Episode Transcript
[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. And welcome to this third day of the core four wounds of narcissistic abuse. And today, we are going to dive into shame. And I think it was the beginning of April I released a podcast titled shame shuts you down. So there has been a recent podcast on this. And shame is often one topic that gets woven into a lot of podcast episodes. So you likely have heard me talk about it in many different realms, many different contexts. And I want to bring it up here, though, because this is often such a critical piece of narcissistic abuse and thus healing. We have to heal the shame and we have to learn how to stop shaming ourselves, because for many of us, we may have grown up with somebody who is very shameful and shaming. We might have been married to somebody for many years who did this to us as well. But now we are not the ones. Now we are the ones who are shaming ourselves. Now we are the biggest narci voice, right? And we can't just have a. Like, a legal divorce. We can't just divorce another person. We have to divorce these habits, divorce these patterns within us. And shame is one of the most powerful weapons a narcissist uses to control you. It's how they get you to do what they want you to do.
[00:01:49] Right? They use it because it works. Because we really don't like feeling ashamed.
[00:01:54] And it's interesting because often they will typically project and shame you when they feel shamed and. Or ashamed. And so they feel bad, they feel ashamed. Then they try to shame you to get you to show up to. To do something that will get them out of their shame. Right? It's like this cycle.
[00:02:15] They have such resistance to the shame. They can't feel it. They can't experience it.
[00:02:20] And so when we think about the abuse cycle, the other way that I think about this is it's a shame avoidance cycle.
[00:02:28] Both people, both parties, both the narcissist and the pleaser are in shame avoidance. What typically happens is there's all of that love bombing and everything's great and amazing, and then something happens, and there's a trigger and there's some type of ego injury, narcissistic injury, but their shame typically gets triggered. That is often One of the big ones. So their shame, and it might come out as like, they feel disrespected, they feel angry, but what's underneath that is often shame. So their shame button gets poked. They don't like it, it doesn't feel good, they can't feel it, they don't have the capacity to feel it. It's like they are shame avoidant, that it's, I have to get out of this feeling.
[00:03:08] And then what they do in response, what comes out is often the narcissistic traits and tendencies. So they respond with controlling, manipulative behavior, demeaning words, insults. And they often are trying to shame you because if they can do something, if they can poke your shame button now, you will show up as the pleaser, the perfectionist, the fixer. You will show up to get everybody back on track.
[00:03:38] They are using you to regulate their nervous system. And because they are dysregulated, you feel like you have to please them in order to regulate your nervous system.
[00:03:48] So it's this highly dysfunctional cycle. And yes, it's abusive, but I want to bring some awareness to and some compassion to really understand. Like we both are just trying to avoid feeling shame right now. And shame, I see it as a couple of different ways. And you can think about how it shows up and resonates for you most because shame definitely will shut you down. That's part of why it works. It's part of how they control you. And they can get you to basically sit down, shut up and fall in line. That's essentially what they wanted, right? They need you to stop doing something to start doing something else.
[00:04:25] And it's often, I am bad, I am terrible, I'm the problem, I'm not enough.
[00:04:33] And so for some people, the shame story is I'm the problem. I cause all the problems. I'm the issue.
[00:04:40] For some, it's something about me is fundamentally wrong or flawed.
[00:04:45] For some it's, I'm not enough. That was my story and that was one that I picked out before I even understood narcissism and abuse, before I understood my own childhood trauma, before I like really got into coaching. It was like the very, very beginning there I started to recognize and I didn't even realize this was shame. I just saw it as, oh, I have this story that I'm not enough.
[00:05:13] And that was a long standing pattern, a long like thought pattern, like a real true hardcore belief because I had thought it and it had been repeated over and over again. And then my brain was finding evidence as to how that was true, it kept on reinforcing this I'm not enough.
[00:05:31] And I, I know I've mentioned it multiple times before, but it's that never ending cycle of never feeling good enough. Whether it's because of our bodies or our career or our education or our divorce, no matter what it is, it's like for some reason I'm not enough.
