December 31, 2022 • 48 mins
OUTWEIGH: Amy & Kat Defatta (licensed therapist) do an eating disorder Q&A. Send any questions you may have to hello@outweighpodcast.com. Thanks for listening and Happy New Year!!!
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Produced by: @HoustonTilley
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Happy Saturday Outwei fam amy here and Happy New Year.
I can't believe as of today is in its final stages.
Tomorrow it will be a new year, which I'm very,
very very excited about and all that it has in store.
So I hope you're having a great holiday weekend. And
today we are going to be hearing a couch Talks
(00:22):
episode from Cat de Fought as You Need Therapy podcast. Now,
this is something I recorded with Cat early in two
I was during need a Week, a National Eating disorder
awareness week, and Cat and I just talk a little
bit about our experience and then we did a Q
and a little Cats the therapist, so she lead everything,
and this is from her podcast, but it is a
(00:44):
conversation that I think will be very beneficial to you,
especially as you are looking into the new year, and
how you want to show up and how are you
with your body image right now, how are you around
food right now, and what kind of goals are going
to set this year and maybe they could look a
little bit different than they have in the year's past
and not really have anything to do with what your
(01:07):
body looks like or what you're eating. So I hope
you enjoy this chat. Here you go couch Talks. Welcome
guys to another new episode of couch Talks. This is Cat.
(01:28):
I'm your host, and I am excited because we have
a guest for couch Talks. This is my first couch Talks,
is it I don't know. I mean it is, yeah
on the podcast before, but not a couch Talk. Yeah.
If you don't recognize the voice we have Amy Amy Brown. Welcome, Welcome,
thank you, Hi, happy to be here. You're welcoming yourself. Yes,
if you are new or newer to you need therapy
(01:50):
podcasts and you're like couch talks, what is that? Couch
Talks is the bonus episode that we do every single
Wednesday where I answer questions that you guys send in
and you can send this into Catherine at you Need
Therapy podcast dot com and maybe one day I will
get to your question. Now, that can be kind of
confusing because you're sending questions to a licensed therapist and
(02:12):
then she's somewhat answering them on air. I want to
say on air, but we're not on air on a podcast,
on a podcast. But I do want to remind you
guys that this podcast is not therapy and doesn't serve
as a replacement. However, it could aid in the addition
to your therapy or encourage you to go to therapy,
which is great, I do. I agree. Yeah. So this week,
(02:32):
the reason we have a guest is because it's need
a Week, and need a Week is National Eating Disorder
Awareness Week. It's a very special week. Very I only
started to even know something existed that, Like in the
last two years, I had no idea Need a Week
was a thing. And I've had a needing disorder. Well,
my eating disorder started when i was maybe and then
(02:53):
I'm forty I'm turning forty one. So we weren't doing
very good job of bringing those I don't know, there
was not there was a disconnect. Yeah, but I love
this week, not because like I'm not celebrating eating disorders.
What we're doing is bringing awareness to them and talking
about them and putting information out that can either help
you or help somebody, you know, because there are a
(03:14):
lot of misconceptions about eating disorders and I like to
bring light to a lot of that stuff. Because I
don't know if you felt this way, maybe not amy
because you were like I've had one for a very
long time. A lot of people think that they are
just about body image and the way you look, and
they're vain and why don't you just eat? And there's
(03:35):
so much more complexities. Yeah, well not even like why
don't you just see? It's why don't you just stop
eating when you're full? Or why don't you just stop purging?
Or whatever it is that you're behavior, because there's so
many different kinds of eating disorders, and I think people
just think of one I did, and I'm going to
link some other episodes that I've done on this topic
(03:55):
in the show notes, But I did one episode where
I just talked about the different types because people don't
don't realize that, like an eating disorder isn't the same
for every single person. So we're going to talk about
it today, okay. And I asked you guys for your
questions on Instagram and you sent me some and we're
gonna try to do like three to four. Yeah, And
I'm speaking as someone who is in recovery, and then
(04:16):
Kat is speaking as the expert, so yeah, and in recovery,
so I get both sides. You just get one second.
I just get one side, and I mean somewhat of
an expert, though you have a lot of conversations with
a lot of I don't know, is there like a
podcast degree, because like I don't, I don't have the credentials.
So just I'm I'm thankful to be in a place
where I get to have open, honest conversations about it,
(04:38):
where there's no shame or judgment. And that's wonderful that
we get to connect with people in that way, because
I think I would have benefited from conversations like this,
especially my younger self. But I by no means and
an expert at all. And that's why I just wanted
to clarify because sometimes what I say, which you'll catch me,
but I don't want to be a trigger to anybody,
(04:59):
or I don't want to say anything ing that would
harm anybody in any way. I'm really glad you said that,
because I talked about this a lot on the podcast.
But I get really frustrated and very very disappointed when
I see people out there with influence or maybe they
don't even have a lot of influence, but putting information
out on a topic that is as delicate as an
(05:19):
eating disorder, is that is not true or is like
a version of the truth. That is twisted and turned
a little bit. So we're going to have some expert
experience in some just human experience day and I will
say we talked about or I have I don't know
what we talked about on your podcast too Dopsic and
how obsessed with that show I was. And if you
(05:42):
have not watched that, I highly recommend watching it. However
trigger warding. It can be hard to watch. But it's
all about the opioid epidemic. And you know, something that
we used to think or it used to be true,
is that addiction to opiates was one of the most
deadly like mental health crisis that we had. But right now,
the highest mortality rate of any mental health disorder comes
(06:03):
from eating disorders. I did not know that. You didn't
know that. I didn't know it surpassed other things. If
you was one, you know, name three. I don't think
I would have put it as a top one. Obviously,
I know that that's there's a lot of tragedy that
comes from eating disorders, but I don't know. I just
would figure other things but fall in line first. That's wild. Okay, Well,
(06:26):
so even more of a reason why this conversation or
having these conversations wherever you're having them, as long as
again there's the expert involved, it's important. Okay, So we
better get to the question. Yeah, okay, So I'm going
to ask the question. I'm going to see if you
want to give feedback first, and then we'll just bounce
(06:47):
and see what happens. Okay, okay, So the first question
is what are your thoughts on over ears anonymous and
um using vivants for binge eating disorder? Okay, Well, I've
gone to one over eaters anonymous meeting in my early twenties,
and I never went back. I think I was just
so thankful to know that I wasn't alone. Why didn't
(07:11):
you go back? It wasn't somewhere Maybe there was still
some shame. I felt uncomfortable. I didn't know anybody there.
It was comforting again, like I said, to know, I
think that, like honestly, I ate my way there, Like
I think I went to a gas station and I
was like, I'm gonna get always sacks, you know whatever,
candies or cookies or whatever. I just know it was
a particularly hard day and it landed me there. But
(07:33):
I guess I just wasn't fully ready. You have to
be ready for something like that um and be committed,
and I just didn't even know really where I fell.
But nobody talked about over eating the fact though. This
was early two thousands, so there wasn't this Instagram community
where there was all these influencers you could follow that
were being vulnerable and sharing with you about there, or
(07:56):
not even just influencers, but experts or like hashtags, or
you can search things out. I honestly don't even know
that we really googled a lot back then. Maybe I
googled it, or maybe I've saw it somewhere or looked
it up in the phone book. I don't know how
I even found this meeting, but I know it was
in North Austin, and I know that I went. It
almost feels like a dream as I'm telling that happened.
(08:18):
And I'm making this up right, because sometimes you are
on the really hard days, it's almost like you are
having an out of body You're not connected. Well, that's
a whole we just connects you. Yeah, so you went once,
and you the goodness you got from it was that
I've got the sense that I wasn't alone. I'm not alone, okay,
which is amazing and I love that And if that's
(08:38):
what you can take from one of those meetings, then
I'm all for it. I have never been personally a
huge fan of these meetings. There's also something called e
d A, which is Eating Disorders Anonymous, which encompasses all
eating disorders that I'm really pro that it's hard to
find those meetings now. They do do them online um
these days. But the reason that I'm not super into
(09:00):
o A is because they have in the past. It
could have changed, but when I was more familiar and
when I've had clients and people in my life go
into those meetings, they did preach and encourage that you
abstain from any food that you've binged. So it was
like sobriety. So if your bench food was chips, then
(09:20):
you're not allow to eat chips anymore, and a relapse
would be you eating chips, even if you're eating in
an appropriate way. I mean, I could get how for
some people that might work if you have a specific
binge food, but yeah, I mean sometimes it really didn't.
I didn't always stick to one food, so then you
can never eat If it was like candy, It's like,
can you never have any candy? Again, and I just
(09:41):
think that can be a really toxic way to find
healing because it can get that can just turn into
another type of eating disorder. Right. It sounds very restrictive
to me. And the reason I think eating disorders are
one of the hardest things to work with is it's
your need food to survive. Yeah, And it's like you're
about to say, when it's like you're teaching somebody how
to like responsibly use their drug of choice. Right, So
(10:02):
it would be like if you came to my office
and you're like, Okay, I'm addicted to cocaine. I needed
to teach me how to like use it in a healthy,
positive way, And that sounds crazy. But with food, we
kind of have to do that. And so I'm not
a huge fan of o A. However, if it's something
that if you go into it, all you take from
it is, oh my gosh, I'm not alone in this,
(10:22):
go for it, but be very mindful of what they
encourage and what kind of like I want to say,
that's like a food rule to me, and well, and
I'm going to say they probably have overall themes that
they follow or it's a it's a twelve step program,
but each chapter might it might be full of different
people in different relationships you might make. I don't know.
(10:42):
I'm just thinking of like like I know people the
do A A and they might go to one meeting
and they don't like it there, but then across town
they'll drive twenty minutes to go to this other meeting
because it's a solid meeting for them, like more impactful
and like actually a good place for them. Okay, Well,
I just looked up some criticism and I never really
find any online. I mean, I'm sure I could not
(11:04):
like a like group on Reddit that's like just bashing it,
not that I can see at the moment. But also
we're not here to bash like any particular thing because
it might be helpful to somebody. But this is just
different things can work for different people. This is just
what I've seen and how it's not been helpful in
the way that I work for myself and with clients.
