Victoria Kleinsman (00:01.454)
Hey queens, welcome back to the podcast, to another solo episode. I feel like doing a bit of a formal introduction. So for those of you that don’t know me, I’m Victoria Klinsman, a food freedom and self-love coach. Kind of like going under the tough love coach vibe because my specialty is tough love at the same time as like delivering that tough love with compassion and understanding which…

is necessary, especially if you’re feeling sensitive, which most of you are in recovery. So anyway, today I’m gonna talk about something that comes up quite a lot actually, and lately it’s been coming up a lot within my group coaching clients. I’m hearing this from clients who’ve done the work, who’ve committed to recovery, who are finally eating unrestrictedly, amen to them, who’ve stopped the behaviours.

They’ve practically recovered from an eating disorder and they’re confused as hell because they’re like, Victoria, I thought recovery was supposed to fix everything, but I’m still anxious. I’m still depressed. And sometimes I’m more anxious than when I had the eating disorder. What’s going on? Have I done something wrong? Is there something wrong with me? And my answer is always no, my love. You didn’t do anything wrong.

you’ve just uncovered what was there all along. So shit gets serious. When you’ve recovered from an eating disorder, everything that was suppressed by the eating disorder is there because the coping behaviour, the coping mechanism of the eating disorder is now gone. Now this doesn’t happen to everyone. This is worth saying because my work, if you don’t know me by now,

It goes deep, it’s not just changing the behaviour, right? It’s a lot deeper than that. This doesn’t happen to everybody in terms of feeling depressed and sad and unhappy after recovery, because through our recovery, we can address what comes, or we do address what comes up, and the goal is to heal at its root as you’re changing your behaviours to no longer have an eating disorder. But for some, and like I said, a lot of people…

Victoria Kleinsman (02:23.776)
in my group lately, which is why I’m doing a podcast episode about this. It has kind of come up that is like I’ve recovered, but I’m still unhappy. So now what? So this is why I’m doing this episode. So you didn’t do anything wrong, but today I’m going to explain what’s happening when you recover from your eating disorder, but you’re still left with anxiety, depression, panic or shutdown. And I’m going to explain why this is actually normal.

It’s not a sign you’ve failed and most importantly, I’m going to share with you what the fuck to do about it because we want a solution, right? But here’s the thing. The eating disorder was never the problem. It was your solution to a problem. And now the solution is gone. You’re face to face with what you were trying to solve in the first place. So grab a cuppa, get comfortable. Let’s dive in.

The question, why am I still struggling? So right, let me paint you a picture of what I’m hearing from clients as I’ve said, but let’s go a bit deeper. I’m eating unrestrictedly, I’m not restricting, I haven’t binged in months, I haven’t purged in months, I’ve stopped body checking, I’m doing the bloody work, Victoria, but I’m still having panic attacks. I’m still waking up with this crushing anxiety or I’m feeling flat and depressed and unmotivated. And sometimes I swing between

both of them and I’m thinking, is this just my life now? Is this who I am? Or something similar to the eating disorder gave me something to focus on, something to control. Now that I’m not doing the behaviours, I don’t know what to do with all these feelings. The anxiety is worse now without the eating disorder to manage it. I would almost rather go back to the eating disorder because I kind of felt better.

is not the right word, but I felt numb and I wasn’t open to these overwhelming sense of emotions that I’m experiencing right now. If this sounds familiar to you, because if you’re in recovery and you’re feeling this way, or you’ve nearly recovered or you consider yourself recovered, you need to hear this. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not fundamentally flawed. You haven’t failed at recovery and know this isn’t just who you are.

Victoria Kleinsman (04:45.324)
What’s happening is that you’ve removed your primary coping mechanism, the eating disorder, and now you’re left with what’s underneath, what was underneath all along. The stuff the eating disorder was created to manage in the first place. And that stuff, it’s nervous system dysregulation, trauma, and that’s what we’re gonna unpack today. So the eating disorder as a coping mechanism, as I’ve said probably about five times now,

but it’s important to get clear about something. Your eating disorder was never just about food or your body. It was never about vanity or control, really, just for control’s sake. Your eating disorder was a coping mechanism. It was your nervous system’s brilliant desperate attempt to manage overwhelming feelings that you didn’t have the capacity to process or the safety to express to another.

The restriction was you trying to create a sense of control when everything inside you felt chaotic. That was you trying to numb out feelings that felt too big. And that was you trying to disappear because feeling seen meant you felt like you were in danger. It was unsafe to be seen.

And perhaps if you’re here from the other end, like not necessarily the restriction, but the emotional eating, because binging is a healthy response to restriction, but emotional eating perhaps, if you’re in that camp, that was you trying to soothe yourself when you were overwhelmed. That was you trying to feel something when you were shut down and numb. That was you trying to self-regulate when your nervous system was completely dysregulated. There’s a reason why

the, in terms of our nervous system states, you’ve got a fight, flight or freeze, and you’ve got rest and digest. If you look at the words rest and digest, when we eat food, what we’re trying to do, whether conscious or not, if we’re using food as a tool, not just out of pleasure or hunger or intuition eating, we’re trying to bring our nervous system back out of fight, flight or freeze into rest and digest.

