The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
Karly Pitman: Overcoming Addictions through Mindfulness, Self-Compassion, and Grieving
Have you ever found solace in the sweetness of sugar, only to discover it's a double-edged sword that cuts deep into the fabric of emotional well-being? Karly Pitman joins us today — whose journey through eating disorders and deep dive into neuroscience and attachment theory sheds light on our complex relationship with food. Throughout our revealing conversation, Carly helps us understand how self-compassion and empathy are key in transforming the way we interact with food, especially sugar, and how these insights can empower us in the recovery process.
This episode is an invitation to reflect on the cyclical nature of healing. We emphasize that your journey need not be a solitary one, and that opening doors to healthier coping mechanisms while closing those that harm us is part of the healing process. Karly and I explore the essence of our true selves—compassionate, loving, and kind—distinct from the critical inner voices that often plague us. By embracing this journey to self-compassion, we learn to internalize our experiences, fostering a deeper understanding of ourselves and, ultimately, a more peaceful state of being.
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Hello and welcome everybody. I have a very special guest with me today Carly Pittman. And Carly, when I first started my summit seven, eight years ago, eight, nine years ago now stood out of the crowd because she was an early, early adopter. I guess you would say beginning to. Sorry, I have some mascara that just fell into my eye. Forgive me, that happens. I'm just going to take a moment.
Speaker 1:I think we're better Early pioneer in integrating mindfulness, self compassion and trauma into the mix. Right and so now it's really, it's really opening up in this space. But Carly was my first, my first person that I knew working in this space that was really talking about this stuff. So we're in for a treat today. Let me tell you a little bit about her. She's a poet, she's a writer, she's a teacher, she's an educator, she's a coach, she's a therapist, she's a healer and she comes by the work that she does honestly because she's journey she's learned so much in her own journey of trying to figure out what is this relationship I've got with food, with sugar, that's causing. It's both soothing me but it's also hurting me, and so she's impacted that journey. She's been studying neuroscience and relational attachment theory for 16 years and she brings it all together into a very compassionate, gentle approach to recovery. So I'm very excited to share Carly with you all today. Welcome, oh, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I've. I haven't touched by your intro and yeah, it's the laboratory of my own experience that, yeah, I was trying to make sense of why I had so many eating disorders and I would kind of bounce from one to the other. Sugar was kind of the constant threat underneath them. But, yeah, I'm really trying to understand what. What is this and why, even being aware when I I think I had an eating disorder and I was 18.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why it took so long to heal. So it kind of took me down this journey. So I'm so grateful to be here with you and, yeah, that place where self compassion and mindfulness and trauma intersect, for me is so potent because, as we were chatting before we began, it really softened shame and it helps us know oh, it makes sense, my experiences make sense. This is not, particularly, if you're really conscientious and I might be one of those people how have I been so stuck in this or why it's been since a constant threat in our lives. So I love diving into those worlds because they bring, they bring understanding and they bring they soften that shame and they soften the anxiety and we feel more like a, like a friend for a journey, rather than an adversary.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, the worst thing we can do when we're struggling with anything, including our food, is intensify our self loathing, our stress, our self rejection, our discouragement, right Like that language, that self talk that approached to our journey doesn't work. Yeah, I hope you. I think you help us save, shave off years, you know, by not continuing to do that old school. If I just kick my myself, if I beat myself up enough, I might actually get this sorted out. It doesn't work Like going to war.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go to war. I have teenage sons, so one of them has this joke there's apparently some meme about this but yeah, we can go to war against ourselves and I remember there's this. I mean, there's a couple of moments in your own journey that might stand out and I think when it and just just being so, just the honor of listening to other people's sugar stories and hearing about their journeys, you know, there's always something tender underneath. The sugar is a really mean. Sugar works as a protector. It works as a nervous system regulator. That's why we use it. And when we start to really see that what's underneath the trauma, that's underneath the experiences we've had, the sufferings, that's there, it's like the heart opens and we feel this compassion for ourselves where that tension can kind of soften a little bit. And I can think of moments in my journey where that would happen and you can feel that sense of oh, my goodness, I've been so hard on myself or this has been with me so long. I really feeling that I think of times when I've cried so hard with was my people that I've worked with, you know, my beloved therapist, or my educators, my mentors, and when, the time when I cried so hard and I realized, oh, my goodness, the sugar food saved me. It protected me from pain that was too overwhelming to feel, it held me, it comforted me. It was like. It was like a mother. You know I teach a class when footage of mother and people they describe that you know how sugar is like a mother. It's like one woman said, it's like a bad boyfriend, I can't let go, which I thought isn't that active, like there's just part of us that knows. Oh my goodness, this is really hurting me, but it gives me. It's also holding me and comforting me. But yeah, when that really sinks in, it's it helps us then become.
Speaker 2:There's this children's story. I love that. This is one of the best examples I've heard of this. Did you ever read the story Corduroy with your kids on their little about the little stuffed bear? Yeah, I think he.