[00:05:47] It might also be, it's like I am terrible. So instead of it being I did a bad thing, which might be, which is guilt, it's, I am a bad person. I am bad at my core. I am a problem at my core.
[00:06:02] And that is the difference between shame and guilt.
[00:06:05] So if you have not listened to that previous episode, it was 1:32.
[00:06:09] So I wanna say, yeah, it was just a couple months ago that it was released.
[00:06:12] But this is, it's such a great reminder and refresher to, to recognize and see how this might still be playing out in your life and in different areas. And so what happens in these narcissistic dynamics is that shame of okay, I'm not enough, so me just as I am is not enough means that I now have to earn it, I have to achieve it, I have to now prove it and justify it. It's like I have to argue or fight for why I am good enough. But because my shame gets poked and it's such a strong, forceful emotion and belief process and thought process, it, we often revert back.
[00:06:55] But we're always trying to earn and prove and justify ourselves with I have to earn good things, I also have to earn feeling good enough.
[00:07:07] Not only do I have to earn and achieve my worthiness, I have to earn being good enough and feeling good enough. I also have to simply earn feeling good.
[00:07:17] So I have to earn feeling good about myself, feeling proud, feeling successful, feeling accomplished. And so shame really keeps us striving.
[00:07:26] And this is part of what keeps us in that cycle and in that loop and why we think so often. We have to earn love, we have to work hard for love, we have to achieve something, we have to be doing something. And it's why we can get stuck in dysfunctional patterns, especially in relationships, because that's how we've been trained to think. It's how we've been wired. The narcissistic abuse that we have been through has literally rewired and reprogrammed how we think, how we see the world, how we show up.
[00:07:56] And so it's so important to understand how that is working and how that is impacting us Just as a person, because we take us everywhere we go, we take us into all our goals, but then we'll also be able to see it in other areas specifically, but just as a whole, we need to see how we don't feel safe not earning love, not achieving love. We have to strive for something. Like, it has to be hard. We have to work for it.
[00:08:24] And sometimes that comes from I have to be constantly busy and constantly doing stuff to prove that I'm enough, to prove that I am good enough.
[00:08:33] And maybe that was a part of your marriage, maybe that was a part of your childhood, was feeling like you constantly had to be working around the house, you had to be doing things, you had to be doing chores. You could never just take a break. You could never just sit and watch a movie or read a book.
[00:08:48] Or maybe there were conditions or parameters around that, but this comes up because so often it's like we struggle with feeling proud of ourselves because we just look at this evidence as to how we can't, how we shouldn't.
[00:09:02] We don't get to feel successful, right? It's, oh, I wanted to lose eight pounds this month and I only lost five. So, yeah, that's good. But really, I didn't hit my goal. So I don't get to feel proud, I don't get to feel successful.
[00:09:15] And it's like, no, that you do get to feel successful, you do get to feel proud. And that's part of what's going to help you to lose weight next month, is when you give yourself that permission to feel good about yourself, to feel good about your progress, to feel good about what you're doing and how you're showing up without having to earn it, without having to constantly prove yourself. This, this was something I felt like I was constantly doing in my marriage, trying to prove and earn that I was doing enough, prove that I could make money, prove that this business was successful, that it was reliable, that I could do something like that. I actually had these valuable skills that could change people's lives.
[00:09:59] But I was constantly trying to prove to my ex that this was a good thing and he just didn't want to see it.
[00:10:07] And really, it wasn't. It was never about me. It was never about the business. It was about him and his childhood trauma. And that is what comes up is like for narcissists, they have endured a lot of trauma. Part of why they are the way they are, they're not necessarily born that way, in my opinion. They are trained that way. Part of the. This is Their trauma response, just like ours, is pleasing and perfectionism and over functioning and like this extra giving. And that's how our trauma response shows up. Their trauma response shows up with control and manipulation and in these other ways.
[00:10:46] Okay. But they have been through a. A huge amount of trauma. They learned this.
[00:10:53] And I'll never forget listening to a book by Lundy Bancroft, and I believe it was called why Does he do that?