It doesn't have the same kind of ideology behind recovery
(11:28):
that I see work, But I think that speaks to
just recovery in general. There's not one way to do it,
and thinking that there's just one way to do it,
you can get us in trouble. It's dangerous. Yes. So
the other part of that question was I have some
feelings on this, but what are your thoughts on using
vibe ants for binge eating? Well, I've taken that, but
did you take it for binge eating? Well? I took
(11:48):
it for both, knowing that I have a d h
D and that I'm a binge eater. But did I
relay the binge eating to my practitioner. No. I did
it for the HD But secretly, deep down inside, I'm like,
this is gonna be my magic pill because this one
I know. I for sure saw commercials about you know,
I'd be watching something and then I'd be like, do
(12:09):
you overeat? Wait? They had commercials for vibe And how
I knew it. This was probably two thousand and fifteen.
I remember specifically work. I was working at a treatment
center in and eating disorder program when it got approved,
and remember getting an article and it was very sad
to me to read that article. But for you, you're like,
(12:32):
oh my gosh, yes, I do that can help me.
I was like, this could help me focus and concentrate
at work. But then also this, this is gonna be
my cure to eating too much, and I would put
myself in that binge category. I did have a season
where I wasn't purging in any way, probably working out
too much. I learned later in recovery that over exercising
(12:55):
is a form of purging as well. It doesn't have
to be actually the physical act of purging and act.
A book that I love that helped me in my
recovery was called brainover Binge, and the author of it
she binged and purge, but her purging was always working out.
She never that was mine threw up. So for me though,
I had like twelve years where I didn't throw up,
so I thought I didn't have an eating disorder. But
(13:17):
I was eating like would have. I would binge restrict
like I would not eat, and then I would just
eat uncontrollably. But I learned a lot through brainover Binge
that my brain was like, you don't give us food.
You don't give you're not giving me any food. So
therefore when you do give me food, I'm gonna eat
the heck out of it because I don't know when
you're gonna feed me again. And so that's where I
(13:39):
had to go in and break that cycle. But it
was a mental thing, and I think one of the
questions we get to later is going to talk about
I have a mental answer for it, of like what
I just had to tell my brain. But with the purging,
it did come back after my mom passed away in
two thousand fourteen, so I was still doing binge restrict
but then the purging had come back, and I was
(14:00):
desperate for anything. And that's when I started seeing the
Vivance commercials and I'm like, this is my miracle drug.
I'm going to be here, I'm going to take this.
My life is going to be better, Like I was
convinced of that. Well. I had taken Adderall before and
didn't have the best experience with it at all, but
I thought, well, this is different than Adderall. I don't know,
help me focus, which it did for a time. And
(14:22):
then I was focusing like all day long because it's
as Viviance is a time release, and it was altering
my personality. My mouth was still getting really dry like
it did on Addall. I started feel uncomfortable. I was
still swinging, I wasn't sleeping great, and also I was
still overeating, and so then I thought something was wrong
with me, like I'm broken. I'm the person didn't fix you, right,
(14:46):
I'm the person that can't take this pill. But again,
I wasn't talking to a medical professional about that because
I wasn't taking the pill for that reason. Did you
talk to doctors about binging ever? No? Because no, never
shame embarrassing. I didn't even feel comfortable talking about that. Part.
(15:10):
Of course, I was able to say to some people
at certain times, I'm beliemic, but there's like more shame. Well,
I had shame and to believe me, don't get me wrong,
but there's it with shame for me with overeating well,
because it's this like out of the ideas, like you're
out of control. And I hate that because and if
(15:31):
anybody is listening to this, like all of these behaviors
that we're using, whether it's restricting or binging or purging
or you're purging through exercise, they're literally all the same thing.
You're just picking a different one. And like the only
reason I picked exercise over actually like throwing up, is
because I couldn't do it same thing she couldn't do. Yeah,
I would have been doing that, And I just hate that,
(15:53):
Like we've put different like labels of this one's good
and this one's worse. And this is I hear all
the time. Well, I wish I had that eating disorder
and not eating disorder, Like why couldn't I just like
not eat? Yes, And it's like they're really all the
same thing. And I just want you guys to know listening,
if you're struggling with bench eating, like somebody who's restricting
is not any better than you at all. No, And
(16:14):
it's not like they have more willpower than you because
a lot of those people, I mean I know for
me in my most restrictive parts of my life, like
I couldn't eat if I wanted to, Like I had
no control. I didn't have the control to make a
healthy choice for myself. So it wasn't like I was
all like put together and all of that. So it
didn't work for you. No, I ended up having to
(16:37):
get off of it because not it wasn't doing what
I needed it to do, even for my A d
h D. And it then was messing with me in
such a way because then, like I said, I just
felt like I was something was wrong with me. And
so then I'm like I remember going back to pick
up my prescription and then one time my prescription like
I couldn't get it. It It was late, and I was
(16:58):
like freaking out because I'm like, I need this, I
need this, And then that's a scary place to be
because I didn't. So anyway, I got off of it
and it wasn't for me. But I don't know your
thoughts on it, So I have my own feelings and
beliefs and thoughts on it, and it is not a
one size fits all. Vi Vance for binge eating kind
of feels a little bit like harm reduction to me,
(17:21):
and there's a time and a place for that. I
think that there's a time and a place for using
different ways of helping someone heal for any disorder based
on that specific situation. So I'm saying all of that
very carefully because it's not a one size fits all. However,
vi Vance the way that that it is not designed
to work for this because it wasn't designed for eating disorders,
(17:41):
But the way that now it's prescribed is because it
does suppress your appetite. So what it's not doing is
teaching you any kind of connection with your body, any
kind of connection mind, body spirit. It's not teaching you
any skill it's not allowing you to sit with discomfort.
It's not allowing you to build agency and power in
your yourself to make good choices. It's just suppressing your appetite. Well.
(18:04):
And one of the big parts of my healing, and
I say healing because I was having to I'm still
in a place of healing. I'm actively pursuing therapy and
different things that I know that are good for me mind, body,
and spirit. So I think if I was someone that
needed to take it in conjunction with a recovery process,
(18:27):
but I was looking at it as a pill that
was going to fix me when I happen, don't take
the pill anymore, right, or you go to the pharmacy
and you can't get it that day. But I wasn't
putting in the work to rewire like I had to
rewire my brain. And that took work, and that took
repetitiveness and hitting rock bottom and just wanting that to
(18:50):
be sitting in a lot of discomfort, Yes, and I
had to kept I revisited it sometimes like five times
in the same minute because I was re training my brain.
If I'm taking a miracle thing, which I do, like
what you're saying too, because if I if someone might
need something in conjunction with something else, but if you're
thinking you just take something and it's like wallog and
(19:11):
fix everything, it's not, at least for me, because so
much of my stuff with stuff I needed to actually
work through. Yeah, and I'm a big believer of medication
when it comes to mental health. I all day long. Yes,
If if that's going to be something that is really
positive and helpful for you, I support it. And every
like I said, every case is different. But if we're
(19:31):
taking this just as in like an easy way and
I haven't really tried the other stuff, it does create
another problem because what you're not doing is like healing
the relationship with your body, and healing the relationship your
body has to like hunger cues, you're not actually helping
get those back, you're deleting them. I'm in like year
two of recovery and I'm still figuring out my hunger cues. Yeah,
(19:55):
I'm okay with that, and I know that that's okay,
And I know I no longer have this mentality of like,
oh it's me, I'm broken, what's wrong with me? It's
just like, well, I mean, what do you think I
confused my body for more than twenty years. Like almost
like if once I hit mid forties, if I hadn't
have gotten the help that I needed, it'd be ye say,
(20:16):
you're not in your mid forties, so but I'm about
to be. I'm about to be forty one. And I
feel like when I say I'm in my late thirties,
I'm going to be forty one next month, and I'm
just saying in a couple more years, if I hadn't
gotten help, I'd be living thirty years in a lot
of agony. And you know, we hear from on our
(20:40):
Outweigh podcast, which is specifically for disordered eating conversations. We've
had listeners the email us that are sixty sixty five
years old and they've been living with it. And I then,
I then have gratitude for those that have gone before
me and have been an encouragement to me and where
I am. And I'm thankful that I crossed paths with
(21:01):
certain people online that were a big part of my recovery,
Lisa Hame being one of them with her Well Necessities program, Fork,
the Noise So Good and the Brain Over Binge book
like I mentioned, and then even getting to know you.
But I only learned about brain over Binge because I
followed Kale Junkie, who I've never met in person. She
(21:22):
lives in California, and sort of following around Instagram. She
posted up but thank goodness she was vulnerable about about
her story and posted about this book. You know what
I want to say to this goes back to something
you said earlier when we're talking about OA is the
most important healing agent in any of this stuff, really,
in anything we're struggling with when it comes to mental health,
is feeling like you're not alone. Is connection. That's literally
(21:43):
the opposite of addiction. And I view a lot of
eating disorders from an addictive lens. The opposite of addiction
is connection. So the more that we're hiding from our
eating disorders and we're hiding from our behaviors and and
we're taking that blanket of shame and we're just like
you know, wrapping it all around us, really highly the
farther away we are going to get from like true,
true healing, the more we can actually talk about this.
(22:06):
Even that's the point of this podcast. And I know
outweigh and I know that's one of the reasons that
you do for things with Amy Brown podcast is so
people feel like they're not alone and right. But even
in the beginning of that podcast, because that was before
my recovery, I was hiding it. But now I was
hiding it. Note but I was also spreading toxic, harmful,
(22:26):
triggering information that I thought was quote unquote healthy, and
I was encouraging my listeners to participate. But now I
know better, and that's the great thing. And you're not
being shamed. What you're not doing is let's shame. Just
be like, well, I'll never do a podcast you're gonna
I never want to talk about You're saying, yeah, this
sucks and I hate that I did that, but I'm
going to like talk about it because the more I
(22:47):
talk about it, the less shame I feel about what
I've done. Right, And then it's just this also permission
and reminder that we can all grow and evolve and
learn and we don't have to be stuff. And yeah,
there isn't shame if hey, yeah, I didn't have it
all figured out that then, And you know what, I
might say stuff now that three years from now I
might come back and be like, wow, I can't believe
(23:07):
I said that. But yeah, so glad I learned and grew.
We'll see. I don't know me too. Don't hate on
people for change. We talked about this on speaking of
four things. I think the fifth thing when we quote
quoted Charlottmagne the post he put up, which was delete
the old version of me. It expired, Amen, Amen, except
for all those podcasts were still up candlelate those that
(23:32):
person has changed. Okay, question number two really question number three,
but we're going to stay number two. What is some
advice on not slipping into bad habits when you're stressed?