Speaker 2:He was a children's author, I think in the 60s and 70s. His name is Don Freeman and it's this little stuffed teddy bear named Corduroy and he's sitting on the shelf at a department store and he wants to go home with a child. You know, he wants to be loved and he's sitting there and no one's picking him and then this little girl comes in with her mom, lisa, and Lisa's like mom, can I buy him? And her mom says no, and besides, one of his shoulder straps is missing, one of his buttons is missing and a shoulder strap broken and it's this very inch. It's almost like a Dharma story, because then Corduroy feels like, oh, I've got to fix this missing, this broken button, so that I can be loved and I can go home. So it creates this whole adventure where he goes looking for a button. But at the end of the story Lisa does buy him and take him home. And there's this moment when she's in her bedroom it's in New York City, you know, she's in an apartment on an iron eyes and he's got a little bed for him and he's feeling this and I've always wanted to be home and she fixes his button on his shoulder strap and what she says to him is she says I like you just the way you are, but you'll feel more comfortable with your shoulder strap fixed. And to me that is.
Speaker 2:I love children's stories. They really get to the truth of it. But that's kind of how we have to approach. Sugar is not like coming it from that place of fight, of strain of I need to fix this, of control, but rather it's like, oh you know, if I'm overeating or binging on sugar, it's like I have this missing button on my shoulder strap and I'm not as comfortable as I can be. It might cause some pain. So we love ourselves the way we are and we'll feel more comfortable if our button is fixed. So it's kind of that kind of approach of I don't want to suffer, I want to help myself. Not, you know, I need, I need to get my my crap together or I need to. You know that kind of fight response. But anyway, I love that little story.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love it too. Yes, and it gave me. I actually had a bit of a chill go through my body. I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can send you a link to it if people want to know. Yeah, there are about children's stories. They can teach us. You know they kind of go right through our defenses. You know they just you know that just yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:That brief felt experience of I could love that teddy bear, even if a shoulder strap isn't right. And if we can do that with the teddy bear, can you imagine how good it's going to feel when we do it with ourselves and for ourselves?
Speaker 2:Right, and as we get a little, you know, we get a little frayed. You know, I have this statue right outside my home and it's this picture of a mother holding a little infant, and I bought it at a garden store and they had it like in clearance, way in the back, and then when I went I said, hey, how much is that statue? They said, oh, what will you give us for it? Just take it off your hands because it was all dinged. And I said I kind of like that. It's all dinged up. She's a mother. Mothers get dinged up. You know, we get really dinged up.
Speaker 2:I thought it was perfect and so I love that statue because it's dinged up and we get dinged up. You know, we get frayed, our buttons get missing. Yeah, it's. You know I had to recover from so much perfection it's kind of side by side with my food journey so because I had a lot of shame about who I was, so I thought well, and I had a lot of fear. I felt so afraid and so I thought, well, if I can just order life though, right, then I'll be okay and then I'll be loved, and then I can and everything around me is kind of okay, so for me, just softening perfection is such a good teaching for me and it'll continue to accompany me, I imagine, my whole life, however long that might be.
Speaker 1:Recovery from perfectionism is just a different way of living in chronic pain. That's a good way of putting it. I will say that for me. For me, I am one of those abstinence-oriented like I. Just Right For me, and I know that's not everybody's journey. I think that there are relationships and they can figure out how much they can do and mostly leave it, but make exceptions and be at peace with that.
Speaker 1:It works for them and I know that's not a journey For me. I don't Abstinence. One of the pieces that people can get confused about is they'll think I'm working on my perfectionism so I don't need to do abstinence, because abstinism is perfection and control. That is not been my experience. It could be done.
Speaker 1:It could be done that way but it could also be done as a breakup. It's like this is the end of our road here and I know that I feel safe and I have more tools. Now I have other ways new and better ways of working with my nervous system, of bringing in soothing that I don't need sugar anymore and I don't actually want it back.
Speaker 1:I don't want it back. That's we're done. Too much history. I can't say it'll be forever and I can't say it'll last forever. But I know that for me, at the end of the day I feel peace day over day, day over day, day over day, and I don't think I'm doing it perfectly. It's like an ex-smoker five years down the road. They're not waking up thinking I'm not going to smoke today, perfectly. They just it's over, it's all gone. That addiction is kind of done. I don't know if you want to comment on that that's so beautiful.
Speaker 2:I love it. The breakup metaphor, yes. The other part are Let me see if I can unpack this a little bit. There is a way you can do abstinence. That is very. There's a lot of stress to it. That's about a lot of control that can have a lot of tension in it. There's also a way that you can do abstinence. That is what you describe. That is a. The image I use is of a shut door, the door behind you. Actually it's like, oh, I can't go down that path anymore. My beloved mentor I know you'd like to, dr Gordon Neufeld, a wonderful Canadian. A lot of people know his work better through his peer and co-author, dr Gabarmente. What Dr Neufeld teaches that I think is so profound is what he calls the how the brain can prune out things that don't work. In truth, we have to face things that don't work over and over.
Speaker 2:Like myself right now. You and I were talking about this before we hop on. I've had long COVID the last three and a half years. I have really firm guidelines around what I can eat right now, for example, eggs and dairy. I can do butter, but any dairy it flares up my long COVID symptoms immediately and will make me so sick. It's a shut door for me right now. I really miss cheese. I have to say I miss cheese and I also am okay with it because I care about my health and it impacts me so profoundly.
