[00:00:02] Ready to lose 40 plus pounds without giving up happy hours, weekend brunches, or date nights. Then it's time to uncover the hidden link between binge eating and toxic relationships. And finally, break free from both. Welcome to the Hungry for Love podcast with Jillian Scott. Y' all ready? Let's go.
[00:00:24] Hey. Hey. Welcome back. All right, so we are going to continue in this series, and so often we are suffering in silence, and a lot of times I see this in marriages. We can be suffering in weight loss through divorce, and then also with this overarching theme of depression. And so I am going to share my depression story in a separate episode. As I was recording different episodes, I noticed it got really long. It felt very convoluted. And so for today, I want to talk about toxic positivity, because I think this actually contributed to my depression, and I think it contributes to why we can feel really frustrated and why things can feel really hard. Even though it's like we're looking on the bright side, we're looking for the silver lining. We're just staying positive and how sometimes that can work against us. There's some little nuance to it. And sometimes we really also have to discern what is best for us in this moment. What do we need? And sometimes what we are doing is yes. And it's like, it's hard, it's challenging, and we know that it's the right thing or I need to initiate this divorce. This is where we need to go. And it feels terrible right now.
[00:01:35] Yes, this is the right decision, and it feels awful, but it was this deeper knowing of this is what needs to happen. And part of why I think I was able to navigate the divorce so quickly. It happened in three months. And relatively emotionally stable, I would say, was because I was also willing to allow all of the grief and all of the emotion to come up. And part of my struggle since then has been not wanting to feel negative emotions, not wanting things to be a struggle. So I'll get into that a little bit more. But this aspect of toxic positivity, I think, really resonated with me because as I was reading about that and better understanding that concept, I was like, oh, yeah, I definitely do that. And I've gotten a lot better, but that is still something that I skew towards. And so the way that I think about it is toxic positivity is when we have an unhealthy relationship with emotions, and it's negative. Emotions are bad, and I can't think about them. I can't see them. I Can't look at them, I can't allow them. So we're just going to stop, stuff them off to the side. And I just have to stay positive. I have to stay happy and looking on the bright side. But it's almost like a lying to yourself about it. It's this unhealthy reliance on just stay happy, just stay positive. High vibes only, which I think is total bs. And this high vibes only concept, it makes you out to be a robot. Like, it doesn't allow you to be a real human. And so I don't love that. And while I think we want to be mindful of other people's energy that we're allowing in, we do have to guard that. Especially for somebody like me as an empath, the way that I am designed and wired, I pick up on very subtle cues from other people and their emotions. Like, even with the pastor yesterday, I could tell he seemed a little low, a little sad, a little tired, a little weary. Like, I could just tell there was something off. It was so slight and so subtle. But it's something that I notice and that I pick up on. For better or worse. I pick up very quickly, very easily on other people's emotions. And that's part of what can make me a really great coach. But I also have to be really mindful of the energy of other people that I am around because I am more likely to take that on. And so I think because of that, I have also been guarded and very much been like, okay, I gotta stay in my Bible. I gotta stay positive. Just stay happy. And that has been to a detriment at times.
[00:04:01] So the way that I see toxic positivity is this unhealthy relationship with positivity. And it really stems from an inability to acknowledge and be present with negative emotions or what we might deem are negative circumstances.
[00:04:18] It's like, I am so afraid. I am so resistant to anything negative. I can't see it, can't touch it, can't look at it. Like, don't make eye contact. Just stay over here and just stay positive. Just think happy thoughts and we'll be fine. It's that I'm going to bury my head in the sand and I'm not going to acknowledge what's really happening.
[00:04:39] And so I'm ignoring negative circumstances. I'm ignoring negative thoughts, negative emotions. And the problem is that when we are ignoring things, we can't fix them. When we are ignoring the thoughts and the emotions, we now let them continue to spiral. We don't actually address them.
[00:04:59] And so it takes a lot of courage to be able to look at something and to say or to see this isn't working.
[00:05:06] And so part of this has come up for me, like this really came up in my marriage was like this reckoning of just stay positive. Divorce is not an option.
