Speaker 1 (00:02.136)
Glorious. And again, to reiterate, you are open, you’re free to opt out of answering any questions or to withdraw from the study altogether. Your story is absolutely valuable and we want to make sure that you yourself are protected as well. So beginning with some basic questions for identification purposes, how old are you, Victoria?

am 38.

Okay. And then which gender do you identify as? And then your eating disorder diagnosis, whether self diagnosed or medically. And what was that diagnosis?

Women.

Speaker 2 (00:38.231)
medically.

Speaker 2 (00:43.384)
The original diagnosis was when I had anorexia nervosa when I was 11. And then I was diagnosed with binge eating. It would have been when I was about 21. But I know, well, this is my knowing as a professional now, they misdiagnosed me because I’m sure we’ll go into this without making this a long story now. I’ll try and keep it short. Any form of binge eating that has prior restriction and then

compensation after the binge eating in a severe way is actually bulimia. So I would compensate by the try to compensate from the binge through taking excessive laxatives, extreme exercise and an extreme restriction. And that was the cycle. So I think that’s worth saying because so many people get diagnosed with binge eating disorder. Actually, there’s very, very few people who actually have genuine binge eating disorder with no restriction or no compensation after it.

Mm hmm. Yes, it’s important to specify. Thank you so much. So medically diagnosed. Okay. And then the age of development, you said 11 for anorexia and 21 for the binge eating. Correct? Have you received forms of treatment?

I had therapy and psychotherapy and in the anorexia I had outpatient treatment to support me with that. And I’ve taken something from all of them. What is a part, an inner part that needs and wants to be, I don’t want to say ready because we’re never ready, but that needs to be willing. And I think a lot of that has to do with how the health.

comes in. So I remember being in anorexia recovery, literally sat there like this with my arms folded, doing, nodding, shaking my head, nodding my head, not wanting to speak to the person because I decided that this person had no idea what I was going through. And the people that I saw didn’t share whether they had had a similar experience. I think that’s a big part of recovery. So I had no idea if my therapist have had an eating disorder or not. If they did, they didn’t share it. So I just decided that they didn’t understand and then shut off.

Speaker 2 (02:59.118)
from them.

Absolutely. having a personal story or personal experience, having them be more of a peer rather than sort of absent medical provider. What led you to finally open up if you did come to open up?

Yeah, well, was through, I’m a fighter and many people with eating disorders are a fighter, meaning I would struggle and fight my way through life because that’s how the world moulded itself to me because of my childhood experiences. So it wasn’t always a bad thing. It served me very well in a lot of different things. When I got so it’s, it’s briefly worth saying the anorexia, the diagnosis at 11, I was recovered.

in quotes for anyone who’s not watching the video of this or if you’re writing this, I was declared recovered from anorexia when I was weight restored, when I was on the healthy scale of the BMI. However, I wasn’t at my natural healthy set point weight and I was far from recovered because I’d gained weight but I was still very disordered in my head. But they didn’t see that, they just saw, she’s gained weight, she’s now eating more, so therefore off you go.

you’ve recovered. So I was technically again, air quotes recovered from anorexia. That would have been the age 16. But then it just morphed into bulimia until I was 30 years old. So when I was 30, I moved to the Netherlands, love story, met a Dutch man in Egypt on holiday, fell in love, knew him three months. He flew to England every weekend for three months to see me and just moved here.

Speaker 1 (04:24.066)
Mmm.

Speaker 2 (04:45.07)
So at that point when I was 30 and I’d met the love of my life, I’ve moved countries, everything apart from the relationship, everything went to shit. I was lonely. couldn’t speak the language. The binge eating and the bulimia was getting really, really bad. I hit my rock bottom. I was also keeping it from him because I didn’t feel like I could be vulnerable and share. I didn’t want to share with anyone back home because I thought that I didn’t want them to worry because I’d moved country. So I was holding everything in and I hit my rock bottom.

to the point where I remember sitting on the floor of my kitchen, crying my eyes out, thinking, I’m so afraid of my own thoughts. I want to be put in a psychiatric ward because I can’t get away from myself and I hate myself and I hate being me. I didn’t want to die, but I just, I was like in absolute panic, overwhelmed. I couldn’t be me anymore. And that’s when I was like, you know what? I’m going to have to admit. And I use the word admit then now I don’t use the word admit because

asking for help and asking for our needs to be met is a sign of strength, not a weak sign of weakness. But then I saw it as a biggest sign of weakness because I’ve always just had to do it by myself. So I admitted that I needed help and my recovery started from there. So then I was open because I could not live how I was living anymore. I just couldn’t do it.

Yeah, well, incredible that you were able to have that self-awareness despite being at bottom. To be self-aware while also wanting to escape yourself is an interesting

I so wanted to escape myself. If someone could have given me a pill to escape myself, I wouldn’t have cared what the consequences would have been. I would have taken that without a shadow of a doubt. But you can’t escape yourself because wherever you go, there you are.

Speaker 1 (06:28.46)
Yeah. And if it’s okay, we further into the interview, we’ll continue exploring the idea of the thoughts that you were trying to escape and this sort of bifurcation of self. But for now, we’re transitioning now to questions about like the sort of history of the eating disorder itself. Do you remember the first time you engaged in the disordered behaviour and what led up to that?

I do, through no fault of her own with her awareness, my mother was always on a diet. And without realizing it until I started my true recovery at 30, I didn’t realize that me and my mother were in such an enmeshed codependent relationship. So I saw my mother as like God and I wanted to be like her and we were best friends, which from again, personal and now professional experience,

Hmm.