Speaker 2:In some ways it's helpful if you get really clear, immediate feedback. My body doesn't feel good when I eat that because it makes it easier for you to honor that utility. There are ways. I wondered about this too, florence. It was one of my really wondering. Well, yeah, to white-knuckle it through addiction doesn't work, but there has to be a way that we can say no to something. There has to be a way to do it that isn't a white-knuckle experience. That's what Dr Neufeld taught me. It was so helpful. In a nutshell, I could explain it if it would be helpful.
Speaker 1:Yes, go there, it's great yes.
Speaker 2:He describes these different processes of maturation that we all go through, from the cradle to the grave. One of them is this adaptive process. It's how the brain prunes out things that don't work. I remember in every last year because we talked about it and you talked about the no vitamin that he talks about is we will all bump up into circumstances that we can't change.
Speaker 2:For some people, a circumstance they can't change is maybe their body is really sensitive to sugar. Maybe you're someone like me who has low blood sugar and so you have to eat in a way that honors that low blood sugar. You might be someone who's sugar sensitive, that when you eat sugar it really impacts your nervous system. Where maybe you're a kid and you were someone, at Halloween you ate all your Halloween candy in three days. I think my Halloween candy lasted most a week. It didn't last for long. I remember I had a friend. She'd have Halloween candy for months. I remember just thinking how does she do that? I spent my allowance on ambient magazines and makeup. I was a teenager. That's what I bought at Walgreens, thank you, yeah, so if you're someone who you recognize you have a that when you eat sugar, it's really hard for you to stop that. It's a way you're chronically soothing your nervous system. You might notice that you need more and more of it. You know where you're in that space where it's almost like you're eating, and eating, and eating, trying to get your nervous system to come down, trying to move out of that fight or flight, and you need just more and more of that food.
Speaker 2:Then you might be someone then who comes to that point of recognizing this this can't continue. Or for, like myself, one of the key places for me with. You know, my eating disorders really started to impact my kids when I had two daughters. At the time, I can't remember if my third child, my son, was born, but I thought I was hiding my eating disorder because I never talked about it and I tried to never. I didn't want it to harm them, but I saw really clearly it was and that, for me, was a big wake up call of I can't ignore this. You know I really need to get help. So when you're in that moment, when you realize I this can't continue it's what Dr Neufeld says you have to face utility. You have to. Basically, rather than keeping the door open and trying to make it work, trying to. You have to shut the door. You have to shut the door and realize it doesn't work. And this actually occurs in the emotional brain. This isn't a cognitive experience. It's felt in the limbic system and the emotional brain where emotionally you come to that space of this can't be.
Speaker 2:And when you move from that place of futility into what we could call a place of acceptance or a place of letting go, for many people this is a grieving process and people have talked to me. They've had very creative ways where they actually grieve sugar. They have funeral, they have a ritual, they have a way of acknowledging like this was something that was really important and served a purpose in my life and letting go of this is significant for me. So you go through this grieving process and as that futility dissolves, then you come to the other side and the brain will actually prune out that old pathway. It'll start to open up a new pathway.
Speaker 2:But going through that process of facing the futility of this doesn't work. It's holding you in that no space. So in my life when I've had that futility, I've had people actually physically hold me because the intensity of the feeling of that I want, like everything in my nervous system is pouring me. I want to eat a self-due, because that's what my brain and my nervous system learn. This is what holds me when I'm in this place of overwhelming pain. So to have someone like ah put their arms around me while I'm weeping, because it is for me, for my emotional brain, it is like losing a mother, it's like losing something really important. And for people maybe who have never had an emotional bond with food, they might hear that story of me. Well, isn't that extreme. But for anyone who's experienced that thing, no, no, it's for anyone who's had any addiction the only goal of our addictions is courageous, because we have to feel that law. So that's kind of that pruning out system.
Speaker 2:And when you do that and it might be that you know, for sugar you go through that process several times. You know it may not be just one time where it's like you're going through the futility. The sugar doesn't work. No matter how much sugar I eat, it doesn't actually give me truly what I want. It gives us a little bit. And when I say it works, I mean it can kind of soothe our nervous system, but not really in the way we're needing and it causes a lot of harm. I mean, it's not the mind.
Speaker 2:So we might have to go through that process several times of moving through that futility and moving through that adaptive process, feeling our tears. Now, when we go through that process, we also move our nervous system from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system, so it takes us out of that fight or flight. When I go through those futilities and grieving it, there's a lightness that comes out of the other side but the middle of it feels, can feel really intense Because it's kind of like a mini death. I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a dying process of letting go and for all of us there are 10,000 futilities we face throughout our lives, whether it's, you know, whether it has to do with sugar, whether it has to do with letting go of other relationships that no longer serving us. You know we all go through utility. We face the death of people we love, we face endings, we face there's things we can't control in life. So this adaptive process is such a friend to us and it companion that companions us through life. But in my experience it's really helpful to have loving support to go through it. So for anybody who's listening, if you recognize like, oh, I haven't faced that futility around sugar. You know I haven't faced that futility that you know it's not serving me and I'm it's causing harm even though it's also bringing some comfort.
Speaker 2:It's often what we need is we need support. To do that, you know, we need other people, we need other nervous system. We need and it's kind of like our. You know the way I look at our bodies and our nervous system and this comes from my amazing teachers and amazing woman named Bonnie Badnut, the teacher of relational neuroscience. She really taught me this that our bodies are always trying to move us towards healing, or nervous systems, no matter how messy it appears on the surface.
