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February 4, 2023 14 mins

OUTWEIGH: Knowing you are not the only person in the world struggling with food & body image is comforting. Patrick Custer (host of Rooted Recovery Stories podcast) is Amy’s guest today & passionate about reminding people that they are NOT ALONE in disordered behaviors. He shares a little bit of his story & Amy encourages people to check out his podcast as another resource. Details & link below: 

Rooted Recovery Stories podcast is all about bringing you stories of hope, healing & triumph over the bondage of addictions, mental health struggles, trauma & dysfunctional family systems. Courageous storytellers have chosen to live their journey out loud in order to show others that they don’t have to suffer in silence. The stories you will hear are raw, real and may involve graphic and triggering content. This podcast is brought to you by Promises Behavioral Health’s Rooted Alumni Community.


Link: https://www.promises.com/rooted-recovery-stories/ 

 

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body outly outway everything that I'm
made do, won't spend my life trying to change. I'm
learning to love who I am. I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me
it is beautiful and then will always out way if

(00:23):
you feel it with joys in there, she'll love to
the boom. I am there. Let's say good day and
time did you and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweg fam
amy here and my guest today is Patrick Custer, and
he is on to talk about, well a little bit
of your own journey, Patrick, but then what you're doing

(00:45):
to help others that are in recovery or maybe even
just struggling and wondering. What is this process of recovery
even look like? Is there help out there? Am I alone?
Because I feel like that's one of the most daunting
things when you are going through something. For me, in
particular with my eating disorder, some of the thoughts and
actions that would take place in my mind and then

(01:07):
that I would do, I think, Oh my gosh, I
can't ever tell anybody about this. This is crazy? Am
I the only one? So Patrick's here to remind us
we are not alone. Oh my gosh, you just hit
you know, so many, so many things, you know, talking
about shame and guilt being such strong drivers for us
from such a young age, both societally and and I

(01:28):
think naturally, it just it just it is there. And
whether you know, I know a little bit about your story,
and I'll compare contrast for me. I know, I ended
up meeting and getting like addressing seriously at an early
age my medicators and so quickly to just kind of
try and put it in a nutshell. I look back

(01:50):
as a child. I grew up in a southern family
where everything you know, food is everything, everything surrounds food.
When you know, we we all get it. I was
in sports, I was active. I never really thought about food,
I mean other than like I liked it and I
ate it, and nothing was you know, I didn't correlate
to my body. And then I started to hit a

(02:14):
something weird and puberty and I got chubby. I remember
just the shame and guilt that fell all over me,
both internally but from social reinforcement. So at this time
I'm a gay man. I wasn't out then, raised a
super conservative family. So at the time I'm trying to
fit into this mold what I think I'm supposed to be,
which is like a supermasculine manly man play sports. And

(02:37):
so my story is very interesting to talk about body
image body dysmorphia from an early age where this is
the role that I was felt like I was dealt
and this is what I was trying to play. Right,
So from a very early on, I didn't know like
I battled over eating and body image issues at that

(02:59):
point then came along I don't even remember what introduced
to me, but like over exercise and then dieting. So
these were my earliest medicators food than exercise, than restricting.
And it wasn't until I went to college that that
I really got exposed to some more extreme measures. Drugs
and alcohol played a huge role, and ultimately I had

(03:22):
to seek help for all of it because at the
end of the day, I was trying to control how
my body looked, how I felt, the peace within myself.
You know, a lot of us in twelve step programming,
which I am actively, you know, we call it, we
referred to it as the is um, you know, like
it's not just one thing, and for me it has
been just like a bounce around of you name it,

(03:45):
all kinds of things medicating behaviors and so you know,
when it comes to sobriety from addiction, from chemical addiction,
alcohol and drugs, I've been sober. The February will be uh,
twelve years. That's awesome. I want to stop and acknowledge that,
because that's I mean, that's amazing. A good friend of mine,

(04:06):
I just celebrated twelve years a couple of weeks ago,
and yeah, she was like, it's my sober birthday. Hey, yeah,
it is exciting, And it's interesting how those birthdays end up.
They end up being less about me and more about
other people and showing the way, like you get at
the longer and longer. I'm fortunate enough to you know,
hold on to sober time and stay healthy. Well that's

