Overcoming Emotional Eating: Mindfulness Practices and Personal Food Journeys for Women in Midlife Wellness

Have you ever wondered how mindfulness can transform your relationship with food and help you achieve your health goals? Join host Heather Carey in this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories as she engages in a heartfelt conversation with Ruth Fearnow, a trauma-informed therapist and author of Therapeutic Mindfulness. Together, they delve into the profound impact of mindfulness on emotional eating, weight loss journeys, and overall well-being.

Heather shares her personal food journey, illustrating how mindfulness served as a powerful tool in overcoming emotional eating and finding peace with food. Ruth expands on this by differentiating between coping and healing skills, emphasizing that while coping helps manage immediate stress, healing skills address deeper emotional issues that often hinder our progress. This episode is packed with nutrition advice and healthy eating tips that can guide you toward a more fulfilling relationship with food.

Throughout their discussion, they highlight the significance of practicing mindfulness without judgment, revealing how it can facilitate genuine healing and foster a sense of self-compassion. Ruth provides valuable insights into the science of mindfulness and its practical applications in therapy, making it clear that this is not just a trend but a vital practice for anyone navigating the complexities of women’s health, particularly during midlife and menopause.

As they explore the intersection of food beliefs and culture, listeners will gain a deeper understanding of how mindfulness can empower them to make healthier lifestyle choices. This episode emphasizes the importance of personalized affirmations in the healing process, encouraging you to cultivate a non-judgmental awareness of your emotions and experiences with food.

Whether you’re interested in weight loss stories, midlife body positivity, or simply seeking to nourish your body with real food, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge. Tune in for Ruth’s expert insights on mindful eating practices, sustainable eating, and how to overcome the confusion that often accompanies dieting in today’s society.

Don’t miss this opportunity to empower your menopause journey and embrace a healthier, more mindful approach to eating. Join Heather and Ruth as they inspire you to ditch diet culture and embrace a joyful, nourishing lifestyle that celebrates your unique food story.

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Hey everybody, I sat down today to talk with Ruth Fearnow. Ruth is a trauma-informed therapist and the author of Therapeutic Mindfulness. Now if you’ve been listening to me for a while, you may know that I feel so strongly about practicing mindfulness. I think it is a key skill when it comes to weight loss and really challenging yourself with any health goals for that matter. It’s what distinguishes the fad diets from eating in a healthy, supportive way for the rest of your life and doing it happily. Ruth is truly an expert in her field, and we uncover what it means to truly practice mindfulness, what mindfulness is, what it’s not, and then the one thing that really drives it home. Now, I’m going to keep that one thing a secret. You’ll have to tune in to the episode. So take a listen to my conversation with Ruth Fearnow.

Speaker #1
Hi, everybody. I am with Ruth Fearnow today, and Ruth is a trauma-informed therapist certified in EMDR,

Speaker #0
helping people observe habits of the mind and transform their lives. Ruth created… Therapeutic Mindfulness, a step-by-step method for using mindfulness, meditation, and self-compassion to transform one’s experience with any painful thought or experience. She is also the author of the book, Therapeutic Mindfulness, a healing skill, not a coping skill. And in teaching therapeutic mindfulness to clients, Ruth has found that clients are able to work through many emotions on their own. become confident in their own ability to tolerate and heal feelings, and are even comfortable quitting therapy at higher rates. So welcome, Ruth. Thanks for being on the podcast today. And I’m really looking forward to diving into the topic of mindfulness because I really, truly believe that cultivating a mindfulness practice in our lives really can help move the needle to make really profound change in our lives. particularly for me on my end as a nutritionist, when it comes to our eating habits or weight and other eating issues and just our overall health. So I would love to start out by hearing more about how you as a therapist just latched on to mindfulness as a healing modality and as a way, I think even to heal your own self rather than just as a way to cope. with life, right? There’s this difference between healing and coping. And so why don’t we just jump in and you can tell me a little bit about your story.

Speaker #1
Okay. Well, it’s funny because, you know, my brain is so practical, logical, in some ways, literal, even though I know abstract is very literal. So I’m going to pick on something you said, you said how I latched on as a therapist. I was doing mindfulness for a decade before I became a therapist. And I think that’s a really important point. So a little fun tidbit for that. When I really started working on a focused meditation practice and other mindfulness type practices to try to learn it and get good at it, I was, well, it was a decade before I became a therapist and I was in Shaolin, China, studying Kung Fu and Qigong. I don’t remember if I had told you that. So no,

Speaker #0
that did not tell me that. That sounds, that sounds exciting.

