look at their schedules.
So it's hard and it's exhausting. And if we try
to figure out the per way to do everything, and
we try to make sure that other people avoid any
(08:06):
kind of feelings other than joy and happiness and contentment,
then we're going to probably end up in a disaster, right,
that's probably the worst way you could handle this. But
if we handle this with it's gonna be messy and sticky,
and I'm gonna figure it out and do the best
I can, and we're all gonna make compromises. And if
somebody's upset with me, that's okay. They can be upset
with me, and I can keep my feelings and they
(08:27):
can keep theirs. Then we might have a better way
of dealing with this. The other thing I want to
add right here before we move on to the next
thing is try your best not to mind read, not
to make assumptions based on our judgments. We do that naturally, right,
So we try to make sense of people's behavior. Our
(08:49):
brains just do that. And what happens is when we
try to make sense of other people's behavior, oftentimes we
tell ourselves a story that's very hurtful, and unless we
actually have the truth right we've got from that person,
the most helpful thing to do would be to just
take the information as fact and then put a period
with it. Let's say we're talking about your kids, and
(09:10):
your kids have different options. Let's say your kids chose
to have dinner with their partner's family, but they're going
to come spend the morning with you and have a brunch,
or they're giving you the option to do a Thanksgiving
dinner on the Saturday of the holiday weekend. And when
you receive that information, you think to yourself, well, it
(09:31):
always has to be that person's way, and they just
don't care about our feelings and they like that family
better and are whatever the assumptions are, those could be true,
but they oftentimes are not true. And so what might
be helpful is, oh, they're trying to make this work,
and I'm sure there's a lot of pieces to this
puzzle that we don't know. Boom, all right, so let's
(09:52):
move to the next question. So I got a lot
of questions about how to respond to, how to cope with,
how to handle how to set boundaries around food and
body image during Thanksgiving meals. This is a big one,
and it feels basically impossible to escape these comments, these
(10:15):
kinds of comments, which is interesting because as common sense,
it might seem to some of us to avoid making
these kinds of comments. It's very normal and very natural
behavior for a lot of other people. So I want
to say first off, that autonomy is huge here. If
you feel like it is too much to expose yourself
to a situation where you may hear things that could
(10:38):
trigger negative or toxic thoughts about your body, food, and exercise,
then the most important thing to do here is to
take care of your physical and mental health first. That
does not have to be qualified, It does not have
to be explained. People don't have to understand what you're
doing to take care of yourself for it to be
the right thing for you to do. And I need
everybody to hear that first. If I was an alcoholic
(10:59):
and I couldn't be around drinking without engaging and drinking myself,
then I'm going to make sure that I'm not around drinking.
The same goes for eating disorders, and we have to
start taking those things just as serious because they are
some harsh truth that I don't like talking about, but
I have to talk about. And I've mentioned a couple
times here recently, is that the majority of the world
(11:21):
does not care about your recovery, your triggers, or your feelings,
So that becomes our responsibility. How am I going to
set myself up so that I can best feel taken
care of, I can best feel safe, and I can
best feel loved by myself and the people that I
choose to spend time with now in order to not
isolate ourselves. I also encourage clients to do a couple
(11:43):
things in these kinds of situations to prepare because, like
I said, there are triggers all over the place, and
we're like, no, why would you say something like that
at the dinner table when people are eating, And obviously
somebody at this table was bound to have some kind
of insecurity about their body. A lot of people that
goes right over their heads, or they choose just to
(12:04):
ignore stuff because they want to continue to do what's
working for them. So here are some things that I
suggest people do that I might suggest you do before
you enter in a situation that might offer some triggers.
Number One, identify the triggers and with that prepare for them.
You can create a toolbox of coping skills to help
(12:25):
you sit through the discomfort of those triggers. A trigger
does not have to end in the result of you
engaging in a eating disorder behavior. It might send you
that way, and there are things that you can do
to cope with discomfort so you can avoid actually engaging
into the thing that you don't want to engage in. Example,
maybe your cousin always tries to get you to work
(12:48):
out in the morning of Thanksgiving, and the reason she
or he does that is because they want to work
out extra to plan for the food that they're going
to eat that day. That's a common thing that happens.