(04:28):
part of recovery anyways, using your story and then also
being in a twelve step program, having you know your
sponsor and then sponsors. That's how you say right to
the other way sponsors and sponsors. Yeah, and then you're motivated.
You're out there, you're serving others. I feel like services
a big part of that, taking it off of you

(04:48):
and on to other people. And I remember my mom
telling me that early on in college when I was
really struggling with my eating disorder, and she said, uh,
could you just go falling here somewhere or do something.
I mean, that was her way of saying that to me.
It didn't register, of course at the time, but she
was onto something. It was she was trying to get

(05:09):
my brain to stop focusing on some of my things
and focus on someone else to shift And obviously if
you do that enough, it does help rewire the brain.
But I love that you're talking about making it about
others because that is part of the journey in staying
in recovery. And I'll stop here and say, no matter

(05:33):
what you're if you're you know, you identify that you're
recovering from one thing, or you might need to recover
from something. You know, everybody's got a different journey, different
thing that they're recovering from, and different healing experiences, um
and different things work for different people, but there are
a lot of commonalities. One of them is connection. We
know that. I'm gonna try and get his name right.
The person who coined this phrase, Johan, I forget his

(05:56):
last name. He was the initial person that talked about
connection being the opposite of addiction or self medication and suffering.
And we see that across the board, right and through
that and under that umbrella is the connection of getting
outside of ourselves through serving other people, saying that you know,

(06:18):
I'm part of you, you're part of me, and you know,
taking the focus off of myself. So I will say that,
you know, the eating stuff for me has um and
as I think you know, actually no matter what you're
talking about, I mean, like it's very black and white
with them addiction because I don't drink at all anymore,
but we have to eat when we talk about process addictions,

(06:41):
so you know, eating disorder is a process or eating
is a process, and the addiction is whatever surrounding the
that process. And for me, there was a lot of
or though over exercising under intake. They're just complete restricting altogether,
and I have to be careful every day to not
fall into that trap because it's really really easy, as

(07:05):
I'm sure you know as well. Yeah, and that's a
good reminder for anybody listening that if you've made strides
and you take a step back. It's such a good
point that we can't eliminate food from our lives. You
can try to remove yourself from alcohol and drugs by
who you're surrounding yourself with, what you allow in your home,
but food has to be allowed in the home. So yeah,

(07:28):
that was something that was, you know, difficult. You couldn't
just be like, okay, well I just won't have this.
In fact, for me in recovery, I had to invite
more food into my home. I had to start allowing
more things that I used to not allow. And Patrick,
and regards to your service to others, something that I
want you to tell people about is the podcast that

(07:48):
you're running, because I feel like that's another resource that
people can check out and if they're wondering, like do
I have something going on? I have these thoughts? What
is orthorexia? Some of this stuff is new to people,
this vocabulary or other addictions because oftentimes it may not
just be one thing that you're using to numb out,

(08:09):
like you said, the medicators. And I feel like your
podcast to be an excellent resource for people, So tell
us about it absolutely well. You can check on our
website it's Rooted Recovery Stories dot com. That's rooted. Like
we talked about keeping keeping people rooted in recovery and
it's got kind of a unique story. We started out

(08:29):
I work for Promises Behavioral Health. We own treatment centers
across the country for mental health, addiction, sex, addiction, eating disorders.
We treat all the things UM and our various treatment
centers and UH I have the privilege of getting to
oversee all of our aftercare programming so lifelong. We support
our alumni afterwards when they go out and have to

(08:52):
hit the real world and they're outside of the safe
container that they've gotten the help they need in I
myself have experienced at that's what helps get me on
the track to health and safety. And you know, long
term engagement meaning like two resources that are connecting us,
are serving us, are serving the walk that we wanna do.

