Lacou Flipse: Healing from Emotional Eating through Pleasure

Do you struggle with emotional eating? Healing is possible, and our guest Lacou Flipse is living proof. A former binge eater turned trauma-informed food coach, she's been helping women release emotional and binge eating for over a decade. 

Lacou shares her innovative "pleasuring process," an approach that separates pleasure from bingeing and transfers it to the pleasure of being present with ourselves. Instead of looking to food to fill us up emotionally, we come to the food fed - nourished from within. Lacou makes a distinction between intuitive eating and pleasure eating and shares her perspective that strict food rules obscure the opportunity to explore hidden layers.

In this interview discuss the challenge of sugar addiction and how pleasure eating can be a lifeline for those grappling with it. Lacou emphasizes the importance of self-intimacy, the ongoing nature of recovery, and the need for continual refinement in your relationship with food. 

We also explore the concept of recovery that doesn't necessarily mean giving up certain foods altogether, instead, Lacou encourages using food as an invitation to delve deeper into our underlying issues and emotions, and even into how trauma can come into play.

We conclude with a conversation on how insecure attachment (early childhood trauma) can manifest in compulsive eating and the critical role of pleasure in addressing our unmet needs. 

Join us for this deep and enriching discussion and gain insight into a non-abstinence-based approach to disordered eating. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome everybody to an interview with LeCou. Lecou is my new I don't know how to describe it obsession is a bit strong, but I am like in love with this woman and her work. It is so completely unique completely unique in my opinion, in the space of food eating, disordered eating, embodiment, how trauma fits into all of this. It's so interesting her approach and I'm very excited to share her with you. Let me tell you a little bit about LeCou. Lecou teaches women how to feel their feelings and attuned to pleasure so they can release binge and emotional eating and eat for genuine pleasure instead. She is a bachelor's degree in nutrition and she is a trauma-informed coach, and she's been doing this work for the last 10 years. She, of course, started this journey because she struggled with binge eating and found a path to recovery for herself that she now shares with the world. Welcome, lecou.

Speaker 1: 1:08

Hi so lovely to be here. Do you wanna start with telling us a little bit about your struggle with food and binge eating and what that looked like for you?

Speaker 2: 1:20

Yeah. So I started struggling with binge eating and college as I was studying to be a dietician, and it was a really big transition for me to be away from family. I also experienced a lot of childhood trauma that I wasn't aware of, and so while I was away from family at school, a lot of those unprocessed feelings came up on top of, like, my course load and I just, yeah, I started using food to cope with the challenges of being a freshman, of being a college student, and that experience of binge eating went on for quite some time and I had this like awakening moment where I had been bingeing all day. I would go on these binges where I would just like isolate myself and like know that I was gonna commit to bingeing for the day, and so I had one of those days. I had already done my Trader Joe's run of like entire cakes, entire boxes of cookies that I was gonna devour, and so I was at the end of that and I was like getting ready to just pass out, because when I was at college, because when I was in that post binge date, I was really uncomfortable and didn't wanna be in my body, so I would go to sleep to kind of dissociate from that, and a friend had asked me to go eat with her and I was full because I had been bingeing all day, but I didn't know how to say no, especially the food at the time. So I was like, okay, I'll just go with you but I won't eat anything. And so I go with her and of course I order like a full meal and I eat it all and I am the fullest that I've ever been in my life. It's so uncomfortable to breathe, it's uncomfortable to walk, and normally my binges happened in my dorm room, and so this was very different for me to have to be with those sensations and not have the option to just sleep it off or pass out, which is what I would normally do. And so I had to, like, get on the bus and I was just like really afraid to move and breathing was difficult. Each step was painful and it was in.

Speaker 2: 4:04

When I finally got home, I got on the bath to try to relieve some of this discomfort, and that was when it occurred to me that binging wasn't actually pleasurable Like I thought it was. It was actually causing me a lot of pain. I couldn't say no to this eating experience with my friend. I couldn't stop myself from eating, even though I was binging all day. So I was full and I kind of had this like come to Jesus moment in the bathtub where I was just like I need help and I just like asked I don't know if I believed in God at the time, but I just like asked a higher power for help and just felt completely powerless to help myself.

Speaker 2: 4:51

And the following semester I continued to binge, but nothing as severe as that, because that was very repatterning for my system, to where I understood that binging no longer equal pleasure to me. So now it was just like this thing that I did when I felt sensations that I didn't know were there or how to be with. And then I happened upon a class that was. It was called how to Get an A.

Speaker 2: 5:26

I was taking all these science classes because I was studying to be a dietitian and struggling because, as much as I wanted my priority to be those courses, I was basically like an addict, like struggling with binge eating. So my classes were struggling and suffering because of that. And so I got I registered for this course called how to Get an A, and it was like a bait and switch situation where it was actually a mindfulness class and I learned all these different ways and how to like be with my body. And on the first day of that class we had a eating experience where we ate a raisin and when I ate that raisin, for the first time since I started bingeing, I enjoyed pleasure like genuine, authentic pleasure, without shame. And that was the second turning point for me where, after I uncoupled pleasure from bingeing, I was able to overcouple pleasure from having this like really present experience with food to where I wasn't using it to numb, I wasn't using it to not feel anything. I was really present and I shared that presence with food and food helped amplify that presence.

