340: Body Image Inside Out with Deb Schachter

Chris Sandel: Hey! If you want access to the transcript, the show notes, and the links talked about as part of this episode, you can head to www.seven-health.com/340.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach and an eating disorder expert, and I help people to fully recover.

Before we get on with today’s episode, I have an announcement that I’m currently taking on new clients. If you are living with an eating disorder and you would like to fully recover, then I would love to help. As part of today’s episode, we’re spending a lot of time talking about body image, and this is an area that comes up a lot, that I work on a lot with clients. So if you are struggling with body image, if this is one of the things that is getting in the way of you reaching a place of full recovery, then I would also love to help you deal with this.

If that’s of interest to you, you can send an email to info@seven-health.com and put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, and I can send over the details.

Let’s get on with today’s show. Today it is a guest interview, and my guest today is Deb Schachter. Deb is recognised as one of Boston’s leading clinicians in the area of body image and eating disorder recovery. She’s spent her 30-year career helping people unpack their body image stories and all of the wisdom it has to offer. She brings authenticity, curiosity, and compassion to her work and emphasizes the profound power that connection has in the healing process.

She integrates humour and mindfulness into her workshops, individual and group work, and is inspired by how unique the growth process is for each of us. She believes wholeheartedly that we all have great wisdom inside and has seen how her confidence in her clients translates into change. Deb also trains other therapists and health professionals on how best to approach body image with their clients and staff. Blending together her grounded East Coast sensibility and her playful West Coast spirit, Deb has developed a language and approach that is accessible for all.

I became aware of Deb through her book, Body Image Inside Out. She co-wrote this with Whitney Otto, and when this came out, the publishers reached out and said could they send a copy over or would I be interested in having them on a podcast, and they did, and I read the book and I really, really like the book. When I went through it, there was so much that is in alignment with how I work on body image with clients, and I really liked it, so I reached out to them and said, “Hey, I would love to have you come on the show” and Deb said yes. And here we are.

As part of the episode, we cover what is body image, the mindset check-in – that’s an exercise from early in the book; we talk about that. We talk about the three elements that are essential to body image work, and this is something that we keep coming back to again and again throughout the conversation. We talk about bad body image moments and what people can learn from these and how this is really the centrepiece of so much of the work. We talk about storing our stories in our body and the ways our body tries to communicate this to us. There’s a metaphor or a framework that they use as part of the book, the Negative Body Image Rotary, so we talk about what that is and how to break the patterns when you find yourself in that loop. We talk about shapeshifting, body image jealousy, buying new clothes and that process as part of recovery, and much, much more.

I really love Deb’s approach and the approach of this book. I think this is a very practical episode. There’s many tools or exercises that we go through that you can implement. The time really flew by when talking with Deb. We could’ve done this for many, many more hours.

With that intro out of the way, here is my conversation with Deb Schachter.

Hey, Deb. Welcome to the show.

Deb Schachter: Hello. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I’m so excited.

Chris Sandel: Yes. The reason you’re on is I want to talk about your book called Body Image Inside Out that you wrote with Whitney Otto. It’s a really incredible book. I’ve been using it. I can remember at least once using it on one of the group calls that I do as part of the work that I offer when I’m working with people, and it was a really great call. It’s something I’ve come back to again and again. So I’m glad to be able to share this.

Deb Schachter: Oh, I’m so glad. That makes me so happy. We’ve actually gotten the best feedback from healers and treaters and practitioners, which in some ways has been – not surprising, but really cool, because it means it’s getting in more hands, and these ideas are getting – I think of it like there’s a seed that gets planted and then it gets to spread. We’re so delighted when we hear that kind of thing about it being out in the world that way.

Chris Sandel: For sure. I want to get it more out in the world by having this conversation.

Deb Schachter: Thank you.

Chris Sandel: A lot of it is really going to revolve around the book and ideas from it, and it will be non-exhaustive – whatever you take from this, I still recommend that people go out and get the book.

Deb Schachter: Aw, thank you.

00:05:27

A bit about Deb’s background

Chris Sandel: But just as a starting place, do you want to give listeners a little bit of background on who you are, what you do, that kind of thing?

Deb Schachter: Sure, of course. I was actually thinking when you were talking about the book, I was just talking to a friend I haven’t talked to since it came out – it’s really my whole approach, so to me, it’s the book, but it’s also what I’ve learned in this 30 years that I’ve been doing this. So where do you want me to start? Like, from the get-go? Or from what led me to write the book? I’m happy to do either.

Chris Sandel: To start with, your background, and then we can get into how you landed on doing the book.

Deb Schachter: Sure, great. I think I was born a therapist before I even knew that I was supposed to be one. I always say I was the kid that was always befriending the new kid and was obsessed with people like Helen Keller – actually, Annie Sullivan, but all the people that felt like the right way to be in the world was to create connection. So way before I discovered therapy myself, I already was, I think, moving through the world that way. I think I was always a super relational kid and a super relational adolescent. Friends were kind of my greatest currency, which I think is true for lots of people, but it has always felt so orienting to me.

I think I landed in therapy – how old was I? I guess 21, right after college. I had an eating disorder that started I’ll say mid-college and actually had two friends walk me to my first therapy session. I think at that point, I’m not sure I fell in love right then, but soon after, when I found my own therapist after I graduated, I think I was so blown away. Obviously, there was so much I was learning about recovery, but also about what it was like to be in the room with somebody who was just front and centre there for me and wanted to hear my stories. I mean, it just totally blew my mind. I think somewhere in that post-college year, I just felt like “Oh, this is what I was meant to do, to be connected in this kind of intimate way.”

So that was where it all started. I ended up going to graduate school later, in my twenties. I did some eating disorder work; I was going through my own recovery at that time, too. But I was in a decent place. The ‘good enough’ recovery, I would say, at that point. Went to grad school, started getting my hands wet. I started a programme, actually, called the Befriender Program. We have a really cool organisation here called the Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association. They’re really wonderful.

So I started a group there when I was in grad school as a volunteer. It was called the Befriender Program, and it matched up people – I worked at Big Brothers when I was in my early twenties – people in strong recovery with people that had not had a lot of recovery under their belt. And from there it just sort of blossomed.

I think what’s interesting – and we’ll obviously get into this – is I still never really think of myself as an eating disorder specialist. I really feel like I’m just a human specialist. And it happens to come in that package, and I get that package. It’s also what I love about the body image work; it’s so not just about folks in recovery, though obviously that’s a huge piece of how people land in the body image struggle. But it’s really about being a human in a body. We all have them and we all have feelings about them.

So anyway, that’s sort of the scoop. And that was almost 30 years ago.

Chris Sandel: There’s lots that I want to dive into. What did you study before you started doing this? You said “I discovered this” –

Deb Schachter: You mean as a therapist?

Chris Sandel: No, before you were a therapist. What did you originally go to university for?

Deb Schachter: I got a degree in psychology. I think I was always a people person. But my mom’s an artist, I love art. I love kids. I was working a lot with kids. I think it was always people. It just took me a little while to get – it was when I was in my first job, I was working at a residential centre for kids in a lot of pain that had been taken out of their home, and I saw the people that went into the room for an hour with these kids. I was trying to manage these milieus, and I was like “I want to be that person that they get calm and they come out looking even calmer. That’s the job I want.” So that was basically how I figured it out. They were social workers. So then I was like, “Social work, that’s it.”

00:10:14

Deb’s eating disorder + recovery

Chris Sandel: Nice. Can you talk a little bit more about your eating disorder? Obviously this is something you said developed at this later stage, for some people.

Deb Schachter: For some people, yeah. It’s funny, I was just listening – Abbie Attwood was on your podcast, and it was cool – I was on hers – to hear more of her story.

I actually grew up in a family where there was a lot of emphasis on size and the value of size and eating in certain ways. More from my father than my mom. So there was a lot of emphasis on that, and I think at the time – again, luckily, I think because I had such a great network of friends – I took it all in but I didn’t really do anything with it yet. I think a lot of it really landed inside me, and I’ll get more to this, but I also think living in the kind of body that so many of us in this field live in, which is really sensitive bodies and bodies that can carry a lot – I think I took a lot of it in and it didn’t really manifest.

I mean, it certainly did not help my body image in my adolescence, but it wasn’t until I was abroad in my junior year of college where there were a lot of changes in ways I was eating and things that were happening that it led to some weight loss. And I think that really hooked me. I think there was something that had been laid down around how compelling it could be to be in a smaller body, or a thinner body, at the time. That really hooked me and was really compelling.

Again, if we go back to this idea of how eating disorders function, I think for me, it was such a nervous system regulator initially in a way that – I did not know what a nervous system was then, but a way that I think it helped me navigate the world. It wasn’t till obviously much later that I learned about Internal Family Systems and really thinking about these tools as tools. At the time I started recovery, people weren’t talking about “Oh, this isn’t a pathology, this was a solution to a problem.”

I think so early in my recovery – and it was part of what really drove the way I’ve done my work – it was this way of like “Oh, this was trying to help.” Even though I didn’t have all the language for it, it was really helpful. Until it wasn’t, obviously. But it was such a tool for things I didn’t know how else to manage.

Chris Sandel: I think that’s a really helpful thing to notice and something I talk about with clients a lot, like, “What is this thing doing for you?” Rather than being like “It’s robbing you of this thing and doing this terrible thing to your health and this makes absolutely no sense, why would you keep it up?”, it’s more like, “Let’s explore what this is doing for you, because it’s meeting a need or multiple needs.”

Deb Schachter: Exactly.