Victoria Kleinsman (07:02.614)
It doesn’t usually work that way because if we then see food as a threat, if you have a brain that is wired with an eating disorder, you’re trying to get that down-regulated, that calm, that groundedness through eating, if you’re in the emotional eating camp, but it doesn’t often work if you’re seeing food as a threat and have all the shame around eating. It’s a spiral, and I get it, I have been there. I’ve been at both ends of the camp. I’ve been in anorexia.

and that morphed in to bulimia and then just pure binge eating. So I get you girl, but lack of better things to say, I totally get it. So the body focus that you might’ve had or might have, obsessed with your appearance, constantly body checking, that gave you somewhere to put all that anxiety, all of that shame, all that pain that you couldn’t name or didn’t feel safe expressing. It externalised your internal…

suffering. And here’s a really important bit. It worked, sort of. The eating disorder did give you a way to cope. It did give you some relief, however temporary it did help you survive. But it was also slowly destroying you and eventually you made the brave fucking decision to let it go. So what happens then when the coping mechanism goes?

So now you’re in recovery, you’ve stopped the behaviours, and by the way, do you like my crystal that my husband had made for me? Well, he didn’t have the crystal made, he got the crystal and had it like encased. I can’t think of what the name for the crystal is, but isn’t it gorgeous? So I just wanted to put that interview there as I can see myself on the little screen. Anyway, I digressed. You’re in recovery, you’ve stopped the behaviours, you’re eating, you’re not purging, you’re not restricting, and suddenly you’re faced with the reality.

the reality of anxiety, all this anxiety the eating disorder was managing, it’s still there. The depression, that it was numbing, still there. All the overwhelm the eating disorder was containing, still fucking there. Excuse me. And you’re left thinking, for fuck’s sake, perhaps this is how my brain would process, for fuck’s sake, what now? This is what I call grieving the loss of the eating disorder.

Victoria Kleinsman (09:20.386)
And it’s really a key part of recovery that honestly, people don’t talk about this enough. If you know me by now, you probably will notice I talk about grieving quite a lot because we need to grieve the past body we had, the fantasy body we’ve been chasing, the false sense of control that we had that kept us in a false sense of safety. Like we need to grieve all of these things that were once saving our lives that are now destroying our lives, right?

You’ve lost your coping mechanism. You’ve lost the thing that helped you feel in control, that gave you relief, that helped you manage the unbearable. Even though it was destroying you, it was yours and yours alone. It was familiar and it worked, kind of. And now it’s gone and you’re left with the shit underneath. All the reasons that eating disorder was created in the first place. But here’s what I want you to hear.

This, all the shit underneath that you do not want to be feeling or experiencing right now, this is gold. Because this is the opportunity. This is the, underline bold, the word the opportunity. Because now, you actually get to work through all of this. So you don’t need extreme coping mechanisms in your life anymore. You don’t need to worry about relapsing into an eating disorder like sadly most professionals say, you know,

Just be careful for the rest of your life that you’re not gonna relapse. No, when you really heal all of this stuff that might still be present in you now you’ve recovered or almost recovered, you get to heal the thing that was driving the eating disorder all along. So I’m gonna talk now about the window of tolerance. Let me explain what’s actually happening in your nervous system because when you understand this, everything starts to make sense. There’s a concept.

called the window of tolerance. I like to call it your stretch zone. So I want you to imagine there’s a river, right? And this river represents your optimal state. So let’s call it the river of wellbeing. This actually, this analogy I got from my coach, Jessie Neeland, but she got it from someone else. So I’m just resharing it, cause I really liked it. This river of wellbeing represents your optimal state.

Victoria Kleinsman (11:40.704)
a state when you’re grounded, present, able to think clearly, able to feel your emotions without being hijacked by them. This is your window of tolerance. This is your, no, this is not your window of tolerance. This is your comfort zone, this river. And your comfort zone might be really, really, really, really small. And that’s okay, because if I’ve gone through that list of this river of wellbeing is where you’re grounded, present, able to think.

able to feel your emotions without being hijacked by them. You might be thinking, I can’t even fucking do that. Your river might be, with, your river of wellbeing, be a slither, like literally like a thin line, but you do have one and that’s your comfort zone. So when you’re in your comfort zone, you can express emotions, you can think rationally, you can communicate effectively. You can handle challenges. Your nervous system is regulated and you’re okay.

But here’s what happens when we get overwhelmed. When we go outside of our window of tolerance, your window of tolerance, if you imagine the river of wellbeing going down the middle of the river, and at the side of the river, just before you hit the banks, you’ve got your window of tolerance, you’ve got your stretch zones. So it’s important, so you’ve got the river of wellbeing, and each side of that, you’ve got your window of tolerance slash stretch zones, each side of the river, right? So.

When you get overwhelmed and you go outside of your window of tolerance, outside of your stretch zones, and you hit one of the banks, there’s two directions we can go. So you’ve got one river bank that’s hyper-arri- my goodness, seriously, I’m tongue-tied for two reasons. One, because I’m seeming to be having a challenge like just speaking today. What’s new Victoria, I hear you say. But I’m so excited to get this out. I’m purposely trying to speak slower.

but my brain’s jumping ahead and thinking of a word before I even got there. So just bear with me. You’ve got the river of wellbeing down the middle of a river. The sides of the river, just before you reach the banks, you’ve got your stretch zone, your window of tolerance. The banks, one side is hyper arousal. The other side is hypo arousal. Why the fuck can I say arousal? Hyper arousal.

Victoria Kleinsman (14:06.882)
Hypo arousal. Anyway, back to it, serious now. Okay, as I was saying, when you are overwhelmed, you can go to each bank, right? Your hyper arousal is your fight or flight response. This is the anxiety you’re feeling, the panic attacks, the racing thoughts, the feeling like you’re going to explode or jump out of your skin or that you want to crawl out of your skin, the rage.

the hypervigilance that I can’t sit still, I can’t calm down, everything feels urgent and terrifying. That’s the hyperarousal. Hands up if you’ve probably been in hyperarousal chronically, probably for most of your life. Me also. Not now, but I was. The second is hypoarousal. This is your freeze response, your shutdown. This is the depression you’re feeling, the numbness.

the disassociation, that I can’t feel anything, I can’t motivate myself and everything feels flat and heavy and impossible. And we can spin between the two chronically as well for most of our lives. But here’s the thing, hypo-arousal is often a protective mechanism against the hyper-arousal. Listen to this clearly, everything is a pendulum. I have a pendulum here.