But I'm going to rephrase this a little bit. I
am going to say, what is some advice on not
slipping into maladaptive unhealthy habits when you're stressed? Take that
(23:56):
bad the judgment out of it. Maladaptive. You want to
look up the definition? Yeah, have you heard that word before? Okay,
not providing adequate or appropriate adjustment to the environment or situation.
So not helpful. There you go. Love it the day
from a therapist. All adaptive behavior. Now you have to
(24:16):
use that, okay, every day this week in a sentence. Well,
let me just really drill it in here. Maladaptive behaviors
are those that stop you from adapting to newer, difficult circumstances.
They can start after a major life change, illness, or
traumatic event. It could also be a habit you picked
up at an early age. You can identify maladaptive behaviors
(24:37):
and replace them with more productive ones. There you go, Okay,
So yeah, we're reframing the question. This person is looking
for advice on how do I not go back into
those like coping skills that I picked up that are
no longer helping me when I get really stressed out,
which might be when you're most susceptible to falling into
old behaviors, which could be eating disorder behaviors. It could
(24:57):
be been shopping. Yeah, it could be anything really, men, women,
whatever you choose to numb, because for me, my eating
sort of was just numbing, numbing, numbing all the time, numbing.
It wasn't a there until a therapist in late that
I had and it was actually a therapist for my
son that did intensive with the parents. I have an
(25:19):
adopted son and adopted daughter, but I was working with him.
And really, when you have any child in your life
that has had trauma, which I adopted older children, So
that's a given. They've already been separated from their birth parents,
they lived in an orphanage for years. There's trauma. So
you have to be a healing parent. And in order
for you to be a healing parent, if you're working
(25:40):
with therapists, they want to like, see, let's where where
are you? Where are you at? How can you be
the most effective parent because if you don't dig deep
and work on your stuff. So anyway, we're talking, and
he made me do that exercise. We're sitting in a
chair and you talk to yourself in a chair, you know,
and we do this whole thing, and it came out
in that session that you know, eating disorder started when
(26:01):
I was a teenager. I was talking to my child self.
And then you know, my husband was there as someone
that has spent much of my adult life with me.
We've been married fifteen sixteen years, and he talked about
how my eating disorder has affected our marriage, says on
this whole and I'm like, wait, if I were talking
about being healing parents, but the truth is, just like
(26:23):
I brought that eating disorder into my marriage, I brought
that eating disorder into my parent child relationships as well,
and the therapist said, yeah, I mean, well, let's let's
unpack this a little bit more because, in his opinion,
I'm curious about yours. He said in eating disorders Underlying depression.
No one had ever said that to me before, because
(26:45):
I was like, well, huh, what, I'm not depressed, and
he's like, yeah, you are, in eating disorders underlying depression.
So I don't know your thoughts on that, but I
do know that I was using my eating disorder for
all of the years to numb pain so that I
wasn't feeling. And then depression doesn't have to look like
(27:06):
for some people it might, but for others it may
not be your You can be like a functioning alcoholic,
you can be like a functioning depressed person. Yeah, I've
unpacked that. Actually, never heard somebody say that. I can
understand what he's saying, and that I think that I
see eating disorders more as they can be like best
friends with depression. They could exacerbate depression. Um, depression can't
(27:28):
exacerbate and eating disorder. But I hear what he's saying
in that. What I was thinking as you were talking, though,
is I believe that a lot of the things that
we do in our eating disorders, These coping skills that
we pick up their solutions to problems, right, And so
there's solutions to problems, and at some point they're working,
and so we keep using them, and then at some
point they start causing more harm than good. And like
(27:50):
I said earlier, the addiction is the opposite of connection.
And so if I'm really really honed in on these
behaviors that disconnect me, how is anybody in my life
going to connect to me? How are my kids going
to connect to me? How is my husband or my
wife or my partner going to connect to me. I'm
not connecting to myself. My behaviors are all rooted in
(28:11):
cutting myself off and numbing, right, So how am I
going to expect people to be able to get in there?
But that's really all we ever really want. We want connection,
So it's like the opposite. So I do believe that
like not having that does just open up this perfect little,
like beautifully made bed for depression, right, I mean, I
mean it may not be that, it's like, right, Okay,
(28:35):
that's a good way to put it. Ian Really, which
did do you not have no idea? Do you know?
I think we were gonna know, But I think that
we can often yes, use these things to nomb out
and not face what we're really dealing with. So for me,
I had to first realize it. But obviously, if you're
(28:56):
asking the question, you're aware, because self awareness is key
during any of this, because self awareness without action is
basically just like nothing, right, So you have to be
self aware and then willing to take action, and that's
what they're asking. What's the action? Like for me, it
was actively not participating in the behavior, whatever it was.
(29:20):
I guess for you, what kept you from going back
to it? Because it was so easy at one point. Well,
the rewiring my brain was what I had to do.
I was had to get all in and I had
to practice, like really having a better understanding of my
brain and what was happening helped me a lot, and
kind of at least this is what I believed what
(29:41):
was happening. I know that for others they might read
brain over binge and be like, wait, what this is
not resonating with me at all, But to me, it
made perfect sense. And my brain needed to be rewired
and I had the ability to do that, and so
every time I wanted to go and go to the pantry.
I go to the pantry and I would walk away.
(30:02):
And I would go to the pantry and I would
walk away. And sometimes I would go to the pantry,
and I mean, I walk away from that thing like
five times. But the more I went to it and
walked away, the more I was not going to use
that as my medicine. Every time I walked away. It
was almost also empowering too. And I wasn't perfect by
any means. Well, there's a perfect the wrong word because
(30:22):
also there wasn't anything wrong with me. If I actually
did open the door, It's like, okay, there was no
beating myself up. There was no It's key like I
wasn't there. I didn't do anything wrong. I actually was
in survival and my brain was taking care of me,
and I needed to do what I thought was best
for me. But also I know that I am I
would remind myself of like I am safe, I am nourished,
(30:45):
I have food, I have support, I have all these things.
And I would go to the pantry and would walk away,
but go to the pantry and walk away, go to
the pantry, I would walk away. I'm gonna keep saying
that because that's what it felt like. I would go
to the pantry and I would walk away because the
pain treat that was my problem every time I would
go to the pantry. And now you know what, I
can go to my pantry for comfort, but this is
(31:06):
two years later. I can go to my pantry and
find comfort in food, but there's not this guilt and
shame associated with it. And I'm not I'm not zombie now,
I'm not numbing. No, I'm not dissociating. I'm very aware.
I'm actually like, this cookie is doing its job right now. Amen,
(31:30):
love you cookies, Thank you. Where it used to be like,
oh my gosh, I just ate a whole freaking box
of cookies and I have no idea what happened. So
for me, it was like I don't want to do
that anymore. So I had to just not do it.
And I know that sounds so like I that's not advice,
but it might be that I would turn walk away
from the pantry and go for a walk, walk away
(31:51):
from the pantry, call a friend, walk away from the pantry,
read my book, walk away from the pantry, Go read
a blog about this and that building other it's one
you're you're talking about. I'm not going to beat myself
up for for doing it, because I I feel very
strongly about this. It is about consistency and not perfection.
So I want to be consistent in doing the things
(32:14):
that actually are helpful, not perfect. So that's one of
those releasing shame. The other thing is building up other
things that help. So we get stuck on these things
thinking that they're the only thing that helps, and that
becomes this like automatic reaction when there's tons of other
skills out there that actually can really help you, and
there's some some of different kinds of skills that can
help and coping skills, and there's types of therapy and
(32:35):
DBT is really awesome to do. Now, when it comes
down to it, I think what you're also saying without
saying is you had to be willing to sit with
a lot of discomfort and connect back to your life.
That's I think the key for you, and it was
the key for me, and I couldn't do it on
my own. I had to have accountability because connecting to
(32:57):
my life and getting into the woods of what actly
I thought my eating disorder was going to help me
with was like a blood bath. And I think that
if you've never experienced this, you might have no idea
what this feels or looks like. But like eating disort
of recovery. Really I would describe it as an uphill
blood bath. It is so uncomfortable, it is so hard.
(33:17):
Is it worth it? Yes, But it takes a lot
of time to get to a place where my automatic
thought isn't to beat myself up, isn't to go over exercise,
isn't to like not eat for a certain amount of time,
isn't to make a smoothie of water and kale. Like
That's taken a long time for me to get that
stuff out of the forefront of my brain. So accountability
(33:38):
is key, but also willingness to sit in uncomfortable stuff
and tolerate it. That's something I don't think is we
taught all these skills to like ignore or whatever. But
it's like all about like I need to learn how
to tolerate being in my life. How do I tolerate
be in my life rather than going to go do
something that takes me out of my life. So there's
(33:58):
a lot of skills that can help with that that
would take a whole podcast but things that bring you
into you and your experience rather pull me out of
And I think that the beating self up part like
happens in stages. I mean, I, well, no, there's different
things to beat yourself up about, and you just can't
do it in any category, Like can I say something
(34:20):
about in recovery, I kind of swapped some things out
for other things, Like I wasn't binging anymore, but I
was counting macros and I didn't realize I had replaced
one for the other. I at least thought, well, I'm
walking away from the pantry, I'm not binging, but now
I'm obsessing over entering things into my Fitness Pal. And
(34:45):
if I didn't enter it for the day, it's like
I was going to go crazy, like it was so uncomfortable.
But that, in a way was another one of these
coping mechanisms where I wasn't having to face what because
not being able to enter in the exact calories fat
protein that I ate that day carbs shouldn't send me spinning.
(35:06):
It should be like, okay, cool, I couldn't enter that.
I mean, because if you're in a place where you
can enter that stuff and you want it, just for
facts about your body. It's okay to want to know macros,
but if you're going to not be able to sleep,
not worth it. That's that's not worth it. But I
I replaced, So I'm saying things can get sneaky because
(35:27):
you can rewire one part of your brain and then
like move in in another way to knom out and
not face the real things. And mine was like disguised
by Okay, I gotta enter this, or I have to
eat this, Oh my gosh, I didn't meet my goal,
or steps, like I'd be like, oh my gosh, I'm
only at nine seven steps and I'm supposed to get
to ten thousand, and I would pace around my bedroom.
(35:49):
But I'm not binging, right. But that's what I think
is actually really I'm glad you said that, because that's
one of the reasons that I'm I'm really really big on.