Speaker 2 (07:27.52)
It’s okay to be best friends with your mother if you are both adults. If you’re an adult child of a mother who you consider yourself like best friends with. And I feel by yourself, by your face, resonate with what I’m saying. I can just tell energetically. But as a child, if you’re best friends with your mother, that’s not okay because your mother needs to be your parent, not your best friend. And I’m a new mother now and I’m really leaning into that. So it started off from me just copying my mom.

And she would allow me to, she was trying to protect me because I didn’t need to diet. when I say I didn’t need to, nobody needs to, I want to make that very clear. But back in the day, when I didn’t know what I know now, wasn’t classed as quote unquote overweight or whatever it was. anyone looking at me wouldn’t think I needed to diet. So sadly, people still judge people and think people need to lose weight, but we might go into that. So she allowed me to count Weight Watchers points.

but she would give me a point that wasn’t to lose weight, just to like maintain where I was at. And I was like, what, nine at this point, like, and child. But it was again, because my mom had her own trauma and stuff, it was something we could do together. So she was like, yeah, you can be like me and then we’ll count points together. And at the weekend we can have like this binge because she gets weighed again, like on the next week. So I learned very quickly that food was to be…

of like a love hate relationship. So like we love having this food, but you can’t love it too much because it’s really bad for you. And you also need to feel shame when you eat it because it gains weight and then weight gain is bad. So I started to learn that before the anorexia set in and the anorexia set in for me for a couple of reasons that I’m aware of now. One, because a lot of childhood trauma, like emotionally, my emotional needs weren’t met before that.

So I turned out to be perfectionist and overachiever in order to try and be accepted and loved by my mom. So when I was good at something, AKA the counting, I would be like, if I just like do one point less and I’ll just do another point less and the overachiever in me, because when I went to the Weight Watchers Club with my mom every Friday night, they would clap when people lost weight. And then when someone gained weight, they’ll be like, you know, nevermind, what went wrong? And so I’d…

Speaker 2 (09:48.654)
quickly learn my child brain was like, so it’s really good. Like, and my mom’s really happy when she loses weight. So now just like do that too. So my perfectionism and overachieving delve into the restriction part. And then the praise originally from people, even I was nine being like, oh, you look so healthy. You’re doing such a good job. It just went too far. And then at that point, before the anorexia kind of took over, I’d started to grow hair under my arms. started to grow pubic hair. I’d started to get boobs.

at such a age, from, from nine, my hair was growing under my arms, my mom would shave it for me. So I had a really early onset puberty. all of that, my body was changing. I was just like, not ready to be a woman yet. I just restricted and was really good at it. And then it, before you know it, the anorexia gene gets switched on, the migration response gets switched on and it was easy to just not eat and move.

Mm-hmm. Thank you very much for that history and going into that. It’s curious to hear especially how the overachieving was so specifically linked to food from the outset. A lot of anorexics or people who have anorexia nervosa, excuse me, overachieve and it’s not necessarily within the context of food, but…

they’re overachieving or drive to overachieve puts them in situations where they feel at risk or like they don’t have control because they’re continually reaching out and then they find control in the food. But in this case, you were overachieving within the context of food specifically. Do you feel that drive to perfection or to find your mom’s favor in other contexts?

With everything, if I did something, I would either do it to be the best, or I wasn’t going to bother at all. So black or white, all or nothing was very prominent very early on for me. And if I couldn’t do something, I remember from such a young age, I would get so angry and so ashamed that I couldn’t do it first time. And again, I’m a new mother now, so if she’s not gone through that stage where I’m assuming most children are annoyed if they can’t do something.

Speaker 2 (12:10.68)
but it was like an overwhelming feeling of anger and then shame that I couldn’t do it. So I’d either continue doing it until I was the best or just completely just stop doing it. So it was with everything, because I also believe now how we do one thing is how we do everything. So perfectionism and the overachieving showed up in my relationship with food, but I think we can learn so much about ourselves simply by looking at our relationship with food as an adult and as children. It tells us

It’s just easier to see on the outside what’s going on on the inside. And if someone is struggling with food, if they were to look at their relationship with food and describe it as if it was in relationship to a person, I guarantee it’s gonna show up in other areas of their life and in relationships with people too.

Mm-hmm. Yes, it is without boundaries. This is sure. Beginning now with the experience of the eating disorder, when it was active, what happened in your mind, your body, your spirit? You could approach this through any point. Some people will talk about an inner voice, signs of problematic, and reward seeking, impulsivity, slew of things. What was the experience like for you?

Yeah, for me, it was very strong voice in my head that felt like it was my voice. So again, it wasn’t until I started to recover when I was 30 that I understood, wait, my thoughts aren’t facts, really? Or there’s actually an awareness of space that I can create to witness my thoughts. I didn’t have any of that back then. And sadly, in therapy, none of that was brought to my attention that actually I am not my thoughts, my thoughts are not facts.

It’s not that I have to restrict, it’s that I have a thought that I have to restrict. But to answer your question, it was very much, it was very much, have to do this in order to be okay. So in the anorexia especially, it was always finding loopholes of how to eat less. But the voice that to answer your question specifically, how did I experience eating? So it was a voice of like, very controlling, you have to do this, you can’t do that. It was a very, no, you have

Speaker 2 (14:25.196)
do. So it wasn’t like I felt like I didn’t have any choice. So it was very much in my head and a lot of people with eating disorders live in their heads because they don’t feel safe to live in their body because in the body emotions are felt, truly felt. And so if it’s too painful to be in your body, you live in your head. So it’s very common for people to have that voice, whether they see it as theirs or someone else’s, just this force of like, you will, have to do this. And then in terms of body,

I was so disconnected from my body. didn’t really feel anything, but I liked that feeling. I felt quite numb, quite, what’s the feeling where you feel superior to someone? Like I could tolerate a lot of pain and I saw that as like a good thing. So even when I’d have massages when I was older, as eating sort of progressive lymia, I would find it an achievement that I could like take a massage that way people use their elbows. And it was like a very weird sadistic, like I liked that I could take a lot of pain.