If you know that your cousin does this, and this
is the reason your cousin does this, and they say
things while you guys work out and you might like
working out, do not go. You are allowed to say, hey,
(13:11):
actually I want to sleep in, or hey I want
to go on a walk by myself. I have this
book I want to listen to, or you can just
say hey, I'm not feeling it. You don't have to
put yourself in situations just to test how strong your
willpower is, because a lot of recovery is not about willpower.
It's about setting yourself up for success the best way. Now,
(13:33):
when it comes to comments about food, maybe comments at
the table that could be upsetting our conversations that people
try to coherse you into having. It also might be
helpful to create sentence stems to plan to help shut
down or disengage those conversations. A comment is hello, fill
(13:53):
in the blank's name, I can't believe you are able
to eat like that and keep such a small figure.
Or you can reverse that and somebody might say, are
you sure you want to eat all that? I heard
you slept in this morning? Like just kind of crazy
toxic sentences like that. You don't have to engage in
their questions in their conversation. You can say, you know,
(14:15):
I assume you meant something helpful by saying that, and
I'm really not interested in talking about this kind of stuff.
And it's actually really hard for me to hear that
kind of stuff. It's not helpful, So I appreciate it
if we didn't talk about what I'm eating. And that
can work with random stuff during meals, if people start
(14:35):
talking about things and they're like, hey, what do you
think about that? Or blah blah blah do you hear
about this super food? Or we really should have made
cauliflower mashed potatoes because I saw how much butter are
on these, and do you know what all this stuff?
You can simply say, hey, you know what, I appreciate
you inviting me into this conversation, and I'm not really
interested in talking about food or weight or the morality
(14:58):
of either of those things. Right now, simple boom and
guess what. They might feel uncomfortable, And they might need
to feel uncomfortable, because often that is what we need
in order to do something different. If we keep them
comfortable in that spot, or they keep getting to say
things to you and you keep being like, oh yeah,
they're going to continue to do it. They have no
(15:20):
reason not to. But when them making those comments to
you starts to not feel so great, then they might
stop making them. Another thing I suggest clients to do
and humans to do is set boundaries and ask for
what you need when possible. And that is where you
bring in that intentional dialogue. Right So, if you need
(15:40):
to have a conversation with your mom or your aunt,
or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or whoever it is,
you can use the format when you blank, I feel blank.
What it brings up for me is blank, or what
the judgment I make is blank, and I'm asking that blank.
So when you talk about the calories that are in
(16:02):
food while we eat, I feel really scared and I
feel a lot of shame and guilt. What it brings
up for me is a lot of the beliefs I've
been challenging and working on challenging when it comes to
my own body and body image and mental health. And
I'm asking that you were framed from talking about those
(16:24):
kinds of things as best you can, specifically in my presence,
and then you can add a boundary on there. If
you can't do that, I just would love for you
to let me know, because I want to make sure
that I'm not putting myself in a situation that's going
to be harmful for me. And if you can't do that,
I totally get that. Let me know, I will make
the necessary changes that I need to make to keep
myself safe. And guys, that might be what I talked
(16:47):
about in the beginning autonomy. You don't have to put
yourself in situations where you know they're going to be harmful.
So if somebody's like, yeah, I'm gonna still do this,
you can say, well, okay, that's totally cool. I'm not
going to be able to be a part of this
event with you. And just because somebody might have a feeling,
that doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. Remember that
all these things are kind of tying in together. And
then the last thing I want to suggest you guys
(17:10):
do is write down truth before you enter a situation
that has the ability to emotionally cloud it. When emotions
come in, logic turns off. So if you have a
note in your phone, or a piece of paper in
your pocket, or something where you can a bracelet. You
can make a bracelet with something that it says something
on it when you are in those moments when your
(17:31):
brain can't logic your way out of the emotions that
you're feeling. It is super helpful to have something that
you know you wrote when you were in a very
clear mind. And I can say this doesn't feel true
right now, but I know it is because the authentic,
real sound part of me wrote this down when they
are not in a heightened emotional state. So those can
(17:53):
be whatever you need them to be. Write them on
a note card again, make a bracelet. You can write
them on your arm. I don't care what you do
with them, but that is something that is very helpful.