[00:11:01] And there was a statistic in it that he shared where he said, four out of five kids who grow up in abusive homes will either become abusers or they marry abusers.
[00:11:11] Four out of five.
[00:11:13] That's huge.
[00:11:15] That gives me chills. That literally stopped me in my tracks, that stop. I was walking down a walking path. I'll never forget it. I know exactly where I was. I was literally walking on a walking path and I stopped.
[00:11:29] It was that terrifying because at that point I had my son and I had a lot of concern, not just about me and trying to better understand what was I going through and to make sense of my life, but now I was recognizing this deeply impacts him and what he's going through.
[00:11:52] And it makes a lot of sense, though, that if we have been with people who have these strong narcissistic tendencies, whether they've been diagnosed or not, we're just gonna throw all of that out the window. Doesn't freaking matter at this point. What matters. What matters are their patterns of behavior and enough to have seen it. I trust you, and you can trust yourself too.
[00:12:15] And knowing that they grew up with a lot of trauma, they likely grew up with a highly dysfunctional parent, if not both.
[00:12:23] They grew up with most likely at least one narcissistic or addicted parent.
[00:12:29] So we can understand how it happens. We can have some compassion for them and also know this is not acceptable. We don't want this for our lives anymore. That's totally fine.
[00:12:42] And also recognize all the times in which we were striving and trying to earn and prove and justify that we were good enough.
[00:12:51] And how typically for us, that starts as kids and then it gets reinforced in, in adulthood with other relationships.
[00:13:01] And if you're listening, maybe you didn't get married. Maybe it was just a dating relationship. Because I've also dated some not healthy people.
[00:13:09] I've gone on dates with them. I've had like, short dating experiences. I've also had some longer dating experiences with people who were highly toxic, highly dysfunctional.
[00:13:21] And what was most eye opening was recognizing I was still dating and attracting these toxic people even after my divorce, which Became a huge wake up call. I had this like rock bottom moment where I, it was like I finally woke up and I was like, oh my gosh, I have got to figure this out. I have got to get it together. I cannot keep doing this.
[00:13:45] And really it was, I don't want to.
[00:13:48] And I let that be good enough. I let that be my reason to hire a coach, to get support, to get some help and understanding why I kept going through this, why I kept attracting toxic people.
[00:14:03] And what's interesting because, and that happened in September. And what's been fascinating is noticing some of the people who have come out since then, not like some have been toxic, some not so much. Some have just been like, not quite the right fit. Maybe a little dysfunctional in ways.
[00:14:23] Some fairly dysfunctional in ways like.
[00:14:27] But I catch it faster, I walk away faster.
[00:14:31] And that has been huge.
[00:14:33] And then now starting to date a man who seems very healthy, who's going to therapy, who's working on himself, who seems to have been in his own toxic relationships in the past and is actively working to learn from it.
[00:14:52] And it is a little unsettling. Cause I it like I don't have to work for it. I don't have to earn his favor, I don't have to earn his time. I don't have to try out and show up and be good enough.
[00:15:04] There's this aspect of is this real?
[00:15:07] Is this too good to be true? What's happening here?
[00:15:10] And that's how healthy relationships will feel when you are used to unhealthy ones.
[00:15:16] So we can hold a lot of space and compassion for ourselves as well in this and just recognize how it was that shame button being activated that was keeping us striving.
[00:15:28] And now that this new guy is not activating my shame button, he's not pushing it. He's not pushing it to make himself feel better.
[00:15:38] I don't feel the need to strive and I can just be me and it's safe for him to be him.
[00:15:47] And I also know that I am safe on my own. I am safe by myself. I don't need somebody. I don't need a man in my life.
[00:15:57] I want one. I want to get married again one day. But I don't need someone, I don't need him.
[00:16:05] And I think that is the best place to be coming from.
[00:16:08] And so if things don't work out between us, I also know that we can end on good terms and it's not going to be completely devastating.
[00:16:18] I'm not going to feel like my Life has been turned upside down or that I'll be sobbing on the bathroom floor after a three month relationship.