[00:05:17] Make the best of what you've got. Don't ask for too much. Lay small, play in these rules, color in these lines. And when we can just fit in just right, everything's going to be fine. Make sure to keep the peace, keep them happy, keep them from exploding, and we'll be good in a very survival way. We learn who do I need to be and how do I need to operate in order to keep the peace and not make waves and keep everybody and everything fine.
[00:05:43] It's a very maladaptive coping mechanism.
[00:05:46] I learned it as a kid and I got even better at it as an adult and being married. And I thought I had good intentions.
[00:05:54] And when I had this idea of divorce is not an option, especially with it, my second marriage, divorce was definitely now not an option. Could not have two divorces. Absolutely not. And when I look back on the first marriage really wasn't a marriage. I saw him three times in three years.
[00:06:11] I wish I would have just gotten it annulled. But hindsight. But with this second marriage, there was a lot of just look at how to make this work. Just try to fix it. Let's just try to stay happy. Just look on the bright side. And this constant, just stay happy, just stay positive wasn't helpful because it didn't allow me to really address and identify the hurt and the pain and the struggle and the suffering that was happening.
[00:06:37] I would say the first year was really hard. And so when the second year got a little bit better, I had this thought of, oh, we can do this, we can figure this out.
[00:06:46] And when we weren't living together and he was deployed, there was a lot where we could make it work. And we had a lot of good times. And so a lot of it was also like, just focus on the good, just focus on the positive, just stay happy. But there was this inability to actually address the negative side of things. And then when I would address anything negative, and this is something I learned, we only lived together for six months in the beginning, like within the first.
[00:07:12] Oh, I think I can't remember now if it was the first three and a half or four years of marriage. We only lived together for six months of that. But I learned in that six months not to Bring stuff up because it was just gonna get turned around on me. I remember in the kitchen, like, I was trying to bring up an issue with him, and I think I was like sweeping or I was like cleaning or something, and I tried to bring up this issue with him, and it just got flipped around back on me. And I remember afterwards cleaning, and I was just like, what just happened here? Like, how did I become the problem? How was I the issue? This doesn't make any sense, but yet I just accepted it. And I was frustrated, but there was also this sense of no good is going to come from bringing up this issue. No good is going to come from conflict. And so I learned to appease and then to run away, smooth out the conflict, to try to avoid conflict. But I just bottled it up.
[00:08:06] And then it was always, just stay happy, just stay grateful. Let's not look at the downside. I really created a space for myself where in my brain, in my emotional state, the emotional capacity, there was no space for negativity. And it was almost like, why bother? It's not going to do any good. It's not going to be helpful. And then I would feel bad or wrong if I had certain thoughts or certain things came up. Like, I remember in the. I think this was in the first year of marriage, I had a thought of. Of my ex boyfriend wouldn't have said this to me. He wouldn't have done this to me. He wouldn't be treating me like this, like he would never have done this to me. And then I felt really guilty. I shouldn't be comparing him. I shouldn't compare my spouse to an ex boyfriend. That's bad, that's horrible. And I think there was probably some shame intertwined there, but it was very much, oh, shut it down, don't look at it. And that's a really insightful thing to recognize. And that shows a very clear problem of, oh, he wouldn't have treated me like this. That's a big flag. I think about, like, different songs where I would think about an ex boyfriend and not my spouse, or I would think about my spouse, but maybe in more of a negative way. It was like there were these subtle little things, but then I would feel guilty or then I would feel ashamed. And so then I shut it down. It became this place for me where it really turned into, just stay positive. Just look on the bright side.
[00:09:29] And the challenge with that is that I couldn't actually evaluate. I couldn't really look at the problems. I couldn't look at the pain. And when you come at it from a Christian perspective as well, or any type of spiritual perspective, we look at God and a lot of people will have really good intentions. But I think sometimes the church and certain people will say things like, you just need to pray harder, you just need to have more faith. If you were in God's will, everything would be working out fine. Right? It's this like lingering prosperity gospel of if you are doing the right thing by God, God will quote, bless you, which means you are happy.
[00:10:07] And so we think then that if we're not always happy that something has gone wrong. And I think this comes up with depression too. And thinking that we can heal or work through something like depression or anxiety just with prayer. And I think prayer is really powerful. It's really important. It's a great part of the healing journey.