Chris Sandel: it could be the best thing you know of how to cope, and you are many years or decades on from when this first started, so maybe there are some other options that are available. But we need to recognise that this thing, whatever collateral damage it is causing, is serving a function.

Deb Schachter: Absolutely. And I feel the same way about the body image stuff. When we can really bring in that curiosity, it’s such a different conversation. If we’re really coming to our clients and saying all the things you just said, like “these are all the costs and these are all the ways that it’s getting in the way”, for many people, this feels like the pillar of their way of sustaining their lives. There’s so many ways that it can actually be trying to tend to things. So I think coming at it like that and really engaging our clients in that kind of curiosity is so different. You have such a different conversation. It takes the pressure off of us, too. Then we can just be like, “Whoa, that’s fascinating. Let’s learn more.”

Chris Sandel: Yeah, for sure. And it’s not that we can’t explore the other side of that, like “Tell me what it’s costing you. What do you notice as the downsides of this?” Again, we can look at this in this very multidimensional –

Deb Schachter: Holding that dilemma together is so different than us being on one side of that polarization and them holding on. That isn’t going to get very far.

Chris Sandel: Yes. Being at loggerheads never works particularly well.

Deb Schachter: No, totally. I learned that a long time ago. And obviously there are times where we have to have hard conversations about higher levels of care and things like that, but I do think even when people are in a really dicey place, to still say, “This has got to be here for a reason, even if it’s not a reason that is clear to us yet.”

Chris Sandel: For sure. I think you can then start to peel the onion and really understand the reason. Like, there’s the surface-level reason and then there’s this other reason and the other. So you start to really understand it. And we’re going to get into this with the body image stuff, but you then start to see it through a totally different lens.

Deb Schachter: 1000%.

Chris Sandel: It’s like this other thing that I’m learning now about this.

Deb Schachter: Totally. And again, when they can really feel like our agenda is just to be in that with them, figuring that out, then you get to be a companion. It’s such a gift, I think. It’s an honour.

Chris Sandel: For you, how long did it take for you to recognise, “This isn’t working particularly well for me”? Going from the eating disorder being this thing that’s like “Oh, this is amazing, it’s great” to “I think I have a problem and I don’t think this is the solution I want to be using.”

Deb Schachter: Oh, that’s such a great question. It’s funny, actually; one of my dear friends wrote her dissertation – I think she called it “The Good Enough Recovery.” We talked about writing a book together at one point. I think there’s so many stages, and I don’t mean that even in a numerical way. But when I look back – and we’ll definitely get more into this – I think because it was such a nervous system regulator, and I think it was helping me manage so much of – how do I want to say this? So much of the unknowns in life.

I was a really ‘good’ patient in a lot of ways. I started eating pretty quickly. But I think what stuck around for a long time, and I think is still a little part of who I am, is some of the ritual around it. Because I think for me, partly because of where I grew up and some of the ways of what my body needs from a nervous system perspective, the rituals and the ways that we – how do I want to say this? I guess the ways we move through the world, I found really helpful.

Again, this isn’t about manipulating food or my body, but discovering, “What’s in here that was really helpful, and what do I still” – my favourite foods or the ways that I like to cook with people. Things that really are the good rituals that had gotten much more rigid. So I sort of see it like a softening, almost, a little bit. A lot of the ways that I was acting was trying to tend to something, and the more I can obviously tend to those in other ways, whether that’s meditation or a good cry or whatever, the more softened it got.

I would say certainly by the time I was doing this work and started my private practice in my late twenties, I was in a really solid place. But I think it probably took another decade for me to continue to let go of a lot of those – I’ll call them constraints, I guess, or systems. But again, I think I’m always going to be a ritualized person in some ways.

So I see it, again, as sort of an evolving, but certainly in terms of stability and health, I would say by my late twenties I was certainly in a stable place. Does that feel like a decent answer?

Chris Sandel: It does.

Deb Schachter: We’re always growing, right?

Chris Sandel: I was having a conversation today with a client where we were talking about certain behaviours that she’s keeping up that she’s doing now that she was doing within her eating disorder, and actually what we discovered through going through it is “These were actually really helpful within your eating disorder – not in a disordered way. This was the thing that actually allowed you to get back into your body, to be able to have a cry, to be able to feel your emotions. So yes, you’re doing it now, and you’re doing it for very reasons, and while you were doing it in your eating disorder it was very helpful.”

So being able to make that distinction between “What is my intention with this? How much psychological flexibility do I have to not do this thing? What other tools do I have?” And being able to look at it in this non-black-and-white way.

Deb Schachter: Totally. And I’ll say, I think Covid – whatever remnants were there – again, I don’t think of it as recovered or not recovered entirely. It’s more of this evolving thing. But whatever was left, it kicked its butt because whatever rituals were there, they all got lost. I mean, in some ways obviously we can be as ritualized as we want in our individual lives, but there were just so many things that I did because “This is what I do, I go to the gym three times a week and blah, blah, blah.” And because it was such an intense time, especially – well, for everybody, but as a clinician, there was so much that was happening in my body that a lot of that stuff just got knocked out of the park.

I wrote a poem, actually, that’s on our Instagram; it’s called “It Took a Pandemic” and it talks about it took a pandemic for me to really discover that I could not go to the gym for weeks and I still am standing. Different things that it allowed for a different kind of letting go than I even knew was possible. So there was a gift. There were many gifts in there, but that was one of them. We’re always growing, right?

Chris Sandel: For sure. That’s so lovely to hear, because it’s not the case for most people. The pandemic was such a bad time for so many people; people who felt like they were recovered, this was the point where it took a nosedive and it went in the wrong direction. So for you to say “Actually, this was the thing that got rid of it forever”, that’s awesome.

Deb Schachter: Oh, thank you. It wasn’t pretty. [laughs] But it also got us to write the book. I’m not sure we ever would’ve done. With that kind of space, and being brought to your knees will definitely get you to do different things. Anyway, I’m glad that can be potentially helpful.

00:21:12

Why she decided to write a book

Chris Sandel: Yes. So let’s start with what drove you to write the book? Apart from a pandemic.

Deb Schachter: We actually started before, which is kind of cool. Whit and I met at a really interesting time. I was in my early thirties. I think she was probably in her late twenties. She had just come back from being a spare in the Olympics as a rower. We kind of hit it off. She came to meet with me, actually, as an informational interview. She’d just gone to graduate school after coming back from the Olympics, and we started talking about body image. It was kind of this wild thing. Now it’s 20+ years, maybe 25 years, but in our natural – we were talking about the work and what it would be like for her to do therapy and all those things, but something really organic happened between us.

It took us 20 years to write the book, but we started running workshops within I think a year or two because there was something that was happening between us. There was a way we were talking about body image that was so different than any way I’d ever talked about it in my own therapy. And certainly I talked about it with other friends, but I just think it was something about our chemistry. There was a safety, but there was also all this humour and creativity. It just was this really different experience.

Ultimately, because there was that safety, and I think a lot of curiosity and ways that we started to track our own eating disorder, our own recoveries, our own body image together, something really was happening that was really different. We found this language later, but for so many people, they’re recovered but they hit this glass ceiling around the body image piece. I’m going to say even now, but certainly then, people didn’t know how to talk about it. It was kind of like “Love your body, it does all these things for you, blah, blah, blah “ – which is wonderful, but that’s not often going to help people that have really complicated this complicated relationship with their body. They may not have felt like they created it, but it exists. It’s evolved into something really painful.

So basically, Whit and I took what was happening between us, which was this wild combination of curiosity and humour, and the ways that we were noticing how our body image shifted when we would have different things happen in our lives. Like “Oh, that’s so interesting that you were having such a hard time getting dressed when you went out to dinner with your stepdad. Oh, that’s interesting.” So we started to track that stuff, or I would go to my reunion or I would break up with some new guy or whatever, that we started to really see these patterns. And that was really cool.

Ultimately, we started running these workshops, and we created – Whitney’s had a bit more of a background in CBT, and I hadn’t started IFS at that point but probably was more psychodynamic, lots of curiosity, thinking about family of origin. We just started creating these different exercises to do in groups, and it was just so cool because it felt like, again, people don’t know how to talk about this in a productive way.

So to get these conversations going and to watch what would happen – people are like “Oh, God”, but when they actually get in the room and they start to talk about these patterns or what they notice when we take out the “you need to love yourself” idea – you don’t have to dance like a leaf, you don’t have to all of a sudden love every body part, but let’s talk about what you notice, how it ebbs and flows and why. It was just so cool.

That was over 20 years ago, and we just kept running the workshops, and then I actually did a couple on my own. Whitney was busy having kids and doing a couple other things, and I did a workshop in maybe 2018 with a really wonderful colleague, Marci Evans. I don’t know if you know her. She’s an incredible nutritionist.

Chris Sandel: Yep, she’s been on the podcast.

Deb Schachter: Oh, great. Marci’s the bomb. She helped me do a version of what Whitney and I were doing, and I left and I was like, “This is a book.” Every exercise – we have one that used to be called “The Skinny Girl.” It’s not anymore. It’s now called “The Pedestal Person.” But this idea of jealousy. Like, a whole chapter on jealousy, let’s do it. So anyway, I brought that to Whit and that was fall of 2019, and we were dillydallying and we thought, “We’ll just do a chapter a year or something.”