(09:14):
You know, whatever you're talking about recovering from, we believe
is the key to success. So this podcast came out
from that as my life's kind of passion project. But
it's a mission thing to serve the whole entire community.
You don't have to be an alumni. And we talk
about recovery from all types of adversity. And I say

(09:34):
adversity because it's a very umbrella term that encompasses trauma,
the full spectrum of the mental health issues, parents of
children who have overdosed, people who literally are have experienced recovery,
overdosed themselves, all the things that I named. We interview

(09:54):
and talk about stories, what it was like for these people,
and the resources that are available to help them. So
I think that there can't be enough hope out there.
We've got all kinds of things to entertain us. And binge.
When we talk about binging, Oh my gosh, what a
trigger word and a key you know thing we talked
about right now. But like Netflix TV, we consume so

(10:14):
much to just entertain ourselves. This is an outlet that
we really put so much heart and soul into providing
that is something to feed the soul. Oh. I love
that feeding the soul. I know you give the website,
but if they're just in their podcast browser, we're on everything,
so you can watch it or stream it like via

(10:35):
the regular podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Facebook, YouTube. Just
search Rooted Recovery Stories and you'll find us. And I
love that name, Rooted Recovery Stories. It's so good. Well, Patrick,
thank you for sharing some of your story and then
the message of connection and service and the reminder of hope,

(10:57):
because I think that's what what we all need, because
some ones that can just you just feel so overwhelmed
by everything and you're like okay, and then you see
it working for other people and and instead of saying, oh,
I wish that could work for me, see those other
people's recovery as as hope and encouragement to you, not
discouragement because you're not there yet. Don't let those thoughts

(11:19):
go into your head. If there's one thing I could say,
it's just if people come into your path, don't let
it let their recovery annoy you because you're not there yet.
Feel like, oh wow, thank you God for showing me
that person that's in recovery, because I know what it's
like to be jealous of someone that's in recovery and
you just wish you could be there. But you know, right,
because we all wanted into gratification. I wanted insta gratification

(11:41):
when I was living in my sickness, and I want
instant gratification when I'm seeking healing. But I want if
I could really quick, I wanted to add something that
I feel like it's so important. There aren't enough men
that are out there talking about their history or struggle
with eating disorders. And I don't know if you would
be surprised at this, but many people would be so
surprised that it is a legit real thing. Whether you're gay, straight, trying, whatever,

(12:05):
it's it affects everyone. It's no respecter of persons. And
the compare and contrast for me when I was talking
about earlier, you know, I grew up and wasn't living myself,
tried living as a straight man for a long time,
and a more masculine presence that was, you know, hiding
things and doing sports and whatever. That body type for

(12:28):
me was was way different. And then I, you know,
move into my twenties and I'll just tell you the
gay male world, you're either very very thin or super muscular,
like those are two two of the most idolized body types.
And I didn't know how to go to the zero

(12:49):
body fat, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Channing Tatum, whatever realm, And so
what was easiest for me was to slide into that
rail thin category. So I just want to say that, like,
if you are a male, you know, assist male transmail
doesn't matter. And you're hearing this, don't let societal norms

(13:10):
tell you that, oh, I'm just being healthy or going
to at a gym trips. You know, I'm just following,
you know whatever from Men's Health magazine. You know, this
is totally different from what Amy's talking about and all
that all that jazz. It hits all of us, and
it's real. Yeah. No, it's um disguise like when we use.
I used for a long time orthorexia for sure, under

(13:34):
the guys of well, I'm having fertility issues and I
read this one book that told me that if I
eat this exact way that I'll be able to get pregnant.
But really, I mean, yes, did I want to get pregnant, Absolutely,
But did I love having eating that way as an
excuse to tell myself because I knew some of my
behaviors weren't normal. But I was like, well, that's okay,

(13:55):
that's what this book told me that I needed for
my fertility issues. And when I would be out with friends,
they'd be like, oh, you don't want this or you
don't want to eat this. I would be like, oh, well,
I'm trying to get pregnant, and then that would shut
everybody down and you might be like, oh, oh I
saw this in Men's Men's Health. Oh well that's okay,
no problem, it must be approved and totally good for you,
So thank you for sharing that as well. And yeah,

(14:16):
rooted recovery stories. I love it. Patrick, well, thank you.
And yeah, we'll have to have you back on again.
I love it. Thank you so much

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