Speaker 2: 6:52

And so after that experience it was my second awakening with food I just wanted to eat everything like that or close to that as possible, and that is how I developed the pleasuring process. It's a very embodied way of eating and I think that's why you said it's so unique. It's because it's like very reflective of me and my journey with food and I'm so excited to share it with people and so like thrilled to see how people experience it and make it their own because it's coming from my body. But I also witnessed people taking it and like making it a part of their own organism, their own body, their own being. So I love seeing the evolution how people apply this level of deep self-intimacy to their relationship with food and how that leads to more pleasure with their relationship with food and in their relationship to life. So yeah, that's how it all started with me. That was a really long answer.

Speaker 1: 8:09

Oh, I can't hear you, so sorry. I know that was great and no perfect. Thank you, wasn't too long at all. So, going back to that raisin exercise, I've done that raisin exercise, I've done it and just unbelievable how much pleasure you can get from this little tiny morsel of food and the depth of the sweetness and the tang of the slight sour in it and the chewing of it Like and it was such a slow it was very pleasurable. I did not have the experience of being able to turn that into a turning point, a pivot point with my own binge pattern. Why do you think that was such a powerful pivot point for you? Because I think others have had those. I've had so many ligerable experiences with whole foods and healthy foods and even junk foods that I don't know why it stuck for you and it didn't do it for me.

Speaker 2: 9:15

I think that first experience, where I uncoupled pleasure from food, was very important to me, having that second experience with the raisin. And so it was almost like I was primed to have that second experience because my body no longer associated binging with pleasure. But I was just doing it still because it was like what I did when I had a sensation. I didn't know how to view it.

Speaker 2: 9:46

And this experience with the raisin was just like so powerful for me because it showed me another way. It showed me like an actual, genuine way to receive pleasure with food that didn't have all of the negative repercussions that I experienced with binging. So my body just wants to feel good and just wanted to feel pleasure, and I think most bodies do, and so I took that and I ran with it. I was like, well, this equals pleasure. So I'm going to go deep into this exploration because that other thing wasn't working, like I milked binging to the fullest with that binge that I had that day or that evening, and so I feel like I went to the bottom of it for me and, yeah, it's kind of like a rock bottom moment. I hit the bottom of binging there and then I had to go to a different place after that and this raisin experience. I was primed for it because of that previous experience.

Speaker 1: 11:00

Totally, totally get that. That totally makes sense to me. Yeah, I would say that I still had. I had not uncoupled pleasure from binging, Hadn't done it when I had had my own sort of, and it was a raisin too. That must be the universal sort of yeah, yeah. So I think that's very insightful. Going back, it's interesting to me that you didn't see any struggle with food or any disordered eating until college. I can look back in my life and see stuff in my early, early years and I think most of the people that I work with say oh yeah, I could see early on I was using food for comfort. But interesting that it just started in college. For you, what was your relationship with food, like you know, elementary school, early teen years?

Speaker 2: 11:50

Oh, it definitely didn't. Binging started in college. Like I had never binged before college, but in, let's say, in high school I started controlling my food and it was again a response to trauma. Like had a lot of experiences where I felt out of control and so I was trying to gain some sense of certainty by eating in a certain way and so, yeah, I was very controlling of my food in high school. I think like sophomore to senior year of high school. Like those last two years of high school I was pretty controlling with food and so when I we also like didn't have a lot of food growing up. So when I got to college I was I had a really wonderful scholarship that paid for all my food. So it was kind of like I've never had this much food in my life and I kind of like went to the opposite, like I didn't have to control, I didn't have to like save some for my siblings, I could eat as much as I wanted. So I think that's partially where the binging started.

Speaker 2: 13:14

Also, my mom would like eat herself to sleep, and I never really thought anything of it until after I recovered and would think like, okay, like where, or like spend time with my mom as an adult and just see her do that and recognize like wow, she did that my whole life and that's how she dealt with her own trauma. And so like my little kid brain I'm sure picked up on that because in college like that's how I soothed myself, that's how I manage my stress and trauma, and it wasn't like she ever sat down with me and was like hey, look who this is how I manage your stress and trauma. I just watched her do it. And so that's why it's like so important for people to like be aware of their food habits, because your kids and family members pick up on it just kind of osmosically, even without you talking about it. So that's where I picked it up.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Absolutely. I get that history now and it really makes sense to me as well that there was restriction in high school and then binging in college, because it used those go together. And I was just thinking that I'm glad I asked because I guess my impression was oh, my relationship with food was fine until no, if you have a restriction pattern in high school, it's just a matter of time, typically right For the binging to come in. And you weren't restricting for weight purposes, it was just cause. Was it more orthorexia related or why were you restricting?

Speaker 2: 14:49

I was restricting, like I honestly at the time I didn't like, when I think back to myself back then like I wasn't doing it for weight.

Speaker 2: 15:02

I've always been kind of thin and if anything, my family members would be like you should gain weight.

Speaker 2: 15:08

I'm a half African-American, so like in our culture, it's like you should eat a lot of food, like gain weight, like have hips and stuff, and so there's always the emphasis on being on, maybe thin and not being a good thing.

