The One Where She Explains Why This Show Is Called “Good Vanilla”

Hey there, friend! I want to dive a little deep into my mission for this podcast. I am speaking mainly about wellness as it pertains to recovering from disordered eating, eating disorders, and negative body image. I believe these topics fall under the category of wellness, mental health.

It’s my mission to inspire women to pursue wellness from a foundation of faith. I want to talk about foundation and how it relates to the name of this podcast. Because, believe it or not, the name Good Vanilla was not a random choice. In a hidden way, it’s meaningful. I want you to understand where it came from so when you hear “Good Vanilla”, it can be a meaningful reminder for you, as it is for me.

It’s story time! Let’s dive in.

A couple summers ago, my family and I were driving to the lake to go fishing. My husband, Adam, and I started talking about how overwhelming and over complicated the world is today, and how we prefer simple, because that's where we are truly happy. It feels like everyone is trying to one up someone else, right?

I bought the new car. 

We're going on this vacation. 

We got this house. 

We're doing these activities with our kids. Monday through Friday, we're running around taking this kid here, that kid there.

 So many people are really putting “busy” up on a pedestal, right? Does it inject you with a sense of urgency? Making you feel if you're not busy, and if you're not running around crazy achieving constantly, something's wrong with you? That’s the feeling I get. 

And everywhere you go, there are so many choices. Our culture can be so exhausting. Now, don't get me wrong, I appreciate having the privilege of living in our culture and having the freedom to achieve whatever I set my mind to. I appreciate having choices, but for some reason, I think I'd be less overwhelmed if there were only three choices. At least then, if I'm indecisive, a good old fashioned, eenie meenie miney mo will do the trick.

Back to the story.

Envision Adam and I talking about this, and I gave the example of ice cream.

Going to get ice cream should be fun, but there's a lot of pressure. All the flavors and the toppings and the custom orders… it’s like the menu boards have 57 combinations. And don’t get me started on the lines to get up to the counter to order. They are never the right length.

If the line is short, you have to walk right up and quickly order before the teenager behind the counter gets that sideways look on their face…”How do you not know what you want?”

And then when the line is too long, I fall into this false sense of confidence. I think I have all the time in the world. I'm going to come up with a perfect order. But then you're standing there, listening to other people's orders, thinking, “hmm, that sounds good.”

And you see all kinds of ice cream cones and cups passing by, and you think, “What's that? That looks yummy.”

You have these outside influences starting to weigh on your mind, where before you thought you had to figure it out. You knew your plan of attack, and then you start observing other people, right? And before you know it, you're questioning your order, changing it so many times, by the time you get to the counter, you hurry and you randomly choose something.

And when you sit down with your ice cream, you kick yourself for ordering the over complicated, “double cookie dough explosion with bonus brownie bites.”

I don't know if that's an actual order, but it should be. That's how ridiculous most of them sound anyway.

And then as I'm eating it, my jaws are breaking, trying to chew the cookie and brownie, I say, “It'd be better with less stuff in it. Maybe even with just the ice cream. What's wrong with vanilla ice cream? There's nothing better than good vanilla.”

I also explained to Adam that vanilla, in my opinion, is the best starter for all the other good ice creams. It’s the best foundation. I want to apply that philosophy to life.

Have a solid, good foundation, and nothing is better. You can apply it to all areas of life. Does that make sense?

For me, God is that foundation. He is the foundation for everything in my life. Anytime I need a strong sounding board. Anytime I need constant companionship, resolute, undeniable faith and love, I look to God. Anytime I need wisdom, I pray.

Spend time with God. Spend time reading His word. Honestly, I gotta be doing more of that. I need to read His word way more because I'm really feeling pulled right now in my life, needing that wisdom, needing that guidance, needing that foundation of “where do I go from here? What is right for me?”

We are not randomly floating through this world. We have to be tethered. We have to be anchored to something. You have to have a foundation.

This podcast is rooted in the foundation of faith. It is rooted in God.

I do not get through a single day without needing God, multiple times a day. And that, for me, is wellness.

When I start from the place of “God is my foundation”, it really strips away so much complication and so much expectation. It really strips away the outside messaging and the outside pull of other influences to conform and perform for this world.

For so long, I was performing for this world. I still fight the urge to do it.

I believe to be well, as I have said in the intro to this podcast, when you are well, your gifts shine into the world. That wellness, that foundation, that wellness comes from God.

So friend, I hope that explains a little bit more why this podcast is titled as it is. I know it can be a little confusing, but there's a reason. I have a reason for everything:)

I hope that clears up some things if you were kind of confused.

“Why is the title Good Vanilla?”

Yeah, I will talk about food and body image on this podcast, but it goes deeper than that, because it is not about your body. It is not about the food. Even when you think it is and that is the point. It always goes deeper. It always goes to where you are grounded and where your foundation is.

If your foundation is in God. If your foundation is in Jesus, you're in the right place. This podcast is rooted in faith.

Have a great rest of your day, and I'll talk to you next week.

The Only New Year’s Resolution You Need

Hey there, friends. Welcome to the first episode of 2023. How are things going for you so far in the new year? Seriously? Are you someone who likes to take on New Year's resolutions? Are you someone that thinks it's just another year, just another day? No big deal. Why would I even think about it?

I'm somewhere in between. I'm a driven person. I love setting goals for myself. I'm very competitive with myself. I want to be achieving and succeeding but oddly enough, I shy away from New Year's resolutions. 

I think there is a lot of pressure wrapped up in New Year's resolutions. I think people give too much credit to the New Year. It's always been a weird concept for me, because it's like, why now? Like, why not any other month of the year? Why not any other time? I think any day is as good a day as any to start anything, anything worth improving yourself. 

But there's always this odd feeling around New Year's resolutions, and especially because I don't believe people are making them for themselves. They are not making the choice. They are not choosing the goal for themselves. I believe a lot of times people are pressured into choosing one and feel comfortable in following the crowd. 

What is everyone choosing? Well, you're either gonna choose to work out, because what's marketed towards us over the Holiday season. We are supposedly gorging ourselves on food, so when January comes around, it is time to lose any excess weight. So what better time to shove down our throats that we need to change our bodies than right in January? So the fitness industry really has marketed towards your insecurities around any food choices that you had made over the holiday season.

And here's the thing, it's a season, right? You are allowed to enjoy yourself. You are allowed to step out of a normal exercise and eating routine, or whatever your normal lifestyle is around food. You are allowed to change. You are allowed to have those times in the year where you are just enjoying life and spending time with family. Every culture uses food to gather with one another to celebrate, so it's very bizarre, in my mind, because it's like, it's marketed to us to bake all these things and have all this fun. And then once January rolls around, bam, guilt trip. OK, now it's time. Now it's time to basically shame and feel guilty for those decisions you made about what you ate and how little, or how much you moved your body in November and December. 

Basically, where I'm going with this is I want people to stop saying, “New Year, new me”, and I want people to start saying, “New Year, time to be me”. The truth is, you don't need to change yourself. You don’t need to change your soul. Nothing is wrong with you. You were created the way you are. God created you the way you are for a reason. 

Here’s what happened. You were born. God created you the way you are with your special gifts and your special talents and all your uniqueness. And as you were growing up as a child, you started taking in outside influences and depending on your personality, you perceived those outside influences in such a way that formed your beliefs. Outside influences helped shape your beliefs and the expectations you had on yourself, and how you were to fit into this world. 

You then went through adolescence that way, and you go through your teenage years and your early 20s and then it's like you get to your 30s and you're thinking, holy cow, I've been spending so much of my life being someone that I was not called to be. The New Year's resolution that we all need to have is to have that personal development, that growth, allowing ourselves time to reconnect with who we are as a person. Because you can't just say, I wanna start a business. I wanna write that book. I want to start this exercise routine. I want to travel the world. I wanna do all these things, if it's not who you are. 

Who are you? There is nothing wrong with wanting growth. I love personal development. I love growth. I think that is one of the most important things we can do in our lives, because I believe through personal development is how we reconnect to our souls. We reconnect to who God created us to be in this world. But we can't do that if we’re constantly chasing the comparison, and we're constantly chasing how we think we could fit in and how we're going to be accepted. If I do X, Y &Z, then this group of people will accept me for who I am. Or, once I have the perfect body, then I can love myself and maybe other people will too.

There's all this messed up stuff we start at. We start at the wrong end of things. We start focusing on what others want and how we think we need to be, and how we think we will be enough in this world. When the truth is, we are already enough. We just have to have the faith that is the truth.

This idea has been weighing on me really hard lately. This time of year, honestly, is my least favorite time of the year for a number of reasons. I live in a place where it feels like it’s winter six months out of the year. We don't have four seasons. So it is white and cold many months of the year. I am a person who thrives in the sunshine. I love color and flowers and green trees and grass and vegetation around me. That is who I am. And it gets hard this time of year, and I think it's really easy to lose sight and just try to grasp on to the thing that we think that's gonna make us happy. And I think people choose New Year's resolutions often, because it's a distraction. Because it's something else to focus on, rather than focusing on themselves and who they really are, and aligning themselves and aligning themselves with this world. 

I've tried to change my body to be what I thought it needed to be, to be accepted. That was my form of a New Year's resolution. It wasn't over the new year. That happened over the summer time. But I just really wish people would stop and ask themselves why they are choosing what they are choosing to do. I wish people would choose themselves. I wish they would choose to be who they are, not who they want, who they think other people want them to be.

It's scary, because when we don't feel like we're enough, we feel like we can't take on the world and feel like we're not made for the world. But that's the beauty in it, because your strength does not come from you. Your strength comes from God. You need to lean on God.

David did not beat Goliath because he did it on his own strength. God used David to show how he can work through people, how He works miracles, how it is God that is in control. God can use tiny, little David to take down a giant like Goliath. And then Moses was too afraid to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. He was too afraid and rightfully so. Can you imagine? Guess who did it through him? God. Moses had strength through God. Moses was not alone. God used Moses to part the Red Sea so the Israelites could run to freedom. And then once the Egyptians were in the Red Sea…crash!..the waves collided, drowning the enemy.

God can’t use you for your purpose in this world if you refuse to be you. If you refuse to be you, He cannot use you for what you were created to do. There is nothing wrong with you. You do not need to say “New Year, New me”. Say, “New Year. It's time to be me”.

What is something that would align with who you are? Slow down and ask yourself. There will be hard days. When you choose to be your true self it can be hard. The world can be a ruthless place. But God will always be with you. You need to ask Him for help. You need to have the faith that He will stand by your side. Just as He did with Moses. Just as He did with David. 

And good grief, the story of Esther is a prime example of having the courage to be yourself. Esther had to convince the King not to commit genocide of the Jews. She was the Queen and she had to tell the King that his right hand man, Haman, had this evil plan. And in doing so, Esther had to reveal her identity, that she was an Israelite. Her head could’ve been on the chopping block because of it. But man did she show courage. She was herself. She didn't try to fit in to save herself.

So if you thought this was gonna be a lighthearted episode on New Year's resolutions, I apologize. But that’s how my heart is. That’s how I work. And I'm not going to change myself. I'm going to be me.

Anytime I feel myself slipping to try to conform to this world, to fit in, to be liked, I'm gonna ask myself, is this God’s will? Do I feel God pulling me this way? What does God say? Does He say this is me? Once you slow down and ask yourself those little questions, you will have the answer. 

Friend, I hope this gave you a new insight. A different way to think about New Year's resolutions, because some of you may have made New Year's resolutions and were about halfway through January, and you could be thinking already, oh my gosh, how am I gonna keep this up? There is no way. And I'm not saying it doesn't require hard work. 