If you're struggling something like this and you're looking for help,
is find somebody who has experience and expertise in working
in it, because not all therapists and mental health professionals
are created equal. If I didn't have experience in like
(36:12):
the deep deep deep woods of eating disorders, I might
congratulate you on that and be like, I'm so proud
of you. Look at you. You're getting over this. But
I don't know the inside workings of eating disorders, and
they're so freaking tricky that they can have you do
things that a lot of the world celebrates, and then
you're celebrating it, but it's actually, again not helping you
(36:36):
get to the root of the issue, which is the
disconnection that you have with yourself and the inability to connect,
which then prevents you from connecting to other people. I
remember when Lisa had me stop doing that because I
was doing her program and I had completed Brain over
Venge and I had completed Fork the Noise, but yet
I was still sneaking in my my data and she's like, Amy,
(37:01):
you have to stop because you learn how to tolerate
the discomfort. Yes, And I told her, I can't let
this go. I don't see how this is harming me,
and I can't let it go. But then when I
really sat back with it, the mere fact that I
couldn't let it go meant that it was harmful. And
I remember struggling with sleep the first night I let
it go, and the next morning waking up and sending
(37:23):
Lisa text and I'm like, I don't know how'm gonna
get through today, like not tracking everything. And then I
think I had taken a picture at work and I
sent it to her and I'm like, I already feel
like I look different and she's like, Amy, you look
the same, but I couldn't see it. So then you
(37:44):
know this is just to say, but also you're seeing
how you feel and you're uncomfortable. You're having all these
messages inside of your body shooting off because you have
not learned how to tolerate this feeling. You're feeling all
over the placing and oh my gosh, scared all the
stuff you're seen image of that, and so all of
a sudden you think you look different when like it's impossible.
(38:05):
It was impossible, literally impossible. And so I would just say,
if you're looking to not fall back into other behaviors,
you might pick up other things that you think are
safe and then you realize, oh, shoot, they're not safe either.
So yeah, just make sure you have good accountability, like
you're saying, cat and things in place, and it's okay
(38:27):
to be prepared or have a list of things or
journal and write like journaling, writing, reading, like sometimes writing
things out. I think that that's if you can walk
away from a behavior and go and journal it all down,
that can be extremely therapeutic and help you connect the
dogs with your within yourself, which is ultimately what you're
(38:49):
saying is we have to do. We can't just replace
one numbing behavior with another numbing behavior and then like,
what are things that you say to go do for this? Well,
I've I believe it's very important to have a box
full of tools, like a box full of things and
not just one or two things that work, because we
can't be journaling every time we feel distressed, we can't
(39:11):
be going for a walk every time we feel distressed,
we can't be calling a friend every time. So having
a toolbox a lot of different options. You could do
a grab bag, write I'm all down your drawl, and
we would I get to do to actually make like
emergency kits with clients where um, we would put a
bunch of stuff in like a little bag, or they
could get like a cute fun they could get a
(39:32):
four things bag or something um and put them all
in there and we would have things that would bring
them into their senses. So a picture, to look at
a stone or something soft to hold, um, a scent,
to smell, and it's bringing you back into the present
of that rather than like going in the You know,
when you're really really stressed and triggered, you're like all
(39:54):
over the place and a lot of times living in
your past. So self soothing things are really really helpful.
But self soothing doesn't take away your emotions. So something
that I always have in my office and I actually
have it at my house too, is I keep things
in the freezer like um, citrus fruits like lemons, oranges, limes,
And when you're really used, were triggered to go use
(40:17):
a behavior, you go get that and you've hold it
and your self sothent You still might be feeling scared
or sad or angry, but you're also self soothing in
that moment. So I actually was going to say this
because I was watching Inside Out last night with my
knees and I don't know if you guys have seen it,
but basically, sadness, the feeling sadness is a huge part
(40:39):
of the movie. And spoiler alert, if you haven't seen it,
you can fast forward through this part. But at the
end it showed us that um sadness was a really
important part of this girl's life and emotional literacy. And
my niece looked at me. She's seven, and she was like, wait,
because they were your feelings were categorized by different colors,
(41:02):
and these marbles that were categorized by different colors were
being changed to have both the color for joy and
both the color for sadness in it. And my niece
looked at me and so she said, cat, why are
they turning all of her happy thoughts sad? And I said, well,
look what's happening. Because there was a scene in the
movie where the girl was really sad but her parents
(41:22):
gave her a hugging, comforted her. And I said, look
what's happening. She's really really sad. But because she was
sad and expressed that to her family, they came to
her hugged her, and now they're like spending time with her,
and now she feels love and she feels joy. So
sometimes when you're sad, it's not all bad. It can
lead you to something you really want. So for this
(41:43):
girl was connection with her family. And I don't know
why that's We can be emotional right now, but I.
When she's asked me that, I was like, oh my gosh,
I'm so grateful for this movie. But that's literally what
I'm talking about. How can I sit in this emotion
and sit in this feeling and not like deemon I
is it because our discomfort is probably hitting on some
(42:04):
kind of emotion we're having that we don't know how
to tolerate, whether that's sadness or fear or anger. And
we need to learn that our emotions lead us to
what we really need and what we really want, rather
than lead us to like this deep dark hole. It
makes me think of Halt. It's like a little bit different,
but another thing where you you might be acting or
(42:24):
feeling a certain way because h you might be hungry,
A you might be angry, l you might be lonely,
or TEA you might be tired. And I think of
how many of the years I lived in a state
of just like I don't even have a word for it.
It's just like and but people wouldn't have even really known.
(42:45):
But I was that probably because I was tired and
hungry and angry and lonely, like I was all. I mean,
some of those if you're like on any given day.
You can know if you're feeling a certain way, you
can be like, wait, am I hungry, angry, lonely, tired
it And it's a tool for you to meet your needs.
But like when I was in the thick of my
eating disorder, I was halt all the time, all four things,
(43:08):
but you never actually clued into that. So I'm just
going behavior, so I'm not actually figuring out what do
I need here? Right? But I mean, look at all
those needs, but I wasn't meeting any of them. I
was numbing all of it out. It's like, Okay, I
was hungry, but whatever, I don't not eating right now.
Or if I'm hungry, then okay, I just over eight
da da and I'm angry about it all and I'm
(43:30):
lonely because it's very isolating and nobody's talking about it.
And then I'm freaking tired, likeandjusting a nap. Well yeah,
but I mean it's just a cycle. It's a it's
a cycle that makes you really exhausted. I just remember
being so exhausted all the times, either thinking about food
or not thinking about you're trying not to think about food,
(43:50):
or because running away from yourself is exhausting. I think
that like running away from yourself is exhausting. Even sort
of recovery is exhausting. But there's a light at the
end of the all, and you don't have to live
in that state of exhaustion forever. Right well, yeah, circling
back to like where I want to put a bow
on the whole thing is is like now I might
experience multi pull of those things at once, but it's
(44:12):
very rare. I think that most of my eating sort
of though I lived in all of them hungry, englandly, tired,
and now I can tell I can like tell a difference.
If I'm actually hungry, I'm like, Okay, well that's hungry,
or if I'm snippy, I'm like, okay, do I need food?
Or is it that I'm angry? And I can like
decipher what it is. Again, I might have some of
(44:35):
them that are crossing over, but it's rare, Like what
because I'm more connected, It's like I'm able to narrow
it down and figure out what need is and then
I'm able to feel my feelings and be like it's okay,
and then I go and I have the day I
need to have. How many things can you say that
(44:55):
are like catchphrases in one sentence. I don't know, but
I don't you know, I do want to offer that
hope and that light at the end of the tunnel
is that when you're in recovery, it's not perfect. You
still have days where you're angry, lonely, tired and hungry,
but like it's less exhausting because you're it's more manageable.
It just is. I don't know. I'm speaking for myself,
(45:19):
like I was a freaking hot mess, but also I
was trying to hold it together all the time. And
so yeah, it's just if you're there, I get it.
You're not alone. I want you to know that, And
I just also want people to know that it's going
to take time. It's not as easy as a lot
of the stuff you're seeing on the internet makes it look.
(45:39):
And it's not black and white. It's so gray. And
that's why, I mean, even that's what outweighs about. It's
like the gray area of eating disorders. Yeah, and there's
not one way for everybody, and even some of the
stuff we're saying here, you might need to assess for
yourself what's gonna work, what's not going to work. And
that's the beauty of working with someone like cat if
you can find a license therapist in the city where you,
(46:00):
if that you can actually like meet with that specializes
in eating disorders. Because I've definitely gone to therapist before
that I don't know, I just didn't feel comfortab because
they didn't didn't get it. We're talking about like individualized
treatment too, and I think that's really important. Where Like
I work with a lot of people with eating disorders,
and I don't do the same thing with all of
(46:21):
them because based on their experience, their life, their behaviors,
they need different things. And that's why it's actually really
hard to answer some of the questions that you guys
send specifically about eating disorders, just because there isn't one
answer I can give that fits everybody. So I do
want to throw that out there as we wrap this up,
that we were going to do three or four. We
(46:43):
got two questions. But that's okay. There, it was good conversation.
But take what we're saying and make sure it really
does fit with you before you make it like your
life's motto now, and your therapist might not always be correct.
So if you're with a therapist that does you wouldn't
know this, but does every single thing the same with
every single client. That's a red flag because I don't
(47:05):
see how that would ever work. I don't see how
that would work either. I mean even as I if
I have the same therapist, I want them to do
different things for me in different seasons. Yeah. Yeah, like
if I'm seeing them for a long time, you need
to evolve with me. Let's go. Okay, well, Pat, this
(47:25):
is your episode. But I'm like, okay, sorry, we went
way over. We were going to do this for twenty minutes,
but I don't know how long this is. But it
was a good conversation and I'm grateful to have it,
and I'm grateful that you are somebody that is willing
to have these conversations because they are vulnerable and hard
and scary. And also look at how much goodness and
connection you've gotten from talking about this stuff. Yeah, it's amazing.
(47:48):
So I hope this was helpful for all you guys listening.
If you have more questions for me, remember you can
send them to Catherine at you Need Therapy podcast dot com.
You can follow me at at cat dot de fata.
You can follow the podcast at Ani Therapy podcast on Instagram,
and you can follow Amy at Radio Amy on Instagram
(48:09):
and make sure you listen to if you liked this episode,
her podcast Outweigh Um that's on the same network that
we're on, and her other podcast for Things with any Brown,
which I get to be on once week. Yeah, Cat
is the every Tuesday. Yeah, she's the staple guest from
the fifth Thing, Permanent, Permanent, Stable, whatever. Thank you for
(48:30):
having me, and thank you for having these conversations, and
thank you for nit a week which brings awareness to
a much needed conversation. Alright, bye, guys,
Happy Saturday Outwei fam amy here and Happy New Year.