[00:16:31] So shame is often one of those, One of those triggers that happens. We grow up experiencing it, we grow up trying to avoid it. We get into these relationships that keep reinforcing it.
[00:16:43] And it's learning how to break this pattern.
[00:16:47] And what happened, what happens, and what I've seen most often too, is that now we experience and shame weaves its way into other areas of our life.
[00:16:57] So we feel shame and ashamed when we are overweight.
[00:17:01] We feel ashamed when we regain weight that we had once lost.
[00:17:07] We feel ashamed when, often when our pants are even just a little too tight or when the number on the scale goes up. Like, we are so quick to feel ashamed, to feel like something is wrong with me, right? And that often is that core thought.
[00:17:23] But everybody's gonna have a core, like a core thought, a core wound that plays into the shame.
[00:17:31] And one of the best things you could ever do is understand and identify what is your thought, what is the core thought that drives your shame.
[00:17:41] But really this thought, like, something's wrong with me. I'm not enough, especially at this size, especially at this weight, especially when my body looks this way.
[00:17:53] So we can experience a lot of shame around food, around overeating, emotionally eating, binge eating.
[00:18:04] This brings up a lot of shame of, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just ate all of that.
[00:18:10] And we, like, we're mortified and we feel it to a little bit and then we try to stuff it away. We try to put it, we try to not think about it, not feel it, right? Like it's not safe to feel the shame. So it's like we notice it start to creep in and then we stuff it out and then it's okay, I just need to try harder. Okay, I'm gonna restrict more today. Okay, I'm gonna run extra miles.
[00:18:35] We don't ever give ourselves permission and create safety to feel it.
[00:18:43] So we're in this constant shame avoidance cycle. So sometimes it's with people and in this like, narcissistic dynamic, sometimes it's around food. And we're in this constant toxic, trauma, bonded relationship with food, trying to avoid our shame.
[00:18:59] The shame of overeating, the shame of binge eating.
[00:19:06] And we can feel it around money.
[00:19:08] Money is another big one. We can have a lot of shame around money, around spending, around credit cards, filing from bankruptcy, your house going into foreclosure, right? We can have so much shame and sometimes maybe regret Right. There can be this whole chemical cocktail of emotion that we feel around money.
[00:19:34] And many of us have really unhealthy, really dysfunctional relationships with money.
[00:19:40] Especially if you grew up where money was controlled, where there wasn't enough, where money felt really scarce, where maybe there was urgency around money, or if there were thoughts around being poor. I remember growing up the first maybe 10 years when we lived in California, and my parents did not have a lot of money. I'm pretty sure they lived paycheck to paycheck. I remember there was already money scarcity. There were already thoughts around, we don't have a lot of money. We don't have enough.
[00:20:11] And it was probably more of what I overheard or even my parents saying things like, we don't have money for that. No, you can't buy that. We don't have money for that. And I think to them, it felt very true, very honest.
[00:20:24] And I'm sure at times they were just exasperated. What's. What is that word?
[00:20:29] I don't even know that I'm saying it correctly.
[00:20:31] With three girls, I imagine they also got to a point where they were like, oh, my gosh, stop asking for stuff. Stop growing. Stop needing things. They were young when they had us, and I'm sure that they had their own money drama and stories and issues and things. But I just, from a young age, remember growing up and thinking we were poor. We don't have enough. There's not enough. Just picking up on it around me.
[00:20:57] And I remember dating a guy in high school, and he was reminiscing about the days when his family was poor, and he was like, those are some of my best memories. I don't mind if I'm poor in the future. I don't mind the poor days. Like, it's okay. Those are probably gonna happen. And that. I'm okay with that. And. And it was this, like, yeah, when we were poor, those were some of my best days. My best memories are those moments.
[00:21:20] And I remember having the exact opposite.
[00:21:24] I was like, oh, my gosh, that was so stressful. How horrible. So anxious. Never enough. Never getting what you wanted. Never getting a yes. I just remember having the complete opposite of, oh, my gosh, no, never do I ever want to feel poor again. It was a totally different experience, but again, it's crafted in childhood. And when money is controlled by parents, we don't have a lot of spending power. We have basically no earning power as kids, maybe outside of chores.