What I'm saying is, it takes the inner wisdom of knowing if it's something worth fighting for. If it's aligned with who you are. I want you to stop and ask yourself that, because so often we choose the wrong goal or we choose the wrong path for ourselves. We can make decisions that take us in the opposite direction of who we are. And then when it doesn't go so well, we point fingers and say, “See, you're a failure”, and that's not the truth. The truth is, it’s just proof. It's just showing you an opportunity for something else. That what you chose prior is not the answer. And more than likely, it's showing you that's not who you are. 

So who are you? Who were you made to be? Stop hiding behind New Year's resolutions. Stop using them as distractions and as ways to place absurd expectations on yourself. Be kind to yourself. And choose you.

It’s a new year, it's time to be you. Say that to yourself, over and over again. Alright. I will talk to you next week.

The #1 Thing You Shouldn’t Do After A Vacation

Hey there friend, thank you for hanging out with me today. I am so happy to have you here. The last couple weeks we've been talking about holiday travel and I shared what I do to prepare for travel. I shared how I handle stress during vacation. And now today I want to tell you something very quick for when you return home after your holiday or after your vacation. It's to the point, but it's very important.

There is one thing you must NOT DO when you get home. Do not do this, OK. Over exercise. When you get home from vacation, no matter how tempted you feel to over exercise because you have to catch up, or you have to make up workouts, or you think you have to regain whatever you think you lost while you were on vacation. Don't. Do. It. Stop right there. Take a deep breath. It's not needed.

This is what you’re going to do; gently resume your normal life, your normal schedule.

I did this all the time. I still feel the temptation to do this. This Christmas, my family and I are vacationing at Disney World for ten days and I know when I return I will naturally feel pulled to over exercise. There's gonna be a little voice in my head telling me to go balls to the walls with exercising. I'm gonna guilt myself. And shame myself by saying, “You ate this and this and you didn't workout for so many days.” I’ll think I’ll have to hit it hard or else all the work I did before will be lost.

And that's not true. This is very short and to the point today, but it's very important. No matter what you do, don’t do this. Don't come home and guilt or shame yourself into feeling like you need to over exercise. I know it's gonna cross your mind before you leave for your vacation, while you're on your vacation and again when you come home. It's gonna be rampant in your brain, since you were thinking about it while you were getting ready and while you were there. You might not even have been consciously thinking about these things. It could come out in undertone thoughts or subconsciously.

For example you might think, “I'll eat this but when I get home, I better hit it hard. I gotta make up for time lost here. I gotta make up.”

Don't. Do. This. Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself. Know it's temporary. The vacation was temporary, so don't treat it like it's something that's gonna completely derail you. If you have an eating disorder, it's going to try to sneak in whenever there's a little bit of anxiety, it's going to try to sneak its way in, and it's going to try to gain control again. So if you were on your vacation and you were having a pretty good time, and things went pretty good, it's almost like your eating disorder is sitting there, waiting, almost kind of mad. It's gonna take it out on you when you get home. It’s a bully. It’s a leech-like goblin living in your brain and it needs to be eradicated. It does. Don’t listen to it. Don't do this.

Please do not over exercise when you get home from vacation, when you return from the holidays. No matter how much you ate, how little you moved your body, how little you worked out, you are gonna be ok, friend. I promise you are gonna be ok. But to prove that to yourself, to prove to yourself that you are going to be OK, don't over exercise. Don't punish yourself. Be gentle and nourishing. Think gentle thoughts. Give yourself nourishment.

Always come back here for support. Come here for gentle thoughts and to nourish your mind. That's why I'm here. OK, come back, and I'll give you a big hug. Alright, friend, it's a short, but sweet one today, but it's very important that you listen to what I had to say. Don't over exercise. Have a great week. I can’t wait to talk to you next week. Bye.

3 Non-Negotiables To Support Your Mind And Body On Vacation

Hello friend, thank you for hanging out with me today. It is an honor to have you here.

Last week I talked about ways to prepare yourself for holiday travel and ways to set you up to actually enjoy the holidays and enjoy the people around you, and to enjoy the life that is going on around you. You need to get in there and grab it, right? So we talked about that last week, the five ways to to make that happen, to kind of get yourself ready for that. And these five things are meant to be done before you leave for your vacation. There are things I want to share about when you're on your vacation, during the stay. I want to go a little bit deeper with you on that.

I had shared that I am going to Disney World with my family for this Christmas season. And whenever I travel somewhere, especially when it involves flying and staying somewhere for an extended period of time, there are a few non-negotiables that I have to make sure I’m taking care of my mind and my body.

Number one is water. I have to make sure that I am drinking the same or equivalent to the amount of water I drink at home on a daily basis. I am a big time water drinker. I don't feel well unless I am drinking water and I know most people are dehydrated. They're not drinking enough water. And a lot of people, their goal is to increase their water intake. And so it's very challenging to keep that up when you are on vacation. A non-negotiable for me is water. I'm focused on my water intake. To reach water drinking goals, bring your water bottle that you use at home. Have it with you.

When I go to the airport, I don't have my water bottle full, obviously, when I go through the TSA check, but when I get through security, I go and I buy water, and I fill up my water bottle. Flying is very dehydrating. It's actually quite hard on your system. You have to be water focused.

When I am down at the resort that we're staying at, I'm gonna be focused on water. When you're out of your normal routine and you’re on vacation, it’s all too easy to forget to do your normal things, like, take care of yourself. Remembering to take medication or vitamins can be hard because you're out of your routine. You're not at home. It's just a little different. So it throws you off. But you need to be focused on your water intake. And having that water bottle with you wherever you go, and having it filled up, because we can't function when we're dehydrated. When you’re dehydrated you're gonna feel lethargic. You’re gonna feel off. The number one way to take care of yourself when you travel is to get enough water.

There is an anti-stress drink I really like called Natural Calm. It is a magnesium supplement. It is a powder that you mix into water and it really does help you de-stress. You could take something like that along with you and a positive benefit of this magnesium drink is it helps your digestive tract. When you fly and you're at high altitude, your organs actually shut down a little bit. They slow down. Your digestion slows down. This magnesium drink will help relax your digestive tract and keep you regular. You're not gonna be eating normal and getting the fiber you need, but dang it, you're gonna hit your water. You can certainly purchase Natural Calm. You can find it on Amazon. Have it with you if you need extra stress or digestive support. I live by Natural Calm.

My second non-negotiable for vacationing well is having gratitude. Whether it's a gratitude journal, or if you're just gonna have some mantras that you're gonna say in your mind both work great. In last week's episode, I talked about soaking up the moment. To do that, when you are on vacation, you have to have gratitude in the moment. Our minds, our brains, can only think one thought at a time.

I will use my family and scenario as an example. This is what I'm going to do when I am down at Disney World. I know I'm gonna be in a park with my kids, and I know some thought, or something's gonna trigger me. And I'm gonna start thinking about food and maybe think about restricting myself somewhere. I'll catch that thought and I will zero in on my daughters, and I will focus on them, and I will be grateful for them. I will notice how precious they are. And that's all I can think about. That's all that's gonna happen. The negative thought is gone. I am grateful for them. I am grateful for being here. I'm grateful for this moment with my family and making these memories.

Gratitude. Whether you want a journal, or if you just want a mantra or something to say in your head, or if you want to focus on a loved one. Have your plan in place and do it while you are on your vacation or during your stay.

My third non-negotiable is movement. I have talked about having a plan for movement because the health of our mind and our bodies depends on it. It's so good for you. It's so good for your stress. It's a natural destresser, and it can be anything simple, like walking.

In the last episode, I said we're going to be doing tons of walking down at Disney World. But if you are somewhere and you're going to be sitting a lot, or if you need a good excuse to have some quiet time and go for a walk, it doesn't even have to be a walk. You can do yoga, you can do some stretching, you could go shopping. Just get up and move around. If you're like me, I get stiff sitting around all day, and I also get really crabby. I feel tired and lethargic, and that is no way to feel good. If I’m moody I struggle being grateful. I could care less if I drink water. Each non-negotiable is reliant on the others. You need to take care of yourself SO you can keep taking care of yourself properly.

My three non-negotiables, while I'm on vacation: water, gratitude and movement. These are the three things that I am going to be focusing on to help me live in the moment on vacation. Please use these things for yourself over this holiday season. I know if you choose just one of them you're going to feel better. You're gonna relieve some stress by just choosing one. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing mentality. Choose one. Whatever you can do to make things simpler and easier on yourself, whatever you can do to make yourself feel good, find what feels good and do that.

Friends, I hope you have a Merry Christmas. 

You need to come back next week because I’m going to talk about your return home from your vacation or your stay. I wanna talk about something very important, and that's next week. I'll see you then. Bye.

5 Tips To Enjoy Holiday Travel

Hey beautiful people, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I love this time of year. It is currently, let's see, what is today's date, as I'm recording this. I think December 5th.

I don't like winter. I don't like the cold. I like snow around Christmas time. That's about it. Once January rolls around, I want everything to melt, and I want it to be 75 degrees. But regardless, I do love this time of year. I know it's a struggle for a lot of you. There are so many expectations, so many people to see, so many things to bring us out of our comfort zone. But there is a way to get through this. And if you haven't yet, if you're new here, go back and listen to my episodes around triggers, cause those will be very helpful in this holiday season.

I am so blessed because my family and I are gonna be spending Christmas at Disney World. And another bonus is, we're gonna be there for my youngest daughter's birthday. She turns 5 on December 27th and it's just going to be so much fun. I'm looking forward to it.

The honest truth is, this was not always the case for me years ago. Travel was very hard. It made me stressed out because I knew I wouldn’t have control over the food. Basically just losing control was problematic. I think that's one of the main things with an eating disorder: we want that control. We want to be able to control every situation. Spontaneity is not appreciated. It's rather boring, but it's safe, right? But like I said, that was then, so many years ago, I felt that way.

I can still have moments now. There are still moments that can be kind of tricky. But for the most part, I look forward to traveling. I've always loved traveling, even though it brought out a lot of anxiety in me around food and exercise. It was always like, well, what am I gonna eat? How am I gonna control what I eat? When am I gonna exercise? And I was really losing the joy and what the purpose of the trip was. I wasn't getting everything out of it, cause I was focused on the wrong things.

I want to help you focus on the right things. I want to share 5 ways to make your holiday travel more enjoyable. That is what I'm going to talk to you about today. 

5 ways to make your holiday travel more enjoyable.

The first one is to shift your expectations around food. We know that we won't have control over what is available while we're traveling. So before you leave, get your mindset right. Talk to yourself about it. Tell yourself that you know things are gonna be different for a certain number of days, and that's gonna be OKAY. You know that you're gonna eat differently. What is available for you will not always be your first choice. But you can handle that.

I think the main thing is setting yourself up for that expectation. Remove the expectation that you are gonna be able to control everything. Don’t fall into thoughts like, “I'm only putting this in my body. I'm only gonna eat if this is available.” You can't do that. You need to shift your expectations around food.

The second thing is, plan for movement. And remember, it won't be the same you usually do, and that's OK. Once again, you can see a pattern here. When we step out of our comfort zone, when we are required to have spontaneity, that can be very challenging and can ignite a lot of anxiety for those with eating disorders. Just going with the flow. 

You still need movement/exercise. I have never been one to say that exercise is the root of all evil. You will never hear me say, you shouldn't be exercising. You’ll never hear me say just focus on eating and not moving your body. I'm never gonna say that. You're never gonna hear that for me. Movement is important for so many reasons. Exercise is important for so many reasons.

For one, your mind. If you’re supposed to be shifting your mindset, you have to have the mind that can handle that. And we have to be helping our minds by moving. So whether that’s going for a walk. Wherever you’re going be prepared. Find a walking route. I’ll use Disney World as an example. We do a lot of walking when we visit Disney. I know that I'm going to be putting in a lot of steps. I’m not going to put pressure on myself to do a scheduled per se workout. I'm doing little quotations here.