Speaker #1
It does. And it’s funny because it’s not exciting. You know, oh, my gosh, this was a watershed moment. It was a beginning of my practice. And there are plenty obstacles along the way in a development. But the fact is that I started getting serious about it and really trying to learn it and starting to figure out what are the ways people are approaching these practices? What are some of the Eastern philosophies? Fast forward 10 years. I’m a therapy intern. This is my second career. And we’re taught, even in my internship, okay, we need to teach these grounding skills. Grounding skills are based in mindfulness philosophies, right? So a lot of the Eastern philosophies are now in therapy. And they’re like, you need to do these with clients every day because they don’t know how to regulate emotions. Fast forward more, and I’m becoming an experienced trauma therapist. And I have clients that were doing mindfulness. So I’ll teach some of these techniques to people. And their minds are blown. They’ve never felt so peaceful. It’s the calmest their minds have been. maybe in years. And they’re like, wow, it’s so amazing. It’s so beautiful. This must be the answer. And then the people that are really avoidant, they start getting upset about something, some of their trauma, something’s triggered. And they’re like, oh my God. Okay. I’m at the beach. I’m at the beach. I feel the sun. I hear the waves. And they immediately start using it to push stuff away. When they do that, no, I’ll just put out there that all the mindfulness techniques, all the positive psychology stuff, the meditations, the guided visualizations, all this stuff has really good effects. And a lot of that is documented in science. There’s two time magazines dedicated just to giving articles about the science of mindfulness, but when it is used to suppress, it becomes a new method of avoidance. And I saw it when the first client that I taught you was so avoidant and couldn’t deal with the hard stuff. And we had a lot of difficulty with that. And a year later, it actually stopped working. She would go to her safe place. You’ve been in therapy or you are a therapist. You may have done the safe place. Well, the stuff started intruding into her safe place visualization. And it was no longer safe because what you push away pushes back. What you suppress will express. You cannot fool your mind. to say you’re healing when you’re just pushing it away, your mind knows better. And one thing I’ll explain to people is that if you don’t deal with pain and you can put it off for like, you know, a week or, you know, short term until there’s a good time to deal with it. But if you never deal with it, it will wait. Okay. It will wait. And it will come up when you’re triggered. If, um, if eating is a thing where you know, like it spills out that way, then when you’re triggered, then you’re going to want to eat or when you’re triggered, you’re going to want to restrict or whatever your, your pattern is. But if you don’t deal with it, it will wait. And then once you’re really upset, it will all come out like a volcano. And so I started to notice that she’s not the only one. A lot of people use it to suppress.

Speaker #0
So that’s interesting. So let’s, I just want to go back. Cause we, right. You just, you just threw out like a lot of information about mindfulness. So that’s okay. I just want to like kind of dissect this because I have my own experience with mindfulness, but you are the expert. And so I want to just really get clear on what mindfulness is exactly. And I know you mentioned first the science of mindfulness that it’s been in some news articles and right. It’s like, it’s starting to become like a, you know, maybe more mainstream.

Speaker #1
Yes.

Speaker #0
That’s what you want to call it. And so what is the science then of mindfulness? I mean, is there a, is there a step-by-step, is there a protocol that you follow? And then I want to talk about a little, it sounds like that you could almost take that science and then like flip it on its head. And that’s, it sounds like what, what your client had done, like that it’s like, She went like a full, almost like 180. Right. And used it like in an almost more of a negative way.

Speaker #1
In a way, there’s at least four questions.

Speaker #0
Yeah, I know.

Speaker #1
Let’s start with what mindfulness is. It’s funny because through just my own deep work, I came up with a definition of mindfulness. Later, I looked it up on several dictionaries and several websites, and everyone was trying to say my definition more complicated. So mindfulness, there’s two aspects to it. It is. Non-judgmental focused attention. That’s the whole thing. You’ve got the non-judgmental and you’ve got the focused attention. So you’ve probably heard of exercises where we’re going to mindfully drink a cup of tea or mindfully take a walk. If your attention is focused on it and there’s no judgment, it is mindful. You can mindfully wash the dishes. You can look at pain and trauma and abandonment feelings. with focused attention and no judgment. And now it’s mindful. The moment you start judging yourself for it or judging the feeling, you are no longer mindful. You might be focused on it, but you’re not mindful. You’re judgmental. If you are looking at a feeling and you’re like, it shouldn’t be there. I need to push it away. Even though someone’s doing a visualization, which is a mindfulness exercise, they’re doing a visualization. It is not truly mindful. If they need the fear to go away, if they need the feeling to go away, because you’re judging that it’s not good, that is too much for you, that it should not be there, rather than understanding that we need to be with the dark side. Negative feelings are alerting us that something needs to heal. And that’s why pushing it away permanently doesn’t work.