Here we go. Said pendulum. Hyperarousal, ha-po-ar-isal. Ready? Let it go. Swing, swing, swing, swing. It goes back from one to the other until it just comes to a stop by itself without any interference. The same with restriction. If you have the genetics for anorexia, if you don’t get out of anorexia, the restriction will kill you.

either, if not physically, mentally and emotionally. So if you don’t have the genetics of anorexia, you restrict and then, bing! You quote unquote binge because everything’s a pendulum, as I was saying. So the hyper and the hypo, they’re both protective mechanisms. So everything is a pendulum, like I just so talently showed you and explained.

Victoria Kleinsman (16:34.444)
When you’ve been in fight or flight for too long, your nervous system goes, right, that’s it, we’re shutting down to protect you. So you swing between panic and shutdown. Too much and nothing at all. Does any of this sound familiar? The thing is, recovery makes this worse or can do Well, it does. So whether you find yourself in this position during recovery, and we work on it, because it’s gonna come up at some point, or you find yourself in this position after recovery,

it’s gonna come up at some point. It can sometimes feel like anxiety and depression got worse when you stopped the eating disorder behaviors. When you were restricting, purging, obsessing over your body, dieting, binging, whatever it is, excuse me, that was giving your nervous system something to do with this activation. It was a pressure release valve. It was containing the overwhelm. Your anxiety needs a job to do.

and the eating disorder and the body obsession, perfect job. Takes all of your energy and thoughts and all the things, right? So the eating disorder was essentially managing your window of tolerance for you. It was managing your comfort zone for you. Badly, yes. Destructively, yes, but it was doing something, right? So now that coping mechanism is gone and you’re feeling the full force of your nervous system dysregulation.

you’re feeling what was there all along. You didn’t just have the capacity to feel it before because the eating disorder was taking up all of that space. And for 99 % of us, we don’t even know how to feel all these like overwhelming emotions within ourselves, within our bodies, because we weren’t shown how to. This wasn’t modelled to us. This is why clients say things like, I was less anxious when I had the eating disorder.

because the eating disorder was channeling the anxiety into something concrete. Now the anxiety is nowhere to go. So you’re feeling it in its pure raw form. You haven’t created new anxiety. You haven’t failed at recovery. You’ve just uncovered what was always underneath as I keep saying. So the question is, where has all this come from? Why is your with, with a well-being? Why is your river of well-being

Victoria Kleinsman (18:58.796)
and your window of tolerance so fucking narrow in the first place. Why are you swinging between hypo and hyper arousal instead of just existing in a calm regulated state without hitting the banks of, you know, the river of, I said it again, the whither, the whither of wellbeing? For most of us with eating disorders, we are most likely overwhelmed as children constantly. So maybe you grew up in a chaotic environment.

Maybe you experienced trauma. Maybe you had emotionally unavailable parents. Maybe you were highly sensitive in a world that wasn’t safe for sensitivity. Maybe you were parentified, expected to manage adult emotions before you had the capacity. Whatever the reason, you probably spent most of your childhood and adult life in hyper arousal, anxious, vigilant, trying to be perfect, trying to be good enough, trying to keep your nervous system safe.

trying to manage everyone else’s emotions so yours could at least exist. Your nervous system never learned what regulation actually feels like. You never developed a wide window of tolerance because you were constantly outside of it. You were constantly in your panic zone. And there’s something really important that I want to add in here. When you’re not okay inside and people don’t know that you’re not okay.

It’s actually a really good strategy to develop an eating disorder because suddenly people can see your pain. Suddenly there’s acknowledgement. Suddenly there’s help. The eating disorder communicates what you couldn’t say. And that is, I’m not okay. I need help. I’m in pain. You might have also been ridiculed for being in your overwhelmed state. Maybe you were told that you were too sensitive when you cried.

or maybe you were told that you were overreacting when you panicked, maybe you were shamed for being too much or too dramatic or for shutting down or for being difficult, whatever it is. So you learned that your natural reactions to overwhelm were wrong. You learned to hide them and the eating disorder became that perfect hiding place. So what do do about it?

Victoria Kleinsman (21:17.792)
Right now, hopefully, you’ve understood or you understand what’s happening and what’s happened. You’re in recovery or you’ve almost recovered or you have recovered. The eating disorder is gone and you’re left with a dysregulated nervous system that’s swinging between hyper arousal and hypo arousal. You’re feeling the anxiety and the depression that was always there underneath it all. The question is, in Victoria form, what the fuck do you do about it?

Here’s the answer that’s gonna change everything for you. You are not a victim to your nervous system. You can actually manage it. Notice I’ve used the word manage, not control, because we can’t control shit, but you are not a victim to your nervous system. You are not a victim to your past trauma. You can actually manage it, your nervous system that is.

I know it feels like your nervous system has been running the show, hijacking you, bouncing between panic and shutdown without your conscious permission, but you can play an active role in regulating your nervous system. This is the work of recovery that goes beyond stopping the eating disorder behaviours. This is about widening your window of tolerance. This is about teaching your nervous system new ways to cope that don’t include destroying yourself.