That is going to do it for me today, That
is going to do it for me this Thanksgiving week.
I hope you guys have the holiday that you need
to have. I hope you have the time that you
need to have. Hope you have the family time you
(18:14):
need to have or the non family time you need
to have. And I will be back with you on
Monday for a new episode of You Need Therapy again.
In the meantime, if you ever have questions, send them
to Katherine at You Need Therapy podcast dot com. I
love getting your questions, I love getting your emails. I
appreciate them so much. If you want to follow us,
you can do that on Instagram at you Need Therapy
(18:36):
and at kat van Buren
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of Couch
Talks on You Need Therapy Podcast. My name is Kat
I am the host. If you are new, welcome. Couch
Talks is the special episode of You Need Therapy Podcasts
where I answer questions that you guys send in to
me and you can send those to me at Katherine
at you Need Therapy podcast dot com. And before we
(00:31):
get started, I like to remind everybody every week that
although this is a podcast where I answer your questions,
especially on couch Talks, and I'm a therapist sin it's
called You Need Therapy, that this podcast does not serve
as a replacement or a substitute for actual mental health services. However,
it's still allow of help and be helpful. So it
(00:52):
is the day before Thanksgiving. Happy Day before Thanksgiving. Also
Happy Thanksgiving, because I probably won't be talking to you
guys on Thanksgiving unless you save this episode to listen to.
In that case, Happy Thanksgiving. I'm sure there are a
wide range of feelings between all of you guys right now,
as the holidays are some people's like favorite time of year,
(01:13):
and there are some people's least favorite, and then there's
people that are in the middle and people that are
just basically neutral. And I have promised you, guys some
content around the holidays and family and stuff to do
and help cope with the times that might be tough
for the ones of you that kind of don't like
this time of year or even like it and just
(01:34):
notice some hard things about it. And so today Couch
Talks is dedicated to that. I am going to talk
about two different things today. And honestly, as I was
doing this, I was thinking this really would have been
more helpful like a month ago, so you could prepare
and make plans and kind of work on stuff. But
(01:55):
I am going to tell you, guys, better late than ever.
You have this episode for next year as well, So
let's get into it. Going through some of your questions
that you had specifically for the holiday season, there were
some themes that the questions were a little bit different,
but they kind of centered around the same kind of themes.
We are going to talk about two of those themes today.
(02:17):
One is about splitting time between families, and one is
about feeling safe around food and family members and just
people in general. Because you know, diet culture is the
holiday's best friend. You know, I feel like a lot
of things are diet culture's best friend because diet culture
just infiltrates everything. And we're going to talk about it.
So we're going to start with the family time question.
(02:40):
So a lot of the questions that you guys sent
in were, how do I find a way to split
time with in laws? How do I find a way
to do what I want on the holidays and not
feel guilty? How do I find a way to make
it fair when it comes to time with different family members?
And let's talk about that. And maybe you don't have
in laws, but you have divorced parents, or you have
(03:00):
multiple friend families, or you just have in general different
options in places that you want to be or you're
expected to be during the holidays. An easy solve for
this is switching holidays each year. That's not always possible,
but that's one way you can do it. You can
also when location allows spend a little bit of time
at each person's or groups of people's experience or home.
(03:24):
That's also not always possible, and there are so many
different circumstances. I don't really think it's that important or
helpful to give you ideas on how to split things
because I just think it could only apply to a
small margin of y'all. I could go on and on
and give you a million scenarios and plan them out,
but again, life is too nuanced for everybody to do that.
(03:45):
So what I think would be more important is to
help you think about how splitting these holidays should work.
What I want to do here is give you, guys,
some mantras. I'm going to give you some words of wisdom.