[00:21:55] But then you get into adult relationships, and sometimes there's control around Money, too.
[00:22:01] And there are times when I think some people have some good intentions. And I will say I did learn some good money habits from my ex.
[00:22:09] And I also, I had a lot of poor money habits going into our marriage, and I still have money habits that I'm working on. But we can feel so much shame around money, and yet money's never talked about. We don't learn about money. We aren't taught about money. And I don't know if it's because maybe if our parents didn't have a lot, they didn't think to teach us about money. And I think it goes back to honestly. For me, it's more of they can't teach what they don't know. When my parents were emotionally immature and they didn't know how to regulate their own emotions, they couldn't regulate their own nervous system. They couldn't teach me how to do that as a kid either, because they didn't know how to do it for themselves.
[00:22:50] So I think about it like that. Like, they can't teach me good food habits if they don't have it themselves. They can't teach me good money habits and to have healthy money conversations if they don't have a healthy relationship with money.
[00:23:03] But this comes up a lot with clients because they can have so much shame about overeating and binge eating, but there's also a lot of shame around overspending and credit card debt and. And even things that happened years ago, decades ago, and there's so much shame. And I was in a program recently that was very focused on how to create a return on your investment from any type of program, anything that you do in life.
[00:23:32] And I knew, just based on my own money challenges and money story, I was like, oh, this is gonna be really good. Because rather than trying to throw money at a problem, I need to think about it more strategically and in a way where I can intentionally create a return on that investment.
[00:23:50] And it. So it's been really helpful. And in some of the coaching, there was one night in particular where I was listening to the replay, and so many women in particular were getting coached, and they had so much shame around debt and investing in programs and in spending money on a business and lines of credit. And just there was so much shame around money and around spending, and there was so much suffering in silence.
[00:24:21] This is going to be a whole separate podcast on this concept of so often as women, we suffer in silence. We suffered as kids at the hands of abusive and narcissistic or addicted parents.
[00:24:36] We Suffered in these relationships in silence. We suffered as adults in romantic relationships in silence. We suffer with our own anxiety and depression in silence. There is so much suffering.
[00:24:52] And a big piece of this is shame.
[00:24:57] And it's, I shouldn't be experiencing this. It's resistance to what is. It's like, this shouldn't have happened. How did I let it get this bad? How did I let this happen? And that can be around money and like, how did I let this bill get so high?
[00:25:11] It could also be around our weight.
[00:25:13] How did I let myself get this way?
[00:25:17] Why didn't I stop it sooner?
[00:25:20] It comes from this deep core wound of shame, but because that was triggered and reinforced as a kid. And then we, it's like we learn just in how we operate. Like we learn to avoid that with a ten foot pole.
[00:25:36] And so part of the antidote and really your superpower that the narc cannot access is your ability to allow yourself to actually feel shame, to give yourself permission to just feel it. Feel the sensations in your body, not just the stories that you're telling yourself that are driving the shame. We wanna notice both sides separately. Notice the thoughts driving this emotion. Like I'm not good enough or I'm a terrible blank, right? I'm a terrible mother, a terrible daughter, a terrible father, Whatever it is, right? We want to notice the stories driving the shame.
[00:26:16] But really giving yourself permission to just feel the sensations in your body, because shame is an emotion, which means that it is just vibrations in your body that you're experiencing. That's it. That's all an emotion is.
[00:26:32] When we can notice where we feel it, what it feels like, when we can start to describe it, when we just let it be and we let ourselves experience it.
[00:26:45] They create so much freedom and so much safety.
[00:26:50] I can feel this and I am still alive. I'm still breathing.
[00:26:56] Can you momentarily suspend the thoughts, suspend the stories and just allow yourself to feel this, feel these vibrations, feel what's happening in your body, feel the movement.
[00:27:08] And often the sensations in our body, they want to move.