[00:10:24] I don't think that prayer is the end all, be all. I don't think you can pray your way out of constant negative thoughts, constant negative emotions, an inability to regulate your nervous system.
[00:10:35] I don't think that you can pray your way out of depression or anxiety. I don't think prayer is the one standalone solution. I don't. I think some people it's helpful for medication. I think some people it's talk therapy. For some people it's coaching. For some people there's alternative methods. I think there are other aspects. And yes, absolutely, let's pray.
[00:10:57] And let's also look at how we can better understand what's happening in our brains, in our bodies, with our emotions.
[00:11:06] So it doesn't have to be an either or. But I think sometimes in the kind of religious side of things, we can feel bad or guilty because we are going through something like depression or because we have anxiety, like there's something wrong with us or that our relationship with God isn't good enough, it's not strong enough, we're not Christian enough, we're not Jewish enough, we're not whatever enough.
[00:11:27] That in and of itself is a very narcy way of looking at things of I am not enough.
[00:11:33] I am not enough in this area.
[00:11:35] My personal view and my belief is that God has given us tools and resources and psychology and the ability to better understand our brains and our bodies and our nervous system. And he has given us medicine and he has given us healthcare. And while healthcare around the world varies and healthcare in the US can be problematic, there are still issues with it. I think God, God has given us tools and resources and things that can help. While I know I might have a headache because I'M dehydrated and I need to drink more water. I also know that maybe I also need a little ibuprofen. Or if I have really bad cramps one day, you better believe I'm taking some ibuprofen. Right? Like I'm going to take something that's going to help. We want to look at how can I address the symptoms while also still getting to the root cause, while getting to the root issue.
[00:12:23] And now can I solve both? And that's how I think of depression sometimes is there are going to be symptoms of depression that we want to be able to mitigate and we want to be able to look at and address while also solving the root issue.
[00:12:37] Just like with emotional eating, we want to be able to solve the symptom of the food and the cravings and the urges and the desire, but we also have to solve the root, the root emotions, the root challenges.
[00:12:50] We need to do both.
[00:12:52] That is how we want to be looking at and addressing emotions. Right? We need to be able to allow both.
[00:12:58] I've always been a very positive person. I am always very happy, very peppy. I have great energy. That is something that people comment on the most. I get comments about my hair and comments about my energy, right? Like when I get compliments, those are typically what they're about. I pride myself in that. And I do enjoy being a happy, positive person. That just comes naturally to me.
[00:13:20] And I know it's not for everybody. I know I'm not everybody's cup of tea. Sometimes I'm more a shot of coconut tequila.
[00:13:28] But sometimes I lean too much into the positive to where I'm avoiding the negative, where it's shield my eyes, hide my eyes, don't look at that, I can't touch it. And I'm now going to avoid anything negative and at all costs.
[00:13:44] And so what was really interesting was I hired a business coach at the end of 2021 and so was working with her all of 2022 and had really great results, but really working through a lot of time management and mindset and emotional capacity. And one of the things that came up in that first kind of six months of working with her was recognizing how much I fought and resisted and avoided negative emotions, even low level emotions like disappointment.
[00:14:11] And that was one of the big shifts, was recognizing the more willing I am to feel something like disappointed. It's not even a big terrible emotion, but just how much I was avoiding feeling disappointed. And so I wouldn't set goals, I wouldn't go after big goals. I didn't know how to really talk and treat myself if I didn't hit that goal. And it was like this fear of, I don't want to be disappointed.
[00:14:32] And so it's now I'm going to try to do the right thing, and I've got to do it perfectly. And so I'm going to lower my goal and lower my standard, all in an attempt to try to keep me happy, to try to keep me from feeling this disappointment. But it wasn't allowing me to be as successful as I could be.
[00:14:48] And when I finally opened up and allowed myself to feel disappointed, I think I signed six clients in a month. Business exploded. And what I can also look back and see is it wasn't safe. And there was a thought of, I can't keep doing this. I can't repeat this. This was a fluke. This wasn't in my control. I don't know how to keep doing it. I don't know how to do it again.