because that meant, again, I only knew this through the inner work. I made the story up, although I was taught to believe the story, that it means I’m really strong and I can hold a lot. So my body, was numb. My emotions, I was quite numb because I didn’t know how to deal with them. So that kind of made them go away. In terms of my soul and spirit, now I’m connected to what those even mean. I won’t say I was broken because we’re not broken, we’re always whole and complete at a soul level, but because I was so disconnected,

I just, again, numb. was just, I was not connected to that part of me, but there was one part in my eating disorder when I was 25. So this was before I started recovery. I was in an abusive relationship. I was getting beat up daily. was a, it’s a hard time. And I remember, I remember a voice in my head, but a different voice in my head. So the voice that I described about the eating disorder, that was just me. I thought it was me. This other voice came into my head and it questioned, it spoke to me and it said,

what the fuck are you doing with your life, Victoria? Look around you, what the fuck are you doing? And I remember kind of answering the voice by looking around me and then just being like, yeah, what am I doing with my life? And that voice asking that question so direct actually allowed me to have the strength to come up with a plan to leave that abusive relationship and I did. So that was the first time I connected with my intuition without realising it, I guess.

Speaker 1 (16:52.174)
Yeah, so the crisis brought back your intuition.

Because I believe your intuition throughout our entire lives were born 100 % connected to our intuition. Absolute pure, fully connected. The day you were born, you had no problem expressing your needs through your voice, through crying. Like we’re taught not to express. So when we’re born, we’re fully connected. And I believe throughout our lifetime, our intuition starts tapping us. And if we don’t listen, it will kind of start prodding us. And if we don’t listen, it will…

start pushing us and then it will slap us around the face until we listen. There’s so many spiritual leaders out there who have only gotten to their spiritual path through extreme trauma and adversity in childhood. It’s a gift.

Yeah, there’s some yeah, it’s tragic that they have to go that but then yeah, it’s incredible how they’re how it’s redeemed, right? Yes. going back to this this inner voice that was so strong in your head. Again, that was your voice. It’s not the intuitive voice. No. The

When it was active, what was that like for you?

Speaker 2 (18:13.442)
Like I was in prison and I couldn’t get away from myself. I had no belief or no inkling to think I could even ignore that voice. No, like that wasn’t an option. I just had to do what it said. I didn’t even question, and this is where coaching is so powerful to ask the questions, to get your own answers. I didn’t even question, well, what would happen if I just didn’t do that? It was like, well, I have to run 10K at five o’clock every morning. Well, I have to then go to…

Like it was just a have to. It was like a dictator that I was just a victim, I guess victim. Absolute, that’s a very key word. I was a victim to it. And obviously a true victim thinks that they have no choice but to just do what the person in control is saying to do.

Sure. And it’s curious, if I’m remembering correctly, you mentioned that the voice was your voice. It was as if you were victim to yourself.

exactly that. I thought that was who I was.

Yeah, and hence the desire to escape yourself that you mentioned earlier on in the interview. Okay.

Speaker 2 (19:23.384)
Yeah. But very powerful, you’ve actually just shared that Courtney, because I’m just reflecting on what you’ve said. When I was at rock bottom where I wanted to escape myself, who was the I that wanted to escape myself? That’s soul self. The repressed self was who I thought I was. Yet in that breaking moment, there was another I that came into my awareness.

that wasn’t the suppressed self, I see it now as the soul self. So that’s really interesting. Like when we say things like, oh, I was lost in thought, well, who is the I that was lost in the thought then? Cause you’re not your thoughts. And so to ask these, maybe people might think weird or very philosophical questions. They’re the questions we need to be asking ourselves to start to have a little opening, a little bit of a space of like,

Wait, maybe there is something else out there for me then, that’s not this.

Exactly, and as you’ve recovered, seems as though your soul self has become all the stronger.

Yeah, that’s who I identify with now.

Speaker 1 (20:32.788)
It’s beautiful. Could you speak a bit more to what that soul self is? Who is Victoria’s soul self?

Yes, and this is to all of us. So it’s not just me because we’re all one, it depends how deep you want to go here, but the soul self that you get, all of us get to experience in this lifetime is three things that I can explain so it makes sense to everyone how it feels and how you can experience it. Number one, the soul self can give and receive unconditional love. Receiving is a big one for women especially. So it’s all about giving love.

but it’s receiving love because here’s the thing, we can only ever receive love from others to the same extent of that which we love ourselves. If we love ourselves 10%, someone can love us 100%, but we can only physically and emotionally and spiritually receive 10 % of their 100 % love. So number one, unconditional love for ourselves and for others and to be able to receive it back, that’s your soul self, that’s just.

That’s just inevitable. The second thing is authentic self-expression, which means being honest about how you feel and what you need and sharing that with your partner, in relationships, setting boundaries, saying no, not people pleasing, sharing what’s on your heart and what’s on your mind, unapologetically sharing your authentic voice. And the third thing is then because of those two things, you live in freedom.

freedom to express yourself, freedom to give and receive love, freedom of speech, and then freedom brings peace. And life happens, people die, you feel sad and sadness and grief, of course you do. You feel anger if something happens that is going against what you’ve said or it’s encroaching on your boundaries. They’re all human emotions we feel, but in my experience, underneath all of these daily emotions is a foundation of just peace.