Speaker 2: 15:24

And it was more so to feel in control, like it was a bit of a compulsion that at the time I didn't understand, but I knew that tracking everything I ate felt good, like it gave me a. It felt good in that it gave me this like feeling of containment that I think nervous systems crave, like consistency in the form of a schedule, some nervous systems, and it gave me that containment that I didn't have because we were moving every couple of months and that was my consistent thing. I just yeah, I think that's why I was doing that. And then when I got to college I was in this consistent environment, consistent people. I didn't need that form of control anymore. Then all of the like stuff that I had been kind of not looking at because I didn't have capacity as a kid like came up and propelled me into binge eating.

Speaker 1: 16:36

Got it. I got it. Yeah, so when we chatted before before we hit record and this was last week when we were connecting I was noticing that it sort of looks like you ascribe to intuitive eating, but not really, because intuitive eating says there are no bad foods. All foods are on the table If you feel like intuitively, feel like eating it when you're hungry, stop when you're full. You're good to go right, but you're not. You're not. What is the difference between pleasure eating your approach called to pleasure eating versus intuitive eating?

Speaker 2: 17:19

Yeah, I really love that question. Thank you. So intuitive eating there's these list of roles that help people. Basically, you have to get to a more aligned place with eating and I find that with certain clients that I've worked with who have used intuitive eating, it can become another rulebook that people listen to, for example, and it can get in the way of their own authentic expression with food. But I think it could be a great starting place for people. For example, I had a client who subscribed to the idea that all foods fit you should be able to eat all foods, but her relationship with certain food, let's say like peanut butter, she didn't have a good relationship with peanut butter so she didn't know when to stop and she would eat that until she felt like completely like sick, like shit. So I think there's how it's.

Speaker 2: 18:34

Different is that pleasure eating prioritizes the body. I think a lot more than intuitive eating. To eat of eating, it feels like it's utilizing the mind to kind of control certain things about the body. Intuitive eating it's more of like a body to mind approach to where, if we're coming up against or coming up to peanut butter and a client is like I, all foods fit, but I can't really navigate peanut butter right now. I'm going to honor that for that client and we'll take steps to build a relationship with peanut butter. We will. I won't just say like, yeah, you should be able to eat peanut butter, it's okay, just eat until you're full.

Speaker 2: 19:24

Some people who struggle with binge eating, they don't have a relationship to fullness, they don't have a relationship to stop being.

Speaker 2: 19:33

Sometimes the relationship to hunger is over coupled and there's a lot of fear. And so when someone begins pleasure eating, they learn all of these things about their body, how it relates to certain foods, how it relates to hunger, fullness, so that when they're in front of food they have an awareness of how to navigate certain things that come up Like certain foods that are triggers. They'll know how to navigate the sensations around that, instead of kind of telling themselves all foods, fit, I should be able to eat this, they'll just know how to feel those sensations that come up for them and then make a decision, a summer decision, and instead of kind of like a mental, kind of dominant decision, it'll come from their body. And so I find that that's my preference when I work with clients is to focus more deeply on how the body is feeling how the body is responding to certain foods, certain environments, instead of making sure that they're prescribing to certain rules that intuitive eating prescribes and states.

Speaker 1: 21:03

So what happens if so? My podcast really is geared to people who struggle with sugar, and we know sugar is addictive. Cigarettes are addictive, alcohol can be addictive, cocaine can be addictive. Sugar is addictive, can be, and for those of us that fall on that spectrum, it's our hope. Every addict's hope is oh, I can learn to moderate, I can do my healing work, I can do recovery first, so that maybe I don't have to abstain from sugar, I can actually develop a relationship like sugar, like Laku is helping people develop a relationship with peanut butter based on tuning into the body and what feels pleasurable and what doesn't, and getting really good insight into do I actually feel good when I eat a brownie? Actually momentarily, and then not so much right, and so do I want the like sort of tuning into the full picture of what's happening when you consume a food. So what happens when someone comes to you to say I think I'm on the addiction spectrum with sugar? Like, how would you navigate that?

Speaker 2: 22:16

Well, first of all, I wouldn't tell them to stop eating sugar. I would help them navigate their relationship with sugar so that it feels better for them. And we would do that by looking at when they crave sugar or when they have the impulse of their urge for sugar. We would look at the sensations underneath that and help them get a level, gain a level of self-intimacy with those sensations by sitting with it, relating to those parts that feel like the urgency for sugar. Sometimes there's unmet needs there, there's unmet desires, there's wisdom around a boundary that needs to be set. So we explore those sensations and get really clear with them and build a relationship with them so that when that person is in the presence of sugar, they can be intimate with their body and then make a decision rather than have a compulsion about sugar.

Speaker 1: 23:30

They're free to take it or leave it.

Speaker 2: 23:32

Yeah, and like they could take it to a different level than they usually do. They could have half as much as they normally do. They could be so intimate with their body that they know exactly the right and perfect amount for them in that moment, rather than overdoing it, and this is like a kind of a lifelong journey. For example, I had an experience with caffeine a couple of days ago where I had too much and I thought I knew the right amount for me. But it also depends on my environment and like what I'm doing that day. Am I active? Am I more sedentary? So I know what happened there because of my intimacy with my body. And so for someone who, and I've been practicing a relationship with caffeine for many years now, and so someone who can be many years in recovery of sugar, will still need to do those refining things and refining steps in their relationship. But it's much beautiful, it's just like a part of the relationship.

Speaker 1: 24:46

It's like any other relationship.

Speaker 2: 24:49

Yeah, it's like couples get married and they don't just stop learning and being intimate with each other. It's a continual unfolding and it gets deeper and deeper and yummier and yummier.