Years ago, I would have, I would have taken the workout shoes and everything. And I would have made myself exercise. Get that workout in because, you know, walking just isn't enough. That was my mindset. It wasn't enough to earn or deserve the food I was eating there. 

We have to plan for movement. We have to shift our expectations.

The third thing is to have support in place. If you can, the optimal way here is to have someone to talk to when you feel those spiraling thoughts creeping in. It's just nice to have that person because you're in a situation already that’s a little testing because you're out of your comfort zone. You're out of your norm. It’s OK to need that extra support. So if you have a friend or a family member, it doesn't even have to be someone that's there with you. You can call a friend. If you're at someone's house this Christmas and something is really making you feel down, go to a quiet corner and call a friend. Go for a walk and call a friend. Someone you trust. It's one of those things where that outside person can reprioritize what is happening and kind of bring logic into the situation.

I always use my husband. He's my support. So if for some reason, all of a sudden, down at Disney, I'm just thinking, ohh, good grief. I'm starting to feel panicked. I’ve had cookies and ice cream and we're eating sausage and at all of these buffets. All this wonderful, delicious food. But Heaven forbid, I just enjoy it. No, I have to be miserable about it. So I will bring that up to him, and he'll say, “hey, you're gonna be OK. This is for a few days. What you do over the few days is not going to undo the rest of your life. It's impossible. It's impossible that what you're doing over these few days is gonna somehow become a habit, become the norm. And it's kind of funny then, because it's like, yeah, you're right. There's no way I'm gonna go home and just continue this eating train, this marathon of food. That leads into my next point.

#4 is, it's temporary. The situation you're in, where you are visiting, if it's a family member's house, if you're flying somewhere, it is temporary. It's only gonna be for a certain number of days. A handful of days. This leads into #5.

Because it's temporary, #5 is, soak up each moment. Mentally be there rather than living in an anxious mind. So often we miss our lives. I really feel like when I was in the thick of my eating disorder, I think of all that was wasted. All the time that I spent thinking and living in my head. I know so many of you do it. If you have an eating disorder, you're in your head 24/7. And it's not nice. It's not nice thinking. It's abusive. And you're missing out on what's going on around you.

So I have a pact. I have a pact with myself that when I'm down at Disney World with my family these are memories. This is magic. These are memories for the rest of my life and the rest of my daughter's lives. This is precious time. You better believe I'm gonna do everything in my power to get out of my head and be in the moment with them. To watch them in living joy. With them it's always the simplest little things too. Watching them holding hands, walking, laughing and actually laughing with them. Like, not just playing along, like laughing with them and just being there with them, soaking up the moment.

Can you do the same for yourself, friend? Can you promise me that this holiday season you will set yourself up in a way that it won't be time wasted? That it'll be memories made? Memories you want to think back on and remember.

If you need to jot these down, step one, you're going to shift your expectations around food. Step 2, you're going to plan for movement, and it's going to be something you can incorporate someone else in. Invite someone else along because then you can go right into step three. You could be walking with someone supportive, and you can just tell them how you're feeling. And they can be that support for you. Speak some life into you. Speak some truth over you and snap you back into the belief that you need to get out of your head. You need to start living and absorbing and interacting with those around you. You’re missing out. You don’t want to miss out. Have your support in place.

#4, know it's temporary. That's one of the biggest things I always tell myself, this is not forever. You can do this for 10 days, two days, three days, whatever, it could be for the month. I don't know. It seems like a long time, but you can do this.

#5 is, soak up each moment. Please soak up each moment. It'll feel so good. And then when you do, it's something that is a critical step in the healing process, I think, where you start feeling alive when you're soaking up those moments 'cause so often we lose those pieces of ourselves. That joy and that passion. We lose it. So if you can find a way to be present and soak up the moment with those around you and whatever you're doing this holiday season, it will give you life. OK friend. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. I cannot wait to talk to you next week. Bye.

Stop Your Triggers In Their Tracks

Hey there friend. Thank you for hanging out with me today. It is an honor to have your ears. A couple weeks ago, we talked about my three step process for regulating triggers. 

1. Stop 

2. Stillness 

3. Surrender.

I shared what each of these meant and how I have used these recently in a trigger moment that I have had. If you are new here, it would be best to go back and listen to those previous episodes so you know exactly what I'm talking about with this three step process. And even further, if you are needing more support with triggers, go back even a number of episodes, because I have recorded quite a few now on triggers.

But this three step process that I'm talking about: stop, stillness, surrender. It's great, but how do you apply it in your life? How do you take this and use it? You can't just expect, in the next trigger moment that you have, you can't expect yourself to just automatically be able to go into, stop, stillness, surrender. You have to prepare and plan so that you are ready when the next trigger strikes.

For example, I can’t expect myself just to walk into the kitchen and whip up an elaborate meal when I've never cooked before in my life, right? We have to practice if we want to be good at something. We need to practice so that instinct takes over. So that is the same thing with triggers. Because in the moment, when a trigger hits, it's too late. If you're not ready, your mind is gonna be frazzled. It's gonna be a mess, and you're gonna say, “ohh yeah, what was the first step again? What am I doing? Oh, gosh, OK, I'm freaking out.” 

It just doesn't work. So what we have to do is plan and prepare while you're calm. So what I would do if I were you, this is something I have used a number of times. And it's actually something I learned using with my oldest daughter. We have needed to work on regulating emotions. And there are tools to regulate emotions, kind of like what we're talking about with triggers. The same thing was told to us. We cannot expect her to just utilize these tools if she doesn't practice them when she's calm. So we would practice her tools when she's calm, over and over and over again. Even as the parent, because when I would be in a situation with her and her emotions were firing through the roof, it made me fluster too. And then I couldn't think of the steps I was supposed to follow. So that is the same thing here. 

Give yourself a little grace. Give yourself a little credit. So don't put yourself down. If whenever you're having those moments of anxiety and panic, that you're thinking, “ohh,I just can't do this. I'm no good at it.” That's not the truth. The truth is, you just haven't practiced yet. So keep that in mind. You're not gonna be expected to quilt if you've never quilted before in your life. If you've never played a sport, you can't expect to just be able to do it, and especially in a stressful situation, that's not fair. 

So first of all, give yourself a little bit of grace. Don't put yourself down. Just prepare. Allow yourself to prepare. I’ll help you do this now.

This is an action step that you should do for this episode. Get out a journal or a piece of paper and write down the three steps of working through a trigger moment. 

Write down: 1. Stop

Leave some space underneath that to journal out your plan.

Write down: 2. Stillness

Leave some space under stillness to write.

Write down: 3. Surrender 

Leave some space there.

Go back up to number one and ask yourself, in moments when you are starting to spiral and unravel, what do you need to tell yourself? What is a good thing for you to say after you “stop”? What is something you can add to this that will really get your attention to snap yourself out of the harmful talk? Write down what would best be suited for you to jar you out of the spiral and get your mind focused on that “stop”. Go journal out your thoughts now.

#2 is stillness. Stillness can be anything. What's your plan for stillness? Are you gonna take 5 deep breaths? Are you gonna say a prayer? Are you actually going to go for a walk? Are you gonna do a yoga pose that’s really relaxing or makes you feel really grounded in the moment? You need to choose something. What is your stillness? 

You're probably gonna need to give yourself some options for when you are in a public place versus at home. Obviously, I don't think you're gonna wanna break out into a yoga pose in the buffet line or the Target line. Maybe you don't want to, but maybe you do. That's OK. I would like to see that, actually. So go ahead and do that. But have those options for when you are home and when you are away for “stillness”. A lot of times, it’s going to have to be something you choose to say to yourself. And actually being able to be still. That's why I like doing deep breaths. Journal your plan for “stillness”.

#3 is surrender. My surrender is, I like to say, “God is in control. If He is for me, who can be against me”? I like to do that. I surrender my control to God. I don't need to figure out anything in this situation. This situation, the trigger is not in control of me. I'm not even in control. That feels kinda good sometimes when you're grasping for control, to realize it's not really attainable, like it's not really yours to have, but it's not your trigger’s either. Give it to God.

Write down what your plan is for surrendering. Is there a certain Bible verse you'd like to say? Is there a certain prayer you'd like to say? Would you just like to say, “Jesus”. Hold me Jesus. Hold my hand. Or just “Jesus”. When you say His name, you will feel His presence.

Write down what your plan is. It doesn't have to be long and laborious. This needs to be something that's actionable and something that's realistic. Something that you're actually gonna be able to implement. 

When you have that written down, go through it. Go through the steps in real time. However long it would take you, try to visualize yourself in that situation at a trigger moment. Visualize yourself saying “stop”, and then run through what your plan is with “stop”. Stop spiraling. Stop over catastrophizing. Stop doing the harmful habit.

And then 2 is stillness. And 3 is surrender. Read through what you’ve journaled. Go through it. And once you get to the stillness, practice it out. Actually go through the motions. If it entails physically doing something, do it. You have to go through the motions when you're calm, if you expect instinct to take over when you’re not calm. You have to do this now.

I coach my daughter's third grade basketball team and it's a lot of fun. My dad used to coach me in basketball for many years. And when we were young, he would always say, “you play like you practice”. And I love that so much. It's kind of this mantra for life, really. For the longest time, I thought it only pertained to basketball or sports, because playing and practicing is sports, right? But this is the game of life, folks. You need to practice living too. I know it sounds crazy, but it's the truth. So you play like you practice friend. 

You get your play set up. You have your strategy. Your strategy and a trigger moment to regulate yourself. Stop. Stillness. Surrender. Get that down on paper. Practice it as many times as you need. When I was working with my daughter on her tools, we had to do these things. I think it was twice a day for at least two weeks. And you need to do something routine like that in order for it to become a habit and for the instinct to kick in like a snap of a finger. You can just initiate. It's ready to go. I got my tools ready to go. That is what I want you to do. To take the information from a couple episodes ago. This is how to really apply it to your life and to utilize it, to set it up as a tool. For you and your game of life.

If there is any aspect of the 3 step process you have any questions on, feel free to reach out to me. I would love to hear your plans for implementing these tools into your life. What did you write underneath, Stop, Stillness and Surrender? What are your things that you're gonna go to? What's gonna work for you? Share that with me, I'd love to hear it. We can all help each other out here. It's not like I don't have triggers anymore. I have triggers all the time. This is my process for not letting it take over my day and ruin my day. Alright, friend, you have a great day. You can tackle this. You got it. Practice it. Practice it. Practice it. You play like you practice. Bye.

How To Reframe A Trigger

Hey everyone, thank you for coming to hang out with me today on the Good Vanilla podcast. I am so happy to have you here. I kinda had a mini series going here around triggers and I am finishing up that segment with today's episode. So if you have not yet listened to episodes 5, 6 and 7, those will be very beneficial for you to hear before you listen to this episode. These past four episodes have built on each other.

Triggers are complex and there's a lot of things to pick apart on triggers. I’ve been covering different portions of that over this last month and today I'm going to finish out with specifically how I have reframed a trigger moment for me.

I have shared about when I was 17 years old, my dad had a massive heart attack. I've shared a lot about that story here. If you don't know much about it, I’ll explain really quickly. I was at home when my dad had his heart attack and I was standing out by the street waiting for the emergency response team to arrive, waiting for the ambulance.

As I stood there waiting, I could hear sirens and there were times when it sounded like they were getting closer and then all of a sudden it seemed like they were farther away. It was a very anxious moment because I knew my dad was in desperate trouble. He was really needing help and we were just relying on help to come. And I wanted them to come so soon and so fast.