Speaker #0
Well, right. If you try to push, right, you can try to push some of your old traumas and ugly feels, but somehow they slip it back in there, right? And right. Yeah, the message to heal. So I, yeah. So mindfulness, I mean, I remember the first time I even learned about. about mindfulness was I was in, I think, some nutrition workshop, and they had us do the raisin, you know, you put a raisin in your mouth, and then you feel it from, you know, you feel it, and you touch it, and you taste it, and you, and you know, you let it sit there, and you just observe it without judgment. And I remember my mind being blown. I mean, this is this is many years ago. And I just thought, wow, this is just radical. And it Yeah, and it what it did was it It got me to just focus in on the attention, right? And without judgment, right? So I think what you’re saying is absolutely, you know, that’s true. It’s nonjudgmental and it’s focused attention on something. Tell me then a little bit more about it working almost against you as you, you know, know that you mentioned your client did and why this might happen.

Speaker #1
It’s funny because when we start using, you know, focused nonjudgmental attention on anything on a walk or well, let me talk a little bit first about when I talk about mindfulness practices, there’s lots of types of things. So when you’re eating the raisin, you were focused on the raisin without judgment. Now, if you it was ice cream and you were focused on all the textures, but you were like, but you’re eating ice cream is going to raise your blood sugar. And, you know, this makes you gain weight. You know, dairy is not good for you and whatever your judgments are. you are not mindful, you are focused and you are judging yourself. And right, right, right. So, so mindfulness is a basis for all the meditation type stuff. If you ever do like, say guided visualization, or empty your mind, or notice the chakras, or contemplate God’s love, all these guided type things that you can find, you can find all that stuff on YouTube, are they generally start with something that grounds you in the body. So, and therapists teach a lot of grounding. So it’s going to be what focus on your breath, notice it go in and out, notice the rise and fall of your chest. So you’re bringing a focus into your body, which is a really good way to get out of your head story, all the thoughts. So if you can get a lot of focus on your body, and then usually you’re not judging your breath. So it’s easier not to judge when you’re focused on your breath. Although some people will that, am I doing it right? Am I breathing too fast? I need to slow it down. Okay, now we’re getting into a little bit of trouble. There’s no, you know, there might be some guidance for fun, but if you’re not, if you’re judging yourself for it, then you need to just let it breathe. But mindfulness is that focused on judgmental attention. And it is the foundation for meditation, for visualizations, for grounding, for DBT, which is a type of therapy for mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy. So it actually is mainstream in that it’s mainstream therapies. But that’s the foundation. And so when people try something like a guided visualization, right? So probably the most common guided visualization is let’s go to the beach. That’s why I use that as an example. What do you like about the beach? Well, the sun’s on my skin. I can hear the waves. I see the sand. I see the waves. I hear the breeze. I feel my feet in the sand. I smell the salt water. You know, we use all the senses and it makes it really visual and it draws. all of our attention out of our stories and concerns and into the beach. And it’s very relaxing. And there is a lot of, you know, brain scan stuff and a lot of outcome studies on how calming it is for the mind to do that. But then when we think, if I feel bad, I have a solution. I imagine my happy place. I imagine the beach that you never deal with it. And the thing is, you’re not at the beach, you’re in life. And when you go through life and something happens and you feel a rejection or you feel pressure, you feel any of the things that trigger you, someone’s angry and it brings up childhood stuff. And you’re like, I need to go to the beach. You need to go to the beach. The emotions that you don’t deal with will stack up. I’ve got a part of my book that says the pain adds up and it describes how this works. The pain adds up. So coping skills are a wonderful thing. short term. I think this is probably a good way to answer where I’m at with this. They’re good short term. So if something tragic happens, if I see a horrible accident and I have a child with me and the child needs to know that the world will be okay again and I’m freaked out, I’m going to use coping skills so I can be a stable source for that child and get her home and soothe her and do whatever until she’s asleep. Until she’s… I’ve done everything I can. And then when I’m alone, it’s no longer time for coping skills. It’s time for me to go into my anxiety, my fear, my hurt, my despair, my freak out, and go into a healing skill. Coping skills get you through the moment. Healing skills get you through life to a happier life. So coping skills, yeah, short-term versus long-term.

Speaker #0
Yeah, that sounds like a… Because I was going to ask you about that. What is the difference between coping skills versus healing skills, which sound, you know, coping to me sounds like trauma induced, you know, like it’s just, we got to like kind of grin and bear it and like get by, you know, like just what we were raised to help us survive, you know, and, and healing skills sound a lot more gentle and, and something that you cultivate as more of a habit. Am I, am I saying that correctly?