And then the shit hit the fan. So every Sunday, certainly in 2020 and probably 2021, we started writing together and crying. Every Sunday we would cry and talk about what was happening in our bodies and what was happening with our body image in the midst of this crazy time. And then we were really lucky; we just happened to meet a friend of Whitney’s who had just left a publishing house and was going to coach us on self-publishing. She read Chapter 1 and she said, “I’m going to pitch this.” That was totally beyond our wildest dreams, and here we are 4 years later. So that’s how it came to be.

00:26:39

How polyvagal theory fits in

Chris Sandel: Awesome. One thing that you said there that we’ll get into as we go – you mentioned the IFS piece. The thing that matches up so well for me with this book is polyvagal theory. I don’t know if this is something you talk about.

Deb Schachter: I wouldn’t say I’m super skilled, but I love it, and I think it’s so important. And we tried to get into it a little bit. I might’ve even written a different book now than I would’ve two years ago around that. But yeah, it’s everything. And that’s another silver lining from the pandemic, I would say: all my clients, it’s what we talk about all the time, nervous systems. I never did that before. I mean, I would talk about being upregulated or being calm. But it’s given people a language for people that, sadly, because we were all so upregulated, we needed to find a language we can use to describe it now. Super important.

Chris Sandel: For sure. I’ve done podcasts on this before, so I’ll put links in the show notes to those. One of the things that I will regularly say to clients – and this is from Deb Dana, who’s done a load of work with polyvagal theory is ‘story follows state’. Just this idea that we are constantly in a different state. We’re constantly in flux in terms of the state, and the state that you’re in is going to have an impact on the kinds of thoughts and feelings and beliefs and memories and perceptions and all those things that naturally arise within us.

This just fits so well with your ideas around body image. Yes, this is about the physical body, but it’s about so much more than this, and let’s start to explore that. I think the polyvagal piece just sits so well with this kind of thinking.

Deb Schachter: It reminds me of what we were talking about before, which is the body’s so accessible. And now especially, if our body is in this varying state of regulation, it’s right there in front of us or within us to be like, “Oh, so all of a sudden now my arms…” What might be happening in these different states for us and how the body being so accessible is just this natural place to turn when all of a sudden we’re like, “Ugh.” And we’ll get more into this. I love all the sensation stuff particularly. We have these sensations, we have what’s happening in our body, and all of a sudden it looks like our body’s changing. That makes so much sense, right?

Chris Sandel: Yeah, for sure.

Deb Schachter: So bring in the polyvagal. I’m happy to.

00:29:08

What is body image?

Chris Sandel: Let’s get into it. What I always start with when we’re talking about body image is, what is body image? I’d love for you to define it. Or how you conceptualise it when you think about this work and this book.

Deb Schachter: Great. What I would say – and I know we have some fancy definition in there, but basically, I think we often think about it as how we see ourselves, how we perceive our bodies. Almost in a two-dimensional way. It could be a mirror, it could be a picture, it could be in our mind’s eye, how we see ourselves.

What Whit and I really stumbled on is like, oh, no, no, no. This is a whole multidimensional thing that’s happening here. It could be what we see in the mirror or what we see in a photo of ourselves, but who’s around us? How do we feel in our bodies? What’s the temperature? What’s happening with our hormones? What did someone say right before they snapped the picture? Who did we see the week before we were at this party? Whatever. There’s so many factors that inform how we see ourselves. And those are constantly changing.

So the more that we can learn to, again, bring that curiosity, then we can start to put those pieces together.

So I would say the biggest way that I would respond is this idea that it’s multidimensional, and the more that we can learn to deconstruct and decode, which is a word that I really like to use, what our body image is saying, there’s all this information and wisdom inside. Even these parts of us that we might really not like or have really terrible things to say about, there’s something happening there. There’s some charge there in your butt or in your lower thigh or whatever; let’s inquire.

00:31:01

The ‘three muscles’ of body image work

Chris Sandel: Yeah, for sure. One of the first exercises in the book is the mindset check-in to really better understand body image. Do you want to describe this and why it can be useful as a starting place for people?

Deb Schachter: Sure. One of the things that was so cool when we wrote the book is we had no idea what we were going to do. We had these exercises, but how do we frame how we think about this approach? We’re doing it a little bit today in that we explain how we stumbled on the way that we related to one another, and then we really thought, what are the muscles? What are the ways we think about this work?

And the first one, which may seem obvious or not, is this idea of just starting to notice. Because for so many people – and we obviously take in a bazillion messages every day – we just go to judgment, go to negativity. We don’t even realise we’re doing it. So starting to build an awareness of how we’re talking to ourselves is so profound.

And I’m amazed. Even people who’ve been in therapy for a long time – and I’m not saying this like we’re so great. I just think that people don’t necessarily think about that idea. There is a huge difference between saying “I look like shit. My butt is so flat. I can never wear those cool jeans that everybody has” or whatever to “Wow, I’m thinking and saying really negative things about how I look. My body image is really loud right now, and I’m really going to town about my butt.” That’s so different. You’re just noticing. Whitney calls it her ‘newspaper reporter voice’, which is like you’re just observing. Like, “Wow, my body image is off the charts today” is so different than “Your body’s so terrible.” It’s so different.

Really getting people to start to track that. For most people, even if they’re really still very blended with this way of thinking about themselves, it’s a great practice. People feel a lot of relief when they hear it because it’s a really natural place to start, to just start to track. It doesn’t mean you have to let go of your attachment to having a certain body; it’s just like, “Oh wow, that’s really big right now.”

Chris Sandel: For sure. I start with the awareness piece with so many clients. And again, from a polyvagal standpoint, there are different states that someone can be in. The first part with that is “These are all the different states. I want you to spend the next week just noticing when you’re in these different states. Do you have the capacity to be able to identify these different states?”

Deb Schachter: Because isn’t that grounding in and of itself, just starting to ask that question?

Chris Sandel: Yes, definitely. And another component of the way I work is acceptance and commitment therapy, which I really love, and so much of that is being able to notice ‘thoughts are just thoughts’ or being able to notice that “There is this emotion here and I don’t have to resist this emotion.” So having that more mindfulness approach with it, where you’re able to notice this thing. I think that then opens the door for the curiosity piece that you keep mentioning. The “Oh, isn’t that interesting.”

Deb Schachter: Exactly, and that’s what we talk about. That’s the second muscle. We say mindful awareness opens the door and curiosity invites us in. Mindful awareness, I talk about it as almost like we’re getting the Jaws of Life in there. Like, let’s just get some space in between you and your negative body image.

And our whole framework is about relationship. We have a relationship with our body image. We don’t even know that. Most people think they have a terrible relationship with their body, but we actually have a relationship with our body image, too.

So we’re getting some air in there, and then we can be like, “Oh, this is fascinating. I kind of felt okay last week. All of a sudden now, every morning is just such a slog to try and get dressed. What’s happening?” So that’s when it can get juicy and we can start to put pieces together about how body image might be trying to help or how hating our body is trying to take care of us in some way.

Chris Sandel: For sure. And then the final piece is the self-compassion piece. Talk a bit about that.

Deb Schachter: I think so many of my clients roll their eyes when I talk about this one initially, because I think everybody’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” But what I think is really helpful is when you start to think “Oh, the reason I’m hating my body is because I’m really scared about this college reunion I’m going to. I haven’t seen these people in 20 years” or “this family reunion that I’m going to” or “the interaction that I had with my boss” or whatever it is – “that makes sense that I can’t figure out what to wear, or that makes sense that all of a sudden I’m really hating on my (fill in the body part).”

If we can get compassion there, then people can start to really get some traction. I love compassion on every level, but again, the “love your body, it’s an amazing gift to the universe” – that’s all true, and “oh my gosh, hating it is trying to help me with some really big emotions”, and people can really get down with that. So that’s really cool to see how they’re able to see, “Oh, really, these negative thoughts are trying to help me navigate something that feels overwhelming or scary or angering” or whatever it is. That’s number three. So those are the three muscles.

Chris Sandel: On that piece, it feels like bad body image is the answer to every single question, and it’s like, okay, let’s move our way back with this. If bad body image is the answer to everything, let’s figure out the nuance. What happened before this? What are the other emotions that are being squeezed into ‘bad body image’? Then it’s like, “Oh, actually there was loneliness today. Last week it was much more about feeling overwhelmed.” As you say, then there’s events that can be connected to that – going to a reunion or “this thing that happened with my boss.”

But I think the bad body image is basically just a flattening of every experience into “that’s the answer” and we’re wanting to expand that out.

00:37:07

Bad body image moments (BBIMs)

Deb Schachter: Exactly. We call them BBIMs, which is a bad body image moment. The reason we came up with that silly name is we wanted to create a neutral – again, like it’s hot today, it’s cold today. Like, “Oh boy, did I have a BBIM.” It’s really helpful to have that way of framing it. And very much what you were just describing: when we’re in distress, what a compelling answer to this problem. What an interesting way.

And actually the whole next chapter is talking about what we call the Rotary, which is this idea that we have big emotions and then our body image steps in without our even realising it – especially because we’re so supported in our culture, “if you feel better about your body, everything will feel better.” So when we have these BBIMs, it’s so compelling then to get on a loop. Like, “Oh, how can I do this or that?” or “I tried that once before” or that whole loop that we can get in. And we’ve moved so far away from, as you said, whether it’s a state in that moment or just a state of our lives where we’re in pain.

So it’s really helpful, again, much like the mindful awareness, to start to track “Where am I on that loop? Oh, I’m already way past – now I’m like running a 10K or planning to run a 10K” to like “Gosh, I’m feeling really lost in my graduate programme and I’m not sure if it’s for me” or something. So it’s really helpful to track that stuff.