So if you think of that river of wellbeing and those window of tolerance stretch zones either side, when you widen your window of tolerance and stretch zones, they then become your comfort zones. The river of wellbeing gets bigger and then et cetera. And the more you spend time in your window of tolerance and stretch zones, then becomes your comfort zone. gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So here’s what you need to understand. Your behaviors influence your nervous system.

and your nervous system influences your behaviours. It’s a two-way street. So you get to intervene. You get to learn how to judge yourself, how to not judge yourself. You do not need to judge yourself. You’re already judging yourself enough. Nudge, the word I’m looking for. You get to learn how to nudge yourself up or down depending on what you need. So up regulation.

Victoria Kleinsman (23:38.56)
is needed when you’re stuck in hypo arousal. So you’re feeling flat, shut down, frozen, depressed, unmotivated and disassociated. First of all, awareness is needed to see and to notice that, I’m in this like hypo arousal state. I feel all these things. So the goal would be to bring your energy up. You need to mobilize at this point. So when a client comes to me and says, I’m not restricting anymore, but I just feel so numb and flat,

and I’m scared of the depression that’s underneath, I can’t get myself to do anything, this is when we can work on up regulation. So again, your behaviours affect your nervous system. This is where you get to step in to influence your nervous system. Things that might help you up level your nervous system from a hypo state. It sounds silly, but little things like jumping jacks in the moment or any physical movement in the moment.

because you record from the exercise addiction, right? In the moment that gets your heart rate up. Or, and loud, upbeat music, dance around your bloody living room. I love to dance, especially with Koa, my daughter, she loves music. And me and my husband just danced silly like a lot of the time, it’s really fun. And it just like upbeats you, know, makes you feel good. So use music to support you. Cold water on your face, that can help, just splashing cold water on your face.

probably wouldn’t advise that, that’s a bit of a shocking way but it can help some people. Taking yourself out somewhere in the sunshine, some bright lights, like getting out of your house, change of environment. Energising breath work, like fire breathing, I’ve never done it but I’ve heard it’s quite good. Yelling into a pillow, like I know it sounds a bit weird and it can be uncomfortable at first but it’s kind of quite therapeutic to be honest where you really let yourself go and just like fully surrender to it.

anything that mobilises energy in your physical body that will help up-regulate your nervous system. And now down-regulation, of course, the opposite. When you’re stuck in hyperarousal, you’re anxious, panicky, your thoughts are on repeat, like going a million miles an hour, you’re jittery, you want to lash out, you can’t think straight, feel like you’re gonna crawl out of your skin, all the things, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Victoria Kleinsman (26:03.032)
So if a client says, I’m eating, but I’m having constant panic attacks, I feel like I’m going to explode. This is when we work on down regulation. So things that might help, slow deep breathing, didn’t help me, but it definitely helps some. Gentle movement, this did help me and does help me like yoga or stretching. I love the workout, which she’s got somatic courses. It’s like a lot of.

really gentle rocking of the hips. Like I love doing that. I do that daily at the moment. Getting outside in nature, get your bare feet on some grass if you can. That can be really helpful to ground and like, bring yourself back down. A long, tight, gorgeous hug or a cuddle from someone else. Or if you haven’t got anyone else there, a blanket or a pet is good for that too. They can’t hook you back, but you can hug them.

Gentle humming or singing. Humming is actually very good because it’s a vibration that actually opens your throat chakra and naturally relaxes you. Progressive music relaxation. So put something on that relaxes you. Music is energy. Everything is energy and you are an electromagnetic being so it’s going to help you. Mindfulness meditation. Anything that calms your nervous system. The key is learning to recognise where

You are hyper aroused, hypo aroused. Are you in your window of tolerance? Are you in your comfort zone? Are you in your panic zone? And then choosing actions that nudge you back towards your window of tolerance and your river of wellbeing, your comfort zone. This is what you do instead of restricting.

Instead of body checking or weighing yourself or any of the eating disorder behaviours, you learn to manage your nervous system directly. And look, I know it sounds like, for God’s I was hoping you’d say something, Victoria, that I’ve not heard before. And I get it, like, this work is hard. You know, doing something to calm yourself doesn’t quite hit it in the moment when all you want to do is restrict or purge or like whatever. But honestly,

Victoria Kleinsman (28:19.502)
Practice makes progress and just noticing and then bringing yourself back down if you’re up there and you your thoughts and anxiety is like present Choosing these behaviors Influences your nervous system. Don’t forget that so yes your nervous system influences your behaviors, but you’re not a victim to those things so if you create yourself an Up level and a down level if that’s even a word

an up level and a down level list of each, like what can help bring you out of the depression, the flatness, the normness, just like brainstorm a list to bring you up a little bit and do the same to bring you down. And in the moment when you notice like, my God, I’m like so anxious right now, you can look at your down regulating list and be like, okay, I’m gonna pick a few things off that list, even if I don’t feel like it, even if it’s stupid.

I’m going to do the behaviour and start to show my nervous system. Okay, we’re actually safe right now. And the same for if you need to up-regulate yourself. The last thing you want to do when you feel depressed and unmotivated is to do something, right? And you still can, even if you don’t feel like it. So when you do these lists, have like really gentle ones and kind of more bold ones and start off with the gentle ones. For example, if you’re really anxious and panicky,

A gentle one might be like choosing a song that you love and getting it on your favourite then just closing your eyes and just listening. I will do my best to remember to add in a link to one of my favourite songs when your thoughts are racing. I’ll link that in. If I haven’t, get on my ass and I’ll put it in there. So just to do that, that might be a small thing. And then when you’ve listened to that song and you’re like,

then maybe you feel like doing meditation or taking a nap or, you know, just going and taking yourself for a gentle stroll or out for a cup of tea and a cake at a cafe or something. Like you can then open yourself up to other things and to up-regulate, it might look like doing 15 jumping jacks on the spot, which I know may be sound and look ridiculous, but it gets your body like pumping. And then you might be like, you know what? I’m going to go for a walk outside with a podcast.