Speaker #1
Yeah, absolutely. When, when I need to get through a moment, if something triggers me, because, you know, in spite of having all this knowledge, I’m still human and I get triggered. So if I’m triggered and I’m in a grocery store, I could cry. You know, I’m not scared to cry. I’m not scared of my feelings, but it’s not my first choice crying in a grocery store. So I might use coping skills just because that’s, that’s what I’d prefer to do. And then when I get home and I’m by myself. okay, what triggered me? Let’s open the box. Let’s look at it and time to work on my feelings. That’s when you need the healing skill. And what I found with therapeutic mindfulness is that when I help people sit through it, sometimes these triggers, these things that come up can last for like, sometimes it can be healed in 15 minutes. So I think it might work right now to share one example. And this is an example that I have in the book. So it’s sanctioned by the person, all the stories in the book were, you know, sanctioned and signed off. But I didn’t have a client who there’s a trigger that happens Friday night, or Friday or Saturday, I think this, it happens. And then she tells me that she goes into this spiral. And she’s like, on the floor in the bathroom, weeping all night long. And the next day, she spends a whole day in bed. And by Monday, she has to go work and adult again and go out in the world. And then she kind of goes back to her routine. And this is something that happens. And she had done this therapeutic mindfulness. I had taught her and she had done it, but she was in the habit of remembering it. So I’m like, well, take the worksheets, put them by your bedside. You know, so about three weeks later, same kind of thing happens. She goes into the spiral. She sees the worksheets. She decides to go into her body and, um, and work, work the process in 30 minutes. She’s okay. Instead of all night and the whole next day or longer, instead of a day and a half of pain, 30 minutes, she’s okay. But then a little while later that evening, another like layer of it comes to the surface and she’s triggered again. She does it again, 10 minutes that time. She’s okay. 40 minutes total. And her weekend was fine.

Speaker #0
So it sounds like her. her coping skill, right. Was to go dark, right. For, and that was just, that’s what she knew. And you were teaching her some healing skills and she could get out of her, I’m just calling it a dark hole, you know, like, you know, much faster than if she was just using those coping skills.

Speaker #1
Yeah. And the cool thing about the healing, coping skills kind of get you through the moment and things get a little bit more distant sometimes. But to me, if the healing skill has truly worked, and if you look through the process in my book, the last step in the process is go back to it. Because normally, you know, if you’re dealing with it, you’ve kind of calmed down from something. You don’t want to go back and think about it again. I tell you to do exactly that. Okay, bring it back up. Bring up the thought. Bring up the image. Bring up the phone call. Bring up the thing that got you triggered and look at it. How much of the feeling comes back? And sometimes it’s just a little bit. Okay. Sit with that much. How much of it does it come back? And sometimes it’s not at all. It’s just, it’s just something that happened. That’s when you know it’s healed. You can look directly at it and it doesn’t hurt.

Speaker #0
I have my own story with mindfulness. I mean, mindfulness absolutely got me. I mean, I’m a nutritionist. I know a lot about food. I know a lot about eating and diets and fat grams and, you know, like all the things. Like, I mean, I learned that I got my master’s degree in clinical nutrition. And I was having a problem losing weight, especially after I had my kids. And I realized that the missing link, I mean, because I was trying to just follow these like traditional diets and just count this and do this and everything. And the one thing, the only thing that really moved the needle for me was to start practicing mindfulness. I mean, to get really mindful about it. I mean, I was in like a mindless eating, you know, just, I just,

Speaker #1
it was like you’re following rules, which meant that you had to kind of strong arm yourself into doing it this way or that way.

Speaker #0
Yes. I mean, and I was also then falling back on a lot of emotional eating. I mean, I was like, I’m having a bad day. I’m exhausted. My kids are, you know, exhausting me today. And so I, therefore I deserve, you know, and fill in the blank, ice cream, a glass of wine, whatever, you know, whatever it was, my coping thing. I’m not quite sure how I started like latching on to. mindfulness practice. I can’t really, I honestly can’t remember, but I know that it was the thing that absolutely moved the needle for me. And I had to be very consistent with just being, you know, I think you mentioned like nonjudgmental and focused attention, you know, with everything. And to this day, I mean, I’m still, I still, you know, have to be very nonjudgmental with my food choices, what I do. And I think you mentioned something about, you know, like even eating ice cream can be mindful. And I try to tell that to my clients a lot too, that it’s okay to eat ice cream. I’m not saying that you can’t ever eat ice cream or desserts or have a glass of wine, whatever you want to do, but do it with this nonjudgmental focused attention. Just be aware of what you are doing rather than-

Speaker #1
Yeah. I think it seems like it will make it worse.

Speaker #0
Yes. And then, right. And then go into a shame spiral. And then that goes, I think, then filters into a lot of compassion, right? Self-compassion. And that was another thing I had to cultivate. But mindfulness, I think, and self-compassion really go hand in hand with each other. What do you think about that?

Speaker #1
Oh, I’m so excited. First, let me throw a caveat to the readers or listeners, pardon, that the therapeutic mindfulness process. And that’s the name of the book, therapeutic mindfulness. That is for when something’s triggered deeply that you no longer wish to be triggering. You can dive into that emotion and work on healing it. Sometimes it’s a single shot. Sometimes it’s a little bit by a little bit. If it’s a really big, deep thing for you, you can work on healing it. But what you’re talking about with the eating to the more short term, what I do in the moment stuff, a self-compassion is so important. Even people that can’t have self-compassion, I’ll start with nonjudgmental because it’s neutral. Some people, when they try to have self-compassion, they’re blocked and all these judgments will flood into their head. So I see you nodding. Yeah.