Speaker 1: 25:03

That's been my experience. So what happens? If someone says you know what, even if I have a little, I just get compulsive. I just want more. I don't like that feeling. I don't like the feeling of when I have a little, my body's like, oh, let's have more. And then I actually have to sort of struggle with that. It's like being in a relationship. I've had past relationships where I had to work at it and after a while it was like I don't want to be in a relationship where I have to work this hard and I have a marriage where I don't feel like I have to work at it. We really we just work and we're 17 years in and we're friends and we laugh and we're kind and we enjoy each other and like honestly, like I don't know how lucky I got, but I know the difference between this one and the ones I've been in and before and I had to let those go, oh like. So I suppose at some point in the way that you're approaching a relationship with food, that breakups are an option.

Speaker 2: 26:15

Yeah, absolutely. But I think until you get there there's so many gems that you can learn about yourself along the way that I can't. I think gets missed when we just like break up too soon with a certain food. Like, let's say, you have a need for comfort and you get an urgency to eat sugar every time that need comes up. If you just were like I'm not going to eat sugar, then you may never get to relate with that urgency and learn like, oh, I have a deep need for like cuddles with my partner and when I don't have enough cuddles I feel this urgency to eat sugar.

Speaker 2: 27:07

And yeah, I think a lot can be missed when we just kind of demonize certain foods and don't first explore what is under those sensations to be with compulsively certain foods. So I think like, once you have done that exploration and you feel complete in that, then I think you can break up with certain foods and feel good about it. But for me I there's like very few foods that I don't eat. Like I don't typically eat gluten but I'll still like have it every now and then to a certain degree. That I know works for my body and I, for me personally, I love knowing like the right amount that still works and to where I don't feel like bloated or have a breakout. And that's me personally and that's what I enjoy. And I also understand not everyone is like that. Some people find a lot of reassurance in breaking up with certain foods and that not works for them.

Speaker 1: 28:32

Right, right, right, right, right. That's part of the authentic journey. Yeah, and it depends, I can imagine, on how much bandwidth you've got to put this much energy into figuring out what kind of relationship you want with all kinds of foods. Right, I imagine you have to have a fair bit of time and energy and bandwidth and willingness to put that kind of effort into how what's my relationship with peanut butter going to look like? What's my relationship with gluten going to look like? Or dairy, or sugar, or caffeine or these foods that we know? All of them have some sort of opiate like component that can make the pull into for more a real thing for some bodies. There is so many right ways for women and men to heal their what feels like broke and painful relationships with food, and this one's so beautiful and so unique. So there's lots of right ways, and the way that I sort of landed in my first exposure was through the 12 steps, and their whole approaches were abstinence first, recovery second. So get abstinent, put the plug in the jug, put the sugar in the flour and the processed refined carbohydrates down, get that far and then let's start the deeper recovery work where we're like what do you really need. What's really going on? What are you feeling? What missing? Where are you missing pleasure in your life? What's going on in your mind? What thoughts negative thoughts are there? Let's start to work with CBT. Right, you do the recovery work second.

Speaker 1: 30:24

And I feel like I had tried to do the recovery work first. I did decades of therapy and CBT and workshops and rebirthing and I worked with a shaman and I just I kept thinking I just can't shift my relationship with food, no matter how. I mean it was improving, massively improving, but it just wasn't. I was. I never got to that place of peace and I also secretly thought that if I could do that, I was doing this recovery work because either I wanted it to help me get abstinence, stay abstinent, so I could be peaceful with food, I would stop the self harming, or because I secretly hoped that if I could heal my underlying issues, I could be someone that could do what you can do have a little and go.

Speaker 1: 31:08

Oh, that's just enough. I think you know I'll know again when I can do a little bit of gluten or I can do a little bit of caffeine, and that I can trust myself. All that to say that it's very clear that what you're saying is you can do the recovery work and not necessarily have to drop that abstinence hammer, that you, if you've got the willingness to do this, you can do a deep dive into what's really going on with your food. What's behind what's, what are the thoughts behind the food thoughts? What are the feelings behind the urge to binge right? What's going on? Pop the hood of the car. What's going on deeper? And it's an opportunity, it's an invitation to use the food as this invitation to go in and to do this deeper recovery work without needing to do anything with the food itself.

Speaker 2: 32:02

Yeah, it's an opportunity for self intimacy and also it's a at the same time that recovery is happening with the pleasure process. There's also an attunement to pleasure that's happening. So my clients learn how to feel the pleasure of self intimacy, which is the pleasure of relating to that part that's like, oh, I want that sugar. Like that relationship becomes pleasurable and then over time it feels better to feel intimate with self than to like have like a bit of sugar in an unhealthy way or a way that doesn't align with the body. And also, at the same time they're expanding their capacity for pleasure in other areas of life, so that dopamine hit that drug like experience.

Speaker 2: 32:56

But sugar isn't really seen as something that's on this pedestal anymore. It's just like one of the many pleasures in life because they learn how to experience more pleasure in life in general. So, yeah, the level of importance that sugar has, it and like addictive foods and like just like binge behaviors, become the last important because the individual learns how to experience pleasure, and pleasure, I think, is truly a skill that is not practiced enough. And so once we find something that is like really easy to feel pleasurable in, it's very natural, I think, to get addicted and obsessed about it, because pleasure is a need that we all have and if we don't know how to facilitate that in consistent and healthy ways, we're going to be addicted to things.