First, the police car came and then the fire truck came and then the ambulance came. But as I was standing there listening and waiting, the sound of the sirens became the stimulus that my brain logged as something important to that traumatic event. For years afterward, every time I would hear a siren, it was like I time traveled, it's like I fell into a portal and I would be instantly back in that moment standing and waiting for help.

I’m from a relatively small town compared to most of you but there are a lot of sirens and each time these sirens would be blaring, it didn't matter where I was, so I could be driving in a car, I could be sitting in my house, I’d be in the backyard doing something super fun and in an instant just plummet. My mood would just plummet and I would get so sad and I would think about that day and I would think about my dad's heart attack and then all the things that came after it cuz it was so hard. It was so hard to see him go through that and all the things afterwards health wise that it took a few years to work out.

But anyway, I knew that something needed to change. I knew that I couldn't keep going through my day to day and have these sirens triggering me to that moment.

What I chose to do is say a prayer. That is what I chose to do. I don't know when or how. I don't know the day it actually dawned on me to do this but after so many years of hearing sirens and reliving that day, I said that is enough. I am tired of this emotional roller coaster. When I hear a siren I am going to say a prayer. I say a prayer.

It is something very simple. I just say, “God, help them. God help the emergency responders and God help whoever they are going to save or assist.” Sometimes just, “God help them,” because I fully understand the magnitude of what is all wrapped up in the sound of that siren. Like so many things could be going wrong and I don't even want my brain to go there because I get so sensitive to it. And that's another rollercoaster you don't want to go on. But I say a prayer.

I can honestly say, 99% of the time when I hear a siren, I don't think of that day anymore. I’m not transported back to that moment in time. I now say that prayer, “God help them,” and I just kind of take a moment of stillness and just kind of really try to project that energy and that prayer outward. I visualize it going out from my body and meeting up with those emergency responders and it's almost like I visualize the prayer kind of encompassing them and joining them and helping them. It did take me a while to get to that point though.

So how would you do this for yourself? That is the question I'm asking. How could you take a moment, a traumatic event, and how could you reframe it for yourself? One of the main keys to this is, positivity breeds positivity. So you wanna get really good at spinning alternatives and really brainstorming different ways you could view the traumatic event.

And so with mine, with the siren, I was so grateful, so appreciative of those responders that day. And I know that God was working through them. We were told later that day, by either the emergency room doctor or someone else in the hospital who actually said, “you know that EMT team today, that was the hospital's top rated EMT team.” It just so happened that it was the team that came and saved my dad's life. So if that isn't God stepping in, I don't know what it is.

So I knew that I could choose gratitude and just view it as a sign of hope. The siren is a sign of hope. That help is on its way. It will get to you. It really just comes down to choosing to be happy. Like I said, positivity breeds positivity. Start spinning happy alternatives. Brainstorm happy ideas. Get that rolling.

Another thing too is, view your experience objectively to possibly identify a potential way that you could reframe it. That's something that you would have to do after much time has passed and that is probably how I ended up carrying out mine. How it was possible that I could reframe the siren into something positive. I had so much time. There were so many years. And that space allowed me to view it objectively. So then all of a sudden I could just see it as, it's not just that moment, these firefighters, these EMT's, these police officers, they're always here. They are always serving. They're always here to protect and that is amazing and I am so grateful for them. And I really think then it was almost like a praise. Like, “thank you God. Thank you for these people that can do these things.” I think I would just lock up if I had to do the things that they do.

So it kind of came from that. I had that space which allowed me to have that objectivity and gratitude and I was able to say, “thank you God. Thank you God for these people. Thank you for those people that saved my dad's life.” And from there the next natural thing was for me to pray that they could do that for someone else. It was an opportunity. So now the siren is an opportunity for me to say a prayer for someone else. For someone else's dad. For someone else's Grandma. For someone else's brother. For someone’s child. For whoever it may be on the receiving end. Wherever those emergency response people are rushing to, whoever they are going to save, I say a prayer. “Please God, help them.”

It’s more positive and it just feels better. And it's lovely not being so vulnerable to a particular trigger, friend. This is what I wish for you. I wish that you can take some trigger, some traumatic experience in your life and if you could start looking at it in a different light. Looking at the detail. Remember how we talked about in the previous episodes about the details of that moment, your brain commits the details of that moment. The stimuli, it commits it to your memory and if you connect the details and start to understand how all of it affects one another, how it affects you then you can look at it and kinda pick it apart just like I did with the siren.

The traumatic event was my dad's heart attack but this siren, I noticed the siren was a major trigger for me. It transported me back to that time, to that actual event and once I could identify that and I had the time and space, I could start working at reframing it. How can I reframe the sound of a siren into something more positive?

So truly I pray for you that this is something you can start doing. Pick something that feels not so monumental, start with something that would feel like you could get a win from it. Ask God for help with this. Pray and ask about it cause He will show you. He really will. That is how I got to my reframing. Having a conversation with God. And it led to the prayer. It went from thankfulness. Thanking God, to realizing I will be praying for these people when I hear a siren. I will say a prayer to God. Help them.

That's what I pray God does for you,friends. I pray that He helps you. Ask Him to show you the way and He will. He will not only show you the way, He will hold your hand and walk you down that path. When God is in your healing, when God is in your day-to-day, you are never alone and as always if you ever need to reach out to talk to someone seek that professional help. Seek that support. And as always, I am here to support you if you want to chat. If you need someone to listen, I am here to listen. You have a great day, friend. I cannot wait to talk to you next week, bye.

3 Step Process To Regulate Triggers

Hey beautiful people! Welcome to the Good Vanilla podcast. Thank you so much for coming to hang out with me today. It is a pleasure to have you here with me.

Today I'm going to talk about the process I use for working through a trigger moment. If you have not yet listened to episode 5 and 6, I highly recommend that you go back and listen to those before you listen to this episode because this episode really builds on the last two episodes. It will make way more sense and you’ll get way more out of it if you go back and listen to episodes 5 and 6.

With that said I want to hop right in and continue our conversation around triggers. I’m gonna bring you into my simple process for working through a trigger moment. A little bit of background around this is, I have done so much internal work around my limiting beliefs and the lies that I tell myself, that now when the internal dialog in my head turns critical and it's fear driven, it becomes obvious to me that I'm dealing with an anxiety or a trigger. It’s like a major red flag starts whipping in the wind so intensely it smacks me in the face. That's how obvious these sneaky inner workings are for me now.

I really do feel like triggers start small. Like you'll have these little warnings or or these little things that are happening around you and you're slowly walking into a moment or into a situation that is going to affect you. I feel like it's pretty sneaky and then all of a sudden, bam, it hits you and then it’s too late or something. Just so you know, it does take work to identify those triggers and kind of get to know yourself better and know how you are going to respond and react in particular situations or in particular stressful scenarios. That is something that is extremely beneficial for helping first off, identifying the triggers.

To illustrate my process, I’m going to share a story. Recently I was backing out of the driveway and I was just feeling a sense of urgency with being busy juggling my kids’ activities along with my own. And out of nowhere, I began reciting out loud the food I had eaten so far that day. And this is something that I used to do very often. Back when I was in deep with my eating disorder. It was almost like it was an anxious rambling. I had to run through what I had eaten. I had to keep track of it. I had to say it out loud. To almost feel like everything was gonna be OK. I don't know why but that is something, hopefully I’m not the only one that does this or did that, but it is something that I did everyday.

I think when you have that food obsession, I think most people with eating disorders, I think with that food obsession, they will run through it over and over. And that’s what I had done too. Once I started doing that it didn't take me long to realize that this was not at all helpful but rather hurtful to my mental state. I now know that when I start reciting food that I’ve eaten that day, I know I'm falling back into those old habits and those old ways. It’s just one of those things where, with me, if I feel a little out of control, if I feel like there's some chaos going on around me, it's like a fall back on repeating what I've eaten so that I can almost look for some kind of control. So if I know what I've eaten then I can maybe restrict what I eat for the rest of the day or something. Just to give me some kind of false sense of security in a way. But I know that's not true.

So in this moment when I was backing out of my driveway and these thoughts were running through my mind, that's like a panic anxiety, like it just struck me. And my breathing becomes short and my heart races and any type of critical thought can course through my mind. That is the red flag for me now, like I know something's not right and I realize that what I'm thinking is not helpful but rather it is hurtful to my mental state.

The next thing I do is, I tell myself to stop, right in the moment. If I'm alone, I will say out loud, “stop.” You have to have a very firm “stop”. I use the same firmness as when I’m telling my kid to stop doing something that's dangerous. Because that's basically what's happening. You have to treat yourself as a child doing something extremely dangerous. The way you're talking to yourself, the way you're working yourself up in this moment, this trigger moment.

I tell myself to stop and that gives me that second to start breathing 'cause I actually found out that during these moments when I'm being triggered, I don't breathe. I'm holding my breath and it's really hard to think clearly and it's really hard to function when you are not breathing. Your heart rate increases. You have to tell yourself to stop and then I take long deep breaths. I do at least three and it's the really deep, yoga breathing. Once I do at least three, then there's a stillness and this calm. Studies show deep breathing helps lower your blood pressure, it helps calm you down.

Once I get that stillness, my logical mind enters the ball game. Finally my logical mind can enter the ball game and it's out there and it's fighting for me. With my logical mind, I can then identify the red flag and label it for what it is so I can identify what it was or what's going on that I believe triggered me.

In this situation when I was backing out of the driveway in my car, I told myself to stop, I took my long deep breaths and I was still. Then my logical mind identified, “whoa, you feel rushed, you feel busy, you feel scattered because you're running from one activity to the next. And that chaos made me feel out of control, so obviously to grasp for that control you are listing off things that you have eaten today.

I label it for what it is. It’s just me trying to regain that control. It’s not something true or what I need to be focused on. It doesn't matter. It's not important what I ate today. I mean, as long as I'm eating, that's important and it's food that gives me the nutrition and fuel to keep going. And when I can logically identify that, “wait a minute. The food is not the issue. I do not need to be thinking about that. I need to be calming down. I’m rushing and I just need to settle down. Everything's gonna be OK.”

That's the next step. I tell myself I'm going to be OK. I'm safe. And I'll even say that. I'll be like, “you're OK. Everything's gonna be fine and I know everything's gonna be fine because God is in control. I don't have to be in control. I surrender my control. I surrender it to God and I willI just really embrace the idea that God is in my healing. God is in my day-to-day life. God is my strength. I surrender to His will. He is in control. I’m in God's hands. And if He is for me, who can be against me?”

I love saying these things to myself. It's the ultimate pep talk anyone can share with themselves in moments of just complete and utter breakdown and hopelessness and despair. It's the greatest pep talk. Because every one of my triggers is fear based and it's because even though I know I'm grasping for control, I ask myself, “hey, why do you think you need control?” Because it always stems from some kind of fear. I feel if I can't control this, then this is going to happen, this is going to happen and the over catastrophizing starts and suddenly it's a snowball and I'm rolling down a hill. And it just goes on and on and on.

But no, that is not how it is because God is in control. I don't need to fight that fight. I don't need to go there 'cause He's gone before me. God has already gone before me in those moments and He is going to make sure I'm gonna be OK. And that is the faith I have. And that is the ultimate pep talk I share with myself to get me through the worst moments that I have when I'm feeling triggered, super anxious or just panicked.

There are even times when I go straight to this piece. I’ll go right to God. I’ll bypass all the previous steps and I’ll just go right to God because there are times when it's too hard to do it on your own. And when you go straight to God you're not alone. You're not meant to do this alone. You don't have to. You don't even have to feel like you're alone. And realistically, when you go straight to God in those moments of panic, He can do all the previous steps for you or do them with you. It's almost like you go straight to God and then you can work backwards. With His help, then you can go backwards and then you can tell yourself you're gonna be OK and you're safe. And then you’ll have the capacity to think, “oh yeah, OK, oh yeah the red flag. What was the red flag? That's right, I was all worked up because the control and the fear and the doubt, that was just seeping in because I'm really busy right now and when I get busy, my wheels start spinning and sometimes I spin out of control. Yes that's right. Thank you logical mind. There you are. Welcome back.”