Speaker 2:But kind of what that does is it helps us trust, because healing goes through cycles and through seasons. It's not linear and it isn't linear and so part of what that does is like it's almost like our body move us into that adaptive process, or more like we're not the one forcing it. It's moving through us. It's like we, our job is to. It's almost like a willingness. Am I willing? Am I willing to have this process go through me and am I willing to face futility? Am I willing to face the things that don't work and to let them go. Am I willing to grieve? Breathing is a huge part of the healing process. Yeah, I hope that does. That give you a flavor of it.
Speaker 1:Totally and my experience with a new felt and I never applied it to my own journey of addiction recovery, but I applied it as a mother right. So he's an expert in parenting and I read a book have a New Kid by Friday and the main takeaway for me was he talks about you've got these strong willed kids that are anxious and scared and they think they need control, that they need to be the alpha child, they need to get their way to be safe and when parents say no, it can be really stormy, they can go. They'll fight you, right, they, they want their way. They'll tan from the bite or whatever. I mean extreme kids will do that. Yeah, mine was.
Speaker 1:She was very strong willed and many times I thought I don't know that I'm strong enough to parent this kid because my instinct is just go, okay, okay, okay, okay, all right, just you can go soccer, like whatever it is that they think they needed to do. But eventually, after I read that book, I learned to expect the storm and once the tears came, I knew she would soften, I knew she would come to a place of peace and I knew she would feel that she was protected by her mom, that her mom was the boss and she could just be a kid. And before that, somehow I thought that this process, I was torturing her, I was being a mean mom right, because she certainly let me know I was being a mean mom. They will let you know. Yeah, way too, like you're the meanest mom. And I realized this is good, I know what she's doing.
Speaker 1:I know this process. She's fighting, she's trying to hang on, she wants her way. I want to eat the sugar. I want to be able to have some. I want to. I want to be able to eat that a parties. I want to have some of my kids, but you know, birthday cake or my wedding cake, and there's that stormy, tantrumy sort of face and then, when there it's not happened, no, honey, as long as she was young enough that I could say no and have it stick, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it, no, I'm not giving you the keys to the car or whatever.
Speaker 1:It is Right. And then you could see she moved through to the tears, and then there was this amazing grief, and then there was peace. That was the letting go. And that's the same thing we do with sugar. I have wept about pancakes. I have wept about chocolate. I can't do any of it, I just choose not to. And I'm totally, totally a piece, totally a piece I.
Speaker 2:It's just absurd to think in retro, at retrospect, that Right, I know, I was just thinking as I listened to you, like, like, pepsi was one of the flavors of my childhood, you know, and yeah, I haven't had a Pepsi and although then I drank Coke when I went to college, I didn't have Pepsi. Really, yeah, it's probably been around like 30 years since I've had a soda and I don't even think about Pepsi anymore. But yeah, you can, like they can. There are things that dissolve, that then aren't an issue anymore. And yet, yeah, so that you know, when you talk about grief and you talk about this letting go process, it can feel a little intimidating to some people.
Speaker 2:But I think about a friend of mine who she run grief circles for women and we were talking the other day and it's not just for women who have lost loved ones, it's for any kind of grief. You can be the grief of the courts, it can be the grief of parenting, all kinds of things. And this woman said, and the struck me she said now I know the piece that passes understanding and she was talking about after having grieved and being witnessed under grief I'm just grief, but having people to hold her in it oh, this is that piece. There is that that piece on the other side, and for a lot of people. Having the shut door of no sugar in such a lot of people is easier than in an eating it moderately, because it does kind of create a. It's just really clear. You know, it creates a real clear boundary, a container then. The container then holds our nervous system. It's like you've got this In. The same ways are our daily rhythms can kind of hold us. It becomes this thing that holds you, which can be surprising to people to think, because initially they think it's going to feel awful and it's hard to imagine. Oh, that that limit could actually I call loving limits. It actually feels supportive. It's, you know, an alchemy and sacred alchemy.
Speaker 2:They talk about how you have the container and then all the stuff in the container to make the alchemy. The container is an alchemy. They kind of think of it as the masculine principle, and when I mean masculine, it's it doesn't matter if you're male or female, it's we all have that principle within us. It's that holding, it's that that sense of containment and our emotional nervous systems need containment, they need that sense of boundary.
Speaker 2:And I have a little bit of a theory that I think a lot of us, if we're using sugar regularly to soothe our nervous system. It's almost like sugar is what we're trying to use to be that boundary, that containment. So when we have that kind of that container around us, the inside of the container is what's considered quote the feminine and that's like the flow and that the river within the river banks. And we need both. And as our nervous systems are well supported and some of that support, you know, comes from loving others, where it were, social beings that containment it's almost like that containment can replace the containment that they're giving us, sugar, that substitute that we're using for really what we're meant to find in relationship. You know, it's so interesting.