Chris Sandel: Yes, and I like those in the book where you’ve got this very handy visual of, this is you on autopilot – and not just you, this is everyone on autopilot, and then this is what happens when we start to bring in the awareness piece, bring in the curiosity piece, start to bring in the self-compassion. We start to be able to go in a different direction with this.

Deb Schachter: Exactly. And again, from a much more – we’ll say neutral place, to start to really observe these natural patterns that we have. I’ve had so many clients over the years be like, “Oh man, I got on the Rotary yesterday” or something. It’s so awesome. Then we can really get into it.

00:39:29

How we store our stories in our body

Chris Sandel: One of the things you talk about in the book is storing our stories in our body and the way the body tries to communicate this with us. There’s some great examples in the book, and I imagine there’s lots of examples you’ve had over the years. But I would love for you to explain this part, because when I reflect on clients, I think this comes up so much.

Deb Schachter: The way that we may store the stories? It’s so funny, because this was in some ways the hardest chapter that became the easiest chapter. It’s so funny; Whitney’s kids are like, “Oh no, Chapter 4.” They heard us talk about Chapter 4 for months. Ugh. Because we were like, we’re not Bessel van der Kolk. We’re not going to explain all of this. Neither of us are particularly science-minded. But how do we capture what we’ve lived and what we see in our clients’ experiences? Which is how many ways that, as we were just describing, the body and our body image and feeling like we have some control over our body is helping us manage these other experiences in our lives.

There’s so many ways. Obviously, whatever we’re navigating is an embodied experience. Our body is with us our whole life. The longest relationship we will ever have is with our unique body. It’s with us, and it takes it in, and for each of us that is going to look different and feel different.

I’m very passionate, while there’s so much of the science I don’t understand, about that mind-body connection. It’s part of what we introduce in that chapter: really starting to observe what we feel in our body when we’re in experiences, and how that might affect how we feel about our body, and how quickly we can jump from point A to point B.

It might be a much more longitudinal experience, which might be something like trauma or navigating some sort of illness – ways that over time, our body has had a lived experience, and the ways that our body image may have stepped in to try and manage / cushion / offset / distract us from the stories that live in different parts of our body.

We really encourage people to start to find language, again, for how we feel in our body. So lots of emphasis on the sensation stuff. Because that so often will translate when you get people to talk about, “When I’m around my stepmom and I don’t feel safe or understood, and all of a sudden I’m feeling jiggly, what just happened? What’s happening in my body emotionally that comes with sensations?” That’s a very normal experience. And how do those sensations, because of the diet culture around us all the time and messages we may’ve gotten about our unique body too, how that becomes a way to orient. Again, to think if we fix our bodies, then these sensations that we’re feeling in it will be different.

And there’s so much hope. We actually call it the hope in self-hate – that in that hating, we think, “Oh, if I can make these sensations go away and the way that makes my body look, then maybe I will feel better about me. I’ll feel better in this relationship. I’ll feel more like I can trust myself or know myself.” Which, again, is a very noble wish. It’s really compelling.

Chris Sandel: I think it’s compelling as well because so few people ever actually get to the place that they hope to get to.

Deb Schachter: You can’t. Because it’s always moving.

Chris Sandel: It’s always moving. And I think there is sometimes a recognition of “Oh, I did get there, and it didn’t fulfil the thing that I thought it was going to.”

Deb Schachter: 1000%.

Chris Sandel: But for so many people, it’s “I was close. I just never got there, and if I’d just found that extra 10%, 15%, then things would’ve been different.”

Deb Schachter: Totally. And I find often, even when people are still really struggling, that they’ll say, “Even when I’m in this body” – and even if they feel like “I know this is where I always wanted to be” – they’re like, “I don’t feel good. I don’t feel good in my body, and I definitely don’t feel good about my body.” But the things that they were hoping – maybe it’s numbing, but most of my clients will say, “This isn’t a dreamy place to be, either. This actually sucks. It doesn’t feel good.”

But again, I think it’s such a powerful longing. That’s the other piece that we get a lot into. If we can unpack the longing, the longing is for connection, being understood, a sense of mastery, a million different things that we’re longing, that we believe if we’re in this body, we’ll have. Unpacking that is the best. That’s my favourite part.

Chris Sandel: Yes. I also think that then gets – for the person who is able to say, “Yes, I finally got my ‘perfect’ body, and I felt so confident within that body” – often when I start to tease that apart, it’s like, what did that actually deliver for you? And when someone says “I felt so confident in my body”, it should be “I’m dating lots of people” or “I would turn up to parties and feel this particular way.”

And actually, when we explore, it’s like, that didn’t really happen that much. It was “I felt confident in a vacuum, and if I was left to myself and I didn’t have to interact with anyone, I could feel confident in my body. But in terms of actually going out into the world, it didn’t really help. It only helps if I then ignore all this other stuff that came along with it. I was completely anxious all the time. Any time food was present, I would be really struggling.”

Deb Schachter: Totally. “I’m at the gym for four hours and exhausted.”

Chris Sandel: Yes. “So I have to lop off all of those other things and I have to do this magical thinking to be able to say this really translated into it.”

Deb Schachter: Totally. That’s why I think it’s so important even to think about the quest and the drive for that quest, because what they often want – any of us, what we want is a felt experience. The fantasy, like you said, of “If I fit in these pants or whatever, then I’ll…” We actually talk about this a lot in the jealousy chapter. But if we think about how we want to feel, it’s actually typically, “If I’m in that body, I will feel an ease. I will just throw some clothes on. I will just move through my life. It won’t be so loud.”

And that’s really good information, because that makes sense. Talk about a polyvagal experience. To really be in rest and digest, that’s what we all want. But it’s just gotten associated with looking like Jennifer Aniston or something. So how do we create that more? How do we find more alignment in ourselves and in our lives that make us feel more like us? That’s often, obviously, where we feel the most connected and potentially, like you said, at the party feeling the things that we want to feel.

00:46:46

Separating states from traits

Chris Sandel: And also, it’s understanding who you are at your core in terms of the things that are genuinely traits as opposed to just states. For so many people that I work with, they are highly sensitive. They are introverted. They are on the autism spectrum. So “There can be things that I wish and long for, and the reality is, they’re just not going to happen. And there can be a lot of grief connected to this, and there can be the realisation of “I was thinking that changing my body was going to deliver that thing, and that’s just never going to happen just because of the way that I’m wired and the way that I am and I experience this world.”

And then, as you say, you do the deeper work of, given that these are the natural constraints, and there’s good things about this, there’s some not-so-good things about this, how do we want to approach life? How do we want to show up in the world? What do we want our life to look like?

Deb Schachter: Totally. I think grief is a huge part of it. And figuring out of these things are true. I’m thinking of a wonderful client of mine who would describe herself as neurodiverse and being on the spectrum. For her, so much orientation around “If I’m in this body, then people won’t notice. If I’m really hot, if I’m really whatever, then people won’t notice that sometimes I don’t know how to respond when they share something.”

For her, she’s actually in one of my groups, and what’s been cool is, yes, she is someone who would describe herself as neurodiverse, and she’s also gotten more comfortable both being herself and also sharing that. So it doesn’t mean that everything is perfect now, but to realise her perception, “I’m going to distract people with being attractive so they’re not going to notice that I’m kind of awkward”, and the reality is, her awkwardness is quite delightful.

I know not every story feels that way, but I do think there’s a way the more that we understand ourselves – this is very IFS oriented – the more we understand these parts of ourselves that are different, and maybe dark, maybe hard, maybe trauma, maybe all kinds of things – I still think if we can be in relationship with those in a different way and we can be more ourselves in the world in relationship to those things, I do think it puts a lot less pressure on “If I look a certain way, then all this other stuff will quiet down or fall away” or whatever it is.

Chris Sandel: Yes, for sure. It also means that you’re not trying to solve this impossible riddle. For her, this person you’re describing, there may be this feeling of “It doesn’t matter how attractive I get, I can never quite escape that thing” where the end goal becomes, we’re not even trying to do that anymore.

Deb Schachter: Right, how can you be you? And obviously, partly, as she gets older, she can be more frank with people that she’s dating, like “Hey, this is part of who I am and sometimes I get really quiet” or whatever it is.

00:49:48

The role of relationships in body image

It made me think, too, as we’re talking – I think the biggest ‘aha’ in the book was when we were writing the chapter when we were realising we weren’t Bessel van der Kolk. Realising that at the core of all of this, relationships are everything. This piece about body image and relationships is just totally where the money is. Whether it’s the story I just told you or any story, it could be a more global relationship, like “Do I fit in in this community? Will I find love?”, whatever it is. But so much of how body image tries to serve us is a fantasy about what will happen for us relationally or will undo what may have happened to us relationally.

So we really dive into this idea around, how do we feel, especially in current day in our relationships? And then what happens to our body image along the way, and starting to really learn more about that piece. I think for most people that’s so freeing, because that’s always been true but they may not have had the language to talk about it. It may be what we took in as kids and now we’re projecting on other people in our lives. But really, that’s the conversation where it really gets meaty. To me, as I said, that’s kind of everything.

Chris Sandel: Yeah. If I’m thinking about this even from an evolutionary perspective, it’s really important for us not to be ostracized from the group. If I think about this as a child growing up, it’s really important for us to not be left behind.

Deb Schachter: To belong, to feel like we belong. Totally.

Chris Sandel: That’s just so hardwired into us, and I guess with the culture that we live in, we learn there’s shorthand ways of being able to get that thing or think we can get that thing or think we can avoid that thing. And one of those ways is “If I look a particular way, if I’m thin enough, attractive enough, whatever, no-one’s going to leave me, or people aren’t going to abandon me. I’m still going to be part of the tribe.”