Speaker 1: 33:59

Okay, let's go there. How can we attune to pleasure? How can we learn the pleasure skill?

Speaker 2: 34:09

Well, you can start with self intimacy, because that's like everyone has a body and everyone can be with the sensations in their body. So I would start with feeling how it feels to have a hand on your chest there, just noticing how the chest feels, how the hand feels, and noticing what happens in the body. Does the body respond to this hand? Does it shy away from the hand? Does it come up and meet it? How does the body relate to the hand?

Speaker 2: 35:25

Noticing if it's possible to experience this self-intimacy, this relating, if it's possible to see and witness and feel the pleasure in this Will we find, if you don't this time, just trusting that eventually we'll be able to experience pleasure of relating with yourself, which is not unlike the pleasure of relating with another person.

Speaker 2: 36:32

Have you ever had a moment where you just really felt seen by someone and you feel the relaxation or the vulnerability of that? That's kind of the quintessence of where we get to in the relationship with the self, and so every uncomfortable emotion becomes like, oh, I get excited because I know at the end of that is pleasure and it's an attunement, because it's so. Yeah, it takes some time to get to, but yeah, it's very nuanced and I love working in groups to help women experience this because, like once one woman gets it, the other one's kind of like entrained to her versus, like you know, seeing me do it and like I've been doing this for close to a decade now and it just can seem out of touch. But other women who are still experiencing Benji and still experience, like, difficult relationship with food, feeling this love of self-intimacy and the pleasure it's just so beautiful.

Speaker 1: 37:55

And I get it, and I get it, and I so for me. I put my hand on my chest and there was this immediate feeling of comfort and pleasure. And then, the longer you were just inviting us to just have our hand on our chest and to tune into our body and to see, you know what was happening for us, I began to notice, oh, my arms are tight. I kind of worked a little late my it's tightness from typing, and then I was noticing, oh, I'm thirsty. And then I did all that.

Speaker 1: 38:24

There was discomfort that started to come to the surface and I sort of tuned out of the pleasure of my hand. It became it didn't become the dominant sensation, other ones were sort of becoming discomfort, was becoming dominant, and I think that's why my capacity to stay with that pleasure is probably needs work, because there's a variety of discomforts in my system. And so then I think, oh, I want to get out of here. So tell us, what do you do in those sort of, because I'm sure I'm not alone there. And so how do I again meet the pain? That's not feeling like pleasure. That felt like pleasure, but the pain in my arm does not feel like pleasure. So, instead of like wanting to check out from that or be distracted or eat over it. How do I turn that into pleasure?

Speaker 2: 39:24

Yeah, so first of all, it's very normal for that to happen, like will. That kind of tells you where your capacity is for experiencing pleasure in this moment. And that happens for a lot of women, like a lot of people. Once they start feeling pleasure, there's this like impulse to shut it down, and also what you're speaking to is a bit of that, and also just like you have pain in your arm that needs some tending to and that's okay, and so how I would kind of speak to you on it would be different than someone who maybe didn't have like a pain but they knew was why it was there, and just have like this complete shutting down. That's a little different than what's happening for you.

Speaker 2: 40:14

So for you, I would encourage you to first enjoy the pleasure of that awareness, like first you attune to pleasure, you're able to notice it, like celebrate the fact that you experience that and also celebrate the fact that you can feel your arm and it's telling you there's some discomfort there that you can tend to.

Speaker 2: 40:37

It can be like you just simply stroking your arm or however you tend to your body when you experience discomfort and in that celebration it's kind of like you're meeting a little child who's like, oh, I, like I have an awi, and instead of being like what's wrong with you, you're like, oh, come here, and then that arm gets to experience the pleasure of self intimacy too, and so making it okay for the other sensations other than pleasure, to be there and just like relating to them. And if it feels like you can, or if it feels like you have capacity to pendulum between the pleasure and the discomfort, and also like seeing if you can experience the pleasure of like, oh, acknowledgement that, to acknowledge this part, and how does this part feel to be acknowledged as it experienced that pleasure of self intimacy too.

Speaker 1: 41:42

I got that.

Speaker 1: 41:43

So what you're saying is the pain can be there, but I can still experience the pleasure of being nurturing to my own self, that the the pleasure of being loving and kind and present and attentive, that there's a pleasure in being that way towards other people.

Speaker 1: 42:00

But equally we can experience the same pleasure to ourselves, like when a child comes and they have an awi, it feels so good to be able to say, oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry, shall, I kiss it Right. Like that feels so good to be that way with another person. And what an invitation you're giving us to experience that same kind of pleasure even while we're tending to a pain in our own bodies. And I really like that idea that we can practice pendulating by, like orienting to the pleasure of the hand, the pleasure of being self loving, loving, loving and kind towards ourselves, being nurturing and experiencing the pleasure of that, and then also, you know, noticing that we might get drawn to the pain or orienting to the pain and then being able to pundit, pendulum it back to orienting to the pleasure. And I feel like you're inviting us to recognize when we pull away from orienting to pleasure and getting caught up in the pain and to invite ourselves to come back can orient back to the pleasure of being self intimate, being present to our body.

Speaker 2: 43:15

Yeah, yeah, we deserve to feel the pleasure of self intimacy.