[00:15:08] Even though there's been years now where I have continued to grow this business, it's been so fascinating to see how my brain still wants to go back to pulling back. Good things happen. And yet it feels scary. It's like the success is not safe.
[00:15:23] And this has been the work for me this year is really to unwind and unravel why, what's going on here? Because I think there have been some deeper things, some deeper aspects at play of, like, it's not safe to be successful. And also looking for some of the little thoughts that I tell myself that are really getting in the way and letting it be that simple, noticing how I tell myself I can't keep doing this. I can't recreate this. That is my number one problem. I keep telling myself I can't. I keep fighting for my inadequacy. I keep fighting for why I'm not good enough. I had to pause and I was like, why do I keep doing this?
[00:16:03] Why am I more eager to fight for why I can't do something?
[00:16:07] And it does take a shift, that does take a willingness to see this. And when we can look back over several months, maybe even several years, and see these recurring patterns, it's really powerful because by me avoiding some of these thoughts, some of these emotions, I just keep repeating them. They just keep going. When I just stay positive and just look on the bright side, I don't have the opportunity to truly learn from certain experiences or to learn from mistakes, to learn from failures, to learn from missed goals I miss out on so Much, and it just perpetuates the problem.
[00:16:43] And this, I know, is what fed into some of my depression wasn't the whole story, but I know this is part of what contributed to it was like, I can't look at the downside, I can't look at the negative.
[00:16:53] And when you have negative people in your life and some people who are constantly really paranoid, really negative, always the world's out to get them, something bad is going to happen, they're always the victim. Sometimes we want to be the complete opposite and we're like, I don't want to be anything like that.
[00:17:10] And sometimes we pick up those traits and sometimes we skew to the other end. So sometimes we pick up the negative thinking, the doomsday thinking, worst case scenarios. And I would still say my brain still will go to worst case scenarios at times. But if it's gonna skew one way or another, it's gonna skew on the side of avoiding the negative. On the negative side of things. It's like this constant negativity. The glass is always half full. It's never good enough. The world's out to get you. Kind of this victim story, victim mentality, and constantly in fear or paranoia, hopelessness, a lot of cynicism and just really disempowering thoughts and beliefs. And often the more narcy people, the ones with the more narcissistic traits, they often skew very negative. And it can feel like, you know, what you do isn't good enough or things are always your fault. And so as a protective mechanism, we try to shift this narrative. We try to find the opposite.
[00:18:09] Sometimes then what happens is because we're afraid of becoming more like them when we don't want that. It's like, well, I just have to stay happy. I just have to stay positive. But it's really this inability to actually allow and handle different situations in life. And so what happens is we end up wanting to gloss over or not look at challenges or obstacles. So when it comes to food and weight loss, it might be kind of an apathetic type of approach, or I might be like, yeah, that happened. But it's okay, don't worry about it. We're just gonna try harder today. You may not beat yourself up for it, but you're not actually learning from it because we can't truly look at it. And so it's this inability to truly evaluate and assess and learn from the challenges and the obstacles. It can also be this lens through which we don't know how to really allow ourselves to feel anything negative. And so we spend our whole lives just trying to avoid negative emot is like essentially what it comes down to. And that's how our brain is wired. And it's there as a protective mechanism. It's there trying to keep you safe. The more that we can understand these two dichotomies and how we can get stuck kind of on one end or the other, we now can look at where is their middle ground and how we can find the messy middle and this gray area between the black or the white.
[00:19:32] The whole point of this is so that we can really expand our capacity to feel. We can expand our capacity to think differently, to think better for ourselves, but also in a way that's productive, in a way that fuels us forward, in a way where we can hold space for the disappointment and the failure and the mistakes and the setbacks without letting it overrun and rule our lives. And I think so often why I couldn't look at the negative side of things, or I couldn't look at where I missed a goal or I made a mistake was because I would just beat myself up. And so it's like, oh, well, I. I can't go there. I can't trust myself there, or to be feeling something negative, or I might think, well, if I'm feeling something negative, something's gone wrong. And so it's just this constant striving to always feel good and always feel positive and always look on the bright side. It was an attempt to avoid feeling helpless. And when you go back to those core narcissistic wounds, helplessness and feeling powerless like that is one of the core aspects around the safety. The episode around feeling unsafe. A lot of times it wasn't safe to feel a negative emotion, just like it wasn't safe to really look at it and address it, because it created a sense of helplessness or hopelessness or things can't change, things won't change.