Speaker #0
Yeah.

Speaker #1
So the cool thing about the mindfulness with therapeutic mindfulness, a big part of what I do, why people can take it home is that there’s a process to help you get out of your head and into your body. It’s your head that’s giving you all the judgments. So if you’re strongly triggered, you’re feeling super shame spiral. I ate ice, all right, cake and ice cream. But then I got super like blood sugar triggered and then went back when no one was looking and got seconds and then snuck a third to take home. And they’re smiling. I know we all have these stories. And they’re like, this is more shame spiral. No wonder that I can’t lose the weight anyway. And when you go into that, that’s really intense. And to be kind to yourself in your head is a very difficult thing. So as part of the process, when you have all that guilt, I teach some exercises to help you get used to what does that look like showing up in your body. And so if that feels like an elephant’s foot on your chest, or if it feels like a vice on your throat. Then you can go into your body and I ask a series of questions to get people out of the judgment story because the judgment will hold us back. You absolutely need to be out of judgment. And I ask, okay, imagine the feeling in your body. If it had a size, how big would it be? If it had a weight, how heavy would it be? If it had a color, what color would it be? If it had a temperature, if it had a texture, what would it feel like to touch? And these sound strange and abstract, but when people go into it, and these are people that I’m teaching that are not meditators, do not have a history of this. And they’re like, that’s weird. And I’ll ask them and I’ll say, I don’t know why, but it seems like it’s blue. Okay, great. It’s blue. And then all these dimensions will come up. And now you have a blue. gooey, squishy thing in your head that’s weighing you down. Like it’s like lead, but it’s like gooey and, or it might be a solid plate of metal that’s over your heart, things like that. And then I teach them to go in without the judgment and say, okay, let it be there. It’s just a hurt part of you. Let it be listened to let yourself be uncomfortable, allow it. And then as they’re watching their body, it starts to shift. and change on their own. And sometimes they’ll get worse for a moment. And if you can listen to it without judging it, it’s almost as if the feeling itself that’s hurt says, finally, someone’s listening to me. And the biggest word I hear when it starts to dissipate is relief. It feels like relief. And when it really goes away, then it’s like peaceful contentment after that. So getting out of the story of judgment is so important. And when I find people get into the practice of using therapeutic mindfulness, over time, they start to be able to observe. And this is one of the benefits of all the mindfulness type practices is being able to observe yourself without the judgment. But to give people a jumpstart in the book, I do have a chapter just on self-compassion. In fact, if I write a second book, it will be about self-compassion because it’s so important. A basic thesis that I have for all healing is that judgment will block your healing, but self-compassion facilitates healing. It nurtures that. And so it’s about what’s a mindset to look at. And one of my favorite little tips and tricks here is, you know, the process of therapeutic mindfulness is a skill that it’s called a healing skill because you need to practice and develop and all the things. But for a little tidbit for them right now, working on. okay, I ate the cake and then I had another cake and they don’t know how big of a piece of cake I had because I ate two bites before I went out to make it look like the slice was smaller.

Speaker #0
Right. Yeah. We’ve all been there.

Speaker #1
Telling, telling all my secrets here, my dirty secrets. And then when we go into what parts are showing up, what’s showing up, it’s like, there’s this judgment, there’s this hurt, there’s this despair of I’m never going to do that. I’m never going to get there. And then there’s a statement. I like to say, it’s hard to be the person who that, or the part that so It’s hard to have to do it perfectly. It’s hard to be the person that thinks if I mess up, I’m not lovable. And these self-compassion statements in the moment, if you can say, it’s hard to feel like I had to do it perfect. It’s hard to be the one that messed up. It’s hard. It’s just hard. It’s hard to be a woman in my case with blood sugar issues that will have cravings last for days, multiple days. That’s hard. It’s hard to try to get back on the wagon. Sometimes it’s hard. All these things are hard. It’s hard to feel that my self-worth is tied up in my body image. And when you look at that and you say, oh gosh, it’s hard to be that aspect of yourself that’s hurting. Sometimes there’s a softness that happens in how we’re seeing ourself. And if we can talk to ourself, if you had a dear friend or a daughter in pain about this or anyone and someone that you love so gently and you talk to the part of you that’s showing up hurt the way you talk to them and you say it’s hard to be the part that needs to do it perfectly to be afraid that you won’t be loved to be afraid that you’re going to be judged it’s

Speaker #0
a hard thing to go through that yeah and it’s going to say that yeah i mean you know it’s how would you talk to a friend it’s one thing to have to say like you know to yourself about it which can feel completely unrelatable, I think, to… a lot of women especially, but if you can think about how would you talk to a friend?you would never probably talk to a friend the way you talk to yourself sometimes. But just going on that, I just have a question because none of us come into this world, I think, with a clean slate. That’s my belief.

Speaker #1
It’s a whole other podcast.