You can keep them in your front pocket, you can
keep them in the back pocket, you can keep them
in your hand. I don't care what you do with them.
I just want to give you these things that you
can come back to when you end up having those
(04:07):
moments of fear or anxiety, or like you're doing something wrong,
you can come back to these ideas. Because spoiler alert,
there is no perfect way to handle this kind of situation.
Number one, There's no way on earth I can perfectly
please everyone Like that is such a simple thing to
(04:28):
hear and such a hard thing to actually accept. No
matter how you slice it or dice it, there is
no way that you can perfectly please everyone. And so
if that is our goal, we're always going to be disappointed.
So I I want you to start with accepting or
attempting to accept this idea that there's no way on
earth I can perfectly please everyone. Number two, just because
(04:52):
someone is upset with me, it doesn't mean I did
anything wrong. And that is something that I think you
guys hear me say a lot, and it's something I'm
going to continue to say a lot. Just because someone's
upset with something that you did or a choice you made,
it doesn't mean that you made the wrong choice, that
you did something wrong. Number Three, I am allowed to
(05:13):
make decisions that make me happy. That's why I said earlier,
like all of this stuff should not negate you having
an experience that is joyful or fun or just midline enjoyable.
You are allowed to make decisions that make you happy.
That's okay. You combine that one with just because someone's
(05:33):
upset isn't mean you did something wrong, and you will
just be set up for some success. Here. When it
comes to families and when it comes to having multiple
groups you're trying to satisfy at the same time, the
deal is, no matter what you do, someone is going
to feel left out or like they didn't get what
they wanted or like somebody else got a better deal,
(05:57):
like that is just usually the case. It's really hard
to make everything fair because life just actually isn't fair
most of the time. And that's also a hard pill
to swallow. And often what we do in these moments.
I see this all the time, where it's like, if
we can't make anybody happy, then I'm just not going
to do anything, and that kind of sucks because then
everybody loses. Rather, what would it look like if we
(06:19):
entered these situations with the attitude of I'm going to
do the best I can to accommodate as many people
as I can, including myself, and we will all need
to make compromises for this to happen. This kind of
thing is not about winning. This thing is not about
picking sides, picking people that we like the most. This
(06:41):
is about accepting the rules of life. One hundred percent
of people cannot be one hundred percent satisfied all of
the time. It is impossible for that to be true
or the case, or whoever you want to say it.
So if we adapt this attitude of I'm going to
do the best I can, I might learn something and
(07:03):
want to do something differently next time, and I know
that people, including myself, might be disappointed in different areas.
That doesn't mean I'm doing something wrong. It doesn't mean
I'm being unkind. And not getting exactly what I want
or not giving somebody exactly what they want does not
take away the ability for us to have a good experience.
(07:23):
So I know this stuff is hard, and it really
is hard. Is because families always are changing, right, So
first you have your family, and then I don't know,
maybe you're a sibling gets married and they have multiple families,
and then other sibling gets married and they have multiple families,
and then maybe somebody gets divorced, and then there's multiple families,
and then so you are navigating your stuff, and then
(07:44):
you find a partner, and then you are navigating in
their family, and then all the different navigations of your family.
Things are always changing. You have kids, then your kids
grow up, and then you have to look at their schedules.