I can't believe as of today is in its final stages.
Tomorrow it will be a new year, which I'm very,
very very excited about and all that it has in store.
So I hope you're having a great holiday weekend. And
today we are going to be hearing a couch Talks
(00:22):
episode from Cat de Fought as You Need Therapy podcast. Now,
this is something I recorded with Cat early in two
I was during need a Week, a National Eating disorder
awareness week, and Cat and I just talk a little
bit about our experience and then we did a Q
and a little Cats the therapist, so she lead everything,
and this is from her podcast, but it is a
(00:44):
conversation that I think will be very beneficial to you,
especially as you are looking into the new year, and
how you want to show up and how are you
with your body image right now, how are you around
food right now, and what kind of goals are going
to set this year and maybe they could look a
little bit different than they have in the year's past
and not really have anything to do with what your
(01:07):
body looks like or what you're eating. So I hope
you enjoy this chat. Here you go couch Talks. Welcome
guys to another new episode of couch Talks. This is Cat.
(01:28):
I'm your host, and I am excited because we have
a guest for couch Talks. This is my first couch Talks,
is it I don't know. I mean it is, yeah
on the podcast before, but not a couch Talk. Yeah.
If you don't recognize the voice we have Amy Amy Brown. Welcome, Welcome,
thank you, Hi, happy to be here. You're welcoming yourself. Yes,
if you are new or newer to you need therapy
(01:50):
podcasts and you're like couch talks, what is that? Couch
Talks is the bonus episode that we do every single
Wednesday where I answer questions that you guys send in
and you can send this into Catherine at you Need
Therapy podcast dot com and maybe one day I will
get to your question. Now, that can be kind of
confusing because you're sending questions to a licensed therapist and
(02:12):
then she's somewhat answering them on air. I want to
say on air, but we're not on air on a podcast,
on a podcast. But I do want to remind you
guys that this podcast is not therapy and doesn't serve
as a replacement. However, it could aid in the addition
to your therapy or encourage you to go to therapy,
which is great, I do. I agree. Yeah. So this week,
(02:32):
the reason we have a guest is because it's need
a Week, and need a Week is National Eating Disorder
Awareness Week. It's a very special week. Very I only
started to even know something existed that, Like in the
last two years, I had no idea Need a Week
was a thing. And I've had a needing disorder. Well,
my eating disorder started when i was maybe and then
(02:53):
I'm forty I'm turning forty one. So we weren't doing
very good job of bringing those I don't know, there
was not there was a disconnect. Yeah, but I love
this week, not because like I'm not celebrating eating disorders.
What we're doing is bringing awareness to them and talking
about them and putting information out that can either help
you or help somebody, you know, because there are a
(03:14):
lot of misconceptions about eating disorders and I like to
bring light to a lot of that stuff. Because I
don't know if you felt this way, maybe not amy
because you were like I've had one for a very
long time. A lot of people think that they are
just about body image and the way you look, and
they're vain and why don't you just eat? And there's
(03:35):
so much more complexities. Yeah, well not even like why
don't you just see? It's why don't you just stop
eating when you're full? Or why don't you just stop purging?
Or whatever it is that you're behavior, because there's so
many different kinds of eating disorders, and I think people
just think of one I did, and I'm going to
link some other episodes that I've done on this topic
(03:55):
in the show notes, But I did one episode where
I just talked about the different types because people don't
don't realize that, like an eating disorder isn't the same
for every single person. So we're going to talk about
it today, okay. And I asked you guys for your
questions on Instagram and you sent me some and we're
gonna try to do like three to four. Yeah, And
I'm speaking as someone who is in recovery, and then
(04:16):
Kat is speaking as the expert, so yeah, and in recovery,
so I get both sides. You just get one second.
I just get one side, and I mean somewhat of
an expert, though you have a lot of conversations with
a lot of I don't know, is there like a
podcast degree, because like I don't, I don't have the credentials.
So just I'm I'm thankful to be in a place
where I get to have open, honest conversations about it,
(04:38):
where there's no shame or judgment. And that's wonderful that
we get to connect with people in that way, because
I think I would have benefited from conversations like this,
especially my younger self. But I by no means and
an expert at all. And that's why I just wanted
to clarify because sometimes what I say, which you'll catch me,
but I don't want to be a trigger to anybody,
(04:59):
or I don't want to say anything ing that would
harm anybody in any way. I'm really glad you said that,
because I talked about this a lot on the podcast.
But I get really frustrated and very very disappointed when
I see people out there with influence or maybe they
don't even have a lot of influence, but putting information
out on a topic that is as delicate as an
(05:19):
eating disorder, is that is not true or is like
a version of the truth. That is twisted and turned
a little bit. So we're going to have some expert
experience in some just human experience day and I will
say we talked about or I have I don't know
what we talked about on your podcast too Dopsic and
how obsessed with that show I was. And if you
(05:42):
have not watched that, I highly recommend watching it. However
trigger warding. It can be hard to watch. But it's
all about the opioid epidemic. And you know, something that
we used to think or it used to be true,
is that addiction to opiates was one of the most
deadly like mental health crisis that we had. But right now,
the highest mortality rate of any mental health disorder comes
(06:03):
from eating disorders. I did not know that. You didn't
know that. I didn't know it surpassed other things. If
you was one, you know, name three. I don't think
I would have put it as a top one. Obviously,
I know that that's there's a lot of tragedy that
comes from eating disorders, but I don't know. I just
would figure other things but fall in line first. That's wild. Okay, Well,
(06:26):
so even more of a reason why this conversation or
having these conversations wherever you're having them, as long as
again there's the expert involved, it's important. Okay, So we
better get to the question. Yeah, okay, So I'm going
to ask the question. I'm going to see if you
want to give feedback first, and then we'll just bounce
(06:47):
and see what happens. Okay, okay, So the first question
is what are your thoughts on over ears anonymous and
um using vivants for binge eating disorder? Okay, Well, I've
gone to one over eaters anonymous meeting in my early twenties,
and I never went back. I think I was just
so thankful to know that I wasn't alone. Why didn't
(07:11):
you go back? It wasn't somewhere Maybe there was still
some shame. I felt uncomfortable. I didn't know anybody there.
It was comforting again, like I said, to know, I
think that, like honestly, I ate my way there, Like
I think I went to a gas station and I
was like, I'm gonna get always sacks, you know whatever,
candies or cookies or whatever. I just know it was
a particularly hard day and it landed me there. But
(07:33):
I guess I just wasn't fully ready. You have to
be ready for something like that um and be committed,
and I just didn't even know really where I fell.
But nobody talked about over eating the fact though. This
was early two thousands, so there wasn't this Instagram community
where there was all these influencers you could follow that
were being vulnerable and sharing with you about there, or
(07:56):
not even just influencers, but experts or like hashtags, or
you can search things out. I honestly don't even know
that we really googled a lot back then. Maybe I
googled it, or maybe I've saw it somewhere or looked
it up in the phone book. I don't know how
I even found this meeting, but I know it was
in North Austin, and I know that I went. It
almost feels like a dream as I'm telling that happened.
(08:18):
And I'm making this up right, because sometimes you are
on the really hard days, it's almost like you are
having an out of body You're not connected. Well, that's
a whole we just connects you. Yeah, so you went once,
and you the goodness you got from it was that
I've got the sense that I wasn't alone. I'm not alone, okay,
which is amazing and I love that And if that's
(08:38):
what you can take from one of those meetings, then
I'm all for it. I have never been personally a
huge fan of these meetings. There's also something called e
d A, which is Eating Disorders Anonymous, which encompasses all
eating disorders that I'm really pro that it's hard to
find those meetings now. They do do them online um
these days. But the reason that I'm not super into
(09:00):
o A is because they have in the past. It
could have changed, but when I was more familiar and
when I've had clients and people in my life go
into those meetings, they did preach and encourage that you
abstain from any food that you've binged. So it was
like sobriety. So if your bench food was chips, then
(09:20):
you're not allow to eat chips anymore, and a relapse
would be you eating chips, even if you're eating in
an appropriate way. I mean, I could get how for
some people that might work if you have a specific
binge food, but yeah, I mean sometimes it really didn't.
I didn't always stick to one food, so then you
can never eat If it was like candy, It's like,
can you never have any candy? Again, and I just
(09:41):
think that can be a really toxic way to find
healing because it can get that can just turn into
another type of eating disorder. Right. It sounds very restrictive
to me. And the reason I think eating disorders are
one of the hardest things to work with is it's
your need food to survive. Yeah, And it's like you're
about to say, when it's like you're teaching somebody how
to like responsibly use their drug of choice. Right, So
(10:02):
it would be like if you came to my office
and you're like, Okay, I'm addicted to cocaine. I needed
to teach me how to like use it in a healthy,
positive way, And that sounds crazy. But with food, we
kind of have to do that. And so I'm not
a huge fan of o A. However, if it's something
that if you go into it, all you take from
it is, oh my gosh, I'm not alone in this,
(10:22):
go for it, but be very mindful of what they
encourage and what kind of like I want to say,
that's like a food rule to me, and well, and
I'm going to say they probably have overall themes that
they follow or it's a it's a twelve step program,
but each chapter might it might be full of different
people in different relationships you might make. I don't know.
(10:42):
I'm just thinking of like like I know people the
do A A and they might go to one meeting
and they don't like it there, but then across town
they'll drive twenty minutes to go to this other meeting
because it's a solid meeting for them, like more impactful
and like actually a good place for them. Okay, Well,
I just looked up some criticism and I never really
find any online. I mean, I'm sure I could not
(11:04):
like a like group on Reddit that's like just bashing it,
not that I can see at the moment. But also
we're not here to bash like any particular thing because
it might be helpful to somebody. But this is just
different things can work for different people. This is just
what I've seen and how it's not been helpful in
the way that I work for myself and with clients.
It doesn't have the same kind of ideology behind recovery
(11:28):
that I see work, But I think that speaks to
just recovery in general. There's not one way to do it,
and thinking that there's just one way to do it,
you can get us in trouble. It's dangerous. Yes. So
the other part of that question was I have some
feelings on this, but what are your thoughts on using
vibe ants for binge eating? Well, I've taken that, but
did you take it for binge eating? Well? I took
(11:48):
it for both, knowing that I have a d h
D and that I'm a binge eater. But did I
relay the binge eating to my practitioner. No. I did
it for the HD But secretly, deep down inside, I'm like,
this is gonna be my magic pill because this one
I know. I for sure saw commercials about you know,
I'd be watching something and then I'd be like, do
(12:09):
you overeat? Wait? They had commercials for vibe And how
I knew it. This was probably two thousand and fifteen.