Victoria Kleinsman (30:43.646)
Start small and you are the expert of your own experience. So, you know, create this list for yourself and experiment with it. You can’t get this right or wrong, but you can influence how you feel. You don’t need to stay in this feeling of depression or anxiety forever. This is a long game. And obviously all of these things that I’m sharing, as well as reparenting yourself when little you is feeling anxious.

What’s she feeling anxious about? Why doesn’t she feel safe? Explore with her, be there for her, reparent her, give her what she needs, give her what she didn’t get that she needed back when you were a child. It’s a constant checking in, feeling, allowing, and reparenting, and taking action. And that is how you come out of this and generally live.

a life that feels fulfilled and at peace and happy and joyful. You’re not going to be happy and joyful all the time, you’re human. But when you do this work, you have an underlying foundation of like peace and inner safety and there’s no better feeling. So when you do go outside your window of tolerance, because you will, we all do, you need a way to come back before you shut down or spiral completely.

This is where the stop skill from DBT therapy comes in. Excuse me. When a client tells me I feel the panic rising, I just want to restrict. I’m so numb, I just want to zone out, shopaholic, like scroll, whatever. This is what I teach them. The word stop is like an acronym. So the S stands for stop, literally stopping and freezing your body.

Pause everything. Name out loud what is happening. I’m in hyperarousal right now or I’m shutting down. I notice it, I can feel it. The T stands for take a step back. Step away from the situation. Take some deep breaths. Give yourself some space. If you’re about to restrict, step away from the mirror, if that’s what you’re doing, if you’re body checking. If you’re about to numb,

Victoria Kleinsman (33:06.71)
scrolling through social media, put down your phone. The O stands for observe. Notice what’s really going on. What triggered this? What are you actually feeling? What’s your body doing? What do you actually need right now? I’m feeling panicky because my partner just criticized me and now I want to control my food to feel safe again. State out loud what’s going on.

And the P is proceed mindfully. This is where you have that choice. This is where you are not a victim to anything. Once you’ve cleared your head a bit, decide how you actually want to respond. Not from panic or shutdown, but from your values. I want to tell my partner I’m feeling activated and need some space instead of restricting. Or I want a hug from you, please. I want to do some breath work.

instead of just mindlessly scrolling, or I wanna go on a walk instead of mindlessly scrolling. This skill interrupts that automatic response. It gives you a moment to choose something different to manage your nervous system without falling back into the behaviours of the eating disorder. That’s the difference between a reaction and a response. Often reactions do happen literally, automatically and subconsciously.

But in hindsight, we can look back using this stop method. But if we need to look back at it, we can be like, wow, what triggered that? What can I do differently next time? And when you have this hindsight knowledge, next time this happens, you will be able to stop and look back and assess in order to know what to do next. So it’s just being gentle with yourself. Practice this as much as you’re able. And my husband’s coming in and is distracting me.

you’re getting your laptop. Okay. I had to say because I was distracted and then people would wonder what I’m doing. Anyway, I continue. Yeah, so it’s just practise and the difference between a reaction and a response, the response is that second, that minute, that space you take to be like, this is what’s happening. This is how I feel. What does little me need? How am I going to proceed differently? And that’s how you get better. Just consistency and gentleness over time.

Victoria Kleinsman (35:30.754)
And natural reframes can help to stop the shame spiral. something that’s really important when you go outside of your window of tolerance, when you feel that you’re in that anxiety or that depression, you probably have a lot of judgment about it. I’m being crazy, something is wrong with me. I should be over this by now. I’m failing at recovery. I’m such a mess, blah, blah, blah. These judgments make everything worse. They add shame on top of the overwhelm.

That’s a shit show, a clusterfuck of shit shows, as I say. Right, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. They make you want to go back to the eating disorder because at least then you had an excuse for feeling this way. At least then you felt like you weren’t such a failure with things. But instead, practise neutral, objective, present tense reframes. So it might look like this as an example. Instead of, I’m being crazy.

I’m in hyper arousal right now. Instead of something is wrong with me, my nervous system is activated. Wait, am I reading this wrong? Yeah. Rewind. Okay, instead of I’m being crazy, you could reframe it to I’m in hyper arousal right now. Instead of something is wrong with me, you reframe it to my nervous system is activated. Fact, no story, fact.

Instead of I’m such a failure, you reframe it to I’m feeling really overwhelmed right now. Instead of I should be fine by now, reframe it to I’m experiencing a lot of anxiety right now. Instead of I’m a mess, reframe it to I’m learning to manage my nervous system without the eating disorder. So notice that what we’re doing is we’re taking away the story, we’re taking away the moral

Interpretation, like I’m a mess, is like making it personal about you. Whereas something like, I’m in an anxious state right now and that’s okay, I’m learning how to regulate my nervous system. It’s different, it’s a fact in the present moment without a moral judgment or a story attached to it. It’s just what is, that is very helpful for neutralising anything. So this removes the shame.

Victoria Kleinsman (37:53.612)
and gives you space to actually manage what’s happening instead of spiralling into self-hatred or reaching for eating disorder behaviours to cope with the shame. So here’s a long-term work. I mean, all of it’s long-term work. And when I say long-term, I’m not talking years and years. mean, reparenting yourself, I think, is like a serious long-term journey, but I’m still reparenting myself and I’m the happiest and healthiest and most fulfilled I’ve ever been in my entire life.