So it's hard and it's exhausting. And if we try
to figure out the per way to do everything, and
we try to make sure that other people avoid any
(08:06):
kind of feelings other than joy and happiness and contentment,
then we're going to probably end up in a disaster, right,
that's probably the worst way you could handle this. But
if we handle this with it's gonna be messy and sticky,
and I'm gonna figure it out and do the best
I can, and we're all gonna make compromises. And if
somebody's upset with me, that's okay. They can be upset
with me, and I can keep my feelings and they
(08:27):
can keep theirs. Then we might have a better way
of dealing with this. The other thing I want to
add right here before we move on to the next
thing is try your best not to mind read, not
to make assumptions based on our judgments. We do that naturally, right,
So we try to make sense of people's behavior. Our
(08:49):
brains just do that. And what happens is when we
try to make sense of other people's behavior, oftentimes we
tell ourselves a story that's very hurtful, and unless we
actually have the truth right we've got from that person,
the most helpful thing to do would be to just
take the information as fact and then put a period
with it. Let's say we're talking about your kids, and
(09:10):
your kids have different options. Let's say your kids chose
to have dinner with their partner's family, but they're going
to come spend the morning with you and have a brunch,
or they're giving you the option to do a Thanksgiving
dinner on the Saturday of the holiday weekend. And when
you receive that information, you think to yourself, well, it
(09:31):
always has to be that person's way, and they just
don't care about our feelings and they like that family
better and are whatever the assumptions are, those could be true,
but they oftentimes are not true. And so what might
be helpful is, oh, they're trying to make this work,
and I'm sure there's a lot of pieces to this
puzzle that we don't know. Boom, all right, so let's
(09:52):
move to the next question. So I got a lot
of questions about how to respond to, how to cope with,
how to handle how to set boundaries around food and
body image during Thanksgiving meals. This is a big one,
and it feels basically impossible to escape these comments, these
(10:15):
kinds of comments, which is interesting because as common sense,
it might seem to some of us to avoid making
these kinds of comments. It's very normal and very natural
behavior for a lot of other people. So I want
to say first off, that autonomy is huge here. If
you feel like it is too much to expose yourself
to a situation where you may hear things that could
(10:38):
trigger negative or toxic thoughts about your body, food, and exercise,
then the most important thing to do here is to
take care of your physical and mental health first. That
does not have to be qualified, It does not have
to be explained. People don't have to understand what you're
doing to take care of yourself for it to be
the right thing for you to do. And I need
everybody to hear that first. If I was an alcoholic
(10:59):
and I couldn't be around drinking without engaging and drinking myself,
then I'm going to make sure that I'm not around drinking.
The same goes for eating disorders, and we have to
start taking those things just as serious because they are
some harsh truth that I don't like talking about, but
I have to talk about. And I've mentioned a couple
times here recently, is that the majority of the world
(11:21):
does not care about your recovery, your triggers, or your feelings,
So that becomes our responsibility. How am I going to
set myself up so that I can best feel taken
care of, I can best feel safe, and I can
best feel loved by myself and the people that I
choose to spend time with now in order to not
isolate ourselves. I also encourage clients to do a couple
(11:43):
things in these kinds of situations to prepare because, like
I said, there are triggers all over the place, and
we're like, no, why would you say something like that
at the dinner table when people are eating, And obviously
somebody at this table was bound to have some kind
of insecurity about their body. A lot of people that
goes right over their heads, or they choose just to
(12:04):
ignore stuff because they want to continue to do what's
working for them. So here are some things that I
suggest people do that I might suggest you do before
you enter in a situation that might offer some triggers.
Number One, identify the triggers and with that prepare for them.
You can create a toolbox of coping skills to help
(12:25):
you sit through the discomfort of those triggers. A trigger
does not have to end in the result of you
engaging in a eating disorder behavior. It might send you
that way, and there are things that you can do
to cope with discomfort so you can avoid actually engaging
into the thing that you don't want to engage in. Example,
maybe your cousin always tries to get you to work
(12:48):
out in the morning of Thanksgiving, and the reason she
or he does that is because they want to work
out extra to plan for the food that they're going
to eat that day. That's a common thing that happens.
If you know that your cousin does this, and this
is the reason your cousin does this, and they say
things while you guys work out and you might like
working out, do not go. You are allowed to say, hey,
(13:11):
actually I want to sleep in, or hey I want
to go on a walk by myself. I have this
book I want to listen to, or you can just
say hey, I'm not feeling it. You don't have to
put yourself in situations just to test how strong your
willpower is, because a lot of recovery is not about willpower.
It's about setting yourself up for success the best way. Now,
(13:33):
when it comes to comments about food, maybe comments at
the table that could be upsetting our conversations that people
try to coherse you into having. It also might be
helpful to create sentence stems to plan to help shut
down or disengage those conversations. A comment is hello, fill
(13:53):
in the blank's name, I can't believe you are able
to eat like that and keep such a small figure.