Speaker #0
Yeah. And when it comes to food and diets and body image and the beliefs we have, certainly impact our lives. I mean, I, you know, I. I’ll just use myself for an example. I mean, I grew up with all of that happening. There was no loving your body, you know, when I was younger, I mean, I was just programmed to be judgment. You’re supposed to be as a woman, you’re supposed to be judge judgy about your body. Because we’ve just, you know, we’ve just been doing greater, we always had to be on a diet, all the women in my family, which, you know, that, and that’s right, that’s a whole other probably podcast. But I mean, I think my question is when someone has is like, you know, has that judgmental base, you know, foundation, how do you crack that? You know, how do you really how do you take the steps or how do you know if I mean, if if that’s just really just inbred in them to just be so critical of themselves?

Speaker #1
It is a practice. do it. So the, the. The self-compassion chapter of the book talks about the mindset and the way, the way to kind of look at that. If you look at yourself as a whole, it’s real easy to judge what you’re doing wrong and all that. And we feel like we get to a certain age. I should have known it all by the time I was 18. I’m grown now. I should know. I should have no problems. I should go 25. I should be over this 30. I should be over this 40. I should be over this. I should know better. And it’s like, we always, we feel like. beating ourselves up is going to get us there, but it hasn’t gotten us there. So what can we do differently? And I really think the self-talk, I like to separate out the part of me that’s struggling. Okay. And so I have a few clients in therapy that will kind of chuckle and say, okay, well, this just makes me crazy because I have these parts. So I just want to throw out there a caveat that this is not multiple personalities. This is not schizophrenia. If I’m looking at a Sunday. in ice cream sundae and i have parts that show part of me wants to eat it part of me thinks that i should leave it alone part of me is judging my body part of me is judging myself for not having self-control or holding value on whether or not i can hold back that so i’ve got a judging part i’ve got a part that wants it and a part that’s afraid that i’ll never get over this okay so i have parts that come up but anything’s like that if you know anything that pleasure oh i shouldn’t Oh, I should. I want to call out of work today. I don’t know, whatever it is. So we have parts. We have aspects. We have different opinions about the same thing. So this is normal. And so the part that’s showing up hurt in some way, that’s the part. And we have different aspects of who we are. I have a part of me that knows how to be very nurturing and loving. So it could be your motherly part. I’m a mother. It could be your motherly part. It could be the older, wiser self that’s gone through the healing. But you take the part of you that can nurture and look at the part of you that feels little and ashamed and say, it’s hard to be the part that has to do perfect. Let me hold you in this. Where’s the shame in my body? And then hold that shame and say, you’re allowed to show up today. One of my very favorite things to say when we’re working with the parts of us that are hurting is it’s okay to feel that way. but you don’t have to do it alone. And I’m going to allow my nurturing part to show up and be with you the way we would for a child who is hurting. So that’s kind of the mindset, but the mindset is a practice. It’s a practice. This might be something to write and put on your, on your bathroom mirror, on your bed stand until you get into the habit of. When whatever shameful is showing up, say it’s hard to be the part that has to do it all perfectly. Let me hold you what’s going on, you know, and, and get into the practice of responding. And when I’ve been in my own shame spiral, when I’ve remembered that I can feel a softening toward myself and then the shame will want me to go back in. I’m like, but then I’ll repeat it. No, no, no. It’s hard to be the part that has to do this perfectly. And that allows me to hold myself a little bit and everything softens. And believe it or not, Once you soften the judgment, it’s actually easier to get back to the logic of what you need to do.

Speaker #0
Yeah, it’s really a practice, isn’t it? I mean, and I love what you said about like maybe writing it down and sticking it somewhere. I mean, I have sticky notes. If you see my computer in my office, I have sticky notes everywhere with like little sayings on it, you know, because I’m a very visual person. I need to just like be, I need to look at it and see it and remind it because- And we need reminders. Yeah, because we could get, we could drift into a mindless thing about like we could forget. I mean, because we’ve got so many other things. happening with us. I mean, I think another thing too, that I really did was not to just react when something negative, you know, was happening, like, oh, I ate the ice cream or, you know, and practice mindfulness that way. But also when something positive happened, you know, like when I had, I felt like I had a really great day of, I don’t know, I want to call it eating, but not dieting. I’m not saying dieting, you know, but I just had like a… I just felt like I had a really good day.

Speaker #1
And I learned about how you took care of yourself that day. Yes.

Speaker #0
And I would make sure, and I still do this, and to just like give yourself a pat on the back, you know, like you did a great job. I think we need to be our own cheerleaders. So especially women, I think that we need to, you know, really advocate for ourselves because there’s so many messages out on the internet saying, you know, like get on a diet. I mean, there’s, it is just, you know, I mean, you could just. drown. I love that.

Speaker #1
So I love that application so much that I think I’m going to incorporate it into my eating pattern. So thank you. Thank you.