[00:20:48] And so when we are stuck in this toxic positivity, we end up just lying to ourselves is really what happens, is like we sugarcoat it. We can't tell ourselves the full truth. We end up lying to other people inadvertently because we're lying to ourselves. And all we know how to do is be that ostrich and sticking our head in the ground. We don't actually evaluate. We don't look at the patterns, we don't learn from the patterns. It's like, just stay happy, just stay positive. But it shuts us down and it's not productive. We have to become robots. Right. We have to become these robots who are constantly happy, constantly feeling good. And we learned this too with kind of growing up with narcissistic parents, whether it was one or both, but having a parent where it was like, you learned you weren't allowed to be angry, you weren't allowed to be stressed, you weren't allowed to be upset, you had to be happy, you had to be happy for somebody else. You had to be happy in order to please them. And so sometimes that's the other thing is, like, it plays into this sense of safety and security about who we are and how we operate and what the repercussions are going to be. And if we aren't happy, if we aren't positive, what the negative consequences are. It's all what our young minds made something mean. We want to be curious and we want to better understand what's really happening. Because when we are just trying to focus on the positive and just stay happy, yet there's still negative aspects there. There are negative emotions. All we know how to do is stuff them down and then what? Now we're searching for a way to avoid those negative emotions that has us turning to food, turning to alcohol, turning to a dating app, turning to something or someone else to meet our emotional needs.
[00:22:26] And so while, yes, I'm a very positive person, I also know that there are going to be times when I'm just going to be feeling down or sad or it's going to be a day where there's like a wave of grief, a wave of sadness, a wave of disappointment, a wave of, this isn't where I thought I was going to be or I want to be further along. I want to be down the road, recognizing that there's still this desire and maybe this longing.
[00:22:50] And sometimes there's just gonna be that wave of grief, that wave of sadness, and we can find peace and contentment with where we're at and also knowing that we are on this journey for a reason. And I always now see grief and sadness. And really any emotion, especially a negative one, though, is like, this is just helping me to see more of what I want. And it's helping me to recognize that where I'm at, while it may not be bad and I don't need to hurry up and get out of it, that's likely not where I want to stay. There's a message there. There's a message with our emotions. We just have to tune in and listen for it and identify it. We get to decode what that message is. Just like There's a message with emotional eating and emotional drinking. But we have to learn to shift that conversation, to tune in and figure out and decode what is this trying to tell me? What is this habit trying to tell me? What is this emotion trying to tell me?
[00:23:44] And sometimes it's where you're at. It's not where you want to stay, it's not where you want to be.
[00:23:49] And when we can accept that. And now look at, okay, so what are my next options?
[00:23:54] What kind of help? What kind of support? What do I think is going to get me where I want to go?
[00:24:00] If you are listening and you're like, oh, this makes so much sense, I can see how I keep wanting to try to just stay positive and not see any negative and just stay bright and look at how I'm winning. But we end up coloring over our pain, covering over the emotions that are really sacred, that are really there for us to experience and there to help us heal.
[00:24:22] When we can really lean in and see that as it's going to be a healing experience and a healing journey.
[00:24:29] This is what it's all about, healing from relationship trauma just as much as we're healing from food and diet trauma.
[00:24:38] And when we can bring these two things together, that is the beautiful unfolding of a life that is so good it blows your mind. And that's what I'm going to help you do. And so if you want to still lose 20 or 30 pounds this year, I can help you. There is still plenty of time. I think we get so hung up on these arbitrary timelines, around months and years and where we are in a month and how far along in the year we are. And really it's. We can throw away so much time and so much energy because we think we've already lost out when really we're barely halfway through the year, you know, and there's still plenty of time if you want to lose 20 or 30 pounds, if you want to heal your relationship with food and body, if you want to feel peace and ease and calm heading into the holidays, heading into a season that is often high, with parties and desserts and drinks and fun and these activities and things that we want to participate in. I'm going to help you create a weight loss plan and a program that you can follow that's customized to your lifestyle, your tastes and preferences. And I'm going to help you create a program that you don't need a break from, something that you can do for the rest of your life without hating your life and as we're doing this with the food and with the body, we're also going to be curating and creating a life intentionally by design, so that you don't need an escape from it. You don't need to escape it with food, you don't need to escape it with alcohol or escape it by going on a date or escape it in some other fashion.