[00:27:12] It might start in your stomach, it might start in your chest, but sometimes it comes out in tears.
[00:27:18] And tears are your body's way of regulating your nervous system. It's a way of closing that loop. Your nervous system needs a closed loop to full like, to heal, to feel settled.
[00:27:32] And we don't ever learn that. The way we learn how to close a loop is to get somebody else to feel better, to stop yelling, to please, to placate. It's like, I've got To get them to feel better so that I can feel better. That's how we've learned to calm the shame. But we don't ever allow ourselves to feel it.
[00:27:49] We're just looking to get out of it, we're looking to avoid it. And this is so much of what drives our emotional eating and our overeating and our binge eating is shame. And sometimes it's shame from binge eating or overeating the night before that drives the next binge.
[00:28:05] But this was really the core of my overeating emotional eating habit I realized was the deep shame that I felt I should be further along in life, I should have more of a career, I should, it was all of these shoulds.
[00:28:21] So you want to find these patterns too. And notice anytime that I have a should, I have an expectation that may not be realistic, but I'm all I'm doing is arguing with reality and subsequently just making myself feel like about myself and where I'm at in life.
[00:28:38] And that's my choice. That's on me.
[00:28:42] I have the power to stop that.
[00:28:45] But I have to notice it first. This is why when I talk about cycles, I was like, we have to notice the cycle. We have to see the cycle and what's happening, how it's playing out so that we know where and how to break it.
[00:28:59] But we have to look at it eyes wide open with so much love and so much compassion. And that becomes the other part of the antidote here, right? Part of it is I can allow myself to feel the shame.
[00:29:16] And the other part is I'm going to hold so much love and so much self compassion. I'm going to stop the self loathing, I'm going to stop beating myself up, stop throwing myself under the bus and I'm going to hold so much love and compassion for myself as I go through this.
[00:29:32] Like this is the core of the evaluation process that I teach people for overeating and emotional eating.
[00:29:38] It's like we can ask ourselves these questions, but we have to let go of the self loathing if we truly want to learn from it. We have to let go of the shame.
[00:29:48] No more punishment because you really don't learn better when you are punishing yourself. You don't learn better, you don't learn faster when you treat yourself like crap. You don't.
[00:30:03] And it's time we acknowledge that.
[00:30:08] And when you show up with self love and self compassion, it invites you to learn from your mistake, to let go of the perfectionism, to hold space for all of your Emotions to trust that you can feel them and they are not going to hurt you. And you don't have to stay there either. You can feel them, you can allow them, but you don't have to stay there. You don't have to keep repeating the patterns, you don't have to keep repeating the beliefs and the stories.
[00:30:40] And when you have compassion and self love, you can truly step into the belief that I am enough, just as I am today.
[00:30:49] I have nothing to prove and nothing to earn.
[00:30:54] I had a mentor who shared this with me years ago and it was I have nothing to prove and nothing to hide.
[00:31:01] And I think so often that's what we feel like in with narcissistic abuse. We have everything to prove and we have so much to hide.
[00:31:13] We are constantly hiding the bad, hiding and trying to protect people's reputations and how they look on the outside and how they look to other people.
[00:31:24] And we are constantly striving and trying to prove ourselves.
[00:31:28] And so this idea of I have nothing to prove and nothing to hide, it's ooh, I want to step into that. And yet it also was like it doesn't feel safe because there are times when I had to prove things to myself.
[00:31:44] I was narcy to myself again. We gotta divorce these narcy habits, these narcy patterns, not just in relationship with other people, but within ourselves.
[00:31:58] So can you step into this belief of I have nothing to prove, nothing to hide, nothing to earn.
[00:32:07] And when we show up with more love and compassion too, we can own our success.
[00:32:12] Now instead of waiting for external results to prove that you're enough to prove that you're successful, you can own your success, of the progress, right? So if you want to lose a hundred pounds, you can still show up and own and feel proud of the fact that you lost five.
[00:32:28] That's freaking amazing.
[00:32:31] And yes, there's still more to lose, not a problem. But you lost five. And you can feel good about yourself, you can feel proud of yourself for losing those five. You don't have to wait until you lose all £100.