Deb Schachter: Totally, exactly. 1000%. Really, to me what was my favourite part of the book was as we started to tease that part – I’d always used this language with clients, but really put into words this idea of shapeshifting and the ways that we literally, likely before we even were thinking about our body image, we were doing things in our family of origin or early life with peers to create a way of being and connection that was going to keep us connected.

It may be that we would silence parts of ourselves or maybe that we would over-index part of ourselves. If we had a sibling with chronic illness, we’d be the easy kid. Or if our parent was really driven, we would push ourselves really hard so that maybe they’d see us more. So really looking at how a lot of those early patternings and ways that we may have shapeshifted emotionally to stay connected, especially in family of origin, may now over time evolve into “How does that actually look in my body? How has that actually gotten laid down in a certain way?” “If I’m like this, then…”

Even as adults, we take these messages in all the time. If we change how we look, something will be different. Something will go well. So really looking at how much that may drive our choices and really starting to get curious about how are we relationally? When are we coming from a more authentic place as opposed to – my clients call it a shapeshift-y place? And really starting to notice that.

I love doing groups because I do a lot of groups in my private practice, and people are talking about “Oh, this is so interesting. How do I shapeshift in my life and how does that run in parallel with what I’m thinking about my body and ways that I’m trying to maintain those connections?” I see it a ton with things like dating. But any time we feel vulnerable. It’s so helpful to think about how body image has become a currency for connection.

Chris Sandel: Yes, for sure. Just thinking there, being able to understand what was valued when I was growing up and what I was taught to value, either very explicitly or implicitly. For example, if someone’s being told achievement is everything, you need to be top of the class, you need to be getting this job, etc., then it makes sense that when there are challenges in that area, whether I’ve got a big exam coming up or I’ve got a performance review coming up or I’m going for this job interview, those are the times that I have worse body image in those moments.

Deb Schachter: Absolutely.

Chris Sandel: Because these things now are intimately connected, because when I feel these big feelings, when I feel unsure or overwhelmed or whatever, it gets pushed through the lens of body image.

And it can be the same with so many other things. It could be “It was really difficult, we were told we were never meant to speak up for ourselves and we should be quiet, so now any time I have to do that, that’s when this comes up.”

Deb Schachter: Totally. And bringing that curiosity to the relational experience. We have a whole handout – I forget, I think it’s called the Post-BIMM Debrief or something. It’s this idea that when you leave an interaction and you feel icky, and all of a sudden now you’re feeling icky about your body – it goes very quickly.

If we go back to “what I feel in my body becomes how I feel about my body”, you go to the icky. And then there are a bunch of questions that are like, “When you left this lunch with your aunt and uncle, what did you feel full of? What did you feel too much of? What was there not enough of? Did you feel misunderstood?” Really getting people to be like, “Oh yeah, I felt really” – whatever it is. I felt really small, I felt really angry, I felt really invisible. And then you’re like, of course all of a sudden now the body image has gotten louder. That makes so much sense.

Again, so helpful for people, especially this relational stuff, because we may have had experiences growing up, and then in our adult lives, even if it’s a micro experience of it, the body image may get louder. Like, “Oh, I felt misunderstood by my boyfriend. Why all of a sudden am I trying on 18 different dresses for this dumb date we’re going to have that’s not that big of a deal? Oh, that’s a feeling I had a lot growing up, feeling like people really weren’t getting me, and this is a way that I’m trying to manage that feeling inside.”

Chris Sandel: For sure, and even with that experience, “Let me go back two hours before the lunch. What was I noticing there? Let’s go back to when I was invited to the lunch and see what I notice.” Just to see in the steps along the way in this chain of events, what was going on in all of them? Again, from a curiosity standpoint, “What do I start to notice?” Because it means you can hopefully catch this as early as possible.

Deb Schachter: Absolutely. That’s part of why I love the sensation – we have a sensation list in the book. But lots of folks have it; we just built our own and added to it. Starting to track sensations in our bodies. “When my uncle called and asked me about meeting up with them, I started to feel really buzzy inside, or I started to feel that stomach drop feeling. I started to feel like my legs were tender and destabilized.”

I won’t get into all of it, but that’s where we also talk a lot about the decoding. Let’s think about the language that you use. When you’re with them, you feel wobbly. So you start out feeling wobbly, and then all of a sudden you’re like, “God, my legs are so jiggly.” Well, that’s interesting. It’s wild. When we’ve done this in groups, I always feel a little bit like Deb the Circus Act. Whitney will be like, “All right, Deb, pull someone out of the audience.” And I’ll do that and I’ll be like, pick your words. Where are these words applicable in the context of your life right now? And there’s always something. It’s so cool. It’s really neat.

I’m thinking of an example when I had a client when we did a recent workshop and she kept talking about being too much. What was really cool was in her family, she was always taught she was too much. So in the group, when she started to both take up space in the group but also share more, there was a part of her that felt like too much. And I see that all the time in my groups. People are like “I’m taking up too much space” or all of that kind of stuff.

What was so cool for her is that she was like, “Oh, I expanded.” We were trying to find different language for that experience of like “I am taking up space” and people were psyched. The things she shared were so relatable. Everybody was like, “I have jiggly arms too!” It’s such a neat way to get people to – I think that really hooks them, often, thinking about language, because they say it over and over again.

Chris Sandel: For sure. Language matters so much. There’s an exercise I’ll often do with clients in terms of mirror work. I’m trying to remember what book this comes from, but basically the idea is, I want you to look at yourself from head to toe and imagine there is someone who is blind next to you, and I want you to describe all of these different parts, but do it in a neutral way. You can’t say “I have fantastic hair.” It just has to be neutral descriptions. And definitely not me saying I’ve got fantastic hair. [laughs]

Deb Schachter: You never know, some people might like that.

Chris Sandel: But the point of this is for so many people, they don’t actually even have a neutral descriptor for what my arm looks like or my belly looks like or my nose looks like or whatever. So if I can’t even use a neutral word because I don’t even have it, of course I’m going to feel badly about this part of me. We want to be able to have these other words that are neutral to use.

It could then be interesting when you notice, “Oh, I’m using the word ‘jiggly’ for my leg or I’m going towards more of this negative descriptor in this moment, and actually there are other times where I’m able to use that more neutral descriptor, or that’s the thing that comes to mind more freely. What’s that telling me about the experience that I’m in?”

Deb Schachter: Exactly. The tracking is just such a great way to start to notice these ebbs and flows, and that idea sort of what we said early on: good body image isn’t a place you land. We’re in bodies that are always changing, our environments are always changing, but really learning more how to be in relationship with those ebbs and flows, and when it really spikes, to feel like we have a way to be in relationship with it that is less painful.

01:00:48

The family’s role in body image

Chris Sandel: I know you’ve probably touched on this already, but talk about the family’s role in body image and what you’ve noticed from doing all of these group work sessions for such a long time.

Deb Schachter: This is my baby, I feel like. I guess I would just say it’s a bringing together of family system theory and patterns and all that stuff. We actually use the – I’m not sure it’s a metaphor, but the imagery of a puzzle piece, because in our family, we’re part of a puzzle.

And there are a million different things that might inform that. I’ve had clients that have been adopted. I’ve had clients in foster care or a child with one parent. But what happened in the system, in the family, and whether it’s direct – like you said, it might be a really strong value of body size or strength or capability – or a lot of people in our family were ill or whatever. But how did we respond, and how did our unique puzzle piece come to shape us? Again, may not even have to do with how we see our body yet, but how did we adapt, and how over time might that evolve into how we think about our body?

Certainly with my clients – and may be true for you, too – I think generally speaking, it’s a lot of “I’m going to shapeshift, I’m going to puzzle piece to what’s going on around me to try and keep the boat afloat.” I see a lot of that because not only do we want to survive by belonging, but we want our system to survive. Again, whether it’s some sort of a sibling issue or an alcoholic dad. I have one client I’m thinking of where she had a very actively alcoholic dad, and all the girls developed eating disorders as a way to reduce their needs in the family because he needed so much. Obviously that didn’t go well ultimately, but it started out as an attempt to be “If we’re really small, then Mom won’t be as overwhelmed, and then we’ll at least get whatever safety we can in this family system.”

So I think really looking at this piece can be quite helpful in thinking about the ways that we may take those early patterns – “I’m going to keep myself small” or “I’m going to be really competent” or “I’m going to drive myself into the ground” – I have another client where the rest of her family has untreated mental illness, and she’s pushed herself so hard to be ‘healthy’ but is really living in an overexercised and undernourished body to be this representative of health.

So ways that we may take it and run, per se, to manage, and how that might often then get enacted in some other adult relationships. If someone’s struggling in our partnership, or one of our kids, how might we lean into that old pattern?

Again, I love the shapeshifting. In the workshops, we actually have people take a literal puzzle piece that we order off Michaels’ Art Supply. They can actually write on the front of it, “These are my authentic qualities.” Like quiet, enjoy stillness, enjoy home projects. And then on the other side it might be who we needed to be in our family – really engaged, really excited, really open to staying out late and we would go see all kinds of shows, which my parents thought made me cultural but really wasn’t my cup of tea; I just wanted to be at home reading a book. So learning about the ways that we may have adjusted ourselves, and again, how that may overlay into how we see our bodies.