I remember specifically work. I was working at a treatment
center in and eating disorder program when it got approved,
and remember getting an article and it was very sad
to me to read that article. But for you, you're like,
(12:32):
oh my gosh, yes, I do that can help me.
I was like, this could help me focus and concentrate
at work. But then also this, this is gonna be
my cure to eating too much, and I would put
myself in that binge category. I did have a season
where I wasn't purging in any way, probably working out
too much. I learned later in recovery that over exercising
(12:55):
is a form of purging as well. It doesn't have
to be actually the physical act of purging and act.
A book that I love that helped me in my
recovery was called brainover Binge, and the author of it
she binged and purge, but her purging was always working out.
She never that was mine threw up. So for me though,
I had like twelve years where I didn't throw up,
so I thought I didn't have an eating disorder. But
(13:17):
I was eating like would have. I would binge restrict
like I would not eat, and then I would just
eat uncontrollably. But I learned a lot through brainover Binge
that my brain was like, you don't give us food.
You don't give you're not giving me any food. So
therefore when you do give me food, I'm gonna eat
the heck out of it because I don't know when
you're gonna feed me again. And so that's where I
(13:39):
had to go in and break that cycle. But it
was a mental thing, and I think one of the
questions we get to later is going to talk about
I have a mental answer for it, of like what
I just had to tell my brain. But with the purging,
it did come back after my mom passed away in
two thousand fourteen, so I was still doing binge restrict
but then the purging had come back, and I was
(14:00):
desperate for anything. And that's when I started seeing the
Vivance commercials and I'm like, this is my miracle drug.
I'm going to be here, I'm going to take this.
My life is going to be better, Like I was
convinced of that. Well. I had taken Adderall before and
didn't have the best experience with it at all, but
I thought, well, this is different than Adderall. I don't know,
help me focus, which it did for a time. And
(14:22):
then I was focusing like all day long because it's
as Viviance is a time release, and it was altering
my personality. My mouth was still getting really dry like
it did on Addall. I started feel uncomfortable. I was
still swinging, I wasn't sleeping great, and also I was
still overeating, and so then I thought something was wrong
with me, like I'm broken. I'm the person didn't fix you, right,
(14:46):
I'm the person that can't take this pill. But again,
I wasn't talking to a medical professional about that because
I wasn't taking the pill for that reason. Did you
talk to doctors about binging ever? No? Because no, never
shame embarrassing. I didn't even feel comfortable talking about that. Part.
(15:10):
Of course, I was able to say to some people
at certain times, I'm beliemic, but there's like more shame. Well,
I had shame and to believe me, don't get me wrong,
but there's it with shame for me with overeating well,
because it's this like out of the ideas, like you're
out of control. And I hate that because and if
(15:31):
anybody is listening to this, like all of these behaviors
that we're using, whether it's restricting or binging or purging
or you're purging through exercise, they're literally all the same thing.
You're just picking a different one. And like the only
reason I picked exercise over actually like throwing up, is
because I couldn't do it same thing she couldn't do. Yeah,
I would have been doing that, And I just hate that,
(15:53):
Like we've put different like labels of this one's good
and this one's worse. And this is I hear all
the time. Well, I wish I had that eating disorder
and not eating disorder, Like why couldn't I just like
not eat? Yes, And it's like they're really all the
same thing. And I just want you guys to know listening,
if you're struggling with bench eating, like somebody who's restricting
is not any better than you at all. No, And
(16:14):
it's not like they have more willpower than you because
a lot of those people, I mean I know for
me in my most restrictive parts of my life, like
I couldn't eat if I wanted to, Like I had
no control. I didn't have the control to make a
healthy choice for myself. So it wasn't like I was
all like put together and all of that. So it
didn't work for you. No, I ended up having to
(16:37):
get off of it because not it wasn't doing what
I needed it to do, even for my A d
h D. And it then was messing with me in
such a way because then, like I said, I just
felt like I was something was wrong with me. And
so then I'm like I remember going back to pick
up my prescription and then one time my prescription like
I couldn't get it. It It was late, and I was
(16:58):
like freaking out because I'm like, I need this, I
need this, And then that's a scary place to be
because I didn't. So anyway, I got off of it
and it wasn't for me. But I don't know your
thoughts on it, So I have my own feelings and
beliefs and thoughts on it, and it is not a
one size fits all. Vi Vance for binge eating kind
of feels a little bit like harm reduction to me,
(17:21):
and there's a time and a place for that. I
think that there's a time and a place for using
different ways of helping someone heal for any disorder based
on that specific situation. So I'm saying all of that
very carefully because it's not a one size fits all. However,
vi Vance the way that that it is not designed
to work for this because it wasn't designed for eating disorders,
(17:41):
But the way that now it's prescribed is because it
does suppress your appetite. So what it's not doing is
teaching you any kind of connection with your body, any
kind of connection mind, body spirit. It's not teaching you
any skill it's not allowing you to sit with discomfort.
It's not allowing you to build agency and power in
your yourself to make good choices. It's just suppressing your appetite. Well.
(18:04):
And one of the big parts of my healing, and
I say healing because I was having to I'm still
in a place of healing. I'm actively pursuing therapy and
different things that I know that are good for me mind, body,
and spirit. So I think if I was someone that
needed to take it in conjunction with a recovery process,
(18:27):
but I was looking at it as a pill that
was going to fix me when I happen, don't take
the pill anymore, right, or you go to the pharmacy
and you can't get it that day. But I wasn't
putting in the work to rewire like I had to
rewire my brain. And that took work, and that took
repetitiveness and hitting rock bottom and just wanting that to
(18:50):
be sitting in a lot of discomfort, Yes, and I
had to kept I revisited it sometimes like five times
in the same minute because I was re training my brain.
If I'm taking a miracle thing, which I do, like
what you're saying too, because if I if someone might
need something in conjunction with something else, but if you're
thinking you just take something and it's like wallog and
(19:11):
fix everything, it's not, at least for me, because so
much of my stuff with stuff I needed to actually
work through. Yeah, and I'm a big believer of medication
when it comes to mental health. I all day long. Yes,
If if that's going to be something that is really
positive and helpful for you, I support it. And every
like I said, every case is different. But if we're
(19:31):
taking this just as in like an easy way and
I haven't really tried the other stuff, it does create
another problem because what you're not doing is like healing
the relationship with your body, and healing the relationship your
body has to like hunger cues, you're not actually helping
get those back, you're deleting them. I'm in like year
two of recovery and I'm still figuring out my hunger cues. Yeah,
(19:55):
I'm okay with that, and I know that that's okay,
And I know I no longer have this mentality of like,
oh it's me, I'm broken, what's wrong with me? It's
just like, well, I mean, what do you think I
confused my body for more than twenty years. Like almost
like if once I hit mid forties, if I hadn't
have gotten the help that I needed, it'd be ye say,
(20:16):
you're not in your mid forties, so but I'm about
to be. I'm about to be forty one. And I
feel like when I say I'm in my late thirties,
I'm going to be forty one next month, and I'm
just saying in a couple more years, if I hadn't
gotten help, I'd be living thirty years in a lot
of agony. And you know, we hear from on our
(20:40):
Outweigh podcast, which is specifically for disordered eating conversations. We've
had listeners the email us that are sixty sixty five
years old and they've been living with it. And I then,
I then have gratitude for those that have gone before
me and have been an encouragement to me and where
I am. And I'm thankful that I crossed paths with
(21:01):
certain people online that were a big part of my recovery,
Lisa Hame being one of them with her Well Necessities program, Fork,
the Noise So Good and the Brain Over Binge book
like I mentioned, and then even getting to know you.
But I only learned about brain over Binge because I
followed Kale Junkie, who I've never met in person. She
(21:22):
lives in California, and sort of following around Instagram. She
posted up but thank goodness she was vulnerable about about
her story and posted about this book. You know what
I want to say to this goes back to something
you said earlier when we're talking about OA is the
most important healing agent in any of this stuff, really,
in anything we're struggling with when it comes to mental health,
is feeling like you're not alone. Is connection. That's literally
(21:43):
the opposite of addiction. And I view a lot of
eating disorders from an addictive lens. The opposite of addiction
is connection. So the more that we're hiding from our
eating disorders and we're hiding from our behaviors and and
we're taking that blanket of shame and we're just like
you know, wrapping it all around us, really highly the
farther away we are going to get from like true,
true healing, the more we can actually talk about this.
(22:06):
Even that's the point of this podcast. And I know
outweigh and I know that's one of the reasons that
you do for things with Amy Brown podcast is so
people feel like they're not alone and right. But even
in the beginning of that podcast, because that was before
my recovery, I was hiding it. But now I was
hiding it. Note but I was also spreading toxic, harmful,
(22:26):
triggering information that I thought was quote unquote healthy, and
I was encouraging my listeners to participate. But now I
know better, and that's the great thing. And you're not
being shamed. What you're not doing is let's shame. Just
be like, well, I'll never do a podcast you're gonna
I never want to talk about You're saying, yeah, this
sucks and I hate that I did that, but I'm
going to like talk about it because the more I
(22:47):
talk about it, the less shame I feel about what
I've done. Right, And then it's just this also permission
and reminder that we can all grow and evolve and
learn and we don't have to be stuff. And yeah,
there isn't shame if hey, yeah, I didn't have it
all figured out that then, And you know what, I
might say stuff now that three years from now I
might come back and be like, wow, I can't believe
(23:07):
I said that. But yeah, so glad I learned and grew.
We'll see. I don't know me too. Don't hate on
people for change. We talked about this on speaking of
four things. I think the fifth thing when we quote
quoted Charlottmagne the post he put up, which was delete
the old version of me. It expired, Amen, Amen, except
for all those podcasts were still up candlelate those that
(23:32):
person has changed. Okay, question number two really question number three,
but we're going to stay number two. What is some
advice on not slipping into bad habits when you're stressed?
But I'm going to rephrase this a little bit. I
am going to say, what is some advice on not
slipping into maladaptive unhealthy habits when you're stressed? Take that
(23:56):
bad the judgment out of it. Maladaptive. You want to
look up the definition? Yeah, have you heard that word before? Okay,
not providing adequate or appropriate adjustment to the environment or situation.