Speaker 2:There's a theory that when we practice self compassion, that it's actually using the same pathways in the brain as the attachment pathways and the relational pathways, which to me is so fascinating and makes a lot of sense. So when we're practicing self compassion, when we're gentle with ourselves, when, when we have those flare ups, whether it's for sugar or whether it's self judgment or whether it's self-fartionist, and we go and and soothe ourselves, you know as a mother would sue the child, you know, it's okay, sweetheart, it comforts the brain, it soothes the brain, it softens fear in the brain and it activates those same girl pathways as attachment. So it is like having warm arms around, it's like having that, uh, that hug, that holding, that I've got you, you're not alone, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's very profound. I would say that that is bang on for me, for my nervous system. I've never thought of it that way, that sugar used to be my mother and now abstinence feels like my mother. Abstinence feels like it keeps me safe, it's got me, it's holding me, it's in. I never would have thought because so framed as deprivation Right. What if it's actually just this loving containment like you're describing? That's my experience of it. I feel loved by by just the clarity of I am a whole food woman and the black and whiteness of it for works for my brain I get. There's lots of right ways of negotiating a relationship with sugar, but for me it's just so clean. I don't ever have a, well, occasionally I do. It'll have this little food chatter where I'll say, oh, don't you think we should have? And I'll think, oh, no, sweetheart, no, I don't think so.
Speaker 2:But it does look good, doesn't it? It's an interesting idea.
Speaker 1:Interesting idea. Yeah, I don't not going to go those ideas will come, they will come up.
Speaker 2:You know other, you know, sometimes the interesting idea is I should really check my social media right now, or I really, you know it'll, it'll kind of navigate us different ways. But yeah, it's interesting to hear how that resonates with you, that it can feel like. It's kind of like if you've ever seen a really small child like an infant or a toddler when they just had too much for the day, they're you know, we used to jump in our kids were a little stick of fork in them. They're done like Thanksgiving turkey. You know what it's that you can see. When a small child is like they've had enough for the day, they have enough activity, they're tired, they're reached that end point. When you have someone, someone who can see and attune like, oh, they've had enough, they're satiated, they've had enough, they don't need anymore. When you have that loving space of oh, I see, you've had enough, you're full, you're done, it's incredibly soothing and it feels so cared for. But on verse, when we don't have that, that containment around us, I think for many people, whether it shows up as like with work or we flip or never done and we feel like we just have to keep working, working, working. That feeling we have when you're exhausted and you're pushing to get something else done, and sometimes you have no choice, like you've got an infant, or you've got a huge deadline, or you're an EMT, or that feeling when you have to push past your capacity, you know it's stressful for it. So to have something that recognizes, oh, you've had enough, it's okay, so so soothing.
Speaker 2:You know, one thing that Dr Neufeld said is one of the most vulnerable feelings we can feel is emptiness. And we have to be able to feel both emptiness and satiation because we can only feel we have to be full, empty before we're full, and those two feelings are, in my experience, it's like two of your most powerful friends on the journey. You may not always feel like friends, because feeling empty is a very vulnerable feeling and feeling satiated in the vulnerable, to know when we've to be able to feel oh, I've had enough, I've had enough stimulation for the day, I've had enough food and a meal, I don't need any more, because sometimes our nervous systems try to bring us to rest paradoxically, by pursuing more Like. Often what we need is to recognize oh, I'm satiated and full, and that, in my experience, is a moving really into the body, which for a lot of us, is a gradual process, because if we've had a lot of trauma, it often doesn't feel safe to be in our body but to really feel, oh, that emptiness. What is that emptiness I'm living and the emptiness will often tell us oh, it's chocolate. It's the chocolate that will fill that emptiness, or it's a Netflix show, or it's working more.
Speaker 2:And so, in addition to kind of befriending that shut door in those limits, we're also befriending emptiness. We're befriending satiation and really learning oh, how do I know I'm full? Like in my life, when I know I'm satiated, I feel I start to get crabby and almost frustrated. When I'm satiated, and when I'm not recognizing, oh, I'm full, it's like I'm overstimulated. I feel kind of like a cranky infant. And that's my sign. Well, it's like, okay, I think I need to go. That's my sign. What's telling me stop, stop, don't send the next email. I'll put the loan laundry, in which, for me, it feels like I'm learning Western culture.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so recognize and that might be something people can try with. Huh, how does my body tell me I've had enough? And usually we learn by knowing what I've had more than enough, and we feel that adrenaline kind of drive. So isn't it interesting how so much of healing is learning about our nervous system, our understanding our nervous system? You?
Speaker 1:know you and I have talked about this a lot, and I am just before lunch, at the end of this interview, I'm going to go eat lunch. I'm really hungry. So I was just noticing ah yes, I have that my stomach is empty feeling and it feels very vulnerable, like I was just. I was you were inviting me to sort of notice. Yet that does feel vulnerable. That I may not be true for anyone else, but I feel vulnerable when I'm hungry. That emptiness, it is a vulnerable state. It's like. Will I get enough to eat? Will there be food for me? I imagine. I imagine that this is an infant experience, right, that being left alone.
Speaker 1:You know to cry when you're hungry, or or there being a delay before your mom can bring you the bottle because she's warming it up, or something like that. Right that some of those early experiences of fear of is my, not rationally, but to the little thing. The body doesn't know that for sure. Money mom's coming and the thing it just it's. In that moment of am I going to get what I need? And that's why I think I feel vulnerable, because there's the unknown of am I going to get my needs met? Have I been abandoned? Am I going to survive?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, it's an appointment. Feeling feeling empty, feeling hungry, feeling emotionally hungry, feeling physically hungry, feeling lonely. Yeah, will someone be there? Will I be?