So you can feel so much better within yourself within months. I really mean that in your first step of recovery as well. So widening your window of tolerance so that you can handle more before you tip over into hyper arousal or into hypo arousal. Because this isn’t about never feeling anxious or depressed. That’s not realistic. This is about building capacity, building resilience.

teaching your nervous system, you know what, this is shit, but we can handle it. And here’s something really important to understand. Increasing your window of tolerance isn’t actually about the river of wellbeing at all. It’s about your relationship to the banks. So remember you’ve got the river of wellbeing, either side you’ve got your window of tolerance, then you’ve got the banks. So the banks, the hyper and the hypo arousal, that’s the panic and the shutdown.

Right now, when you hit those banks, it feels like an absolute emergency. Your nervous system is screaming, my God, danger, we’re going under, we need to do something now. But hitting the banks isn’t actually an emergency. It’s uncomfortable as fuck, yes, but it’s not actually dangerous. You’re not going to die from feeling anxious, but you can die from an eating disorder. You’re not going to cease to exist.

from feeling depressed, even though it might feel like it. So again, it’s not about your window of tolerance. It’s not even about the banks. It’s about your relationship to those banks when you inevitably do hit them at some point. And this work isn’t about making the river wider so you never touch the banks because the river of life is windy and it has some sharp turns every now and again.

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The work is about changing your relationship to those banks so that when you do hit them, which you will, you don’t panic. You don’t immediately reach for an eating disorder or another extreme coping mechanism to get away with it, to try and cope with it. You learn to think, okay, I’m at the edge of my window of tolerance right now. I might even be in my panic zone. This is uncomfortable as hell.

and it might feel dangerous, but actually I’m not in danger right now. Okay, I’m safe. In this physical moment, I am safe. Might not feel emotionally safe, but I’m actually safe right now. What do I need to regulate myself right now? Or I’m shutting down, this feels horrible, but it’s not an emergency. How can I bring some energy back to myself right now? So think of it like this. If your window of tolerance,

is currently the width of a narrow stream. So you’ve got your width, I keep saying that, don’t I? You’ve got your river of wellbeing in the middle. If your river of wellbeing is currently the width of a narrow stream, we want to gradually widen it into a flowing river. And we do that by increasing your window of tolerance, our stretch zones, not by avoiding the banks at all, but by intentionally touching them.

getting comfortable with them and teaching your nervous system. You know what? We can handle being here. This isn’t the castrophic experience that we thought it was. The same with your nervous system. So here’s how. Step one is you identify your triggers. What sends you outside of your window of tolerance? For many of my clients, it’s things like criticism, rejection, conflict, uncertainty, being seen, feeling out of control.

certain bodily sensations like clothes being too tight, for example. Step two is to find your current edge. What’s the smallest version of that trigger that you can handle right now without leaving your window of tolerance and entering into your panic zone? For example, if criticism sends you spiralling, could you handle your partner saying, hey, please, can you turn the music down?

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with advanced warning in a gentle tone with an agreed response like, thanks for letting me know. And to do with, this is what I did with body image. So when my body was changing and I was gaining weight and my panic zone would just be to look at myself, but when I was getting dressed, I was like, right, I’m gonna be in my panic zone if I’m gonna wear something that’s like body con, like just showing everyone in my own passwords how fat and disgusting I was.

which wasn’t actually true, it was just my interpretation of my body, because my body was never the problem, my beliefs about my body were the problem and the fear of judgement, and the shit show of the society we live in currently, that is gradually changing, but anyway. So my window of tolerance that was stretching me would be to wear something that I could feel against my skin, because I have slash had, had slash have, sensory things, like if something’s touching me.

I’m like, get the fuck off my skin now. Like I don’t like anything touching me, especially around my stomach. And that’s okay, it’s not bad, but I wanted to get over that and just be able to wear leggings like I am doing now without being so uncomfortable all the time. I had to have things that, clothes that were always too big for me to feel comfortable. So my window of tolerance, my stretch zone would be to wear jeans or leggings that actually fit me, that weren’t too big.

that I could feel against my skin that were not tight, by the way, that actually fit me well, comfortably, that I would just work through feeling that discomfort and being like, you know what, it’s okay that I can feel that against my skin. So that was like a body image example. Step number three is practice at that edge consistently. So ask your partner to give you one tiny specific non-character attack, piece of feedback once a day within those parameters.

your nervous system learns, okay, we survived this, we’re safe. So this can be a whole host of different things, like whatever your edge is, I want you to ask someone to support you in overcoming that edge. Like let’s say fear of judgment, let’s say your partner says in a very polite, calming tone, you know? I think the colour blue looks better on you than the colour pink. Just a fact, it’s not a story, it’s not-

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you know, saying anything personal to you, well, they’re just being honest. So that’s something about your appearance that before might have sent you into a spiral and a story might have made up like, we just think I look horrible and disgusting and my skin tone’s wrong and whatever it is. But like you practise stretching your edge of your window of tolerance so it expands. So then your comfort zone, that river of wellbeing gets bigger and then you’re less and less on the banks, you’re less and less in your panic zone.