Speaker 1 (22:36.599)
Mm.

even at peace, and I’m a human and I’m not perfect and you know, I’m in my emotions sometimes, but when you do the work and you return home to your soul self, so I’ll reiterate the three again, giving and receiving love, authentic self expression and then freedom. If you’re in your suppressed self, it’s interesting that the words I’m using here, I was in bed last night, and before I go to sleep, I always ask my higher self, my soul self to just show something to me in dream time or like,

give me a sign or whatever. Sometimes it’s nothing. Sometimes I’ll have a dream and forget it the second I wake up. This morning I woke up and I had the words, the vocabulary of suppressed self and soul self, obviously to use for this interview, which, you know, isn’t random to me or it all comes in the perfect time. I’ve used these before, but not in this exact way with this language. And so where am I going with this? The suppressed self can’t receive love. Definitely not. It can probably give love, but

How much can you give really? Is it unconditional? If it’s an empty cup that you’re pouring from? The suppressed self can’t express itself authentically because it’s people pleasing. It’s wearing masks. It’s organizing all the people’s emotions so you didn’t have to feel a certain way. It’s putting others needs before themselves. And it also is not free. It’s controlled by self.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:05.582)
Mm.

Speaker 1 (24:08.95)
And of course, what complicates this all the more too is, you know, the repressed or the suppressed self and the soul self, as you’ve already alluded to, right, in talking about your story, they can exist in tandem and who is feeding into whom or who is taking from whom in the context, you know, the suppressed self will try to and weaken the soul self, but then the soul self needs to come in and nurture and correct.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:38.946)
the suppressor. No, so bifurcated either or it’s just okay, these two things are always existing in us in tandem. But what is the dynamic between the two? That’s a very beautiful conceptualization of

Speaker 1 (24:59.316)
of just deeper psychology. Thank you.

you addressed it, you mirrored it back to me beautifully, which lead me to say, with the two selves that you always have within you, it’s like planting seeds. So let’s say we all have seeds that we plant for our suppressed self, and seeds that we plant for our soul self. The one that’s going to flourish the most is the one you nourish. I mean that’s a bit of a cringey thing, but true, whatever you nourish will flourish.

At the end of each day, are you nourishing your soul self? Have you said no? Instead of saying yes and people pleasing, have you nourished yourself today? Have you rested? Or have you actually nourished the suppressed self? Because whatever you nourish is gonna grow and is gonna flourish and be stronger than. So just the goal is to not nourish the suppressed self and to nourish the soul self. And then that’s what your experience of life will be because it’s always a choice.

Always, always, always a choice.

Yes, absolutely. in your experience, Victoria, what were the choices that you needed to make to stop feeding the suppressed self, instead feed the soul self?

Speaker 2 (26:22.262)
to face my fear. So I had to choose this, choose the choice. What was the most fearful? And that’s the hardest thing to do. That’s why so many people can read all the books, listen to all the podcasts. They could, they know so much, they could create a program to sell and write a book to sell about eating disorder recovery. However, knowing and embodying are two different things. And I’m saying this for a reason to just share extra value for anyone who

is in that place where they know everything, but they’re not taking the action. So the choices, first and foremost, I had to get out of victim mentality and understand that I actually had a choice. Meaning if someone held a gun to my head and said, if you don’t eat that, I’m gonna shoot you. Or if you don’t eat that, I’m gonna shoot you more and more, like to a big extreme.

Would I do the thing that I’m telling myself I can’t do? The answer is yes. So then I started switching I can’t to I won’t. And just doing that without any action first, going around the day being like, I won’t stop myself going on a 10K run. I won’t eat that and nourish myself. I couldn’t get away from the fact of the fact I was choosing to suppress myself.

Hmm.

Speaker 2 (27:49.806)
And I wanted something different. Here’s the thing. Some people sadly don’t, I don’t want to say this, they want it enough that they’re not willing to do what it takes to get what they say they want. I was, when I was at rock bottom, I didn’t know how. I had no fucking clue how I was gonna love myself in a bigger body. Cause I knew I was gonna gain weight. Cause I knew I was suppressing myself. I knew it. I had no idea how I was gonna love myself or even like myself in a bigger body. I just knew.

I was willing to try to do something different because I couldn’t continue the way I was. So I was willing and because of my perfectionism and overachieving, when I decided and made my mind up, that served me so well because I overachieved at recovery, which again, did feel like it kind of didn’t serve me always, but it served me at the beginning. I overachieved at recovery. was like, right, whatever it fucking takes was my mantra. So because of that,

foundational work of number one, I am not a victim to myself. And I thought I was, I thought I had to be clear with, I am not a victim. I have the power to choose. I have no idea how I feel so weak. I don’t know how I can, but I had to know that there was a choice that I could make, didn’t have to make. It wasn’t like in the outpatient treatment where I was forced to eat, where I didn’t have a choice and it was someone pushing me externally.

As a grown-ass adult, I got to choose. And so that created a space for my soul to like shine through because I don’t have to recover, but I want to. Okay. So with this space of no one pressuring me, no one saying I need to do this. Okay. I want to recover. What do I have to do if I want to get what I say I want? have to eat. I have to nourish. I have to stop exercising. I have to ask for my needs. have to go to bed and get the rest I need.

I have to do all the things that I’ve not done, which was so uncomfortable and fearful and petrifying, especially when the weight gain happened and I wanted to run back. My soul self was too strong then. No, we’re not going back. We’re just gonna, I have no clue how I’ll get through today. And you do, and you get through another day and another day. So it’s all about what do you want most? And are you willing to face the fear and be uncomfortable to get to where you want to be?

Speaker 2 (30:16.62)
because it’s a guarantee, people say, don’t know I can ever recover. I guarantee recovery if you’re willing to face your fears, full stop.

Mm, yeah. Thank you very much. It’s a wonderful way. Yeah, those actionable steps provide a wonderful way out to those who are really hopeless and don’t have a vision as to what life without the disorder would be like. So thank you.