Speaker 2:So that containment piece I was talking about you know now and I'll make sure I get this right because it's been a long time since I've studied this piece but I believe it's the emotional brain can't spell time and boundary. So when we're in pain, it feels like it's going to be forever. It feels like it's going to be forever. So that sense of, oh, this, this will end, and that's part of what. Oh, that containment, like when you give somebody a hug, a hug, part of what's so soothing about it is it helps us know, oh, the pain will end.
Speaker 2:I'm not alone. This, this distress, like there's armed around me, there's a sense of being held, so even spiritually. So a lot of my journey kind of went side by side with relational neuroscience. For me was having a sense of. For me, it's the divine mother that sends a oh, is there somebody? Which is why I have that statue of the mother outside my window here is there a sense that there's something holding me that won't let go, arms that I can't fall out of. So side by side for a lot of people too, with their physical recovery from addiction. It's a spiritual recovery and for me, it was that relationship which really deepened, interestingly enough, before long before the pandemic happened. And I look back and I'm so grateful for that because that held me. So I got sick really really early February, march 2020. And the divine mother was, you know, something that really held me throughout that. So real practical takeaway I think it's so helpful if you're in recovery with sugar is to have three places of support, and one of them somebody with skin on, like another human being, and it actually helps if that person isn't your partner, because sometimes when you're recovering from something, it can put a lot of weight in our partners.
Speaker 2:Our partners certainly can be part of that if you have someone in your life. But it also helps to have someone could be a therapist, could be a support group, could be a friend. But those three places of support, one of them might be spiritual support. It might be your meditation practice, it might be a spiritual figure that you connect to, maybe Kwanian or the Buddha or Jesus, whoever that might be. It might be a tree, it might be a pond that you go and visit every day, it might be the ocean, it might be a pet, it might be someone like a beloved grandmother or an auntie or a teacher that you had as a child that you felt really safe with, because every relationship we've had that had emotional component to us.
Speaker 2:It lives in our nervous system so we can access those places of support in our bodies today. So, having three places one in actual person that you can go to for that support Because that's really in a big picture nutshell what we're doing is we're replacing sugar as a source of soothing with other places that will really meet our needs, other places that can kind of soothe our nervous systems, other places that can give us that comfort and give us the cooling and for many people that's an unwinding you know it doesn't happen overnight, but but it makes the journey.
Speaker 2:You know, if there's something I can look back, because I had so much shame, I really tried hard, doing most of it on my own in my own recovery, and it took a long time for me to feel safe enough to open to people and expose myself. Because, you know, it was always like, oh, I'm going to heal myself tomorrow. I always wanted to think of it as, oh, they're in the past, they're done, and it was, and that was a significant place for me when I really opened up to getting a lot more open support. Three places, just something for people to think of. I have three places and you can have more than starting with those three. You know you can really go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I almost wanted to find out, like, ask people like, where are those three places? That we could go down a whole rabbit hole for that, because it's really beautiful to listen to people and, oh, where are those places that you go to? And for some people that's a very painful question. For some people it's like, oh, my God, I wish I had three places.
Speaker 2:And if that's someone, that's your experience, I just extend my heart to you because you have so much strength, because if you haven't had that kind of support in your life that you're here and that you're breathing and you're functioning, so it's a tremendous strength you have. And to you know, for a lot of people it's their pets. A pet is a place of unconditional love and support and it, or nature, trees, and then you can start to feel safe enough with people. So if you don't feel like you have three, you're not alone and that's an indictment of our culture. It's not a personal fault. It's just that in a lot of Western cultures we've forgotten how to that we belong to one another. You know, with one or two reasons.
Speaker 1:I going back to the idea of the door closing the door, there's that saying when one door closes, another opens. For me and my journey and I don't know anybody who is the exception to this rule that there is always a closing and opening. Closing and opening like the, it's a long journey because we kind of we go back to the blankie and then we venture forth right and we start to connect with other ways of being connected and then we go back. We go back to sugar in our case, or blankie, or something that feels safe. This feels safe. This reliably sues me, it gives my nervous system the feeling of you're safe, you're cared for, you're loved. And then we venture farther, we go back and forth and people call it slips, they call it relapses, they call it get going off their diet, whatever you want to call it. Really, it's just a journey of learning that you, you know that there are other ways, better ways to to bring that comfort that we all need and deserve. Everyone needs soothing and comforting and co-regulation, and so for me, eventually I realized that I I really did need to close that door for long enough at least to create that vacuum for me to be willing to true experiment with new and better ways of bringing self soothing. Because as long as I was still having some sugar when, when I was stressed really needed it, I would go back because it was just too easy.
Speaker 1:But once I closed the door and they made the decision and I had a stretch of abstinence, that's where I was like either. Here's the deal. I understand why they say now, addicts, you know, relapse for three because of three circumstances. They're they're suffering and you know they can continue. They have three options. They can continue to suffer, which I would do as soon as I put the food down. Massive suffering. It was just all right there and I just kind of kept coming up.