Then you have this stillness and think “I’m glad I figured that out. I’m glad that's over with.” And you start breathing. You can work yourself through these steps from the very top from when you're feeling panic. First, you tell yourself to stop and then work yourself down to the last piece of God. Or if you go straight to God and then you need Him to calm you down first, and then you can work back from that place. It works either way.

I guess that it's something I do rely on and I hope it’s information that can be helpful for you. If you can use one or two of these steps, just start with one of them, don’t overwhelm yourself with all of them. Just pick one. If you pick one, I would pick straight to God. Just call out to God in those moments because He'll direct you through what you need, what you need to get through that moment.

I hope this was helpful for you. There is one more episode I am going to share specifically about triggers. The next episode I am going to actually speak on how I have reframed a trigger moment and how I have reframed it so I no longer feel panicked or I go back and relive that traumatic event. I'm going to be talking about that next week so come back and hang out with me. Let me know what you thought of this episode. Send me an email. DM me on Instagram. I will see you guys next week. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate it, bye.

Why Triggers Are Your Personal Responsibility

Welcome, beautiful people. Thank you for joining me on the Good Vanilla podcast. I am so happy to be hanging out with you today. We are gonna jump right into things and continue our conversation from last week about triggers. If you have not listened to episode #5, please go back and listen to that before you continue forward with this episode. There's some information about triggers that sets up the foundation around triggers, understanding them and how to identify them and how they actually form.

Today there's going to be some tough love. I’m gonna love you. But I'm gonna love you tough. That's the type of girl I am. I’m gonna come at you. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. We're just gonna dive right in.

Trigger warnings are everywhere. All you have to do is open up Instagram, open up Facebook, turn on the TV. It’s pretty much everywhere. All the messaging, it's good and it's bad. That's truly what I believe. I believe we need to be sensitive to other’s emotions. I strongly believe each person has a personal responsibility over their emotions and how they regulate and work through their emotions.

We need to stop fully relying on trigger warnings to protect us from reliving our original trauma. I don't know about you but I don't wanna put that kind of power into someone else's hands. I mean think about it. Wouldn’t you feel so much more comfortable and confident knowing you have the tools to make it through an emotionally triggering situation? Or are you gonna rely on people that know nothing about you and to be honest some don't even care. Are you gonna rely on them to protect you from your original trauma? It's just not realistic. 

I don't believe triggers are something you outgrow. I think they can diminish over time but don't write off triggers. If you haven't had one for a long time, and I’m speaking from experience, OK and I will get into that in just another minute. 

As long as you are living, you are taking in your environment, all the senses and stimuli and if you experience trauma, you are bound to be exposed to the stimuli you associated with your traumatic event. And thus obviously you're going to be exposed to triggers then. That is why you need to take the responsibility to identify the triggers that are unique to you. Once you identify your unique triggers, you can prepare for them instead of becoming paralyzed by them. And that's just what happens.

When you rely on someone else, you give them the power. When you rely on someone else to provide a warning for your emotions, to act like a safeguard over your emotions, you're handing that power away. If you prepare yourself then you get that confidence and with preparation you can diminish the paralyzation. And the panic and the anxieties. So that is why it's best to equip yourself to take care of yourself. Give the power back to yourself.

Over the last few months, I have been blindsided by triggers. I was upset right away. Honestly, I was very upset. I was concerned I was relapsing back into old habits, old thinking. Because right away the old anxieties around food and my body, they kinda just swirled up to the surface. I was very much surprised by them. I thought I was spiraling and I started over catastrophizing, thinking “oh my gosh, all the hard work I've put in. I thought I’ve come so far and now look at me. One little trigger and I am…” 

At the moment, I didn't even know that I was being triggered. It was the panic and then the old habits and the old thoughts creeping back in. And the old narratives that I was telling myself about how I look and my self-worth and what I needed to do. It was like a floodgate opened. And I was very concerned. I was very upset. 

But since I have worked through triggers in the past, it didn't take me too long to realize what was happening. Thankfully. So I could kind of reposition myself back into the logical brain versus the panic fear brain that was trying to take over. I wanna share one of those triggers with you, the story behind it.

When I was eight or nine years old, that is when I first started body shaming myself. I noticed my body type was so much different than a majority of my classmates. I was just one of those girls that grew up fast and I matured quickly. And it showed on my physical self. I was taller than everyone and I was bigger than everyone. I was more put together. I just had a womanly body when I was eight-nine years old.

 Years ago when I was in therapy, I discussed that 8-9 years old was a critical age for me. I have a 9 year old daughter and she is kind of like a mini me in a way with body type. She is just so precious to me. Thankfully, I know how wonderfully beautiful she is ‘cause I can honestly say how wonderfully beautiful I was. But I was blindsided right away when my oldest daughter just kind of blossomed into this young lady. It triggered me. It did.

I started feeling very insecure about myself and I tried to control those insecurities by obsessing over food. And trying to restrict certain foods for myself. I caught myself doing this because it's not a normal thing for me now. It's not a normal thing so I knew something was off. I have enough understanding about triggers and working through them because of everything I've gone through over the last 20 some years. So it didn't take me too long to identify what was actually going on because now I check in with myself.

When I started feeling the panic and the spiraling and I started reliving those old feelings of not feeling worthy and not being enough and having to work to be accepted, that I have to somehow look a certain way, be a certain way to be loved and accepted, once those thoughts started creeping in, I knew that it was a trigger. Unfortunately it would get worse when I was around my daughter.

I could feel my breathing getting restricted. The first thing to happen is an “oh no” thought going through my mind. Then the fear racing through my brain and thinking of all the things that I have to do to overcome that fear. I had to start speaking the affirmations that I spoke over myself over my daughter. I tied that trigger to my daughter.

It was so disheartening right away because that is so unfair to her. She has no control over evoking those emotions out of me. That's all on me. That has nothing to do with her beautiful self. And that is why it is so important to understand yourself. And to identify what you are feeling and being able to connect all the pieces so that you can do this for yourself.

Once I was able to pinpoint that I figured out a way to work through that and I still have to go back to those affirmations and I have to keep saying those things in my head because it's kinda new. It's something within the last six months. So it's retraining those thought processes, those neural pathways in your brain, making that new path, that new line of thinking. That is what I've been focusing on with that trigger.

But I was completely taken off guard. I had no idea that once my daughter reached the age of when I started having problems and started body shaming myself and noticing that I wasn't like everyone else, that I was different. That it's that age and she's at that age and that was all it took. It was all it took to just zing me right back to 1993, back to when I was eight. Zing there it was. A time machine. 

Reliving those feelings of inadequacy and it was scary and it was unfair and on so many levels it was something that I put as a priority to work through. Obviously because I love being around my daughter. I love being with her and we're so close and I wasn't going to give those old fears, those old triggers, those old emotions the satisfaction of winning. I had the power in my hands and I was going to take back the joy that I pursue when I'm around my daughter. So when I’m with her, it is joy, it is not any of this old garbage trying to work its way back up out of me.

Another life experience that took me completely by surprise are the problems I’m having with my gallbladder. I learned so many things about myself having a sick gallbladder cause here's what happened: gallbladder gets sick and because of that I lost weight and somehow losing that weight triggered my old mindset of seeing how much more I could keep losing. And not being able to eat, it triggered my old restrictive starvation habits. I was so shocked when I caught myself thinking these things. That they’d actually enter my mind. It was almost like somebody slapped me in the face. I thought, “what, I am back there. Those are the priority thoughts going through my brain?” Like, “oh my gosh. I wonder. I've lost weight. I wonder how much more I could lose. Keep losing. I wonder how much I can lose.” And “you know what, I don't feel good enough to eat.” And then it was just kind of like, “oh well, why don't we push it a little bit further and see how little I can eat. I mean just keep pushing this and see how far I can go. This is what happened. It didn't happen for very long, because I am tuned in now to those triggers and that mindset.

I am telling you these stories so that you see the importance of identifying these habits and ways of thinking and all the stuff in your life. So that you can create the tools around it that you need to support yourself. Because it happens. It doesn't go away. I thought it would go. I thought triggers, I thought that old stuff, I thought that was all behind me. No, it's just not the way the brain works.

And then to take it a step further, it got even crazier, because that happened with my gallbladder. Then it flip flopped. Then all of a sudden I gained weight because of my gallbladder. I got super bloated. I got really bloated and uncomfortable and that made me question if I was truly OK with weight gain. I was actually gaining weight because of bloating. I could see it. I was super uncomfortable. I almost looked 2-3 months pregnant. That's how bloated my lower stomach would get. I was really upset about that but as I worked through my feelings around it, I actually uncovered the truth as I was super uncomfortable and miserable. It wasn't actually a fair comparison of weight gain that was natural and healthy. The weight gain was from bloat. My digestive tract was severely slowed down. It was just weird how the gallbladder flip flopped from the year before. It was one extreme to the next.

I had to logically work through it. I had to work through it and figure it out that “yeah well, I’m upset and I'm super uncomfortable and miserable. It’s because of weight gain, it's because this hurts. This bloat hurts. This weight gain hurts. It's not natural and healthy.” I had to separate that out.

But the thing is, I was able to and I share these stories so you can see triggers happen to all of us. Expect triggers to be unexpected. We can't run from them or realistically always avoid them. I’ve said it once and I'm going to say it so many times to you, be a detective. You have to slow down and begin to identify triggers in your life. Because when you know they are happening and when you know what they are, you'll be able to work through them. Remember what I said earlier, prepare for them instead of becoming paralyzed by them. I was prepared for them right away. I was surprised. I was shocked. I was blindsided because it had been so long but it's just proof again that as long as you are living, you are taking in your environment. You are taking in everything around you and if you've had trauma you are going to experience triggers and I want you to have the power to work through them. I want you to have the power. I don't want you to have to rely on someone else.

Let’s be clear. Therapy is different. I've been to therapy before, too. If you need therapy, if you need someone to talk to, if your triggers are that debilitating, yes, you need professional help. I've been there before. I’ve had professional help and now I'm at a point where I can manage them on my own. I'm sharing some of the tools and the ways that I've gotten to this point in my life cuz I know you can get there, too. I’m here to support you if you don't have anyone to talk to. You can always reach out to me. Send me an email. Send me a DM. Let's talk about this. Let's figure out a way that we can work through our triggers so that they don't paralyze us. So that we don't spiral so far back that we're relapsing fully into old ways of thinking and old habits.

Let's pull yourself out of them. And actually, in my next episode, I am going to walk you through my process in more detail of working through a trigger moment. I’ll show you how I managed to get from point A to point B from the fully triggered panic, can't breathe anxiety moment, to realizing, “oh this is what's happening. This is how it’s all connected. This is why I'm feeling this way, this is how I can talk myself through it, this is how I'm gonna get through this.”

Come back next week and I will walk you through it. It’s a pretty simple process but it just takes a lot of inner work, for working through a trigger moment. That is essentially what I'm going to be sharing with you guys next week. So thank you so much for tuning in today. It is an honor to be in your headphones, in your ears. I love spending time with you guys. I love sharing this information with you. Please let me know if there's any other way I can help you specifically through trigger moments. I will talk to you guys next week. Thank you, bye.

Triggers: What They Are, How They Form and Why You Should Care

Hey everyone! Thank you for being here and hanging out with me today. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to talk about triggers. It's an important topic. It’s something we have to do a lot of work around. We have to be aware of the impact and the presence of triggers in our lives. 