Can I just say a little bit to help those people who don’t have a vision? Because some people say, you know, I did, I was lucky I had a vision. Not a clear one, because I had no idea how I was going to do it. But I knew what I wanted and I wanted freedom and I wanted self-expression. I wanted to stop people pleasing. So I had a vision. So many people don’t even have a vision. just know they don’t want what they’re in right now. So to speak to those people, allow others to be your inspiration, me.

all the coaches out there, all the people who are sharing themselves on Instagram, if you don’t know what you want, that’s okay. Allow your inner child to tell you what she wants and she will be very clear on what she wants. She wants fucking freedom. Use others to be your inspiration before you can feel it within your own self.

Hmm.

Speaker 1 (31:31.47)
Yeah powerful words.

Yes.

Okay, switching gears now, Victoria, I’m going to read the definition of Ask for your questions and comments on it as it relates to you and your personal story. Shame is a state in which an individual has internalized an abstract perception of negative emotions or judgments to the devaluation of themselves. I’ll read it again. And I’m happy to read it however many times to be helpful.

I’m gonna close my eyes as you’re reading it.

Shame is a state in which an individual has internalized an abstract perception of negative emotions or judgments to the devaluation of themselves.

Speaker 2 (32:27.224)
I would agree with that, yes. Because in simple terms, how I experienced it, and shame are two different things. Guilt is you feel like you’ve done something wrong, your behaviour is wrong. Shame feels like you’re just wrong. You’re just bad, you’re just flawed. It’s hard to put in words because the shame I would feel for eating, even like going to the toilet, it was, I wanna say it’s weird, but of course it’s not weird. The shame I would feel like having human needs, that’s it, that’s the key for me.

Having human needs felt so shameful to me. It’s hard to put into words and the shame that was felt in my body was like, I wanted to crawl out of my skin. It was like a wave of like heat of like, please the floor just swallow me now. It was like, it’s hard to put in words. People will understand. I’m sure you Courtney also might understand how that feels. It’s there’s something wrong with me. No matter what anyone says to me.

I’m not never gonna be good enough. That’s it. I’m never ever gonna be good enough. No matter what I do, that’s how I experienced shame.

It’s curious to hear you mention that shame really revolved around your human needs, Wanting to hide from yourself when you began going through puberty. And it’s not like that. That’s being human, right? Yeah. through. Yeah. It’s a part of the human experience. whether it’s whether it’s

eating or feeling, having the embodiment of a human, the sensations that go through and the developments of a human seemed like there was a lot of avoidance or hiding from that for you.

Speaker 2 (34:19.191)
Yeah, and this conversation is beautiful because it leads me to more realisations is that because being a human is imperfect and it’s messy, because I identified or I felt the drive to be perfect in order to be safe, I could not allow human needs. I can’t allow myself to like go for a poo because that’s not a perfect thing. You know what I mean? And people don’t like the smell and…

all the things that were taught, even like to the point where, and I’ve learned this because now I have a baby myself and I’m purposely not doing this, from such a young age, let’s say you’re a baby, you’re pre-verbal, you don’t even know what language is, you see a parent acting in negative way to your pooey nappy, like changing the nappy like this, you’re learning through their body language and through their emotions, it’s not okay to poo, seriously.

So it goes, know parents, mean, God forbid, there’s no such thing as a perfect parent, it’s impossible, because we’re all human again, we’re messy and we’re not perfect. But even to that degree from such a young age, where did I learn that it’s not okay? mean, verbally, of course it’s okay to go to the toilet. But even from such a young age, like when I was being checked for, I don’t know if this is a thing now, kids have worms, they had to look in between my bum to see if I had worms as a child.

I was that adamant no one could see me naked. So from such a age, even before the anorexia, I was so ashamed of people seeing my body. My dad had to come and check when I was asleep, because I wouldn’t let them. So where are we learning that, and I am sensitive too, not everyone could have the same experience and have a different, completely different experience of the life I’ve lived. I’m a sensitive person. But I learned somewhere that I need to feel ashamed for having needs.

perhaps even through the fact that I had a pooey nappy and every time I had a pooey nappy because I’m sensitive, someone didn’t want to change it. so because I put everyone’s feelings before my own, like, if I didn’t have a pooey nappy, then they wouldn’t have to be uncomfortable. It goes so deep and this is what we explore in coaching because everyone’s different. But to try and circle back to answer your question Courtney around shame, shame to be human because humans aren’t perfect. And I had a belief

Speaker 2 (36:45.592)
that in order to be perfect, then I would be loved and accepted and safe. If I wasn’t perfect, I wouldn’t be safe.

Hmm. Hmm.

So rejected the very part of who I am, which is human.

Yeah. Did you experience shame around any other thing besides just embodiment?

I think embodiment was the biggest one. think having needs, I guess that relates to the, I guess having needs. if I, say for example, if I was lying on the sofa on my mum’s lap, if I was uncomfortable, I wouldn’t say, can I have another pillow? Or like I would just keep myself there in order not to disturb her. So it was with everything. The biggest thing was the embodiment, like being in a body that, and a body has needs.

Speaker 2 (37:39.278)
being human, you have a body and therefore you have needs you need to eat, you to drink, you need to poo, you need to, you’re hot, you’re cold. So I guess it was all embodiment, but thinking about it, it was asking for my needs to be met. But if I was, when I was a baby and a child, my needs weren’t met, then I was taught through my mum’s actions or non-action that my needs don’t matter. So if I can have less needs, it will annoy her less and I won’t be a burden and my mum will be okay.

I don’t want to add to my mum’s stress and my mum needs to be happy so the less I ask for the happier she is and because we were so co-dependent therefore I can then be happy. Mum’s okay I’m happy. It’s like roles reverse I was the parent of my mother because my mother is still a child in an adult body because she’s not worked on her own trauma that she’s also been through a lot generationally.

Yeah, you have also such a gracious perspective for your mother.