Speaker 1:And then there was the thought of I can't take this, maybe I should kill myself. And then there was the thought of, oh, maybe I should just relapse, maybe I should just go back to sugar. Well, what a hell of three horrible choices. Like, of course we relapse all the time. Right when you got that, I mean those are your choices. So eventually, when you close the door, I'm not going to kill myself and I'm I'm not relapsing You're left with the suffering and the suffering will compel you. Now go do the work. Go, take the risk of going to find somebody to say I have a terrible eating disorder or I'm in pain, or right. Or you start listening to books to talk about trauma and the nervous system and compassion. Like you start bringing that information in, it starts to create opportunities and possibilities you didn't even know existed in the world because we were so locked into. You know, when you're a hammer you say everything is a nail. Was that the expression or is it vice?
Speaker 2:versa, when you're a nail, you think I think you said it the right way. Wait a minute wait a minute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:That's so beautiful about the. I had never connected that. You connected something for me about the shut door. Yeah, when a door shuts, another, another opens and yes, that that really resonates. Yeah, the, that is the.
Speaker 2:Both the blessing and the challenge of the journey is that when we shut the door on the, the sugar, and we get enough distance from this, from it, you know the places inside that the sugar was protecting they start to speak. Then I can remember the day when I realized I could not have prevented my eating disorders if I tried. And just the. The compassion that came to me of this isn't your fault, you know these are. This was the nervous system that you were given. This is the. You know I'm pretty sensitive. You know I was a really sensitive kid that picked up everything around me and absorbed all the emotions of those around me and food was that real buffer for me. The forgiveness and the compassion of this is part of my path. It's not who I am. The eating disorders, the addictions, they're not who we are, they're, they're things we care for. And bringing in that mercy, bringing in that, that ease, and then the suffering becomes. May I be kind to the suffering, may I be kind to what's here and we gently start to open. And you're right, healing is not, you know.
Speaker 2:I think we need to move from a linear model to a cyclical model. If you think of how we go through seasons, everything in nature cycle and we cycle and often what I'll see with people who are healing is they'll go through this big integration of something that's come up and is being integrated and healed, and then it may be that after that is when they'll have a flare up, there's a big, a big sugar binge and then another piece that is coming up and really being healed. Not to look at, not to judge a recovery in a role, linear, rigid fashion. That real healing and recovery is messy, and particularly as those implicit dramas the implicit is the memory that's below our conscious awareness. It starts to bubble up, you know it. It might bubble up in a way that that you might have a day when you're like, oh, my goodness, I've been eating all day, and that's when it it's really helpful to be really curious. I wonder what's here? So if we throw out the linear model of healing and instead really see the cycles, then there's no, there's no wagon to fall off of. It's like it's all contained within it.
Speaker 2:And if our focus is on how we relate to whatever is coming up and I want to relate to myself with compassion and with curiosity, with as much gentleness as I can then in some ways it doesn't matter what's coming up. It's like the friend that's visiting us that day. It's not like our self worth or where I'm not identified with the success, quote, unquote or failure. It's like our identity is resting with the, the one who's witnessing and holding or unfolding, or identity isn't hit to how well our recovery is going Really help, because everyone is going to have messy experiences in their recovery and often what's happening is either there's more stress in your life or there's something really profound that's coming up that's wanting to be integrated and healed, and in both cases what we need in those moments is more support. That's what we need, and more support might even be more containment around food, like you might need more structure at those times in your journey. You might need someone at your side when you go to the grocery store. You may need someone with you after you eat dinner, because for a lot of people that's it's like the end of the day, because at the end of the day that's when we often feel you know we're coming down, we're quiet, you know we can put things off all throughout the day, but the end of the day that's often whatever emotionally is going to start up that day it kind of comes. It comes calling because we get quiet, we're not doing so much, we're kind of getting ready for bed. A lot of people it's after dinner, it's the evening when things really clear. Yeah, the cycle metaphor there's no wagon to fall off of.
Speaker 2:Because as soon as we start to feel like I'm falling off the wagon, that activates that fight or flight nervous system and then we're on fight or flight and then we feel like we have to control it or we feel like we have to fix it. So instead of control, it's like we're a companion, I'm the companion on the journey, and a lot of for a lot of people there's a real deep, what I would call like base level self-acceptance that starts to flower out of that of. This is what's here in my life today. It's kind of that's where that mindfulness really comes in and the self-compassion of. You know, it's beautiful and sunny where I live right now.
Speaker 2:Here in Austin, it's about a hundred degrees today. Tomorrow it might be raining, it might be snowing. You know we don't control the weather, but we can relate to the weather and so we can relate to our inner weather and that's. You know, that's my journey, for the rest of my life is relating to the inner weather and sometimes we have more bandwidth than others. Sometimes we have a day, but that's again where healing is not. Recovery is not perfectionism. Recovery is learning how to hold all of it within much gentleness and compassion and humor, humor, really, you know, as we can, and when I start to get really kind of like grabby, that's usually when I know I've lost my sense of humor. So humor really helps you. You are really with us.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, thank you. So we're. I can't believe we've just burned through an hour, but I do need to switch gears. But I'm going to just do a little bit of a recap and then I invite you to see if you would like to do a recap yourself or any you know, if there's any final words you'd like to share. So here's what I heard from this interview.