Speaker 1: 43:22

Right, and it's a foreign concept for many of us who struggle with sugar or sugar addiction, because we wouldn't have an addiction if we learned how to do that already. Right, and that's learned in childhood. Our mothers role model it and how they treat themselves and and how they care for us when we are hurting. And if we don't learn it, then we have to learn it as adults. But I know that for me there was decades I'm going to say decades, years and years of resistance to showing up and doing that self intimacy, nurturing work, Because I thought that that meant it meant feeling the frozen grief in me that I was. I had to admit my mom's not coming.

Speaker 1: 44:12

It's not coming the goo. It's me. I need to do this right, and the grief of feeling like I was giving up hope is irrational. That sounds. I'm a grown adult. It's not my mom's job anymore. Right, it's mine. But there is a resistance to do it because I thought that it meant that I was solipsistic, that there that I, that it was pathetic that I would have to do this for myself, that I thought this that my mom should do it, someone else to do it, and I feel that so much.

Speaker 2: 44:50

I had a similar experience with my mom and my dad. There was like this anger there and what kind of helped me accept my parents was to kind of see them as little children too, and they basically were, like their nervous systems didn't develop that much because they were both neglected and so like it's understanding that now I get to continue to raise my nervous system and see it as me. And I also like, kind of when I relate to my mom now we have this, my father's no longer around but when I relate to my mom now there's such a sweetness because I have this understanding that her nervous system is so young and so like tender, and I give her the sweetness that I give myself. And, yeah, there's just a acceptance there that she didn't do a great job. She did her best with like what she had capacity for. And now I get to raise the rest of me and yeah, and it's kind of like I kind of feel a bit empowered in that.

Speaker 2: 46:30

Like there was this like oh, why do I have to do all this work? Like other people don't have to do this and that, and I could get stuck there or I could see it as like empowering, which is what helps me keep going and doing this work and it doesn't feel like a chore anymore, like it may have felt in the beginning, like it feels like I like it's so pleasurable to relate to myself that I could never really see that's a chore, but it did take some time to get to this place. So I yeah, I hear you and I have, I like, felt a little choked up and I just heard your story and totally relate there.

Speaker 1: 47:21

Yeah, and it's funny sometimes. Sometimes, when I'm overwhelmed and I just I'm at the, I'm at the, I'm over the edge, I'm at the edge of my capacity for that self nurturing and I will catch myself sometimes in the middle of the night, I'll just say God, god, god. I just say the word over and over. Or, you know, I'm crying out no tears, I'm just crying out in words and I realize, oh, that's the adult equivalent of what it was like for me when I was left alone to cry in a crib. Right, it's just.

Speaker 1: 48:01

I am so desperate for someone, something else, to come in and lend me their nervous system and tell me honey, everything's OK, everything's OK, I'm right here, you're not alone, I got you, I'm being soothed, I'm being touched. I can feel it my whole body, like I'm still crying. I still have moments where I cry out like I realize, as an adult, that's my equivalent of the baby in a crib cry. And you know, and and, and, and, and. What an invitation you're giving us to say you know what, just try it, put your hand on your chest, touch apart the turning, figure out what feels comforting when you give it to yourself and that it feels like a chore in work, and maybe there's this like oh gosh, I'm never going to get this and this is pathetic, but that clearly you're living proof that if you stick with it, it becomes such as much a pleasure of being in relationship with yourself as any other human being, maybe more.

Speaker 2: 49:10

And those stories like, oh, this is so tiring, or I can't do this, or this is pathetic. Like those stories, I get curious about them because that could be like how our parents felt, like I don't have time for this, and that's nothing against them. It's just like the reality of being a human parent in our society where two people are expected to care for a whole other human In my case three humans and in the past we had villages of people and so our parents could get breaks and like on top of that, they have jobs and it's just like I barely like have capacity for my animals, but like how did she? And so like I have these moments of amazement for my parents, like how do they handle three of us? Oh my gosh. And so I get to experience the pleasure of that and you're speaking to your crying self, like that the fact that you can nourish that part is like oh, there's so much pleasure there for you to experience.

Speaker 2: 50:20

And it's like those core parts are what is usually compelling a lot of unconscious, unhealthy relationships with sugar and other foods for people. Like when they get to like the root and they're able to touch that core part and actually meet that and experience the pleasure of that relationship like that. That's so powerful and I think, yeah, I want everyone to get to that core part because I think it's just it, it's an. I just have this like.

Speaker 2: 50:59

I feel like it's integral to experiencing the full capacity of humanness when we're able to experience the pleasure of relating to those core parts that are crying out and getting like a little bit just like numbed and soothed by food and sugar. But really meeting those parts like fully. And often, when I don't have capacity for my parts, I turn to nature, I turn to trees and I experience this other entity supporting me consistently the way that I need it as a child and that's been so, so healing for me as well. The sky, even like bodies of water, like there's so much support around us that it kind of takes the pressure off of the other people in our life, especially like parents when we're adults, like little kids like should be supported and stuff, but I'm just talking about like adults here.