I love her so much and she, every, I think you may have heard me say this on a podcast and I say it over and over again, every single thing we do or don’t do as humans is either an act of love or a cry for love. So my mom was only doing the best with what she was physically, emotionally and spiritually able to do. She didn’t know better. It’s not like she was doing it on purpose. She just wasn’t evolved enough.

to know how to deal with their own emotions, to hold me in my emotions and give me what I needed. And that’s why I think if we break the generational patterns and then have children, we get to break that and then bring up children whose needs are met, who do believe in love themselves. And then we create a whole new world of humans through doing the work on ourselves first and then passing that down.

Speaker 1 (39:32.494)
Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 (39:40.504)
We have touched on the presence of shame during the eating disorder, the anorexia and the binge eating. Do you believe shame played a role in the development in the steps to what led up to the anorexia and the binge eating?

Yes, because I touched on perfectionism. Shame and perfectionism are two sides of the same coin. So the more perfect you can be, the less you’ll have to feel the shame of, the shame that you feel of just being alive, being you. And it also is mirrored back to you in society, like the more good you are, good girl, well behaved, perfect.

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (40:29.656)
funny in the right times at the right places. Like the more you’re performing and the more perfect you are, you get praised. And so of course, anorexia thrives on perfection. And in order to be perfect, have to be in control because life’s not perfect. I mean, truth bomb, we all know that. Life is imperfect and the perfect doesn’t even make sense. Only in the spiritual sense that we are already all perfect, whole and complete and everything is perfect. That’s deep spiritual work in terms of the perfection.

Perfectionism and the perfect word we use in society today, it shouldn’t even be a word, it shouldn’t even be a thing. So for anorexia, the shame drove the perfectionism. And of course then the immigration response with the anorexia switched on, so that was the anorexia. In the binge eating, my God, the shame of the binges. I would eat in the broom cupboard at work, I would eat in secret, I would frantically eat in my car.

That was a mixture of the behaviour was like so shameful. No one can even ever witness it ever. Cause I’d rather die than someone see what and how much I’m eating right now. And the shame fuels the cycle of secrecy because shame keeps us stuck, silent and separate. But it fuels itself. The only way shame can be healed is if you bring it into the light. So if you see shame as like darkness and something that’s hidden,

Shame, in my personal experience, can’t be healed within yourself only. It needs a relationship of some kind, whether a conversation like this or a therapist or relationship with you with another person in a support group, whatever it is, it needs to be shared from you in a vulnerable state, witnessed by others and just met with love. That’s the only way shame can be healed, because you can’t heal it yourself. You need to be witnessed because we’re

you

Speaker 2 (42:25.646)
human beings, we live in relation to others. We only develop or experience shame through relationship to others. If we lived separate on a desert island our entire lives, wouldn’t even know what shame was. It’s created through relationship to others. So it needs to be healed in relationship to others through sharing it with vulnerability and being met with love.

Absolutely. Yeah. The next few prompts I have, Victoria, are a bit long. So I’m going to share my screen.

Okay, great.

How do I? Where’s?

It sometimes changes, doesn’t it? It might now be in the more dot dot dot and then it might.

Speaker 1 (43:12.718)
Got it

here we go. Okay. Can you see the doc? that’s sorry. That’s my syllabus.

can’t see anything yet so don’t worry it’s just black for me still. I couldn’t see anything.

Doing that lately, I’ll choose the right-

Oh, you can choose, I think, yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:33.398)
And then it should

can’t see anything yet.

Speaker 1 (43:48.162)
Maybe what I’ll do is actually, I think I have too many Word documents open right now. So let me just go ahead and.

Speaker 1 (44:01.058)
Decrease the count of though.

Speaker 1 (44:06.624)
Aha! There we go. Brilliant.

Hey, let’s do something now. Great.

Yes. Okay, so on a scale of one, not at all to five being a great deal. How much shame you’ve experienced in the following context and I apologize that this is more word in the present tense and we’re speaking more towards the past and when your anorexia, neurosa and binge eating were okay. In relationships with family.

Speaker 1 (44:41.264)
okay. In friendships or peer interactions. in academic or professional settings.

Three.

in response to failure or perceived inadequacy.

around expressing emotional needs.

Six.

Speaker 1 (45:07.758)
Due to feeling not enough or too much.

seven. Okay, five. I’ll play the game now, five.

appreciate the, the like.

It’s the verity of the five.

In connection to your identity, that could be class, gender, sexuality, culture, religion, or other demographic identifiers. Okay. Any comments or questions on this prompt?

Speaker 2 (45:30.126)
think two and a half.

Speaker 2 (45:40.562)
If you could have, I guess I was going to say one specifically around how shameful would you feel about being in your body or having a body you have, but I guess for me that can be fed into feeling not enough or too much somehow. So I guess that could be put into there, but something around the body and how you look, the image you perceive, you, you portray to the world how shameful.

Are you around that?

Okay, yeah, so if there were a prompt, a sub prompt to this larger question that read along the lines of, in experiences of having a body.

Yeah, because I remember in the binge eating, it being really, really hot. I mean, wanting to wear like a shorter dress or at least shorts or something and me thinking of, my goodness, can’t let other people feel so disgusted in seeing my legs. So again, was putting other people’s emotional needs before my own, deciding that everyone would be absolutely disgusted to the point where they can’t physically look at me because they’re so disgusted in me. So.

I would choose to do something different so I wouldn’t have to put them through the disgust of looking at me because I’m and then I would feel so much shame if I did do that. So I guess that’s very body specific in terms of appearance.

Speaker 1 (47:06.72)
Yeah, so what would you say on a scale of one to five?

With that five massively, yeah.