Chris Sandel: I think it comes back to the awareness piece. I’m starting to do this reflection on why I’ve been behaving in this way or why I’ve had this sort of an identity or why I’ve valued this thing or spent my time on this thing, and rather than having the assumption of “Because this is either the best way or this is what I actually want to do”, it’s taking a step back and saying, “What could’ve influenced my reasons for doing this?”

Deb Schachter: Absolutely.

Chris Sandel: If I reflect more on who is my authentic self or what I really value, what starts to come up as part of this? And see where that mismatch lies between the way that I have been and the way that I authentically would like to be.

Deb Schachter: Absolutely. I think it really ties into both the nervous system stuff, because I think so often we did what we did to keep our nervous system as steady as we could – even if it meant being out of alignment with our values or things that felt more like us – and then it also is very related to a lot of the Internal Family Systems stuff, which is like “Oh, I was just trying to survive. By me tolerating these terrible camping trips that I really hated because I’m just not an outdoorsy kind of person or whatever it is, I learned to override and push through, and now at this point in my life, when I start to feel like I’ve had enough of something, it’s really hard for me to listen to that and to say, ‘I think I’m going to pass on that, even though it sounds fun. I don’t think it’s actually what my body needs’.”

So it’s relearning, again, my body has all this information. If we can listen to it, it can really help guide us.

Chris Sandel: And I think depending on where someone is at, that can be easier or more difficult. Because sometimes someone has built quite the life on top of this thing, and it feels like, “Where do I go from here?”

Deb Schachter: 1000%. Whitney has many other parts to her life other than the book, and one of them is she has a podcast called Untrained – you should definitely check it out; it’s really neat. It’s with a friend of hers who was an Olympic fencer. This whole idea of untraining, especially as women that both were so – we’ll say overtrained.

They interview all kinds of experts in all kinds of different fields about a lot of the neuroplasticity stuff, like how do we untrain things that were overtrained, and really figuring out – and we talk about this a lot in the book, too – what is alignment? That’s another one of my big favourites: how do we figure out when something really feels right in our bodies? How do we know when, like you said, I’ve had enough of this hike or travel or whatever it is? How does my body tell me, and how do I recognise that resonance when something really feels aligned?

We have a whole chapter on clothing. All the ways. And yes, we don’t always have choice, but we can always be listening so that we understand what’s happening inside, even if something’s misaligned. Then we can be like, “Oh, this really doesn’t feel right. I’m going to stay on this whatever it is, whale-watching tour, or I’m going to see this class through, but I think I’m going to wrap this up. I’m not going to continue in this programme” or whatever it is. Really starting to trust our body saying yes or no and really have access to that more. Obviously, many of us didn’t feel like we knew exactly what was happening inside when we may have not had a choice.

Chris Sandel: As you’re describing this, just recognising that this isn’t a quick solution. It really does take time to work through this. The analogy I was thinking of as you were sharing there is lots of people with their eating disorder will say, “But I just really like these healthy foods. This is just the way that I want to eat. I don’t have much of an interesting in eating outside of this.” You can very easily mistake safety for satisfaction. I think the same way as you describe there, someone has this real fear of setting a boundary, or there’s these very strong people-pleasing tendencies or these fears around this other thing – it can take a while to really feel into, “What is actually true versus what just feels safe to me?”

Deb Schachter: Totally, because safe has been good. If it was good to eat in a more restrictive, hyper-healthy way, it can feel really scary to lean into desire and pleasure and what really gets me excited or nourishes me or food that doesn’t have a point other than being yummy. What is that like to move into that territory and trust that that’s okay? I’m in a body, and I know I’m not going to eat everything under the sun when I’m actually listening, because my body will tell me that, too.

01:10:03

The role of jealousy

Chris Sandel: One of the things you made reference to earlier on was the jealousy piece in the book. I definitely want to talk about this, because I think this comes up a lot. I’ll just start out in a very broad way: what did you share in this section?

Deb Schachter: Great question. It came to be – as I said, we never would’ve chosen this name now, but we called it “The Skinny Girl” because what happened early on is I would be trying to ‘groom’ my clients to go to the workshops, because I just felt like there was so much potential for them in their own healing, and often I would hear – it wasn’t like, “Oh God, it’s a workshop, that sounds gross” but it was more “Who’s gonna be there?” and imagining there’s going to be some ‘skinny girl’, “I’m going to feel bad in my body because I’m not doing this right. I don’t have the right body.” There was a lot of fear.

So that led us to saying we need to do an exercise, because this isn’t just happening in the room; this is happening in our lives. So ultimately we called it “Pedestal Person” because we both also see men in our practice and are both partnered, and Whitney has a son, and we think this is for everybody. And sometimes people’s Pedestal People aren’t even the same gender or might be non-binary or whatever. It goes back to how someone feels in their body.

So starting to unpack, who are we envious of? Who are we jealous of, and moving from “Oh my God, they have the perfect butt” or “Their clothes always hang just right” or “They look so great in a suit” to “What is it about their life in that body, and possibly in those clothes, even” – I’ve had a million people say “I want to look like Jen Aniston.” Well, things hang on her because she looks like she has a great life with lots of friends, and she lives in California, which seems really easy, and she has all these dogs. All these ways that people imagine the life that comes with that (fill in the body part) or that body.

Getting people to really unpack that – people get really excited about it because I think in our pathologizing lens, it’s like “You shouldn’t feel that way. You should just feel good about who you are.” All that’s true, and there is something we’re longing for that’s getting held in the envy and the jealousy. So if we can unpack that, it really is about us. And that can be a much more creative process to really think about, “What do I imagine? If I had that body, what would my morning look like? Where would I travel? What kind of concerts would I go to? Who would I be partnered with or who would I be dating?”

Really getting people to make that connection between how they look and how we imagine the life that they inhabit, and that’s really what they’re wanting. I love the creativity in it, and it’s kind of fun – Whitney and I always talk about who our latest Skinny Girl / Pedestal Person is, and it’s always evolving. For me, as a 57-year-old woman, it’s these women that have great style and have a lot of confidence. It might be very different. I’m less oriented on how their actual body looks, but the ways they move through the world, the ways they spend their time, how much vacation they take. Thinking about our values and, again, what we want the rhythm of our lives to look like that’s getting housed in a certain body type.

Chris Sandel: For sure.

Deb Schachter: That was a very long answer.

Chris Sandel: No, it’s great. It lines up with one of the things I will often talk about with clients where, what is the story that you’re telling yourself about this person’s life or what it means or what’s actually going on? And I’ll have an exercise where I’ll go through people getting to describe different body parts as part of that, and what’s always interesting when I go through the parts that people like, the parts that people don’t like, is there is always a story connected to this thing.

So “Someone said this to me in Grade 3 and this is why this thing has stuck with me” or “I got complimented on this thing.” I remember having a situation where I had two clients I was working with at the same time who had similar bodies – they both had kids, they both had Caesarean scars. One of them, “Any time I see that Caesarean scar, I think that I grew a human in my body. I feel so proud about my body and what it was able to do.” The other person, “Every time I see that Caesarean scar, I feel so terrible about my body and what it used to look like and how my stomach used to look.” This realisation that we’ve got not identical things, but fairly similar things, and people are feeling very differently about this based on the story that is involved.

So one of the things I’ll often get someone to do is, “This part of your body that you don’t like, there’s someone walking around with a very similar part of their body and they actually do really like it. How are they able to do that? And there’s someone who has the part of the body that you think is amazing and they totally despise that thing. How are they able to do that?” Just so that you can start to recognise that it’s not about this thing; it’s how we’re relating to this thing, what is the story underneath it.

Deb Schachter: Totally. I think that’s such a great example. I obviously don’t know your person, but imagining if there is that attachment or the meaning-making around the scar, there’s stories to tell. Whatever that is. Maybe they had a really difficult birth or a really difficult early years with their kiddo or whatever. That goes definitely back to the body stores the story. Again, as you said, it’s such an opportunity to get them to get to what’s underneath that scar or amidst that scar that needs to be talked about.

Chris Sandel: And it’s not about judging them. It’s being able to recognise it’s not actually about this thing, whether it’s good or bad. It’s “How am I relating to this thing? What is the meaning I am ascribing to this thing?”

Deb Schachter: Exactly. That’s why I think the language piece is so important, because if you can get people to really talk about it, if we can move our “Oh God, I don’t want them to feel so badly about themselves”, those parts in us as clinicians, to step back and just be like, “When you think about this scar, how do you talk to yourself? What language do you use?”, there’s just so much to learn. To try and not re-route them into self-love but to really be like, as you said, there’s a reason that this is where this energy has landed, so let’s learn more.

Chris Sandel: Yeah. As you said, the curiosity, the awareness, the self-compassion. If we can bring that in, we can understand things better.

Deb Schachter: Yeah. And those stories evolve over time. It doesn’t mean all of a sudden you’re going to jump to self-love in every arena. But really getting curious, “Why is this one getting stirred up?” or “What is it about this thing that has really gotten my gears going?” It’s a practice.

Chris Sandel: That’s useful in terms of when I go through that exercise with people. “I used to be really bothered by this thing and now I’m not.” It’s like, “Cool, tell me more. That’s interesting.” Or “My this doesn’t really match up to society’s standards, but I don’t really care.” “Okay, tell me more about this.”

Deb Schachter: Right, how has that shifted, or why has it always felt like there’s freedom there? Totally. I think that’s so great. And that’s very Deb Dana too, like how do we use the places that we feel more resourced as a resource?