Before I dive into this, let’s get clear on what triggers are. If the concept of triggers are new to you or you've heard about them yet not quite sure exactly if you've ever experienced a trigger before or don’t know what they are, I want to address triggers from the perspective of how they form. Let’s talk about some of those basic things because knowing what they are and how they form will actually help you identify them. That’s been my experience and how triggers have worked for me. The key step of identifying them allows you then to work through them. And that is the most important thing. 

Over the next few weeks I will share how triggers have kind of blindsided me lately even though I consider myself pretty far along in my healing journey with my eating disorder. I have been kind of taken aback by the impact that some triggers have had on me. I was not expecting it at all. So I will be sharing that later on, but first I want to discuss a little bit about the foundation of triggers so you understand my philosophy and beliefs around triggers.

When I was reading about triggers before this episode, one thing I read was that the word “trigger” has been used more casually in our language. I believe this is accurate. It seems the word “trigger” is heard everywhere. Instagram, Facebook and TV ads have trigger warnings.  It’s obvious the sensitivity around triggers is everywhere. Everyone's being alerted about something.

Here's the truth. A trigger is more than something that just makes you uncomfortable or upset. Sometimes people think they're triggered simply if they get angry about something or if they’re uncomfortable. They believe that's a trigger. But it’s not.

Triggers go deeper. They're tied to mental health conditions like an eating disorder, ADHD, PTSD, OCD, anxiety disorders, addictions, depression, bipolar personality disorders and more. What needs to be understood is triggers are more involved than just saying, “oh yeah, I was so triggered because that made me really mad and upset”.

A trigger is a stimulus that evokes a painful memory. The stimulus is a sensory reminder related to a traumatic event. The stimulus could be anything like lights, sounds and smells. These stimuli elicit the anxiety and the panic you felt during the traumatic event. And when you encounter a stimulus that was at that traumatic event, when you encounter that later on, the stimulus reawakens and can worsen your symptoms around that traumatic event. That is the trigger. The anxiety, panic, racing heart or breakdown follows the triggering stimuli.

I think there's more to triggers than most people understand because many of us use the word so casually.

Let’s go deeper on how triggers can form. First, a traumatic experience occurs. And it must be known that “trauma” is relative to each individual. The depth of trauma a person endures is based on the person’s perception and genetic makeup. For example; how you respond to an event can be different from how someone else responds to it. An experience could be terribly traumatic for one person but someone else at the same event could perceive the experience differently and thus have less or no trauma due to their genetic makeup.

OK, so if you view something as a traumatic experience, what happens in that moment is, your brain stores the surrounding and stimuli. Your brain does this because its primary job is to protect you. To make sure you survive. And if you encounter a traumatic event, it remembers all the surrounding stimuli so that the next time that you encounter the same stimuli it has a warning system set. This is to protect you from pain and to keep you safe. So whenever you come across the same stimuli again, you’re reminded of that traumatic event and it's your brain's job to keep you safe so of course it's gonna say, “hey remember what happened last time when XYZ happened or you experienced this, something bad happened so beware. Be prepared because something bad might happen again”.

If triggers are a problem for you it is important to connect the stimuli to the details of the traumatic event because this can help you later understand why you have such a strong emotional or physical response to the particular stimulus. This is why it's good to know what a trigger is and how they form and how to identify them. When we understand our triggers, we can heal from them.

I’m going to give you a couple of examples from my own life and I hope by doing that you can see where your triggers may be coming from or start to identify some that you may be dealing with. Referencing my experiences will also help show how deep and involved triggers are.

Previously, I shared about my dad's heart attack and I shared the story about how I stood on the street and I could hear the ambulance sirens and I was standing there waiting and wondering if the emergency response team would make it in time. As I stood there and listened to the sirens, it sounded like they were just beyond our street but you know how sound carries. It was crazy how the sirens sounded like they were getting closer and at the same time they sounded further away. It really played with my mind. I stood there and listened to the ambulance sirens and the police sirens and the sirens from the fire trucks. Eventually all three came. First the police came and they had their siren going so there were a lot of sirens that day and then there was the ambulance and the fire truck’s siren. It was the policeman 1st and then the fire truck arrived and then the ambulance. So there were all kinds of sirens and I was standing there listening to the sirens wondering if my dad was gonna live.

Traumatic experience, big time! The sirens were at the center of it and for so many years after that day whenever I would hear sirens I would relive it. I would immediately be transported back to my front yard, standing right next to the street. I remember what I wore. I remember the time of day. I remember where the sun was. I'm standing there and I can feel it and it would be so hard 'cause every time I would hear sirens years later, I’d shut down. My breath would catch in my chest and that pain and that fear of that day, that worry about my dad and whether or not he was gonna live.

If I had to go forward at the age of 17 without my dad. Wondering what I would do without him. Wondering what my mom and brother and I were gonna do without him. Reliving all of that. It was terrible. Yet it is a perfect example of a trigger.

The stimulus was the sound of the sirens. I even remember what I was wearing that day but the main thing that my brain stored in that traumatic event was the sound of the sirens. So it took me time to work through that. That is the first example I want to share.

A second example of a trigger is something I’ve experienced more recently. It just happened within these last couple months. My daughters and I, who by the way, one of my daughters just turned 9 today at the time of recording this. Today is actually her 9th birthday. Happy Birthday, Ava. But at the time this trigger event happened she was 8 and I have a 4 year old, Adeline. 

Picture the three of us driving to a doctor's appointment. My girls were hungry and they needed a snack so they opened up, I don't know, it was something in a bag, you know some kind of cracker thing in a bag. And they're sitting in the back seat eating these crackers and we had just kind of been going through one of those cycles of just eating processed food on the run. It felt like they were on their 5th snack or food from a bag that day and it triggered me all of a sudden.

I started panicking and I felt my heart start racing because they were sitting in the back seat getting all excited like, “oh this is so great. Eating these snacks, this is what I want to eat”. Their excitement over it pushed me and I started lecturing them about how this is not something we can always do because it's not healthy. It's not good for our bodies to take in this food. I was losing it.

Thankfully we parked. I shut off the car and I had to sit there and take these deep breaths in. My heart was racing. I was kinda light headed and I felt this rush of panic coursing through me. It was almost like this out of body experience, too. So now we're getting out of the car and we're walking into the doctor's office and both my girls are looking at me with worried expressions on their faces. They were wondering if I was ok.

I asked myself, “what is going on why am I losing it over a bag of Snapped crackers”. And then it hit me. It was because I was exposed to so much processed food over the duration of my day.

What’s the big deal about being exposed to processed foods? Back when I was in the thick of my eating disorder, I thought food was my enemy. I said things to myself like, “food makes me fat. If I eat food I’m gonna get fat”. That was how I viewed food. And when my dad had a heart attack, I went from fearing food to thinking food was going to kill me. I connected processed foods to that type of fear. Processed food evoked a stronger reaction. The fear was so much stronger and today I still deal with the food fear even though it has subsided a lot. 

 Needless to say, I was triggered by my girls’ endless snacking. Their excitement over the food and the number of packaged snacks they had been eating was too much for me. We were on a few days of running with a crazy schedule. I saw the girls consume one too many processed snacks. Given my past experience of how I equated processed food and during that time when I was really struggling, I called processed food “bad food”. There was no neutrality with food. I viewed it as “bad”. And whenever there is a lot going on in my life and I feel busy and I’m running from one event to the next, anxiety sets in. I respond by grasping for control.

I snapped the day my girls ate too many Snapped crackers. I felt like I was losing control because of the food that I was surrounded with and seeing my girls eat one bagged snack after another sent me reeling. I perceived it as proof, like “Uh-oh, look at this. You don't have control over the situation. You're letting this back into your life. You’re letting big bad food in bags back into your life”.

I really blew it out of proportion and I kinda scared my daughters a little bit. They were worried. I was breathing heavier, my heart was racing and by the time we got inside the clinic, I made this connection I just explained. I thought, “Oh my gosh, this got me again”. I was triggered by the food that I associated as bad and that will clog your arteries and give you a heart attack and leave your child standing on the boulevard waiting for the emergency response team and she's gonna wonder if they're ever gonna make it.

The Snapped crackers got me like those sirens. Those dang sirens. I was triggered again by this food. It's almost like when I watch them eating it, I can see it clogging up their little beautiful arteries. I know that's not true. I understand that's not what's happening, but because of the traumatic event, because of my experience with my eating disorder and food and then it heightened and worsened by my dad's heart attack, this triggering moment with my girls and having them eat so much more processed food over a couple of days, I just kept internalizing, internalizing and all of a sudden I just exploded. I had a meltdown and yet it was a total trigger moment.

And this story serves as another example of how these triggers just kind of wiggle their ways into our lives. I want to highlight the significance of it and the importance of understanding them and starting to identify them in your life. Triggers can happen to the best of us. When my triggers blindsided me, like with the sirens and the food, it was a humbling experience. I was reminded that I still have lots to learn and many opportunities for growth.

With my girls specifically, I use trigger moments as teaching moments. When the processed food triggered me, it was a teaching opportunity. My daughters can view me as Superwoman sometimes and then in that moment when I was kind of unraveling and I had them worrying, they were looking at me like, “Are you ok”. They got to see that even their heroes need help sometimes. It's healthy to be vulnerable and I connected with them and it was a great teaching moment. I told them, “hey guys, I’m really sorry, that really triggered me back there”. I explained why. My 4 year old might not have understood, but my 8 year old did. I could tell by her face and we hugged and we said, “this is ok. We are ok”.

Triggers not only impact your life, they impact those around you. And for this reason it is a great responsibility for you to identify your triggers and kind of learn about them and see how they infiltrate your life. Look for patterns. I’m always going to ask you to be a detective. I’m always gonna ask you to do that detective work and look deep into your life. Connect pieces together. Try to connect the details of a traumatic experience to the stimulus so that you can understand why you're having a strong emotional or physical response. This is important work.

I hope you learned something from this episode, whether you came into it having somewhat of a knowledge around triggers or were completely confused by them. I hope you got something out of this episode that you can take away and can help you learn something new about yourself and about triggers. Maybe for the first time you're realizing some of your panic is originating from a trigger. That could be something very real for some of you. What we feel is real. We have to slow down and learn from it. It’s really that simple. You have to take the time and prioritize yourself and believe that you are worthy of understanding. You are worthy of slowing down and taking a look at your life.

Triggers are a process and they require time so we are gonna be spending more time on this topic. Join me next week and we will be digging into triggers even further and I will even show you on a deeper level how to use certain tools I use in my life and how you can use them in yours. Take care friends. I will see you on next week's podcast episode. Have a great week. Talk to you later, bye.

The Secret Power Of Affirmations No One Talks About

Hey friend, thanks for hanging out with me today. I am going to start with a couple of Bible verses.

The first one is Proverbs 18:21 - the tongue has the power of life and death

Listen to that. I will say it one more time. The tongue has the power of life and death.

Proverbs 15:4 - kind words are like honey, sweet to the soul and healthy for the body. 

This deserves a repeat as well. Kind words are like honey, sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.

I love these two Bible verses. They really speak to the way we speak, right? You're probably very familiar with speaking positive affirmations over yourself and that is what I want to talk about today. I did this a lot and I still do this a lot, using positive affirmations. I think they're just so helpful.

Positive affirmations give you a quick little boost to your mood. They can help reset your perspective and like I've said before in other episodes, combat the lie with the truth. Speak the truth. That's what affirmations really are, it's speaking that truth. Affirmations are great, but I want to share a way for you to take this idea a step further and the impact it can have on your belief is incredible.

 We are told what we think and say about ourselves matters but I have found, what we think and say of others is a critical step in recovery as well. It's a tool for positive thought, it really is.