And then number four is gradually increase the challenge. So for me with the body image stuff, I then did wear a bodycon dress in my new curvy body. I remember going back home to England and people hadn’t seen me for a while and I put a lot of weight on. I remember feeling confident because I was acting confident and I’d done a lot of work on this before I went back to England. But I remember like wearing this bodycon dress and my sister seeing me and she was like, my God. Like she obviously was like, my God.

you’re bigger in the head, but she didn’t say that out loud. She was like, my God, your curves really suit you. And I was like, thank you, because I was a lot curvier, I am a lot curvier. So when you feel comfortable with the little slight increases, remove the safety parameters and then practise at that new edge until it feels manageable. And this is how you widen your window intentionally and slowly with compassion.

and without the eating disorder managing it for you. So that even can look like, let’s talk about food for a moment. I mean, you know, my goal for everybody in recovery is for them to go all in, but everyone’s all in looks different. So you can’t go all in in your panic zone because you’ll get re-traumatised and then you’ll retract back, it’s just too much. But you’re all in. Let’s say I have like a traffic light system, like let’s say you list down your fear foods with red, amber and yellow.

Red being like, I’m so fucking terrified of this food, but I will eat it at some point. That’s on my list of fear foods. The amber is like, I am really scared of it, but I’m not as scared of it as the red food. So let’s say in the red list is pizza. Let’s say in the amber list, it’s, what could it be in the amber list? That’s not as like red danger zone as pizza. Maybe the amber list is…

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a salad but with like, you know, all the thick- no that’s a shit one, wait. I’m just making this shit up, I can’t even remember what used to be on mine. Like, remember, my red list was pizza and chocolate, two things were on there. My amber list was like a cheese toastie, like a cheese quiche, something like that, that would be the amber one. And the yellow one would be something like a biscuit, whatever. So you would start with your yellow stuff, and then-

When your nervous system learns that you’re not gonna die and explode if you’re eating a fear food in the yellow list, you then start with your amber list. And then when your brain and nervous system learn that you’re not gonna die, when you’re eating the amber fear foods, you then go to the red ones like that and you go all in. If you can go all into your red foods on day one, fucking good for you. Do it, don’t hold yourself back on purpose. But what I’m saying is,

You need to keep expanding that window of tolerance, process, it expands, and you continue. You still with me? So this is the real recovery work. When a client asks me, why am I still anxious after recovery? Why do I feel more depressed now that I’m not restricting? You’re not failing, you’re not broken, you haven’t done recovery wrong. I’ve said this throughout this podcast episode. You’ve just removed the coping mechanism that was managing

Managing badly, by the way, it was managing your nervous system dysregulation. Now you get to learn how to manage it properly. Now you get to actually heal what was driving the eating disorder in the first place. The anxiety and depression you’re feeling, it’s not new. It was always there. The eating disorder was just masking it, containing it, giving it somewhere to go. Now you get to face it. And I know that sounds absolutely fucking terrifying.

but it’s also the opportunity to actually be free, truly free, not just free from the eating disorder, but free from the nervous system dysregulation that has been running your life. Because healing from an eating disorder, I would guarantee that most people are in a constant state of overwhelm in the hyper arousal, anxiety, panic, like racing thoughts, like…

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like that feeling of danger all the time. If not, you’ve been in that chronically since you were a child, but recovery involves facing your fears every fucking day over and over again. So when you’ve kind of done all of that, it is common for then your nervous system to try and protect you and go into hypoarousal and then just be short and numb and depressed and disassociated because of how long you’ve been in your fight flight mode.

in the recovery facing the fear foods and all the things, you know? So you get to face it, and I know it’s terrifying, but you have the opportunity, like I said, to be fully free. So this is the work. Learning to regulate your nervous system without extreme behaviors. Learning to widen your window of tolerance. Learning that you’re actually safe to feel. Learning that you’re safe to be present, to exist without constant panic.

or shut down. And you can do this. Your window of tolerance can widen. The anxiety can lessen. The depression can lift. You can learn to live in your body without the eating disorder managing everything for you. It takes work. It takes practice. It takes learning these new skills, the up regulation, the down regulation, the stop skill, the neuro reframes, the gradual exposure to your triggers.

and you absolutely can do this. Another thing that I like to ask my clients to do is if you were to like get quiet and check in with yourself and with your state of being, your hyper or hypo arousal, and you were to have a conversation with that part of you, what does it need? Like let’s say if that depression is just heavy and foggy and black and dark and like a black hole, face that, look at it, invite it in.

knowing that you are not it, you cannot be consumed and taken over by these feelings, you cannot, because you are not your feelings, right? So allow yourself to take a look at these feelings and have a conversation with it. Hey, what do you need from me right now? What can I give you to support you? What do you need? And then give that to that part of yourself. The same with the anxiety, like get, get,

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still and be like, okay, what do you need sweetheart? Like, why are you showing up? And then let it show you what it needs. And this is like consistent work with repetition over and over again that you can do and it takes effort, but I promise you it’s worth it. And then I would also advise as I’m closing here for you to write yourself like, have like a vision of…

If you had a magic wand, how would you like your life to be? How do you want to feel? What do you wanna do every day? So write down like how your life would be if you had it your way. So maybe if you’re holding yourself back from connecting with people because you’re afraid of your body being judged or you’re afraid of a romantic relationship that you so desperately want and you’re afraid of being vulnerable and all the things. If you had no fear,

What would your life be like? Now that is a good way to start this vision plan. If you had no fear, what would your life be like? Write all of that down and start to fucking work towards that life in the body you have now, in the nervous system you have now, taking care of yourself along the way, doing all the things that I’ve shared, being consistent with your practise. And you know what? Remembering who the fuck you are, connecting to your inner power.

to your inner wisdom, reparenting the parts of you that need to be reparented and loving the shit out of yourself. Do those things. This is what we do in my coaching. We don’t just stop the eating disorder behaviors and hope everything else sorts itself out, cause it won’t. We actively work on healing the nervous system, widening the window of tolerance and building new coping mechanisms that actually serve you.