Speaker #0
You’re welcome. Yeah,

Speaker #1
it’s absolutely true. Part of why I wrote my book is because there’s so much of pushing the, the only the positive psychology, only the pleasant part of mindfulness that people don’t know how to use it to heal the negative stuff. So it’s kind of like filling in a hole, but the positive stuff is really useful. And one thing that I suggest at some point in my book is Like when you sit with something negative and you’re, and the feeling goes away and you’re feeling good, like boom, done. Oh yeah. You know, that’s, that’s cool. Especially if you’re in a hurry, but if you’re not in a hurry, stay in it. What does your body feel like without it? And I hear peace, relief, contentment. I’m light. My shoulders are loose. I’ve, my chest feels open. I can breathe easily. My head feels light. So I hear light. open a lot and it just feel light, open, content and relief and peaceful. And then you can take moments and keep noticing your body in that state and really reinforce that. And it’s after you’ve worked through something difficult, especially it’s such a cool payoff, but I’m also going to borrow what you said and just like, let’s do reflection and enjoy how good it feels that. I feel good about what I ate today. My body feels good. My mind feels good. My heart feels good. Let’s pause and celebrate and enjoy that. Because when we feel good, we just, I feel like half the time, we just want the absence of pain. We don’t remember to stop and enjoy the fact that there’s an absence of pain. Enjoy feeling good. That’s beautiful.

Speaker #0
Yeah, no, well, and that’s such a good point too. I mean, just, just that word joy, right? That we can, that we can actually like our bodies, enjoy, enjoy it. But, you know, feel good. Because, I mean, the women I work with in my space, I mean, you’re not really allowed to feel joy about your body or good about your body. I mean, we’re always like, oh, you know, even if someone says to you, like, oh, you look great today. Oh, really?

Speaker #1
Would you care to hear a horrific story? Because I know, like, we just jumped right into mindfulness stuff. And I know people like to connect to the story. But speaking of not preaching the joy. I know you appreciate this awful story and is not a, not a kind of story. So I’m 16 and I go on my first diet, you know, I, I must’ve not been happy with something. Maybe my pants were getting a little tight. So I basically don’t eat huge amounts of junk. You know, when you’re 16, you just eat like one less piece of pizza and you lose 10 pounds. So I lose 10 pounds in one week and I’m like, and I’m really happy with how I look. My jeans feel good. And so I tell my mom. Hey, I went on, I went on a diet and I lost 10 pounds. And my mom says, Oh, that’s great. Just 10 more and you’ll be perfect. I had no idea that she thought I was too much. And I suddenly learned mom thinks I’m chunky. I like how I look, but my mom thinks I’m chunky. I never knew. And she just laid it out right there. Oh, and I’m sure so many of us have so many stories. I heard yours from your early podcast that yours are so much more. overt. I only got mine when I solicited it.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
Yeah, we have those.

Speaker #0
But it’s a story you don’t forget, right? I mean, that’s the imprint that sits, you know, in your head.

Speaker #1
And I know it wasn’t malicious because, you know, years later, there’s this picture of her when she was really young. She’s like, look at this. I was so skinny. And clearly she came from, you know, an era that valued that. And so she passed it on not realizing it.

Speaker #0
You could definitely say that, that parents pass things on, right? From, from whatever they’re dealing with in their generation without ever understanding the impact it’s going to have on the next generations. And, you know, just that one sentence could make you feel.

Speaker #1
By the way, to everybody, you can love them and you can understand they didn’t mean it. And you’re still allowed to be hurt by their limitations and to nurture their hurt.

Speaker #0
Yeah. So, I mean, I think. you know, like I said before, it’s the beliefs and the messages and the self-criticism and, and the judgment starts young. I don’t think we walk into adulthood like with a blank slate and then start judging ourselves. I think it’s, you know, it starts. Yeah.

Speaker #1
Even before that, I, you know, I remember having some ideals and I don’t know where they came from, but when I was a very little kid was the 80s and women in the 80s you look at them and they look ill And they probably half of them are, I don’t know. There’ll be a few with a tiny build, but they just look so tiny. That is uncomfortable. And I don’t even want to look like that. And yet there are certain ideals that are stuck with me, you know, like for me, flat stomach, some people don’t care about, they literally don’t care about that. And for me, it’s like, oh, and, and I still look at that, even though I know better. I think there’s some things that just kind of get imprinted and that’s why we need compassion.

Speaker #0
Absolutely. We need compassion more than ever now. I mean, even though you can see some, you know, if you’re on social media or on the internet, there’s some more body acceptance and, you know, healthy at every size and intuitive eating and things like that. But body criticism, it’s alive and well. I mean, it is. I mean, there’s more, there’s probably more eating disorders and everything now than there ever.

Speaker #1
That’s why we need the tools, all the tools we can get.