Speaker 1: 52:11

Grown very much, grown ups 50, 40, 60, 70, right yeah. And even if, even if my mother could come and she and, by the way, I feel the same way that you do, oh so did the best, and I know that if she'd had it to give, she would have given it. I was thankfully not abused, that there was a well-intentioned, warm, enthusiastic woman doing her best. So I'm clear about that. But even if she could, let's say, step in and nurture me, at this point in time it's clear to me that it's not what I want. I do. I want a connection to myself. I want that self-intimacy that it would only go so far. It can't replace self-intimacy. As children, that's how we learn self-intimacy, but the goal is self-intimacy. You know that this is a piece that everybody hopefully learns in childhood and if they don't, okay, we learn it as adults.

Speaker 2: 53:15

And you're so right that it's like. Even if your mom could be that external source of safety or intimacy or comfort for you, that wouldn't feel good because then you'd be afraid of like when she's not there. But once you have that cultivated within, like this is where kind of like I think we're getting into attachment theory and attachment styles yeah, Avoid it. Like when we oh, are you, oh, yeah, yeah. So when I recognize that I get to be that at all times, there's like a security in myself.

Speaker 2: 53:55

My partner doesn't always have to be that person for me. My friends don't always have to be. I get to allow them to be human and not my God or my Goddess, Like kids kind of project onto their parents. It just leads to a more intimate relationship with others and a more pleasurable relationship with others because I get to show up as my more securely attached self, my more adult self, instead of like the desperate craving inner child. And that includes my relationship to food. And I show up as my desperate craving inner child to food. Like that doesn't feel good after the fact, like not even during because I'm too present now.

Speaker 1: 54:49

Yeah, exactly, it's not really pleasure. It is not really pleasure, I wonder. I wonder if avoidant attachment styles might have just even a little bit of a harder time on this journey, because I would avoid it to even with myself. It just occurred to me that I always thought, oh, it'd be so great to be anxious, because you're just so keen for that connection, you don't want it to go away.

Speaker 2: 55:23

Yeah, I think there's definitely more of a payoff immediately. When you're anxiously attached because you're just like God With the avoidance, there's kind of some stories that you get to go through first, like, oh, this is ridiculous. Oh my gosh, you can't really have to do this. Oh my God.

Speaker 1: 55:43

Why do I even need comfort Like come on, get it together. Florence?

Speaker 2: 55:50

Like am I human or something Like God, like humans are just so? I just get over all these feelings, like can I just be happy happy, joy, joy please.

Speaker 2: 56:04

Yeah, so you can kind of like kind of laugh at those parts. You know, get really it sounds like you're really familiar with those parts at least the stories that go along with the avoidant attachment and then kind of like titrating, I think, a lot more of that self-intimacy to where it starts, feeling good, because there's going to be like this, like now at first, just like with when you're like working with someone who's avoiding the attach. If you go all in they're going to run, so like, just like with yourself. You kind of want to like let yourself have that space and honor, like not buy into the stories, but just like humor them. Oh, okay, you think this is pathetic. I think that's how I would relate with that. And now it came up recently in a session and, yeah, I tend to attract people who are more anxiously attached, and so when I do work with avoidantly attached people, it's like there's a lot more stories and we kind of just get into a place of playfulness with them and allowing that person to be human.

Speaker 1: 57:32

Yeah. So for people who maybe they're like, what in the heck is Lacou and Florence talking about when we come out of childhoods where there was insecure attachment, there was insufficient or inconsistent nurturing and there was some anxiety about is my mom or is my primary caregiver going to be there for me when I need them? And you can go in one of three different directions If there's an insecure attachment, there's a rupture in that attachment. You can be anxious, like Lacou which do you want to describe it? And I'll describe the avoidant.

Speaker 2: 58:09

Yeah, so anxious attachment always or often fears the loss of connection, and that usually comes from connection being inconsistent, connection being never truly feeling satiating. So my mom was very off doing her own thing a lot of times and I was playing with my sisters but I craved her attention a lot and so I developed this like kind of grassy energy of anxiety around her. And there's also like people who have both avoidant and anxious, and so you can kind of identify which one you are after. Lauren shares about avoidance.

Speaker 1: 59:01

And the thing about anxious too, just to add, is that the fear of abandonment. So if you relate to the fear of abandonment you get, you start getting close and you start fearing abandonment. I guess anyone who's got anxious attached any sort of attached security, would feel that, but that it can be quite acute. Does that, does that resonate?

Speaker 2: 59:21

with you it does, and like there's always, like whenever, when I started my relationship with my partner, there's it was going great and like there's thoughts like what's going to happen, when is it going to go wrong, when are you going to drop, when is he going to leave me, or like if something's going to go wrong and yeah. So those thoughts are like anxious attachment thoughts. And then there's also this like inability to receive. I found too from my partner and it takes like conscious effort to receive care from him Because there's like when that fight or flight, that anxiety is activated, it's hard to like kind of like let that down to receive. So doing my own work of self relating and self intimacy helps me receive in my relationship.

Speaker 1: 1:00:18

Right, right, it's the safest way of receiving, even though you know a higher power or God or whatever you want to refer to as a higher power you know could potentially be the most secure attachment ever really. Even then you can waver in your belief. Right, the only secure attachment will ever really trust is the one we have with ourselves, because if I be an avoidant attachment, so avoidant attachment are. They appear very independent, very responsible, potentially hyper responsible. They can be leaders, they can be like it's okay, I'm fine. How about you? You know that they sort of overcompensate for what is underneath a deep neediness, a deep fear, a deep longing for to be cared for, to be held, to feel safe, to be taken care of, to receive, to be intimate. So there's an overcompensation. Is there anything you would add to that?