For example, I'll take a positive affirmation that I use, and many of you have probably used. The affirmation is: my body is a good body. This statement or affirmation is true. My body is a good body. This positive talk works and it's really great. It has helped me bash that inner critic. Are you ready to learn how this affirmation can transform your life even further?

To do so, try changing one word of this affirmation, “my body is a good body”. The next time you walk by someone, the next time you pass someone in a hallway or on the sidewalk or in a grocery store aisle, wherever it is, don't say it out loud but say this to yourself when you walk past someone, “Their body is a good body. Their body is a good body.”

Here's why. I had never thought about changing the way I viewed others and how it could benefit the way I viewed myself. I had myself convinced my self-worth was dependent on the way I looked. Many of you may relate. It was probably something that when you were a kid you formed the belief that if you were thin that you'd have more value. Maybe as a child you perceived the mainstream messaging on beauty as you’d have to look this way, you have to wear certain types of clothes. Whatever it is. But it really is very vain and it really revolves around the belief your self-worth was in the way you looked.

 To uncover all the different lies about your self-worth, you have to speak those affirmations. But it wasn’t until I started speaking affirmations over other people that it became second nature for me to speak them over myself. It became so much easier for me to accept my self-worth and to believe I was valued and that I had self-worth. After I started identifying the value and the worth of those around me, I could identify it in myself.

This idea is similar to the concept of, when we look outward, when we're not so focused inward and it's a hard truth. It is. We get so focused inward especially when we are struggling with mental health. You can get super wrapped up in how you're feeling and how bad things are, that you forget to look outward. Don't get me wrong, there are times to go inward because there's so much inner work to do and there's undeniable value there. 

Yet there are times you need a break. Because here's the truth, aren't you tired? Don't you ever grow tired of constantly self evaluating and constantly looking inward? That's a good way to get stuck too. When you're just beating your head against the wall, looking inward and trying to figure out a way to view yourself differently and to see your self-worth and your value. It’s a clear sign. When you're just bashing your head bashing and you can’t reach a breakthrough, that is the sign that you need to look outward. You need to start speaking affirmations over other people, because once you start seeing positivity in other people, it becomes second nature to see the value in yourself. 

With affirmation practice, it’ll become easier to identify positive attributes in others and yourself. It will take time. So remember, when you walk by someone, say in your head, “their body is a good body”. Or if you don’t want to focus on physical attributes, say, “they are so valued. They give so much to this world. They have such a great purpose”. 

I don't know most of the people I speak these affirmations over and that's the beauty of it. The beauty of it is, I'm speaking this over them while I'm passing them. Over time you will believe the words you are speaking. You’ll think, “yes I do believe their body is a good body, that they are more than their body, they have so much value, they have so much purpose in this world”. Once you believe these affirmations are true of others, guess what, the next time you pass yourself in the mirror it's gonna be a lot easier to see that reflection and say, “hey, that body is a good body, they have so much self-worth, they have so much purpose”. 

It really is a tool for positive thought. Increase your positive thoughts everywhere. Increase your positive thoughts where you can by focusing on others and saying those positive affirmations over them, increasing positive thoughts there, will seep out into how you view yourself. It really does.

I hope you try it because it's quite magical. Think about it too in this way, what a gift you're giving that person. Remember, “the tongue has the power of life and death.” And, “kind words are like honey, sweet to the soul and healthy for the body”. Even though you're not saying those words out loud you are thinking them. You are putting that energy, that vibe, outward. It's reaching those people and that is a gift. 

You're putting that positivity out into the world and you better believe you're gonna get it back. Because that is the way it works. It took me a long time to understand that but it is true. It's the same concept of, if you look for the negative, if you focus on the negative, whatever you focus on, that is what you get. If you focus on the negative then that is what you're gonna get. So that's why I'm saying focus on the positive. 

Focus outward, if you can't focus on the good within you. Look to other people. Focus on them. Start saying affirmations over them and then you will start receiving it back. You will be gifting yourself back that positivity, those affirmations, that self-worth, that self-acceptance, the self-esteem that will come back. And it will become second nature and then when you have those days where you're just really struggling, those affirmations will be in your toolkit.

 You will have tools for positive thought. When negativity creeps in, you’ll be capable of saying, “nope, I've already identified the worth and purpose in others. I know I too have purpose and worth”. When your inter critic says, “hey, you better get on the treadmill” or “you better not eat that because you're looking a little….”. You can tell that voice to shut up because you know the truth and you have the positive affirmation that comes back to you. And it comes so naturally.

Honest to goodness, I'm asking you to do this over the next week or however long you want to do it. It's fun. I just keep doing it 'cause it's just so great. It feels good to put positivity out there and to have that kind of impact on the world. It's almost like you're staying a little prayer over these people walking around you and you gotta believe they're gonna feel it. They will feel it. Doing good for others, it's gonna come back and do good for you. Go out and do this. 

Let me know what came up for you while you were doing this. Was it easy? Was it harder than you thought? What affirmation did you choose to say? Let me know. Email me. Send me a message on Instagram. Let me know how it went for you. I’m really curious. And get other people involved in it. Ask a friend to try it. Better yet, say an affirmation over a friend for some time and then let them know what you've been doing. Ask them to join you in it. Get people involved 'cause everyone needs a pick me up. Everyone needs to smile more, focus on positivity and shift perceptions a little bit.

This is a small way to do that and it's such a blessing and it's going to be such a blessing to you. I really believe that this is something that can have a great impact on your life and on others. So get out there and put good into the world, friends. You never know when someone's walking by you, what little prayer they're saying over you as well. Keep that in mind. Have a great day! I can't wait to hang out with you again, bye.

How Beliefs Impact An Eating Disorder

Hey beautiful friend! Thank you for hanging out with me today. I am so happy to have you here.

I want to ask you, how are you feeling? How are you doing today? Be honest. Do you have an answer? Do you know how you're feeling? How's your day going? 

I'm going to talk about the belief, thought, feeling, behavior cycle. I don't know if many of you are familiar with it but I like to talk about mindset, perspective and internal outlook. Your belief, thought, feeling, behavior cycle is very important in your daily life. I wanna talk about it today so that you can kind of tie it in and see if you can analyze your beliefs, thoughts, behaviors and see how it could be feeding into your negative body image, or into your eating disorder. 

If you aren’t familiar with this concept, it basically is saying our beliefs form our thoughts and our thoughts create our feelings. We then act out of our feelings which is our behavior. These behaviors then support or discredit the initial belief that set this whole thing into motion. 

Visualize it as a circle. There's the belief and then it leads to your thought and then out of that thought is the feeling and out of that feeling is the behavior. It's a cycle. The behavior cycle supports or discredits that initial belief.

I'm going to share a personal story and apply this cycle. The belief, thought cycle. So you can see how you can use it to analyze something going on in your life to see if there's a pattern. Because once we can pinpoint whether there's a harmful belief, if we can pinpoint that, then we can start to reframe that thought or that belief so that we act out of it differently.

When I was stuck in the thick of my eating disorder, one of my number one dominating beliefs was that food was my enemy. I really believed this. I believed food was my enemy because if you eat, it's calories and there's fat in the food. Consuming calories and fat went against everything I was trying to achieve. I was trying to weigh a goal number. I wanted to weigh 105 pounds. I remember when I was in Junior High, I heard someone else talking about what they weighed and I thought “well she weighs 105 lbs so I have to weigh that too because look at her, everyone likes her”. That's kind of where those thoughts came from. The belief that food was my enemy. It was going to sabotage me in a way. 

Picture a 14-15 year old thinking, living that way for a couple years, believing food was the problem. Two years into my eating disorder, my dad had a massive heart attack. I was 17. I was at home when my dad came home from his workout at the gym. He wasn't feeling well. I was sitting near him and he started sweating profusely and he asked me to get a towel. That's how much he was sweating. He was having a heart attack. My mom called the ambulance. I went and stood out on the boulevard waiting for the ambulance and the police and the fire truck so they could find our house faster.

I remember standing there thinking “oh my gosh, are they ever gonna get here”? I could hear the siren. You swear it's getting closer but it's just not coming soon enough. I just stayed outside on the boulevard. I couldn't move. I was in shock, really. 

Another image I remember specifically from that day was turning and looking at my front door. The front door was wide open and they had my dad laying in the entryway, cutting open his shirt and attaching things to him and working really fast and furious. They eventually loaded up and hauled them away to the emergency room. Thank God he survived. 

But needless to say, that was very traumatic for me and honestly I have not even fully dug into all the ways it affects me now. But I went from believing food was my enemy. My dad’s heart attack was bad. Later we found out he had clogged arteries. He eventually had to have quadruple bypass surgery, so there's so much involved with this story and it's really hard to talk about because it's traumatic. It really affects me. It was really hard to watch that day. 

When I saw my dad having a heart attack, I went from believing food was my enemy to suddenly believing food was going to kill me. 

My dad's heart attack not only perpetuated my belief that food was the bad guy, but then I chose to see his heart attack as evidence that food was going to kill me. That ramped up my eating disorder to another level. Then I really started cutting out foods like crazy. Anything with saturated fat, trans fat. I became hyper aware of labels and ingredients in food. 

I would get anxiety being around food like pizza, french fries, fried chicken. Any greasy food with a lot of fat content gave me anxiety. Not only would I not eat it but then to be around people that would eat it, I would almost have an internal panic attack. Being around people eating pizza was hard. 

I went 7 years without eating pizza or french fries.

That's how long it took me to get over the belief food was going to kill me. Why am I sharing this? Because I had this belief that food was my enemy. Then something traumatic happened. I witnessed my dad’s heart attack. I almost lost my dad. The EMTs that day said they don't know how he survived. They really don't. My fear spiked. I feared food, food was the enemy and then it just ramped up to a whole different level. That belief fed into the thoughts around food and how I felt about food and then the behavior of restricting even further and not allowing pizza or french fries. No more cookies, no more saturated fat. 

“If this is processed you can't eat it because if you put it in your mouth and you eat it you will die.” 

That was the belief, thought, feeling, behavior cycle I got on for years. And I just spun around it and I spun around it and I spun around it. Stuck on it. Stuck on it. But the key is to identify it. 

I'm asking you to be a detective of your own beliefs. It can be challenging to pinpoint the initial beliefs that are wreaking havoc on your mind. If that is you, if you don’t have an “aha” moment, like “oh yeah, I know what you're saying. This belief really leads me into thinking these things and feeling this and then I act this way and then it just reinforces it all over again”. If you're having a hard time pinpointing it, work backwards from the behavior. 

What is the behavior that is noticeable? What’s obvious? My behavior of restricting food and not eating foods was so obvious. It was obvious to everyone around me because everyone would be eating pizza and french fries and I wouldn’t eat. Or we'd be on a road trip and we'd have to go through a drive through and get food and people were ordering food and I would say “no, I’m not eating”. I remember my brother getting mad at me saying “you have to eat” and I looked at him and said “no I don't”. I needed that control because my fear had me in its grips. 

That was the behavior. It was so, so obvious. But why was it that bad? So then I could work backwards from that. If you can find the behavior and then if you can link it to the feeling that you had leading up to the behavior, ask yourself why you may feel what you are feeling, and then it can lead you to the thought that preceded that feeling. And then it’ll clue you in on the belief. And if you had that clue on what belief is causing the most distress, then you can go at it. You can choose to reframe. You can work on reframing that belief and start healing in that way. 

But the main thing is awareness. Bring awareness to what needs to be done to start the healing journey. Initiate momentum and hope. I want it for you, friend, I really do. I believe that if you can work today or over the next week or month or whatever it may be, just work at it. Identify one of those beliefs and start working on it. Because half the battle is identifying the belief. If you don't know the belief, work backwards from the behavior. Pinpoint that behavior because you can see from my story the importance of realizing how grand a belief is in your life. How much impact it has on your life and how it can get twisted and molded into something worse. It did in my scenario, based on trauma and my perception of that trauma. 