Speaker 1:I heard you saying this is not in any particular order just off the top of my head. I was really struck when you said you reminded people that we are not the struggle, we're not the suffering, we're not the behaviors. You know that there's a part of us that can witness that and that that part is the true self. So that part that says you know you're not doing this good enough and you're not doing it perfect, and I can't believe you binge date sugar again or what's wrong with you? Why can't you be like so-and-so and just get this together? That's not the true you. The true you would never say, would never use those words, would never bring that energy. The true you is love, it's compassion and it's kindness. You can't fake it. You can't make it go away, you can't make it come. It's just who you are.
Speaker 1:And then I could hear this thread through everything you were saying, like, when you can, when you can access the self, the true self, that true self can hold space, it can be kind, it can be gentle, it can see this as a cycle. And I know for a fact in my life and I say this to my clients all the time if you've slipped or you've relapsed it's because there's something you needed to learn. Still Now, donik, don't even question it, just look for it that there was something more that you needed from that experience. And when you're done, there's no more lessons to learn from slips and relapses or binges or purges or whatever. It'll be done right, that you'll know. Ah, there's nothing more to learn there for me, now that I can close that door and then, over time, as you just start opening other doors, is this gonna be as comforting? No, how about this? How about rocking and soothing and humming, maybe, maybe. How about asking someone for a hug or going out in nature or finding one of my three right, like just to keep exploring what else feels good to our nervous system, and that every step of the way, the journey is kind and it's gentle and it's slow and it's supported.
Speaker 1:And so I think that's and that the pain of closing doors when we have come to the wall Dr Neufeld calls it the T, and I would knew that moment when my kid was hitting this firm no, no, honey, you know. And this fight, and then the grief, and then the peace, right that when we close that door and it's a definitive no, that doesn't work, we don't need sugar or whatever, that there is peace and that if you let yourself grieve, you can move on. The brain will prune it go, not an option, and you don't feel, you don't spend a lifetime in feelings of deprivation and loss. I think those are the things I heard. There's probably more, but how about you for final words?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you hit them. Yeah, that's such a good question, like if there's anything. Yeah, if anything I could say. I could say this that to me it's an incredible honor when I sit and hear someone's sugar or food story. I feel even kind of teary thinking about it. It's just such an honor because there's so much beauty in a human being that and it's interesting that somehow along the way, like our minds kind of crafted this ideal of what we thought we should be and we can very much create an ideal of what we think recovery should be. But it really is just an image, it's not real.
Speaker 2:It's what's real of whatever you're experiencing. So I would help people to really trust the beauty with other journey and I get it. This isn't always easy and there's times I have my own moments when I'm in tears and I just had one last night with my husband because some real deep stuff has been coming up for me in my own trauma and I was feeling that primal sense of that sense of Ash. Why have I had so much trauma? Like, why did things impact me so much? Other people may have gone through similar life experiences and it didn't impact them so much, but again it was that deepening journey for me of this is my path, this is part of my path and the path itself holds you and it's beautiful. It's not like there's a different path. You should be on that somehow. It's just not true.
Speaker 2:And so I would say the recovery journey takes us deeper and deeper into acknowledging, like, how I'm made as holy and as beautiful and is needed, because the flip side of my challenges with in my own life, with addiction and trauma and sexual abuse and the things that I experienced on the other side of that is the sensitivity that I have, the ways I can listen, the ways I can feel the ways that there's other things too. So, yeah, to not identify with any of the struggles we have and if we lived in worlds that, and not to blame ourselves, because in a lot of our cultures they're capitalistic, they're not connection based, and so so many of us struggle and we think there's something wrong with us, when it's just that we haven't. What if we all had communities where we had this, the kind of rich support that enables us to thrive? So I think if I said anything, it would be yeah, where your worth and your identity is, it's not at all tied into. You're not being graded. There's no performing required in recovery.
Speaker 2:None in fact, that's what we're healing from healing, from performing. But trust your journey, even the hard parts, because sometimes I'm able to say this I've had the incredible honor of having eating disorders, of I've had the honor of living with addiction, I've had the honor of living with trauma and it's created this wonderful, rich and compost for my life and it definitely I know there's when we go through our own recovery. We can't help but deepen our compassion for everything, not just ours, and I think that that's why we're all here. So, yeah, if you wanna learn about me, you can find me on growinghumankindnesscom. I do have a Mighty Network and there's a free welcome room, growinghumankindnesscom or our Mighty Network, where you can get lots of free resources.
Speaker 2:I think this is happening in September, so it's actually October, october, October, october. Okay, so I was gonna say that we there was a class that I was offering, that I do offer home study courses, and the one that I really recommend for people with sugar is called Emerge Create a New Revealment, and it is. It's a 30 day course of bringing self-compassion into the kind of these nitty gritty places, and people love it because it's a short audio every day, so it is like having that hug every day on your journey. So, yeah, come by and say hello. I always love visiting with people and, yeah, blessings, blessings on your journey.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Karli. Thank you so much Wonderful thanks everyone. I hope you enjoyed this interview and I hope you give yourself a hug after this interview and I hope you know that your true self can welcome and accept all of your experiences. It knows how to do that, and that's our journey it's part of our healing. Ah, I have this welcome.
Speaker 2:Welcome Welcome.
Speaker 1:Welcome and accept. Have a beautiful day, bye-bye. Yeah, thanks for having me, yeah.