Thank you for that addition. And then to the next prompt, to what extent do you agree with the following statements on a scale of one, strongly disagree to five, strongly agree. Again, apologies, this is within the context of when the eating disorder is active, so these should be past tense. I’ll go ahead and word those as appropriate. When I was ashamed, I was more likely to change the way I ate.

These are great.

Speaker 2 (47:43.374)
05.

Shane made me want to control something in my life.

Bye.

I used food-related behaviors to numb or cope with emotional pain.

And that wants to be a 10, but we only have five, so five.

Speaker 1 (48:01.774)
I hid or isolated myself when I felt shame.

Bye.

I felt more in control when I engaged in disordered eating behaviors.

Bye.

Shame influenced the development of my eating habits.

Speaker 2 (48:17.88)
Bye.

Thank you. Any additional comments or questions on this?

I would like to meet someone who has an eating disorder who doesn’t have a five out of all of four or five with all of those.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. There is…

Because shame drives shame. I had to put shame, if I had to describe shame to an alien who didn’t know what shame meant, I would use the words something wrong with, never good enough, always too much or never enough, embarrassed, those kind of things. So I think they all link to, and obviously if you can then have the answer, because society sells us the answer that if you’re thin and beautiful, everything will be perfect.

Speaker 2 (49:06.286)
you’ll have a great lover and relationship, you’ll earn lots of money, everyone wants to be your friend, you’ll have nice holidays. I know I’m over-exaggerating here and being a bit over the top, but that’s kind of true. If you didn’t have shame, you wouldn’t be seeking to move away from shame to feel good enough if you already knew you were enough. You would collapse overnight actually if everyone woke up tomorrow loving themselves and knowing that they were enough.

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (49:34.156)
the beauty and diet industry would go bankrupt literally overnight.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:42.99)
It’s all linked to childhood, by the way. get you. Obviously, you know that all of it. I’ve not met a single person. I’ve met quite a few clients who they come to me and they’re like, yeah, my, it sort of didn’t start till, you know, my twenties when I was, I just after uni or whatever it was. So had a great childhood. And I’m not, I don’t want to argue the fact they didn’t think they had a great childhood. A hundred percent of the time when we dive into childhood stuff, all of it comes up and they’re like, oh my God.

Because there’s a reason for the eating disorder, even if it didn’t develop until your 30s, because our brain is developed and not fully developed till the age of 25, we have a brain that controls most of what we do or don’t do. It’s always something in childhood. It doesn’t have to be food related or body related. It’s characteristic related and what you’ve learned about your needs.

growing up as a child is always linked. It’s just the eating disorder is, it’s what Gabor Maté says, I love him. He says it’s not why the addiction, it’s why the pain. Addiction to restriction or the eating disorder is simply a symptom of trying to manage the pain, but why the pain? Where’s that come from?

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (51:06.39)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It’s so much deeper, right?

So much deeper,

All right, so I’m going to stop sharing the screen unless there are any further thoughts on these questions.

No, not that I’ve already said, no.

Okay, thank you so much Victoria for your thoughts and your professional insights on this. It’s been very lovely. Final question here. What has been most, or what was most beneficial to your recovery?

Speaker 2 (51:42.862)
Me understanding I had a choice.

Speaker 2 (51:49.878)
me understanding that I didn’t have to be a victim. And I understood that by seeing other people having lived through anorexia and binge eating ablemia, having recovered and then saying, cause we never truly know on Instagram, but you also have a feeling to a person, them showing that

they’re actually the biggest they’ve ever been, but they’re the happiest they’ve ever been. And I wanted that. So I do feel I would have gotten here anyway, if I hadn’t seen these people that have really helped me in recovery. But every day I would make a habit on purpose to spend at least 10 minutes on Instagram, purposely looking at women my size or bigger, being themselves in the world.

I know it’s deeper than body image, but for me, that was like a huge, huge, huge part of the recovery process anyway. The childhood stuff is the reason why, but the recovery, yeah, it’s still childhood stuff that we need to heal, but it’s the body image stuff. So to, I guess, to answer your question, because I always go on little tangents, is for someone else to show me it was possible for me too.

Yeah.

Yeah, to sort of normalize that body type or those body types for that to be what was on your feed and what you are most exposed to saturated and was to give you permission to

Speaker 2 (53:24.022)
Exactly that. And I think what was missing for me in the therapy that I had, like I said at the beginning, was I never felt understood. I never felt that someone could sit next to me, not above me or clinically with all these sheets and tick boxes and all the weighing scales and all the things, to someone to sit next to me and go, sweetheart, I understand. I genuinely understand how you feel because

This is what I went through and it fucking sucked. Like to just be so, this is what I specialise in. That’s why people come to me. Yeah, I know my shit because I educate myself and I’m always investing in myself with coaches for me, but I know how it feels. I can share that. I share the depth of my experience so no one feels alone and I get it and look where I am now. You can do it too. It’s a hell of a journey. I’m not going to lie. The hardest thing you’d ever do. Not going to lie.

it’s worth it a thousand times over. So someone who gets it.

Thank you, Victoria. Those are all the questions I have for you. Are there any final thoughts or questions that you believe our time together would be incomplete without?

Speaker 2 (54:43.308)
No, but I would love to ask you a question if you don’t mind sharing, because I’m going to post this and I’d just love to hear if you don’t mind sharing in five minutes or so, why you’re here asking me these questions, Courtney. What experience have you been through?