Chris Sandel: Yes. And even as well, imagine this part that you say you really like; if I said I didn’t like that in you, how would you react? So often, it’s like, “I wouldn’t really care. I know I’m right” versus let me say I don’t like this part that you also don’t like; how would you react to that? I think so often the feeling is “I have to get everyone in the whole world to change their mind and then I’ll be fine” versus actually, if we do some work on ourselves, there’s parts of yourself that you just don’t even care what the outside world thinks because you feel so confident in that. And again, isn’t that interesting?

Deb Schachter: Totally. And that’s why we talk so much about the alignment piece. And it doesn’t mean we’re always aligned. It’s more of this idea of – it’s much like self-energy in Internal Family Systems – we know when something feels right, if we can really listen. As simple as that might be. “I love this book”, “I think I’m going to toss this book” or whatever it is, we usually know when something feels right or right enough. So getting people to really, like you said, connect to that knowing or trusting or whatever it is I think is such a cool way to help people. Like, “Oh yeah, I don’t even think about that. I love wearing tennis shoes with dresses” or whatever it is.

Chris Sandel: Yeah. It’s like, “Okay, how do you have that energy there and not in this other space? Let’s explore what’s the difference between those things.”

Deb Schachter: Absolutely. Totally, 1000%.

01:19:30

Clothes + getting dressed

Chris Sandel: So then talk about the clothes piece. I think this is really important because I see it come up so much. Obviously I’m working with eating disorders, people going through recovery; there is going to be clothes that people are growing out of and having to clothe a changing body. So talk about this piece.

Deb Schachter: So much of this I’ve learned from my clients over the years, but I think a lot about sensation because if you think about clothes – another pandemic gift, no more hard pants, no more clothes with zippers, as one of my clients said. But getting curious about the sensory experience of ourselves in clothes. So that’s one. And I have many clients who early in their lives already were like, “I didn’t like the way tights fit on my body” or ”I didn’t like wearing this uniform.”

So getting people to think about the sensory experience and what feels good. And it might be leggings or something tight-fitting that feels really containing and cosy, and for someone else they might be like, “Oh my gosh, I only will wear really soft, flowy things.” So there’s that piece.

And then there is a little bit of the Pedestal Person stuff. Like, are there things that you really want to explore that maybe you’ve never done but you’re really curious about? Or there’s a style that’s coming out now that you’re like “I kind of want to give that a go”? Again, it’s really using clothing as a way to find more alignment.

So that might be tossing some stuff. That might be “I’m not ready to let this one go, but I’m going to pack it away for now. Not necessarily because my body’s going to change, but it just feels really important to me.” One of the anecdotes is actually a friend of my family’s who had this skirt she kept from her first date with her husband. She tries it on now and again. There’s a little bit of the “Where’s my body now?”, but what we’ve gotten her to really think about is “When do I try it on, and what’s happening? Is it about something in my marriage? Is it about some other way that I’m not feeling enough or too much of something?”

I think there’s so much, and we really try and give people tools to ask those questions about, what is it that’s happening with clothing that can actually give us more information about ourselves?

And then my favourite part, I have to say, of the whole chapter is when we do – I’m sure this has come up in your practice, too – things like weddings. We call those the Super Bowl events. And it doesn’t matter who you are. It could be you’re the bride, it could be you’re the single third cousin at the singles table. What is happening for you, and how is what’s happening for you running in parallel with what’s happening at this event? Either “I’m the only relative from this side of the family because there’s all this estrangement” or “My dad is sober and I’m afraid he’s going to drink” or all the different things that might happen, and how might that affect how you think about what you’re wearing, how you feel at the event.

We have you walk through the before, during, and after and how you can take care of yourself. What might you choose to wear that really would give you the most freedom and safety? What’s happening in the event? Is there anything you can find that could be maybe a touchpoint person? And certainly debriefing afterwards, whether it’s talking about what happened with your body image along the way or how it feels to navigate all the feelings that might come up. “Oh my gosh, I’m so relieved my dad didn’t drink, but I spent the whole time gripping the table.” What was that like, to have that kind of anxiety, and what was that like to feel like you needed to be tracking him the whole time or something?

So really getting people to look at where clothing – clothing and also getting dressed, really both, because there’s so much that happens in that process.

I just started telling this story because it just recently happened, but it’s one of my favourites, which is that my husband is a scientist and he was presenting at a big conference. He doesn’t do a lot of those. And he was running around, totally having a meltdown about not finding any shirt that he could wear under a jacket, which he so rarely wears. And it was so sweet; towards the end he was like, “I think I’m having a BIMM.” It was so awesome. As I said, we’re in our fifties, so we certainly talk about changing bodies, but it was really cool.

I was like, “That’s a great way to put it. Sure, it’s about the shirt and some of your old white shirts don’t really fit or your body’s a little different, but it’s also you’re presenting to 2,000 people and you’re really scared, and preparing is not your biggest strong suit, so there’s a lot of feelings coming up.” Again, it gave us this opportunity in this getting dressed, or in his case it was packing to go to this event – what’s happening inside and what really needs to be tended to. And ultimately we talked much more about his anxiety about presenting and about how much can he get done before the event and all of that.

It’s really a gateway, I think. And I love the getting dressed stuff because everybody can relate to it, and again, it brings so much compassion to be like, “Oh my God, you were sitting on a pile of clothes in tears. Something’s happening here. This is important.”

Chris Sandel: Yeah, the getting dressed one has come up a lot where someone has reached out and said, “I’m having a really bad body image day.” It’s like, “Tell me more.” “When I was getting dressed this morning, X this didn’t fit or it fit more snugly than it was fitting a week ago, and that brings up so much.” As you say, the sensations piece I see so often with people in terms of how this thing feels on me and whether it is – as you said, the difference between something constraining versus something containing, they have a very different feel to them.

Deb Schachter: That’s a great way to put it. Absolutely.

Chris Sandel: And so often, when people are saying “I have a bad body image”, when I ask them to actually describe it, it is very sensation-based. And yes, there can be aesthetic components, but so much of it is “how this actually feels on me or feels in me”, which is wonderful when someone can actually get there. Because I think in the beginning it is just about the aesthetics and the teasing apart to let’s be able to have more language around this, whether that’s being able to label the specific emotions, being able to label the sensations that are coming up, the chain of events that got us to this place as opposed to feeling “This is just a permanent state of being and I always feel this way.” “I can notice I wasn’t feeling this way an hour ago or yesterday.” All of those elements of awareness I think are so important.

Deb Schachter: And starting to learn patterns, too. I was thinking, even this morning – we did a ton of podcasts right after the book came out and I haven’t done one since probably May or something, and I was like, “Oh God, what do I wear?” this morning. Not that it really matters, but I was like, this is interesting. I usually just pick whatever shirt I’m going to do that day and I spend two minutes thinking about it when I’m in the shower or whatever. But I was like, this is really interesting.

Part of it is like you see this chunk of me, but it was also like, this is interesting; I know for me, at least, when I start trying on a bunch of stuff – sometimes, rarely, it might be I actually have enough time to really think about what I’m going to put together, but I was also like, oh, this is interesting. This makes sense to me. I’m doing a podcast and I’ve never met you before, all those things.

So I think learning those patterns is really helpful. And it might be pick the one you love, get along on your business, or it might be “This is interesting. What am I hoping I might feel today or not feel today?” It might be those pants that felt snug two weeks ago just felt cosy, and today that feels like “There’s something about that that just doesn’t feel good.” And it’s often when people are like “I know I’ve gained weight” or whatever. And I’m like, sure, maybe. And your pants may just feel different to you today. You might be in a much more tender body, so things are going to feel snug and maybe a little bit more distracting or present or whatever. And that might be because your body’s in a more sensitive place.

Chris Sandel: Another place where I’ve seen this come up where it can feel very tricky to navigate for people is when they are growing out of the current clothes that they’ve been wearing and they’re getting into this stage where “I don’t know how long I’m going to stay in these clothes. It feels so hard to dress this body. Do I want to spend money on this in this moment?” and all of the stories that come up connected to that piece.

Deb Schachter: Absolutely. Obviously there’s so many factors here in terms of what kind of financial situation someone’s in, how they feel about change. There’s someone we really love who has partnered with us, actually came to one of our workshops, who specializes in thrifting and alignment in style through thrifting. She has a great Instagram where she’ll be like, “I found these four plaid shirts and I cut off all the arms and did this” or whatever.

And some people just aren’t into fashion that much. I’m thinking of another client that was like, “I just found one shirt at the GAP and I love it and I have it in four colours.” So figuring out what feels right. And then maybe other people feel like they really want to put time and energy and may hire a stylist or say “I’m going to really go to town and find some things that make me feel really good in this stage.”

I see that a lot. Interestingly, for whatever reason, this year I have a ton of pregnant clients. Even that process, not knowing where their body is going to land, and also the growing body, it’s been interesting to be in that conversation on what to wear and what feels right and fantasies around what the ‘right’ kind of pregnant looks like, and not knowing where they’ll land on the other side. All those things.

Again, I think so much of it is having that opportunity to talk about it and understand really what’s at the core of it, which is the emotional experience and the body experience.

Chris Sandel: Just piggybacking on something you said there in terms of finding a stylist, I want to just add that I don’t think this is only for people who are fashionistas or really into their clothes. I think for a lot of clients, especially if they’ve changed into a body that is a different size to where they were before, having someone who really knows fashion, who’s like “For your body size and shape, these are the kind of brands that work really well” or “These are the types of jeans that I think would do well because of the way that they’re” – that kind of advice can be really, really helpful.