Because recovery isn’t just about the absence of eating disorder behaviours, it’s about the presence of continuous, genuine wellbeing. It’s about learning to live in a regulated nervous system instead of constantly swinging between panic and shutdown, panic and shutdown. And yes, when you start this work, nothing will feel as good as the eating disorder behaviours will. And that can suck and that’s when grieving comes in. Like let’s say you…

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if you spoke to that wise parent part of yourself that is speaking to the anxious, scared part of you and it’s actually saying, you know what we need to do? We need to just listen to a song, calm the fuck down, go and spend some time in nature and breathe. And the part of you will be like, yeah, that will not feel as good as like restricting or planning another diet or purging, that won’t feel as good. It’s okay, yeah, it won’t feel as good. And you can grieve that shit. You can grieve the fact it won’t feel as good.

and you can take the action anyway from a place of love and care, then over time, you won’t want to do anything else but take care of yourself. It just takes practice and consistency, that’s all. Right, my love, that’s all I’ve got for you today. I hope this has helped you understand yourself a little bit better and given you some actual tools you can start using now. If you want to dive deeper into this work, I’ve got spaces available now. There was a wait list, but there’s not anymore.

Got spaces available for one-to-one coaching, where we do this kind of nervous system work alongside eking disorder recovery. You can find the details all on my website, victoriaklinesman.com. There’s two different ways you can work with me one-to-one. There’s also my group coaching that you can join. You can have a 14-day free trial. So it’s a no-brainer if you ask me. You can literally sign up for 14 days completely for free, take a look at what’s in there, and decide if you want to continue or if you don’t.

The programme that I’ve created is life-changing. Even without my one-to-one live coaching, if you’re a committed individual and you’re an action taker, even if you’re a perfectionist, even though we’ll be changing that throughout time together in the programme, it can serve you. Because if you dive into everything that’s available to you, including the hundreds of hours of past recorded coaching calls, you have everything you need to recover and more. So check those out on my website.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone else who needs to hear this. Please rate it five star and leave a review. I’ll be so super grateful. So super grateful. And recovery is possible. You do not have to do this alone. I will see you next week, my queens. Okay, so much love to you. And if you do have a question for the podcast, you can find the form to put your question. Ooh!

Victoria Kleinsman (57:03.422)
Actually, yes, before I sign off, I do have a question that I want to read out. So I’m glad I just, yeah, reminded myself. So I’ll finish what I saying then. If you have a question for the podcast, you can find it at the bottom of every email. It says question for podcast. You can click that. Or on my Instagram stories, on the highlights, there’s a question for podcasts and you can click that. So I am going to answer a question from Megan and Megan, I’m just bringing her question. Megan says,

Do you have any advice for athletes coping with the pressure of having a specific body type for their sport? Great question. She is a Sabra, and I’m not sure if I’m saying this right, but she’s a Sabra fencer, and I feel the pressure to be small in order to be fast. I have just recognized that restriction hasn’t helped me become a better athlete, but I still really struggle with what if I was smaller? Right.

Thank you so much for this question, Megan. I’m so glad I just remembered to answer it. So here we go. I’m glad you’ve asked this because so many athletes actually are trapped in this exact loop. But here’s the thing, you said it yourself, right? You know restriction hasn’t made you a better fencer. Your body knows it, but your nervous system is still terrified of being bigger because it.

believes and beliefs can feel very true even though they are just beliefs, they’re not the truth, they’re not facts. Your nervous system believes that being bigger means being slower, being weaker and being less capable. But that’s actually not the truth. It’s just the eating disorder using the sport as its justification to keep its claws in you, right? So the truth is your best fencing happens when your body is nourished, strong,

and not running on fumes. A smaller body, as you’ve found out, isn’t faster, it’s just smaller and weaker. A body with fuel, nourishment, muscle, and nervous system stability, that’s the athlete you actually want to be. Am I right? So here’s what I want you to consider. What if being smaller,

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actually did make you a better athlete, even though we know it doesn’t. But what if being smaller did make you a better athlete? Would that hell of an eating disorder be worth it? What’s more important to you, living a free, healthy life in a strong and nourished body or living in the hell of an eating disorder, trying to be smaller for fencing that doesn’t actually work?

So the what if I was smaller thought will come up. That’s the eating disorder. But every time you eat, when that thought shows up, your nervous system and brain learn, I can be strong and fed at this size. That’s how you become the athlete you were meant to be. Your true, strong, badass, authentic self. So keep fencing, stop restricting, your body will handle the rest.

Okay, you’ve got this. So let me know if you want any more elaboration in the answer, then just contact me and I’ll gladly elaborate. But is there anything else I want to add to that? You’ve already answered it yourself. You’re not a better, faster, stronger fence when you restrict. There’s just those thoughts of the what if. And those thoughts will go away, I promise, over time, only if you don’t entertain those thoughts, you don’t act on them, you just notice them, dismiss them.

and then act as if you’re an athlete who loves the shit out of themselves, who wants to be strong, nourished, fed and capable, regardless of what that does to their fencing. And I know that’s like a big thing for me to say, like I actually work with a few actresses and dancers, professional dancers, who for their professional career need to be a certain weight. And it always comes down to what the fuck is more important? Perhaps.

losing acting jobs or even changing your goddamn career in terms of dancing as well, but actually being fucking free and healthy and vibrant and alive or restricting and all the stuff that comes with that, the hell of an eating disorder and perhaps getting the acting jobs and getting the money. Like what is more important? You tell me. All right, okay, I’m definitely done now. Sending you all so much love. I’ll see you in an episode soon. Much love.