[00:32:46] You don't have to earn feeling good enough or earn being worthy.
[00:32:52] And it might seem unsafe, it might, right? It's one of those. Logically it makes sense, but when it comes down to it, we don't fully believe it, we don't fully embody it because that's not what we grew up learning. Knowing we've grown up the complete opposite of that. We've spent decades believing the complete opposite of that.
[00:33:14] And so often, right, it's like we are praised, we are validated. We are.
[00:33:20] Maybe we win, we achieve something. We win a reward for the outcome or for the results, right? So I remember getting ice cream for scoring a goal when I played soccer as a kid. And there was one, one weekend when I didn't score a goal. And I think I was a forward. I can't remember what position I was, but I think there was the opportunity to have scored based on my position, but I didn't. And I remember asking, can we still go to ice cream? And my dad said, no, you didn't score a goal. That's the deal. You get ice cream when you score a goal, which is really fascinating because it's okay. You have to achieve and earn the good thing.
[00:33:57] We're going to praise and reward the outcome or the result, but we're not going to reward the effort because there was not ice cream even if I played really hard, there was only ice cream if I got the result. So this looks like you praise and validate and feel good about yourself and feel successful and feel proud when the scale goes down, when you lose the weight, when that number reflects the number you want it to, but you don't praise and validate yourself for showing up and following through and the action that you took. If the scale stays the same, right, you could be doing all the same things. And that week, maybe you just don't lose weight that week because your body is doing something else. There's any number of reasons why that could happen. But because that number doesn't go down, you don't get to feel good about yourself.
[00:34:55] This is the. This is a NAR dynamic that's in your own head, that we've got to break free, we have got to divorce, and you get to start feeling good about yourself and feel good about your progress and feel good about your effort.
[00:35:13] So there's a difference between I'm not following through, I'm not showing up for myself, I'm not getting help or support, I'm not trying new things, and so I don't feel good about myself, right? When you are not doing anything to try to achieve something new, to try to achieve a goal versus I am showing up and I am following through and I am taking action and I am getting 1% better every day and I am looking for improvements and the scale just hasn't reflected it yet.
[00:35:43] There's a very big difference.
[00:35:45] But being willing to think positively about yourself, to praise and validate how you did a good job, how you fought hard, how you Tried hard. How you are building new habits and recognizing that the scale is a lagging indicator. You will be showing up and doing things and the scale is often a lagging indicator and that's okay.
[00:36:08] And you will keep going and you will keep pursuing your dreams and you will keep moving forward, keep evaluating and figuring out your emotional eating and decoding the messages in it and learning from it. You'll keep doing that when you keep trusting the process and you keep praising the progress and praising the effort and praising the work that you're doing. Not just the result, not just the outcome. When you choose to feel successful losing one pound this week as if you had lost five, when those both feel the same success level. You have the same pride when you lose £1 in a week as when you lose £5 in a week.
[00:36:49] And we feel like, no, there should be a difference. We haven't earned feeling that good if We've only lost £1.
[00:36:56] This is sneaky. It's a little insidious here, how this creeps into our life and into so many aspects. And this is why I will probably die saying narcissistic relationships and abuse and trauma directly impacts your ability to lose weight and keep it off.
[00:37:16] Two sides of one coin. They are directly intertwined, directly connected.
[00:37:23] This is where we really want to be able to evaluate all of these aspects around how shame shows up for us. Where it shows up, when it shows up. Recognizing when it is our own voice, when it's our own self loathing, our own beat down and choosing different, choosing to let that go, letting go of past failures, of past mistakes, having so much love and compassion to be able to look at past failures, look at past mistakes so that you can learn from them.
[00:38:01] And I want to offer a new belief that it's safe to let this go.
[00:38:07] There are things that you keep holding on to from your past.
[00:38:12] Around food, around your weight, around money, around relationships, around your career.