Deb Schachter: Absolutely. And that kind of stuff – what’s so cool now, too, so much of that stuff, there are so many stylists who are in different kinds of bodies and really offer that, and it’s so fun. And again, as I said, some people aren’t fashionistas and super into this stuff. My husband has eight pairs of jeans in the same brand and he likes the way they fit and that’s awesome for him. He likes fashion, but it’s not the headline of his life.

But I think figuring out, what’s going to make me feel easeful? What’s going to make this fun for me? Which might be “I know how these pants look, I’m going to buy them in eight colours”, or, like you said, “What might I wear” – it’s funny; I remember I hired a stylist for a couple of hours to help me with my closet when I turned like 40, I think, something like that. It was so helpful. She was like, “You absolutely can wear blazers” or something.

We have all these myths or things we took in. There’s a whole section in that chapter about growing up and shopping with family. My mom dressed me and my sisters all the same. All that kind of stuff. There’s so many interesting stories. Who was shopping with you? What did they say about your body? What did you learn about money and shopping? For everybody. And that’s why I love that range of figuring out all the different factors. Race, financial status, health conditions, there are all of these different things that might inform the shopping experience and the dressing experience, and figuring out what feels good, what feels easy, and figuring out if something it feels like something you want to invest more in or really finding that simplicity and figuring that out.

And obviously that may evolve over time with other factors, like having kids or a big job or whatever. Or coming back to dating after being married for a long time or something. There are all these different ways to understand what’s happening and how that informs our experience.

01:32:28

Resourcing + finding community

Chris Sandel: The last thing I want to mention from the book is resourcing. Talk about what this is and what this can look like.

Deb Schachter: We each had our favourite-favourite chapters, and I would say I loved these last couple of chapters, but it was really Whitney’s baby. She’s an executive coach. We did it together, but I really love the way that she thinks about it in this very in some ways practical way, which is like, if we’re back in that Rotary, what do we need to feel more aligned, to feel like we don’t need to stay in this loop?

One of my favourite quotes from that chapter is the Mary Oliver quote, “Letting our animal body love what it loves.” Really helping us, again, tapping into the wisdom of the body, but having that curiosity, like what are the kinds of things that you really know to be true that help you tend to whatever it is that you learned in the Rotary you needed more of? Whether it’s loneliness or overwhelm or fear – that can be a million things. That could be a book, that could be connecting with someone else who’s had a similar experience, that could be shopping.

The more we understand the way our body image is trying to help us, trying to give us some sort of resource, the more we can translate that and figure out what we actually need. Then we can ask those questions and really tend to what it’s trying to do and what we may actually need. Because we all have had the experience of no matter how much we focus on this, it doesn’t ever really fully tend to what needs to be tended to.” So really figuring out – and we do a bunch of different exercises around, how do we figure out what are our personal resources, and then what is it like to start to lean into that and really figure out what our animal body has to tell us about what we may need?

And it may be really different than what we expect or it might be something different than the people around us understand, but really learning to find language to explain that for ourselves, and maybe with the people we love. But really feeling more empowered as we get more clear.

Again, that’s also a practice, because our lives are always changing, and the circumstances, and what we may have needed 5 or 10 years ago might be really different than what we need now or in 5 or 10 years. That sort of evolution of how we resource ourselves – I’m obviously very passionate about the connection piece. I talk to clients so often about how their network and their friends may evolve as they get to know themselves better and what they need more of and what they’re hungry for in their lives.

Chris Sandel: I know in this chapter there’s stuff around self-care, there’s stuff around boundaries. There’s lots of different aspects with this. As you were talking just there, I was thinking about one of the people in my group and talking about the fact that within her life, she doesn’t have anyone who isn’t really steeped in diet culture. Comments and things are always coming up.

Just recognising that actually, I think what would be really helpful is outside of this group – this group we have is wonderful and people can share and be in that group, but in real life-life, having people where these are friends where that stuff’s just not part of the conversation.

Deb Schachter: Totally.

Chris Sandel: You’re able to turn up and know that this is a completely safe zone where we’re not going to be commenting on that. I can laugh, I can be myself. We’re not getting into the weeds about what diet someone’s on or how much weight someone’s lost.

Deb Schachter: Absolutely. Especially with my younger clients, like my clients in their twenties, I feel like my clients are the exception to the rule. This is always evolving, but there’s so much especially in that generation where they’re so oriented around a certain aesthetic. So my clients who are outside that and really thinking about anti-diet, healthy at every size orientation, they’re the exceptions. They’re the ones that are teaching their friends about this, which is really cool but also a little nuts.

I run a lot of groups too, and I love that, especially at that age where people aren’t necessarily as out about “I’m in therapy.” To be in a community where people can really talk about “This is what it’s like navigating this” – even though everybody is. And we really did write the book for everybody. We really were hoping to help people – that’s our greatest dream; just like my husband, we have BIMMs. We have moments where our body image is stepping in to try and help.

So absolutely, I think community and also – obviously I’m not going to dive into all this, but all the GLP-1 stuff too. People are in these communities – I’m thinking of a client of mine who’s a teacher, and everyone at her school is all of a sudden losing weight in a way that she’s worked so hard not to be in that mindset, and what that’s like, and finding her own way both to speak for her own story and also just be like, “They’re on their own journey, and I live in a community” – really cool other hobbies of hers. She’s like, “I just feel so much better being around those folks that are thinking about things the way that I do.” So yeah, I think that’s a huge piece of it, for sure.

Chris Sandel: And there’s no quick fix. You talked about people who are younger. The client I was referring to is someone in her mid-fifties. Meeting new friends at that age, especially if you haven’t moved, is not always the easiest thing to do.

Deb Schachter: Totally. I ran a group for a long time that was 40 and up, and again, at any age, both in terms of diet culture and the ways that we all experience the messaging around that, but also just the ways that we grow, whether it’s going through a divorce or a big job change or whatever it is, or feeling a little stuck and feeling like, “What are the areas of my life where I want to feel more creative?” Where’s your growth edge and what are the areas of your life that you’re wanting to lean into? So absolutely.

That’s what I love about the body image stuff. When I first started writing and telling people about it, everybody had something to say. My dentist, my accountant, these men in their fifties. People want to talk about this and people want to find ways to talk about it that don’t feel so self-shaming and could actually be more fun and creative. That’s really what we wanted to try and do.

Chris Sandel: For sure. It touches everyone because it’s not even necessarily about the body image piece.

Deb Schachter: 1000%, exactly.

Chris Sandel: Someone could be a male in their mid-fifties, late sixties, whatever it is, and they don’t really pay that much attention to their body, and yet this stuff is still coming up.

Deb Schachter: For sure. And we didn’t even get into aging. That’s a whole other – I don’t think that’s the next book for me, but it’s something I think is so important, and it’s part of why I feel so committed to this. Whitney and I talk about this all the time. That’s been a huge part of this process for us, too. There was always this fantasy that you could make your body different, and as you get older – I mean, I suppose there are ways to do that, but this is the way it’s going, so how do we be in relationship to it? And noticing the times where we feel like we look really old or tired or whatever, and how do we relate to that?

Chris Sandel: For sure. This has been wonderful. Is there anything I missed that you wish we could go through or you want to mention?

Deb Schachter: Oh gosh, great question. I love where we landed, which is the connection piece. Obviously that’s my favourite part – just finding people that you can have this conversation with and being able to say this stuff and have the person not try and talk you out of it, but be like, “Oh wow, gosh, tell me more.” To have places where we feel like we can have these conversations. Because again, it’s so not skin deep. There’s so much that’s happening that needs to be talked about.

I think that’s really it. Whit and I are taking a much-needed solid break. We hope to be doing some workshops next year. I’m doing an in-person group here in Boston on body image and relationships. That’s become our main jam. So I’m always happy to chat with people and get people connected if they’re looking for more support or more help. But yeah.

Chris Sandel: If people want to find out more about you, where should they be going?

Deb Schachter: Our website is bodyimageinsideout.com. Our email is bodyimageinsideout@gmail.com. My practice is Deb Schachter LICSW. And I think we have the group on both of the sites. And we hope to maybe next year be doing a training for clinicians as well. So we’re around and if you want to work with either Whitney or I – Whitney, as I said, is more on the coaching end; I have a little bit of room in my practice, and I know a lot of wonderful people, so I’m always happy to help people find the right person, too.

Chris Sandel: Awesome.

Deb Schachter: Oh, and Instagram, of course. Just Instagram, but it’s again @bodyimageinsideout.

Chris Sandel: Great.

Deb Schachter: Thank you so much for having me, Chris. This was amazing. It actually was such a delight. One of my favourite podcasts is a long hour-and-a-half, two-hour podcast, and I was like, “Oh, this is kind of nice to not feel like I have to hit all the points and we can just chat it through.” It was really an honour.

Chris Sandel: Thank you. It felt very easy. We could’ve gone for a lot longer.

Deb Schachter: Yeah. Thank you again.

Chris Sandel: That was my conversation with Deb Schachter. If you liked what we went through, then I do highly recommend getting the book, Body Image Inside Out. There are so many different tools as part of the book that we didn’t get a chance to cover as part of this episode. It’s something I’ve recommended for a number of clients. I’ve used it as part of the coaching that I do, and I highly recommend getting the book and using it for yourself or using it with the provider or practitioner that you are working with.

That is it for this week’s episode. As I said at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If you want to fully recover and you’re wanting help to get to that place, then I would love to support you with this. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com and just put ‘coaching’ in the subject line and I’ll get the details over to you.

That’s it for this week. I will be back with another new episode next week. Until then, take care of yourself, and I will see you soon. Bye!

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