Speaker #0
Yeah. We definitely do. So is there anything else? I mean, I feel like we’ve really, we dived in a really pretty deeply about mindfulness and I just love this topic, but anything else that you want to just bring to our conversation or anything, you know, any takeaways or, when it comes to women and, you know, that just this, this, the judgment, I think that women might have around there. own bodies and just trying to practice mindfulness in that way. Yeah,

Speaker #1
I think the self-compassion statements are a practice. That’s probably the one of the biggest things. I mean, the, one of the key messages I have for anyone is something that no one wants to hear. I’m sure we want to find the secret, the key that will unlock. all the things, and then it’ll all be better. We want the fix. We want the solution. It is not a solution. It is a practice. And so the practice means finding those statements that are helpful, finding the way to talk to yourselves. And again, you know, I’ve got that chapter that’s just all about mindset of self-compassion, examples of what it looks like. But if you can find the way to talk to yourself in your harshest moments and make a practice of talking to yourself kindly. Then that’s what it needs to be a practice, How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. How do you get to self-compassion? Practice, practice, practice. And another thing I like to say is sometimes we want to take on the affirmations or the statements that we’ve heard that sound good, that work for other people. We want to take like, okay, they said that we should believe this. And so I’m going to repeat that to myself in my head, because I would like to believe that. If you check in with your, you have intuition. Everyone has deep wisdom, but they don’t know necessarily to listen to it or how to differentiate that from all their other reactions. So if you are trying to tell yourself an affirmation or give yourself a self-compassionate statement and you check in with yourself and you believe it’s 0%, it will not work for you. I am beautiful and everyone loves me. If I say that crap, in the back of my brain, it’s like, that’s some bull. Okay. My brain is not fooled. So what you need is something that is helpful that you. can grasp on to, something that’s true for you to an extent. So how about I’m learning to accept the ways that I am good. I’m learning to accept the ways I’m beautiful. I’m learning to give myself credit when I do well. Things like that. It’s not black or white. It’s not all or nothing. But if you say I’m learning to see areas where I’m doing this well, where I’m making progress, where I have beauty, whatever the thing is. Can you see how that’s more easy to grasp and believe?

Speaker #0
I mean, I, I, cause I, I’ve just, and I’m laughing, I’m sort of smiling because I have so many experiences with, with, you know, this is years ago, just like, just do the effort. You know, if you just say the affirmations every single day, I am beautiful. I am loved. I am the, I mean, they, they start to become, you can just numb out on affirmations that aren’t yours, right. That you don’t have any attachment to. So I think this is such a great point that affirmations are fantastic and it helps you to stay mindful, but they have to be yours. You have to own them. They can’t be somebody else’s.

Speaker #1
Absolutely. I’m really big on personalized. Actually, I have a section on that too, a small section. But on personalizing your affirmations, making them not all or nothing, that’s a trick I really like. If I say I am beautiful, well, not to that person. Sometimes I am. I don’t think I’m that cute when I weigh more. You know, like there’s all this stuff. Your brain can start arguing with me, but you can say, you know, there are beautiful things about me. I can believe that. And the other thing is I use affirmations meditatively. So once I do that, you slow down and you reflect. Otherwise, you’re just rattling off the words. Might as well rattle off the alphabet if you’re just going to rattle it off.

Speaker #0
Exactly.

Speaker #1
There are ways I am beautiful. And then reflect on that. It’s going to sink. from just words into my emotional mind, into my being, into my awareness. And that’s how you use affirmations more effectively.

Speaker #0
That’s a great point. And I think a great endpoint to our conversation. This has been such a fantastic talk. And I want to just tell my listeners how they can get in touch with you and where they can find your book.

Speaker #1
Okay. My book is on Amazon. It’s Therapeutic Mindfulness, a Healing Skill. not a coping skill. And then they can reach me now as a therapist, I’m kind of chronically overbooked, but I still, but I would like to do more speaking and teaching and workshops and things like that. So if there is anyone that wants to reach me for those reasons, then you can go to ruthfearnow.com. My last name Fearnow, F E A R N O W. It really is like the words be afraid right now.

Speaker #0
Okay.

Speaker #1
Although I could say, sit with your fear now to heal it and feel better later.

Speaker #0
Yeah, no, I like it.

Speaker #1
So ruthfearnow.com is a contact for teaching stuff or actually on the front page, I have a link to my book and I have a link to different podcasts that I’ve done.

Speaker #0
Okay, great. Well, I will put all of that in the show notes. And so people can definitely quickly access it that way.

Speaker #1
Thank you.

Speaker #0
Ruth, thank you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation. And I know that my listeners are going to get a lot out of it. I know that I did too. So thank you. I appreciate it.

Speaker #1
Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it. And I love hearing your wisdom as well, because I am a woman and I eat and I have a body. So I need your help as well. Thank you.

Speaker #0
Good. Well, thanks. We can help each other.

Speaker #1
Yes.

Speaker #0
Okay. Thanks so much. And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.