Yes, absolutely. So I’ll kind of work my way backwards as to where I am currently and then the history that transpired to bring me here. So currently, I am an academic at Boston College. I am in the sociology department and I specialize in sociology of the body. In brief, that’s just basically how our bodies are susceptible to social factors.

how we experience the world is very conditioned by our socialization. And I became interested in that throughout periods of academic study. But then it really became personal for me when in 2023, right after my husband and I got married, you mentioned the beauty of a lover you had that brought you to realize the love that you deserved.

was pivotal to your recovery. My husband at the time, we had just been married for a month. I had just come out of being hospitalized for a week, and in which I was just adamantly

Speaker 1 (56:14.016)
in denial about having a needing disorder. I had all kinds of symptoms and I was also full of misconceptions on what a needing disorder was. So it wasn’t as though I was lying to myself. I just didn’t know. And it wasn’t as if I was lying to my medical team. I just did not relate to, again, you mentioned how sterile, particularly like screening questions can feel. And if they’re asking, are you scared to gain weight? And I,

have yet to admit to myself because I’m so numb, I’m so emotionally un-present to be able to be vulnerable with myself to then be vulnerable to the medical team. Of course I’m going to answer no, because I haven’t done that internal work and I don’t realize that. However, my husband was just so loving and patient and gracious and had shown me what was real unconditional love.

And what I realized what I was depriving myself of and that strengthened me to do more of the internal. I mean, I hadn’t even done internal work at this point, but I was more strengthened internally to be able to admit. But he asked when he asked, I mean, after how many medical people had asked if I was fearful of gaining weight after he asked, I finally realized for myself and externalized both, you know,

synchronously at the same time, yes, I am. And that was a huge revelation for me. And as we looked further into what eating disorders were, it came to realize that the symptoms that I was hospitalized for, like failing organs and the whole slew of a body shutting down because it’s completely malnourished, were correlated to restricted behaviors.

And so I was afraid of food because of how the symptoms would intensify if I ate. But those symptoms began because of my restriction to begin with. And as I’ve done my internal work, I’ve realized similarly, yeah, my mom is a wonderful woman. She comes from her own broken background. She is…

Speaker 1 (58:33.516)
I think, yeah, just a.

Speaker 1 (58:37.856)
She’s a very strong.

very strong woman and I’m very grateful for the ways that she gave my siblings and I a life that she couldn’t imagine for herself given where she came from. Having unresolved trauma that she did, it very much came out in how she was parenting us.

disorganized attachment, codependency.

expecting the child to parent you, the slew of things. And so growing up, I was felt very responsible for regulating her. And also responsible too for regulating my entire family because however mom was feeling was sort of what set the tone for how we as a family were dynamically. And just I’m the eldest child as well so that there’s that sort of dynamic.

And yeah, so how have I come here? It’s a mix of sort of just academically what I’ve pursued and what I’ve come to study and then also just personal experience that I’ve married together, melded, and now I’m curious about deeper unresolved issues.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04.75)
you know, people from people with eating disorders go through all varieties of treatment. And yet, particularly for anorexia, the relapse rate for those who undergo treatment is 50 % within a 10 year period. And so that’s indicative that there are deeper unresolved issues that even evidence-based treatments don’t address. And your story I very much relate to in that the medical team

who are

was using all kinds of evidence-based.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42.25)
evidence-based ways to screen for anorexia and to essentially sort of treat it while I hadn’t admitted having it. But anyways, it just fell flat on its face because they weren’t approaching the person, but more so approaching the diagnosis.

Yes, exactly that.

So I’m actually working on a paper now that we’ve completed the interview. I’ll just, you know, come out and say more specifically a paper to advocate for. Well, yeah, a paper to advocate for.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25.078)
research in the role of Shane in the development of eating disorders.

nice.

Because there is not research, there is not study on that. In terms of research on the development of eating disorders, tends to be very psychologically oriented, looking at the individual as the problem, or what the individual has experienced. But again, all within the locus of the person, or it’s much more systemic level and looking at, okay, you were a victim of these sort of societal forces bearing on you, and you’re just a product of that.

It’s not looking at, know, shame has this, has this social element to it. And that what we are shameful of is something that often is something we’re socially conditioned towards. You mentioned, right, just the way that parents interact with a nappy or how foods can be labeled good and bad when we’re really young, when our parents are trying to teach us to eat healthy and we internalise. Right. So we come to internalise these sort of messages.

that then manifest as shame for us. And then we’re also in conversation with that as living, breathing and mentioned like spiritually whole human beings. And so what is it for us to be in conversation with the social messaging, excuse me, and to be a person who is interacting with these, who’s being formed, but also might be contesting.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59.37)
And shame, shame.

Shame has a presence there and the strength of it really determines how much of the person sort of surrenders to the social forces. that’s really what I’m interested in. Mary, like finding some sort of middle ground between the psychological approach and understanding the development of eating disorders or eating disorders in general and the more sociological or societal approach and.

explaining the development of eating disorders. that’s where I am. That’s who a bit of I am. And yeah, just so grateful Victoria, again, for the work that you do, your passion for helping others just emanates through what you share. You having done incredible self work, but then also it’s clear that you have a number of testimonies that you’re referring to in the wisdom that you have to share. So.

Thank you again so much for the many that you’re serving and for the light that you are.

Thank you, Courtney. And thank you so much for sharing a bit about you. please keep me update on your paper so I can share with my community. And I think it’s exactly what we need to start looking at the more nuanced, deeper connection to eating disorders. thank you for what you do as well. I’ve really enjoyed this interview, the way you’ve asked the questions. Yeah, one of my favourite interviews I’ve ever had. So thank you for your energy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29.518)
Absolutely, Victoria. All right. Bless you. congratulations on your little one, new mommy. Thank you.

Yeah, my God, it’s the best job in the entire, it’s not a job, but it’s the best thing in the entire world. And I tell you what, that also is the best way to grow. Because you just met with yourself like in a deeper level and it’s just such a gift. So thank you.

All right. Well, enjoy rest of your day.

You too, Courtney. I’ll hear from you soon.

Yes, I’ll get the recording to you ASAP, okay?

Speaker 2 (01:04:58.488)
Thank you. Thank you Courtney. Have a nice day. Bye bye.