It all goes back to speaking out loud about your belief. If you haven't listened to episode one or two, go back and listen to those. I touch on the importance of beginning the conversation around your eating disorder and around that negative body image. Whatever it is, get that conversation started because then you start to separate yourself from that identity of “that is who I am”. You can start that process and it's just so important to start seeing yourself as your identity, your person and not your eating disorder.

Identifying those beliefs that could feed into your eating disorder, into your toxic body image, you have to start evaluating and being a detective and analyzing your own beliefs. Your beliefs make up who you are. And you are so important. You are so loved. You are so valued. Your purpose is greater than anything you can ever imagine. I really want you to get to a place where that becomes real for you. It all begins with our mindset.

Please let me know how this goes for you. If you had any major breakthroughs in identifying a belief, send me a message. Email me: hello@andreacarow.com

DM me on Instagram: andrea_carow

Please let me know how I can help you in any other way. Connect with me so I can help you on this journey. I’m on this journey with you. I want to be here for you so let me know what I can do for you, friend. 

Be that detective, tackle that belief. You might have to start backwards from that behavior but I know you can do it. I believe in you.

Why You Need To Start Talking About Your Eating Disorder ASAP

Hey beautiful friend!  Thank you so much for hanging out with me today.  I look forward to sharing this episode with you.  It might come across a little challenging for you cause I'm going to ask you to do something that might be a little difficult.  It might be something you've been avoiding for quite some time and it might make your breath catch in your chest a little bit.  What I'm gonna ask you to do and to explore and to consider with me today is the process of beginning to have a conversation about your eating disorder.  

To begin talking to someone about it, because personally I took one of the most crucial steps in healing my relationship with food and my body and it all happened when I started voicing my anxieties.  For years I would just bottle up my emotions and my tolerance for stuffing what I was feeling until it reached a point where it no longer worked.  I was literally full.  It all came spilling out.  

I hope for you, I don't know how far in with your toxic relationship with food or your body, I don't know how far in you are with it but one of the number one things I would advise, if I can save anyone time in their healing journey it's begin the process of talking about it as soon as possible.  

What this looked like for me was I began to share my anxieties with my husband because he was the person I trusted the most.  And actually he knew me better than I knew myself.  And when I went to him and started talking, it was more about my anxieties around food.  I didn't ever label my eating disorder as an eating disorder.  I didn't say, “hey I have this eating disorder and it’s really getting on my nerves”.  That's not how it comes out. Actually it wasn't till maybe even within the last couple of years I called it an eating disorder.  That is saying a lot.  How long I just almost wanted to hide it, I didn't want to label it.  I didn't want to feel that.

When I went to my husband, Adam, and I would start talking about my anxieties around food and what I ate that day, it started the process of healing.  Adam would be patient, he would listen to me, he was very comforting and supportive.  I felt safe with him.  And it just opened the door. 

Here's what happens, when you release the pressure to navigate this whole thing on your own.  To navigate negative body image, to navigate food fear on your own and when you open up to receiving help, you are fighting for yourself.  You have started the fight for yourself and you're telling your eating disorder “I'm coming for you and you're going down”.  

In a way you are separating yourself from your eating disorder.  You're removing yourself, like you're no longer clumped together as a single identity.  You can start seeing the negative thing that this eating disorder is and what it's doing to you and you can start separating yourself from it.  Once you get that little space, it can get bigger and bigger and bigger.  That's the goal right?  We want it in another country.  We want to be so far away from it but you have to start somewhere.  I really believe it's speaking about it, actually voicing the anxieties, voicing the frustrations.  I feel that was my true first step.  Saying, “I am fighting for myself. I am not OK with this.  I want better.  I don't like the way this makes me feel.  I’m tired of feeling this way. I wanna move on”.

When you hear yourself say the words, it becomes more real.  So when we say what we're feeling and we voice our anxieties and then we have in return that positive environment, that support and that comfort, like “yes you can do this.  Yes you're gonna be OK”, it was a positive experience.  It felt good. It felt good to release the anxiety and to be told that I was gonna be OK.

I really hope that you can find that for yourself.  Finding those people, whether it is a therapist, whether it is a close family member, a close friend, someone supportive, heck you can email me anytime or send me a DM on Instagram.  Email me, it's hello@andreacarow.com.  On Instagram I’m andrea_carow

I can be that if you need someone supportive.  If you don't have anyone, reach out.  I’m here to help. I want to help. I want to listen. I want to do what I can to help other people that are going through what I went through.  I know it can feel so lonely but it doesn't have to be that way.

I’m asking you to have a competitive spirit.  I want you to find that scrappy inner badass within you.  I want you to get competitive because once you can separate that little distance from your eating disorder and you can kind of start viewing it as an opponent then I believe that is where you can really start attacking it.  Like I said before, about saying to your eating disorder “I'm coming for you and you're going down”.  That's the competitive spirit I’m talking about. 

I’m a naturally competitive person and once I started feeling that little separation between myself and my eating disorder, that identity, something clicked in my mind where it was almost kinda like yeah I had this opponent that I could beat. Like we were going at it head to head and it was something for me to overcome.

 Be aware though, it's not a foolproof thing.  I can still have days where I catch myself slipping into my old ways of thinking. But now with that separation that I have I can recognize them as red flags and I have the tools to work through those negative thoughts in the moment while it's happening and in this way it helps keep me from spiraling.  So that's another big positive aspect of having that separation of yourself from your eating disorder because you are not your eating disorder. You are a person. You are a soul.

The eating disorder and the body negativity wants to cling on and it wants to make you believe that is who you are but that is not true.  As I said in the last episode, whenever there's a lie, you have to combat it with a truth.  And the truth is, I truly believe that speaking, starting to voice, actually voicing, using your voice to voice your anxieties, that is where healing will start.  That is where my healing really started for me.  I am challenging you.  I know it might be hard but I believe in you.  Believe in yourself.  You can do hard things.  You were made to do hard things and you might feel alone but you're not alone.

Say a little prayer to God.  Say “God, give me the courage, give me the bravery to speak up about this. Help me start the conversation. Show me the person, lead me to the person that I can share this with.  Show me who that might be in my life because I know with your help I can start the healing journey, I can start this process, I can start the conversation”. 

I can tell you, it’s about time there are some new voices, fresh voices in on the conversation other than just yourself and the crazy things running around in your mind that aren't always positive.  It's time to insert that positivity, that voice.  And if you don't have anyone to speak to about it, talk to God.  Say it out loud to God, He's listening, He will hear you.  Call out to Him.  He will hear you and He will be there.  He's listening.  There's no greater support than our Lord.  Isn't that right?  He's listening all the time.  

All you have to have is that little bit of bravery, that little bit of courage.  Just a little inkling of courage because once you do it once it'll become easier time after time after time.  You'll just kinda get into the habit of talking about it.  I know you can do this friend! 

Let me know how this goes. Send me an email, send me a DM on Instagram. Did you find someone to talk to?  Did you pray out to God?  What happened?  Let me know how it went.  I want to hear how this went for you.  Because every situation is so unique and so different. I want to hear some good things. I want to hear some positivity. I want to hear your wins.  So let me know if you did this and let me know how it went.  Let me know how you felt.

Alright friend, thank you so much for hanging out with me today.  I will talk with you soon, bye.

Having An Eating Disorder Isn’t A Sign You’re A Failure

Hi friend! Thank you so much for joining me on my very first episode. I've been wanting to start this podcast for a long time, so yay, it’s finally here! 

I am here to help women on their wellness journeys and specifically I am going to be speaking to those who are dealing with toxic body image and those who might be dealing with an eating disorder. That is what I am focusing on right now and speaking to. 

I'm not much for sugar coating things or beating around the bush, so today I'm gonna get right to it. I want to address something that I struggled with big time when I was in the thick of my eating disorder. It was a belief I had. It was the belief that I was a failure because I had an eating disorder. I am here to tell you, having an eating disorder is not a sign you're a failure. It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong and it sure as heck doesn't mean you're a bad person.

It simply is a signal that your soul needs attention, your mind needs healing and you need to reconnect with yourself.

Let me tell you a quick story to give you some perspective on this so you kind of understand where I'm coming at this idea of viewing  yourself as a failure.

When I was struggling I would see people living their daily lives, smiling and laughing and enjoying themselves at social functions and family functions and I was trying to mimic their outward appearance. I was trying to be happy. But on the inside I was sad and I was miserable. 

And here's the thing right, like I was perceiving their smiles as kind of like a sign of success, right, but I didn't know what they were going through. They could have been dealing with their own personal demons. They could have been having a hard time on the inside and just projecting what they wanted others to see as well. But I would still perceive their happiness as a sign of failure for me. Because I wanted their smile. I wanted joy. I deeply, deeply, I was so desperate to feel ok with being myself.

No matter where I went, I would see all different body types, all the body types being happy, it was really hard. 

I would tell myself, “see they've got it figured out. Why can’t you figure this out? Are you not smart enough, or what is the deal”. 

That’s where that whole thing came from, that feeling of, I was a failure and I was a bad person. It really was a part of my personality as well. If you are a type one on the Enneagram, if you are a highly sensitive person, if you're just that intense, driven, moralistic, perfectionistic type of person, I deeply relate. I can empathize with you and sympathize with you and what you are going through. 

I want to bring awareness to this belief, this thought that I had, because for one, it took me a long time to even realize I was doing this. I was internalizing so much of my pain that when I was thinking these negative things about myself, like taking it as a sign of failure that I was faking that I was happy and enjoying myself out at these social functions. I was not happy in my body. I was taking that as a sign of failure. But I didn't know I was thinking this. It took me a very long time to realize this because I would shut down so much. I wouldn't allow myself to feel.

Whenever I'd get uncomfortable then I would shut down even further so I wouldn't allow myself to identify what I was feeling and acknowledge my emotions and what I was feeling 'cause it was just too painful. I want to tell you that the first thing you need to do is identify those emotions. Let yourself be self aware. Open yourself up to feeling what you're feeling. Identify what you're feeling, name it, work through it and then move forward.

First we must start with awareness. That is what today's episode is all about. Being aware of the beliefs we have about ourselves and how they relate to our body image and how they relate to our eating disorder. 

This is meant to be a little pep talk and for you to use it as a reflection technique or a practice. I want to specify, obviously the belief “I am a bad person because I have an eating disorder” or “I'm doing something wrong”, is a lie. Those are lies we tell ourselves. And whenever we face a lie we need to combat it with a truth. The truth I'm gonna leave you with today is a Bible verse. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10 says, “for we are God's masterpiece He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago”.

I share this with you because I want you to know you are a masterpiece. When God looks at you He sees you for the beautiful creation you are. We can be so hard on ourselves that we can't always see what God sees when He looks at us. It's something to be aware of. When you're stuck in those beliefs, if you start telling yourself those lies, “I’m not good because I have an eating disorder” or “I’m a bad person” or “I'm a failure”, stop and remind yourself that you are a masterpiece. God has great things planned for you. And healing is one of them. It takes work. There's inner work involved. But I just wanted to start having this little pep talk and addressing something that seems rather simple but the simple things still need to be brought up. It's the simple things that are the answers. And that is what I wanted to focus on today. Bringing up those negative beliefs and batting them out of the park. Get them out of here!

Know that you are loved. You are a masterpiece. You are good. You are so good simply because you are a child of God. You don't have to worry, you don't have to strive so hard to be good and prove you're not a failure.

Thank you so much for being here. Let’s continue the conversation next week. See you then!