[00:26:10] And this is what I'm going to help you do, is bring the tactical side of what do we actually do, what do we focus on and bring it in with the mindset and the emotional pieces. And when we learn to do this together and to regulate our nervous system, to manage our thoughts, to manage our emotions, to allow and fully process through all of them, there's so much healing and there's so much on the other side. And now we free up so much mental bandwidth. We free up so much of the mind drama that used to be consumed with food and exercise and what can you eat and when are you eating next and what are you allowed to do? And we free up so much bandwidth. You're going to get so much time back, so much emotional and mental capacity back because it's no longer obsessing about food or your body or what other people are thinking about you and just doing a different diet or just breaking the diet rules or just leaving a marriage or just leaving a toxic religious environment.
[00:27:06] The actual leaving of something doesn't change the internal habits and the things that you have adapted and brought into your own. And that's what I want to help you do.
[00:27:15] I want to help you to, to stay positive and stay mindful, but also give yourself the space and allowance to feel all the emotions, even when it seems like it comes out of nowhere. And I'm gonna share on another episode more about what it looks like for me just to experience a negative emotion of like, what happens when there's a wave of grief or a wave of sadness or this wave of longing. And I'm gonna share more of what does that look like when it's just a day and how I handle that and how it helps me to reset. And for the next day or the next couple of days, things get better and better. And now this week I'm like, ah, feeling back on track. I feel more aligned, I'm feeling good again. It's that slowing down is going to allow you to speed up. I'm going to talk about that a lot. The willingness to slow down will ultimately speed you up.
[00:28:05] So if you would like some help with this, I would love to chat. Your next best step is to schedule a free consultation. You can schedule and find a time on my
[email protected] schedule and that is going to sync you up with my calendar. And we're just going to get together for about an hour and talk through where you are now and where you want to be. And I'm going to help you to understand the cycles and the patterns and the things that may be playing out more subconsciously and how to bring consciousness and intentionality back to it so that you can create this life on purpose. That's so good, so amazing, it blows your mind. And it doesn't mean that every single day we feel 100% amazing, all day, every day. But it means that you learn how to navigate negative emotions. You learn how to make peace with with your negative emotions, with the sadness, with the anger, with the grief, with the rejection, with the disappointment. And you trust yourself to handle it. And you trust that the people that you are curating around you, the people you are surrounding yourself with, those people are not going to reject you. They are not going to withdraw, they are not going to withhold just because you have a negative emotion. Because often that's what we've been taught, and that's why we often can skew to the positive side of things. We can skew one way or the other, or we have just learned and picked up kind of this negative thinking because we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because it's success is not safe. Something always goes wrong. Something always happens. And I'm going to help you to make peace and to rectify this and really to break out of that trauma bond, to break out of that dysfunctional cycle and dysfunctional pattern so that you are not getting into it with other friends, other family members, with future partners, or people that you might date.
[00:29:47] We don't want to keep attracting the same dysfunctional types of people into our lives. We have to learn how those traits are showing up in ourselves. And that's what gives us the power to break them, so that we can walk away from those types of dynamics faster. And that's what I'm going to help you do. All right, y', all, I hope you have a fabulous week. I will be back in a couple days. I will drop another episode here. Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:30:16] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol, and toxic relationships. Your next step, book your free. Break the cycle. Call where you'll finally see why your binge eating and relationship patterns are so deeply connected and how to break free from both for good.
[00:30:36] You'll walk away with fierce clarity and a game plan to step into a life full of fun, adventure and self love. Grab your spot now at www.bodyucrave.com VTC.
[00:30:51] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.