[00:38:19] There are things that you hold on to. It's like you're holding on to a grudge against yourself and you keep holding on. The fear is if we don't hold on, then we're going to repeat it. If we don't hold on, we're going to do it again. We're going to run into the same problem. We're never gonna learn. Part of it is punishment and part of it is, this was a problem and if I forgive myself, if I let this go, that's not okay, I should be punished. This was a problem.
[00:38:49] But we hold onto these past mistakes and these Past failures, we don't truly learn from them because we're in so much shame and self loathing. So we can't actually learn from it. We just want to hold onto it.
[00:39:03] I want to offer this and maybe you just start to play with the thought of what if it was safe to let this go?
[00:39:11] What if it was safe to forgive myself?
[00:39:15] What if it was safe to let go of regaining the weight of the shame and the regret and the self loathing? What if it was safe to let that go?
[00:39:25] What if I no longer had to punish myself for something that happened a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago?
[00:39:33] What if it was safe to let go of the shame and the regret for marrying or dating multiple toxic people and just allow yourself start to play with that? What would that look like?
[00:39:48] Maybe you can't believe that it is safe right now, but what if it was?
[00:39:53] And as you start playing with this thought it might be, I'm learning to let this go.
[00:39:59] I'm committed to getting to a point where I can let this go.
[00:40:03] This plays into self forgiveness, which I think at some point I will do a podcast on forgiving others and then forgiving yourself because they are connected, but they are not one and the same.
[00:40:14] But really looking at where there is guilt, where there is shame, where is lingering from years ago, from decades ago, and what would it take to forgive yourself for that?
[00:40:28] What would it take to let this go?
[00:40:32] Because you could do this in a moment, in an instant, it takes one thought, one new thought, one different thought to let it go.
[00:40:42] It has turned into a much longer podcast than I originally thought. I started looking at my notes and I was like, oh, this is not very long at all. And yet somehow I've been talking for what feels like forever now.
[00:40:57] But shame is such a common emotion around weight and food and in so many other areas of life, but especially within relationships and within narcissistic abuse. And so it was definitely worth covering. I share this because this is what I have wrestled with, it's what so many of my clients wrestle with, and this is what I can help you with too, is to learn how to let go of the shame, let go of the self loathing, let go of the need to punish yourself because you do not learn from that and really step into compassion and love and understanding and forgiveness and so that you can build self trust, so that you can build trust in yourself to make decisions, trust in yourself around food, trust in your body to just do its natural functions of processing food, of burning fat, of burning Fuel so that you can trust yourself in pursuing a new career or building a business or dating, choosing a new partner.
[00:42:00] You can trust yourself when it comes to recognizing relationships in your life where it is time to let it go.
[00:42:08] If you'd like some help to not just lose weight and end emotional eating, but to heal, to truly heal these wounds, to heal these narcissistic wounds, to heal from trauma, to heal your relationship with food and body, to heal your relationship with yourself, then I would love to help. This is my jam. This is my zone of genius. And I can help you too. You are not too far gone. If you would like some help in moving forward and creating a life so good it lights you up, it blows your mind, it makes you excited to get out of bed on Monday morning.
[00:42:47] A life that's so amazing, where you enjoy your weekdays just as much as you enjoy your weekends. Where you love your body now. And all the way down the scale. If you want to lose weight and I can help you do it in a way that is sustainable and lasting and in a way that's fun and enjoyable and dare I say, easy.
[00:43:09] Your next best step is to schedule a free consultation.
[00:43:13] Find a time on my calendar and let's talk.
[00:43:17] And we're gonna spend a fair amount of time talking about what you do want to create the life that is so powerful and amazing and magnetic that you can't wait to step into it.
[00:43:30] I'm gonna help you create the life that you crave and I'm gonna help you through this healing process and to help bring in these aspects of self belief and self trust and self love and compassion and help you rewire your brain back to these healthier settings.
[00:43:50] All right, I hope you have a fabulous day.
[00:43:53] Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:44:01] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from distractions, constructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. Your next step?
[00:44:11] 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.
[00:44:22] 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.bodyyoucrave.com forward/btc.
[00:44:36] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.