So not helpful. There you go. Love it the day
from a therapist. All adaptive behavior. Now you have to
(24:16):
use that, okay, every day this week in a sentence. Well,
let me just really drill it in here. Maladaptive behaviors
are those that stop you from adapting to newer, difficult circumstances.
They can start after a major life change, illness, or
traumatic event. It could also be a habit you picked
up at an early age. You can identify maladaptive behaviors
(24:37):
and replace them with more productive ones. There you go, Okay,
So yeah, we're reframing the question. This person is looking
for advice on how do I not go back into
those like coping skills that I picked up that are
no longer helping me when I get really stressed out,
which might be when you're most susceptible to falling into
old behaviors, which could be eating disorder behaviors. It could
(24:57):
be been shopping. Yeah, it could be anything really, men, women,
whatever you choose to numb, because for me, my eating
sort of was just numbing, numbing, numbing all the time, numbing.
It wasn't a there until a therapist in late that
I had and it was actually a therapist for my
son that did intensive with the parents. I have an
(25:19):
adopted son and adopted daughter, but I was working with him.
And really, when you have any child in your life
that has had trauma, which I adopted older children, So
that's a given. They've already been separated from their birth parents,
they lived in an orphanage for years. There's trauma. So
you have to be a healing parent. And in order
for you to be a healing parent, if you're working
(25:40):
with therapists, they want to like, see, let's where where
are you? Where are you at? How can you be
the most effective parent because if you don't dig deep
and work on your stuff. So anyway, we're talking, and
he made me do that exercise. We're sitting in a
chair and you talk to yourself in a chair, you know,
and we do this whole thing, and it came out
in that session that you know, eating disorder started when
(26:01):
I was a teenager. I was talking to my child self.
And then you know, my husband was there as someone
that has spent much of my adult life with me.
We've been married fifteen sixteen years, and he talked about
how my eating disorder has affected our marriage, says on
this whole and I'm like, wait, if I were talking
about being healing parents, but the truth is, just like
(26:23):
I brought that eating disorder into my marriage, I brought
that eating disorder into my parent child relationships as well,
and the therapist said, yeah, I mean, well, let's let's
unpack this a little bit more because, in his opinion,
I'm curious about yours. He said in eating disorders Underlying depression.
No one had ever said that to me before, because
(26:45):
I was like, well, huh, what, I'm not depressed, and
he's like, yeah, you are, in eating disorders underlying depression.
So I don't know your thoughts on that, but I
do know that I was using my eating disorder for
all of the years to numb pain so that I
wasn't feeling. And then depression doesn't have to look like
(27:06):
for some people it might, but for others it may
not be your You can be like a functioning alcoholic,
you can be like a functioning depressed person. Yeah, I've
unpacked that. Actually, never heard somebody say that. I can
understand what he's saying, and that I think that I
see eating disorders more as they can be like best
friends with depression. They could exacerbate depression. Um, depression can't
(27:28):
exacerbate and eating disorder. But I hear what he's saying
in that. What I was thinking as you were talking, though,
is I believe that a lot of the things that
we do in our eating disorders, These coping skills that
we pick up their solutions to problems, right, And so
there's solutions to problems, and at some point they're working,
and so we keep using them, and then at some
point they start causing more harm than good. And like
(27:50):
I said earlier, the addiction is the opposite of connection.
And so if I'm really really honed in on these
behaviors that disconnect me, how is anybody in my life
going to connect to me? How are my kids going
to connect to me? How is my husband or my
wife or my partner going to connect to me. I'm
not connecting to myself. My behaviors are all rooted in
(28:11):
cutting myself off and numbing, right, So how am I
going to expect people to be able to get in there?
But that's really all we ever really want. We want connection,
So it's like the opposite. So I do believe that
like not having that does just open up this perfect little,
like beautifully made bed for depression, right, I mean, I
mean it may not be that, it's like, right, Okay,
(28:35):
that's a good way to put it. Ian Really, which
did do you not have no idea? Do you know?
I think we were gonna know, But I think that
we can often yes, use these things to nomb out
and not face what we're really dealing with. So for me,
I had to first realize it. But obviously, if you're
(28:56):
asking the question, you're aware, because self awareness is key
during any of this, because self awareness without action is
basically just like nothing, right, So you have to be
self aware and then willing to take action, and that's
what they're asking. What's the action? Like for me, it
was actively not participating in the behavior, whatever it was.
(29:20):
I guess for you, what kept you from going back
to it? Because it was so easy at one point. Well,
the rewiring my brain was what I had to do.
I was had to get all in and I had
to practice, like really having a better understanding of my
brain and what was happening helped me a lot, and
kind of at least this is what I believed what
(29:41):
was happening. I know that for others they might read
brain over binge and be like, wait, what this is
not resonating with me at all, But to me, it
made perfect sense. And my brain needed to be rewired
and I had the ability to do that, and so
every time I wanted to go and go to the pantry.
I go to the pantry and I would walk away.
(30:02):
And I would go to the pantry and I would
walk away. And sometimes I would go to the pantry,
and I mean, I walk away from that thing like
five times. But the more I went to it and
walked away, the more I was not going to use
that as my medicine. Every time I walked away. It
was almost also empowering too. And I wasn't perfect by
any means. Well, there's a perfect the wrong word because
(30:22):
also there wasn't anything wrong with me. If I actually
did open the door, It's like, okay, there was no
beating myself up. There was no It's key like I
wasn't there. I didn't do anything wrong. I actually was
in survival and my brain was taking care of me,
and I needed to do what I thought was best
for me. But also I know that I am I
would remind myself of like I am safe, I am nourished,
(30:45):
I have food, I have support, I have all these things.
And I would go to the pantry and would walk away,
but go to the pantry and walk away, go to
the pantry, I would walk away. I'm gonna keep saying
that because that's what it felt like. I would go
to the pantry and I would walk away because the
pain treat that was my problem every time I would
go to the pantry. And now you know what, I
can go to my pantry for comfort, but this is
(31:06):
two years later. I can go to my pantry and
find comfort in food, but there's not this guilt and
shame associated with it. And I'm not I'm not zombie now,
I'm not numbing. No, I'm not dissociating. I'm very aware.
I'm actually like, this cookie is doing its job right now. Amen,
(31:30):
love you cookies, Thank you. Where it used to be like,
oh my gosh, I just ate a whole freaking box
of cookies and I have no idea what happened. So
for me, it was like I don't want to do
that anymore. So I had to just not do it.
And I know that sounds so like I that's not advice,
but it might be that I would turn walk away
from the pantry and go for a walk, walk away
(31:51):
from the pantry, call a friend, walk away from the pantry,
read my book, walk away from the pantry, Go read
a blog about this and that building other it's one
you're you're talking about. I'm not going to beat myself
up for for doing it, because I I feel very
strongly about this. It is about consistency and not perfection.
So I want to be consistent in doing the things
(32:14):
that actually are helpful, not perfect. So that's one of
those releasing shame. The other thing is building up other
things that help. So we get stuck on these things
thinking that they're the only thing that helps, and that
becomes this like automatic reaction when there's tons of other
skills out there that actually can really help you, and
there's some some of different kinds of skills that can
help and coping skills, and there's types of therapy and
(32:35):
DBT is really awesome to do. Now, when it comes
down to it, I think what you're also saying without
saying is you had to be willing to sit with
a lot of discomfort and connect back to your life.
That's I think the key for you, and it was
the key for me, and I couldn't do it on
my own. I had to have accountability because connecting to
(32:57):
my life and getting into the woods of what actly
I thought my eating disorder was going to help me
with was like a blood bath. And I think that
if you've never experienced this, you might have no idea
what this feels or looks like. But like eating disort
of recovery. Really I would describe it as an uphill
blood bath. It is so uncomfortable, it is so hard.
(33:17):
Is it worth it? Yes, But it takes a lot
of time to get to a place where my automatic
thought isn't to beat myself up, isn't to go over exercise,
isn't to like not eat for a certain amount of time,
isn't to make a smoothie of water and kale. Like
That's taken a long time for me to get that
stuff out of the forefront of my brain. So accountability
(33:38):
is key, but also willingness to sit in uncomfortable stuff
and tolerate it. That's something I don't think is we
taught all these skills to like ignore or whatever. But
it's like all about like I need to learn how
to tolerate being in my life. How do I tolerate
be in my life rather than going to go do
something that takes me out of my life. So there's
(33:58):
a lot of skills that can help with that that
would take a whole podcast but things that bring you
into you and your experience rather pull me out of
And I think that the beating self up part like
happens in stages. I mean, I, well, no, there's different
things to beat yourself up about, and you just can't
do it in any category, Like can I say something
(34:20):
about in recovery, I kind of swapped some things out
for other things, Like I wasn't binging anymore, but I
was counting macros and I didn't realize I had replaced
one for the other. I at least thought, well, I'm
walking away from the pantry, I'm not binging, but now
I'm obsessing over entering things into my Fitness Pal. And
(34:45):
if I didn't enter it for the day, it's like
I was going to go crazy, like it was so uncomfortable.
But that, in a way was another one of these
coping mechanisms where I wasn't having to face what because
not being able to enter in the exact calories fat
protein that I ate that day carbs shouldn't send me spinning.
(35:06):
It should be like, okay, cool, I couldn't enter that.
I mean, because if you're in a place where you
can enter that stuff and you want it, just for
facts about your body. It's okay to want to know macros,
but if you're going to not be able to sleep,
not worth it. That's that's not worth it. But I
I replaced, So I'm saying things can get sneaky because
(35:27):
you can rewire one part of your brain and then
like move in in another way to knom out and
not face the real things. And mine was like disguised
by Okay, I gotta enter this, or I have to
eat this, Oh my gosh, I didn't meet my goal,
or steps, like I'd be like, oh my gosh, I'm
only at nine seven steps and I'm supposed to get
to ten thousand, and I would pace around my bedroom.
(35:49):
But I'm not binging, right. But that's what I think
is actually really I'm glad you said that, because that's
one of the reasons that I'm I'm really really big on.