Speaker 2: 1:01:21

And there's also like kind of a rejection of people who like there's a distancing when people are trying to like meet the needs. There's like a distancing there versus like the anxious attachment is like may receive the needs but not really take it in the the avoided kind of distances, physically or emotionally. I guess there's both, there's distancing in both of them. The root they both are anxious. What they learned recently?

Speaker 1: 1:02:00

at the root and secure, deeply, deeply desiring and desperate even for for that, that human closeness, and have these patterns that make it more difficult to receive it. Yeah, yeah, so so yeah, regardless of where you fall on that continuum, if you have insecure attachment, what we're learning today from the coup is is is the healing, this is it, and in the process of doing this work of self intimacy, as she's calling it, learning to dial in, to attune to and to orient towards pleasure, even in small little doses, is also the path that heals trauma. Do you want to talk a bit more about how trauma fits into all this?

Speaker 2: 1:02:47

Yeah. So trauma is, I find, at the root of a lot of our compulsions with food, with sugar, any substance. Really. It's like that moment you were crying in the crib, like that was the moment of trauma for you, and the fact that you get to touch in on that through self intimacy is powerfully healing. And so when we don't know how to touch into ourselves or be intimate with the self and our traumas are deep sensations that are underneath the traumas, then we'll use food, we'll use substances to try our best to suit these parts so that we can function in society. And so it's. It's just us trying to do our best to kind of be functional humans in our society.

Speaker 2: 1:03:44

And so when you can take the time to be with those parts, that's when the grip on the substance can be released, because you're attuning to another option and for a lot of people, like I said earlier, like pleasure, is this huge unmet need which I think, when we have unmet needs that have not been satiated our whole life, that can feel like a trauma as well. And so once we start attuning to the pleasure in our life, once we start feeling like oh my gosh, a tree can meet my need, this water can meet my need, like I have unlimited sources of getting my needs met, of feeling nurtured, of feeling comforted by life, like that in itself can be very healing for trauma. Because trauma creates this like shell where life feels unsafe and life feels hard and life feels like this unpleasurable, miserable place. And so to orient to pleasure is so radical and so different from how the traumatized body orients to life and that will take titration at first. It's taken me like, yeah, it's taken me many years Little doses, a couple seconds, yes, little little sips of pleasure over time and then slowly growing the capacity, the body's capacity to experience pleasure, to experience really safety in life.

Speaker 2: 1:05:20

And that goes out into the relationship with food. If you're feeling like you mentioned something in your arm earlier, like the fact that you're feeling that and tending to that means that you won't subconsciously eat something to quell that pain that you weren't intimate with or aware of. And these things kind of stack up for people throughout the day, throughout the week, and so when we're intimate with them, we get to like get the payoff of self, the pleasure of self, intimacy, and also get to feel more awake in our daily life because we're not in this like traumatized state. We're like awake to the pleasure of life.

Speaker 1: 1:06:07

And the traumatized state is can happen because it's too much, too fast or too much coming at us for too long, too much pressure, overwhelmed, or too little for too long. Too little for too long, too little of the things that that make life feel like it's worth living. For too long. And so many women, by the time we hit our 40s and 50s we've got jobs, we've got kids we don't even think about what would be pleasurable because we know we don't have the time for it. Oh, just to sit and read a novel, read a book, go take a bath like go for a walk in nature. It's just like ain't nobody got time for those pleasures anymore. And yet at the same time, because we don't take them, we just dig ourselves deeper into this traumatized nervous system state that is ultimately joyless. It is a joyless place. Look who. I wanted to tell people about your Instagram account because it is so good. It is so good. You could spend hours just all these little gems of insight. So I'm just going to, I type some up and I'm just going to randomly, randomly share some.

Speaker 1: 1:07:24

Okay, what is binge eating protecting you from? The more boundaries we set, the less we need to use food as a defense or coping mechanism. When we accepting, compassionately respond to our triggers, the less we need food to cope. Binge eating is not eating for pleasure. I am not your guru, you are your guru and your body is your teacher. Binge eating is a symptom of unhealed trauma. When you experience a pleasurable life, you are free to eat for authentic pleasure. Last one I could go on for hours. Believe me, want to feel safer with food. Approach your deepest wound with tenderness, kindness and compassion. That's her self intimacy invitation to us all. Like who. Is there anything else you would like to add? On the topic of women, food trauma, addiction, sugar, binge eating, recovery.

Speaker 2: 1:08:27

There's so much. Oh my gosh. I really loved this conversation. I think the final thing I'll say is just like women especially, we need to feel more pleasure, and I'm feeling more and more passionate about women specifically prioritizing their pleasure, because I feel that we're in a pleasure deficit specifically for women. We're just over compensating by trying to be like men and I think it's really dampening our just energy and our ability to experience pleasure. I mentioned having time to feel pleasure earlier, and it's like I work with so many moms who just like don't have the time, and really it doesn't take that much time. I just want to say that also, like these micro dose pleasure moments is what we focus on first, and so everyone can experience more pleasure, even if it's just a little titrated dose. So, yeah, I just want to give the women out their hope and that they can experience more pleasure, even if they are really busy, even if they don't know what that is like, and they deserve it.

Speaker 1: 1:10:00

Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Laku, for your time today. It's been my pleasure.

Speaker 2: 1:10:05

Thank you.