Or you can reverse that and somebody might say, are
you sure you want to eat all that? I heard
you slept in this morning? Like just kind of crazy
toxic sentences like that. You don't have to engage in
their questions in their conversation. You can say, you know,
(14:15):
I assume you meant something helpful by saying that, and
I'm really not interested in talking about this kind of stuff.
And it's actually really hard for me to hear that
kind of stuff. It's not helpful, So I appreciate it
if we didn't talk about what I'm eating. And that
can work with random stuff during meals, if people start
(14:35):
talking about things and they're like, hey, what do you
think about that? Or blah blah blah do you hear
about this super food? Or we really should have made
cauliflower mashed potatoes because I saw how much butter are
on these, and do you know what all this stuff?
You can simply say, hey, you know what, I appreciate
you inviting me into this conversation, and I'm not really
interested in talking about food or weight or the morality
(14:58):
of either of those things. Right now, simple boom and
guess what. They might feel uncomfortable, And they might need
to feel uncomfortable, because often that is what we need
in order to do something different. If we keep them
comfortable in that spot, or they keep getting to say
things to you and you keep being like, oh yeah,
they're going to continue to do it. They have no
(15:20):
reason not to. But when them making those comments to
you starts to not feel so great, then they might
stop making them. Another thing I suggest clients to do
and humans to do is set boundaries and ask for
what you need when possible. And that is where you
bring in that intentional dialogue. Right So, if you need
(15:40):
to have a conversation with your mom or your aunt,
or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or whoever it is,
you can use the format when you blank, I feel blank.
What it brings up for me is blank, or what
the judgment I make is blank, and I'm asking that blank.
So when you talk about the calories that are in
(16:02):
food while we eat, I feel really scared and I
feel a lot of shame and guilt. What it brings
up for me is a lot of the beliefs I've
been challenging and working on challenging when it comes to
my own body and body image and mental health. And
I'm asking that you were framed from talking about those
(16:24):
kinds of things as best you can, specifically in my presence,
and then you can add a boundary on there. If
you can't do that, I just would love for you
to let me know, because I want to make sure
that I'm not putting myself in a situation that's going
to be harmful for me. And if you can't do that,
I totally get that. Let me know, I will make
the necessary changes that I need to make to keep
myself safe. And guys, that might be what I talked
(16:47):
about in the beginning autonomy. You don't have to put
yourself in situations where you know they're going to be harmful.
So if somebody's like, yeah, I'm gonna still do this,
you can say, well, okay, that's totally cool. I'm not
going to be able to be a part of this
event with you. And just because somebody might have a feeling,
that doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. Remember that
all these things are kind of tying in together. And
then the last thing I want to suggest you guys
(17:10):
do is write down truth before you enter a situation
that has the ability to emotionally cloud it. When emotions
come in, logic turns off. So if you have a
note in your phone, or a piece of paper in
your pocket, or something where you can a bracelet. You
can make a bracelet with something that it says something
on it when you are in those moments when your
(17:31):
brain can't logic your way out of the emotions that
you're feeling. It is super helpful to have something that
you know you wrote when you were in a very
clear mind. And I can say this doesn't feel true
right now, but I know it is because the authentic,
real sound part of me wrote this down when they
are not in a heightened emotional state. So those can
(17:53):
be whatever you need them to be. Write them on
a note card again, make a bracelet. You can write
them on your arm. I don't care what you do
with them, but that is something that is very helpful.
That is going to do it for me today, That
is going to do it for me this Thanksgiving week.
I hope you guys have the holiday that you need
to have. I hope you have the time that you
need to have. Hope you have the family time you
(18:14):
need to have or the non family time you need
to have. And I will be back with you on
Monday for a new episode of You Need Therapy again.
In the meantime, if you ever have questions, send them
to Katherine at You Need Therapy podcast dot com. I
love getting your questions, I love getting your emails. I
appreciate them so much. If you want to follow us,
you can do that on Instagram at you Need Therapy
(18:36):
and at kat van Buren
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