If you're struggling something like this and you're looking for help,
is find somebody who has experience and expertise in working
in it, because not all therapists and mental health professionals
are created equal. If I didn't have experience in like
(36:12):
the deep deep deep woods of eating disorders, I might
congratulate you on that and be like, I'm so proud
of you. Look at you. You're getting over this. But
I don't know the inside workings of eating disorders, and
they're so freaking tricky that they can have you do
things that a lot of the world celebrates, and then
you're celebrating it, but it's actually, again not helping you
(36:36):
get to the root of the issue, which is the
disconnection that you have with yourself and the inability to connect,
which then prevents you from connecting to other people. I
remember when Lisa had me stop doing that because I
was doing her program and I had completed Brain over
Venge and I had completed Fork the Noise, but yet
I was still sneaking in my my data and she's like, Amy,
(37:01):
you have to stop because you learn how to tolerate
the discomfort. Yes, And I told her, I can't let
this go. I don't see how this is harming me,
and I can't let it go. But then when I
really sat back with it, the mere fact that I
couldn't let it go meant that it was harmful. And
I remember struggling with sleep the first night I let
it go, and the next morning waking up and sending
(37:23):
Lisa text and I'm like, I don't know how'm gonna
get through today, like not tracking everything. And then I
think I had taken a picture at work and I
sent it to her and I'm like, I already feel
like I look different and she's like, Amy, you look
the same, but I couldn't see it. So then you
(37:44):
know this is just to say, but also you're seeing
how you feel and you're uncomfortable. You're having all these
messages inside of your body shooting off because you have
not learned how to tolerate this feeling. You're feeling all
over the placing and oh my gosh, scared all the
stuff you're seen image of that, and so all of
a sudden you think you look different when like it's impossible.
(38:05):
It was impossible, literally impossible. And so I would just say,
if you're looking to not fall back into other behaviors,
you might pick up other things that you think are
safe and then you realize, oh, shoot, they're not safe either.
So yeah, just make sure you have good accountability, like
you're saying, cat and things in place, and it's okay
(38:27):
to be prepared or have a list of things or
journal and write like journaling, writing, reading, like sometimes writing
things out. I think that that's if you can walk
away from a behavior and go and journal it all down,
that can be extremely therapeutic and help you connect the
dogs with your within yourself, which is ultimately what you're
(38:49):
saying is we have to do. We can't just replace
one numbing behavior with another numbing behavior and then like,
what are things that you say to go do for this? Well,
I've I believe it's very important to have a box
full of tools, like a box full of things and
not just one or two things that work, because we
can't be journaling every time we feel distressed, we can't
(39:11):
be going for a walk every time we feel distressed,
we can't be calling a friend every time. So having
a toolbox a lot of different options. You could do
a grab bag, write I'm all down your drawl, and
we would I get to do to actually make like
emergency kits with clients where um, we would put a
bunch of stuff in like a little bag, or they
could get like a cute fun they could get a
(39:32):
four things bag or something um and put them all
in there and we would have things that would bring
them into their senses. So a picture, to look at
a stone or something soft to hold, um, a scent,
to smell, and it's bringing you back into the present
of that rather than like going in the You know,
when you're really really stressed and triggered, you're like all
(39:54):
over the place and a lot of times living in
your past. So self soothing things are really really helpful.
But self soothing doesn't take away your emotions. So something
that I always have in my office and I actually
have it at my house too, is I keep things
in the freezer like um, citrus fruits like lemons, oranges, limes,
And when you're really used, were triggered to go use
(40:17):
a behavior, you go get that and you've hold it
and your self sothent You still might be feeling scared
or sad or angry, but you're also self soothing in
that moment. So I actually was going to say this
because I was watching Inside Out last night with my
knees and I don't know if you guys have seen it,
but basically, sadness, the feeling sadness is a huge part
(40:39):
of the movie. And spoiler alert, if you haven't seen it,
you can fast forward through this part. But at the
end it showed us that um sadness was a really
important part of this girl's life and emotional literacy. And
my niece looked at me. She's seven, and she was like, wait,
because they were your feelings were categorized by different colors,
(41:02):
and these marbles that were categorized by different colors were
being changed to have both the color for joy and
both the color for sadness in it. And my niece
looked at me and so she said, cat, why are
they turning all of her happy thoughts sad? And I said, well,
look what's happening. Because there was a scene in the
movie where the girl was really sad but her parents
(41:22):
gave her a hugging, comforted her. And I said, look
what's happening. She's really really sad. But because she was
sad and expressed that to her family, they came to
her hugged her, and now they're like spending time with her,
and now she feels love and she feels joy. So
sometimes when you're sad, it's not all bad. It can
lead you to something you really want. So for this
(41:43):
girl was connection with her family. And I don't know
why that's We can be emotional right now, but I.
When she's asked me that, I was like, oh my gosh,
I'm so grateful for this movie. But that's literally what
I'm talking about. How can I sit in this emotion
and sit in this feeling and not like deemon I
is it because our discomfort is probably hitting on some
(42:04):
kind of emotion we're having that we don't know how
to tolerate, whether that's sadness or fear or anger. And
we need to learn that our emotions lead us to
what we really need and what we really want, rather
than lead us to like this deep dark hole. It
makes me think of Halt. It's like a little bit different,
but another thing where you you might be acting or
(42:24):
feeling a certain way because h you might be hungry,
A you might be angry, l you might be lonely,
or TEA you might be tired. And I think of
how many of the years I lived in a state
of just like I don't even have a word for it.
It's just like and but people wouldn't have even really known.
(42:45):
But I was that probably because I was tired and
hungry and angry and lonely, like I was all. I mean,
some of those if you're like on any given day.
You can know if you're feeling a certain way, you
can be like, wait, am I hungry, angry, lonely, tired
it And it's a tool for you to meet your needs.
But like when I was in the thick of my
eating disorder, I was halt all the time, all four things,
(43:08):
but you never actually clued into that. So I'm just
going behavior, so I'm not actually figuring out what do
I need here? Right? But I mean, look at all
those needs, but I wasn't meeting any of them. I
was numbing all of it out. It's like, Okay, I
was hungry, but whatever, I don't not eating right now.
Or if I'm hungry, then okay, I just over eight
da da and I'm angry about it all and I'm
(43:30):
lonely because it's very isolating and nobody's talking about it.
And then I'm freaking tired, likeandjusting a nap. Well yeah,
but I mean it's just a cycle. It's a it's
a cycle that makes you really exhausted. I just remember
being so exhausted all the times, either thinking about food
or not thinking about you're trying not to think about food,
(43:50):
or because running away from yourself is exhausting. I think
that like running away from yourself is exhausting. Even sort
of recovery is exhausting. But there's a light at the
end of the all, and you don't have to live
in that state of exhaustion forever. Right well, yeah, circling
back to like where I want to put a bow
on the whole thing is is like now I might
experience multi pull of those things at once, but it's
(44:12):
very rare. I think that most of my eating sort
of though I lived in all of them hungry, englandly, tired,
and now I can tell I can like tell a difference.
If I'm actually hungry, I'm like, Okay, well that's hungry,
or if I'm snippy, I'm like, okay, do I need food?
Or is it that I'm angry? And I can like
decipher what it is. Again, I might have some of
(44:35):
them that are crossing over, but it's rare, Like what
because I'm more connected, It's like I'm able to narrow
it down and figure out what need is and then
I'm able to feel my feelings and be like it's okay,
and then I go and I have the day I
need to have. How many things can you say that
(44:55):
are like catchphrases in one sentence. I don't know, but
I don't you know, I do want to offer that
hope and that light at the end of the tunnel
is that when you're in recovery, it's not perfect. You
still have days where you're angry, lonely, tired and hungry,
but like it's less exhausting because you're it's more manageable.
It just is. I don't know. I'm speaking for myself,
(45:19):
like I was a freaking hot mess, but also I
was trying to hold it together all the time. And
so yeah, it's just if you're there, I get it.
You're not alone. I want you to know that, And
I just also want people to know that it's going
to take time. It's not as easy as a lot
of the stuff you're seeing on the internet makes it look.
(45:39):
And it's not black and white. It's so gray. And
that's why, I mean, even that's what outweighs about. It's
like the gray area of eating disorders. Yeah, and there's
not one way for everybody, and even some of the
stuff we're saying here, you might need to assess for
yourself what's gonna work, what's not going to work. And
that's the beauty of working with someone like cat if
you can find a license therapist in the city where you,
(46:00):
if that you can actually like meet with that specializes
in eating disorders. Because I've definitely gone to therapist before
that I don't know, I just didn't feel comfortab because
they didn't didn't get it. We're talking about like individualized
treatment too, and I think that's really important. Where Like
I work with a lot of people with eating disorders,
and I don't do the same thing with all of
(46:21):
them because based on their experience, their life, their behaviors,
they need different things. And that's why it's actually really
hard to answer some of the questions that you guys
send specifically about eating disorders, just because there isn't one
answer I can give that fits everybody. So I do
want to throw that out there as we wrap this up,
that we were going to do three or four. We
(46:43):
got two questions. But that's okay. There, it was good conversation.
But take what we're saying and make sure it really
does fit with you before you make it like your
life's motto now, and your therapist might not always be correct.
So if you're with a therapist that does you wouldn't
know this, but does every single thing the same with
every single client. That's a red flag because I don't
(47:05):
see how that would ever work. I don't see how
that would work either. I mean even as I if
I have the same therapist, I want them to do
different things for me in different seasons. Yeah. Yeah, like
if I'm seeing them for a long time, you need
to evolve with me. Let's go. Okay, well, Pat, this
(47:25):
is your episode. But I'm like, okay, sorry, we went
way over. We were going to do this for twenty minutes,
but I don't know how long this is. But it
was a good conversation and I'm grateful to have it,
and I'm grateful that you are somebody that is willing
to have these conversations because they are vulnerable and hard
and scary. And also look at how much goodness and
connection you've gotten from talking about this stuff. Yeah, it's amazing.
(47:48):
So I hope this was helpful for all you guys listening.
If you have more questions for me, remember you can
send them to Catherine at you Need Therapy podcast dot com.
You can follow me at at cat dot de fata.
You can follow the podcast at Ani Therapy podcast on Instagram,
and you can follow Amy at Radio Amy on Instagram
(48:09):
and make sure you listen to if you liked this episode,
her podcast Outweigh Um that's on the same network that
we're on, and her other podcast for Things with any Brown,
which I get to be on once week. Yeah, Cat
is the every Tuesday. Yeah, she's the staple guest from
the fifth Thing, Permanent, Permanent, Stable, whatever. Thank you for
(48:30):
having me, and thank you for having these conversations, and
thank you for nit a week which brings awareness to
a much needed conversation. Alright, bye, guys,
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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