Eating addiction (not food addiction)

Transcript

Speaker 1:
Irreverent. Entertaining. Cool. You're listening to LA Talk Radio. You're listening to the Dr. Nina Show with Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin, only on LA Talk Radio.

Dr. Nina:
Hey there, welcome to the Dr. Nina Show here on LA Talk Radio. I am your host, Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin, and I am here to help you stop counting calories and fat grams so you can easily get to a healthy weight and get on with your life. That is what it is all about. I want you to wake up and think about your day, not your diet. Think about your day. There are so many other things to think about than what you ate, what you weigh, what you're going to eat.

So many people, they don't want to just lose weight. They come to me not because they just want to lose weight. They come to me because they want to lose the preoccupation and the obsession and the thinking about this all the time. So keep in mind that if you are turning to food, you are turning away from something else. It is helping you cope in some way. So one of the things that I talk about here on this show, we identify well, what is it that you are distracting yourself from. Why are you coping with food? Often, we get so good at coping, we don't even know we're getting triggered.

By the way, if you're on Instagram you can see me with Zane in my lap. He has decided to join the show today and he wants attention, so I am going to simultaneously talk to you and pet my dog. If only humans were as good at asking for what they need as dogs, right? Dogs want some attention, they come up and they're like, “Hey.” That was Zane knocking things over. They come up and they say, “Hey, give me attention. Scratch my tummy. Rub my ears. Scratch my ears,” whatever. They say, “I have needs and I want you to meet them.” Unfortunately, we as people don't do that with such effortlessness. We say, “Oh, needs? Needs are bad. We can't have needs.” Or, “I don't want to bother that person.” Or, “I can't express what I need. What if they don't like me? What if they think I'm too much?” What if, what if, what if.

So, we learn not to get our needs met from others and we learn to use food often for that purpose. If you're afraid of burdening others because you need comfort but you don't want to go to someone and say, “Hey, I need some comfort. I need a hug. I need even a virtual one. I need some understanding,” maybe you're going to go for some comfort food instead.

Today, I want to talk a little bit about some of the reasons why we turn to food instead of to people. One of them is that if this idea that if you are not there for other people, if you have any needs of your own, they're going to think you're too much. This is something that I've been discussing a lot with Kelley Gunter, my co-founder of the Binge-Free Babes, we were talking about that at our last meeting and just how afraid so many people are to ask for what they need or to speak up or to speak their mind or to say, “Hey, I think this,” or, “I disagree,” or, “I needs this,” or, “I want this,” or, “I don't want that.”

And remember this, you are not a burden. You are burdened by something. You are not a burden. You're burdened by something. What is it that is burdening you? That is the thing that is possibly making you go into the kitchen for some relief to cope. What is burdening you? So instead of, “Why am I eating this?” Ask yourself something different. Ask yourself, “What problem is this solving for me?” Karlygash is on Instagram giving me a compliment. Thank you, Karlygash. I had very bad hair today so I just put it back. I don't want to deal with it. It's in a ponytail. And yes, I'm here with the handsome Zane, who's hiding now.

So, last week on the show we talked a little bit about slave driving and how this idea that you have to do, do, do, do, do some, more, more, more, more, more is one of the roots of eating issues. If you're always making yourself to do more, you never feel like you do enough, eating can even be… it can be something to do, but it can also be your me time. Sometimes the only way you get a break is when you go eat something and you stop whatever it is that you are doing.

By the way, if you would like to call in and talk with me today, the number is 323-203-0815. 323-203-0815. I would love to hear what is on your mind, what is eating at you, because the real problem with binge eating, stress eating, any kind of emotional eating, the real problem is not food. Food is actually the solution to the problem. The real problem is what's eating at you. Let's talk about it. Let's work it through and that way you don't need food to solve the problem. Easier said that done, but practice makes progress.

So… uh-oh, Ronan is typing. Ronan, I am ready for callers. Bring on the callers. And I have a caller. Hi, Caller, you're on with Dr. Nina. Josh? Can you hear me? Hello? [inaudible 00:06:56] Karlygash. Hi, Karlygash. Welcome to the show.

Karlygash:
Hi, Dr. Nina. Thank you. I've been listening to your introduction words and I totally agree. In these past days I've been shuffling so much, from Lyme disease these past two weeks, where pretty much this is the 10th day I'm in the bed. Can't get out. First time it's that severe honestly. First time in my life everything hurts. Joints hurt, muscles. So when I started noticing pretty much I can't lay down in my bed and cope, a majority of it is an effect of I eat, I overeat, but I didn't binge, so that's the good thing.

So because I have nonstop pain for so many days, I kind of got used to pain in a sense it doesn't scare me anymore. I understand that there is something going on and it's going to be like this until I fix it, if it's possible to fix. So I started telling myself, “Whoa, what's going on? I know I'm in pain right now. Food will not help me get rid of pain. It may distract me for several minutes. The sugar euphoria may last for half an hour, but that's pretty much it. I will come back to the painful state, and yes it's bad, it sucks. It's unfair.” And I said to help myself in this position.

Dr. Nina:
Karlygash, I'm going to stop you for a second. I just want to acknowledge you've been calling the show for a while and feeling so helpless and out of control with food, I just want to acknowledge the hard work that you've put in to get to the point where you can say, “Wait a minute. I'm in pain. I'm in physical pain and I want that whatever, cake, food, candy,” whatever form of food that you're turning to, “I want to help myself, but it's not going to help me.” For you to even get to that point is huge. So I just want to take a moment and acknowledge you that you were able to in my moment realize that you were using food to distract from, in this case, physical pain, and I'm sure at other times emotional pain both.

Karlygash:
Yes.

Dr. Nina:
And you were able to say, “Hey, this is going to help for a second, a few minutes, but eventually I'm going to feel this pain again.” For you to have that thought in real time was hard one, so I just want to acknowledge you for it.

Karlygash:
Thank you very much, Dr. Nina. I honestly was very happy to have this thought. It's like another step on the staircase of awareness and coming to terms with what I have. You know my journey. It took me a lot of time to come to my reality, which is my reality instead of fantasy. I built myself, since I was a kid, I know partially it was a coping mechanism to escape excruciating nonstop pain, both physical and emotional. And fantasy's always so much better. It's so easy to fly there and build this future.

Dr. Nina:
But here's the problem with fantasy. It is always better than reality. And when you're a kid and you use fantasy to hope for a different future and you use fantasy to escape your horrible Dickensian-like situation, it serves a purpose, but then when you're no longer in that situation, it actually ends up hurting you because nothing and nobody can live up to a fantasy. We have these cultural fantasies about, well, when we're this weight, when we're this weight we are going to have a different life.

Dr. Nina:
I just want to interrupt myself to read you something that Sharon is saying on Instagram. She is saying, “I'm so sorry you're continuing to have this awful pain. Great job recognizing that food is a brief distraction but won't solve the problem.” Yes, absolutely.

Karlygash:
Thank you.

Dr. Nina:
And Sharon, I hope that you are as acknowledging and comforting and great at recognizing your own strengths and your own changes as you are with Karlygash.

Karlygash:
I look at Zane. Thank you so much, Sharon.

Dr. Nina:
Zane is a little disruptive. So, fantasy, because the then we have this fantasy of if we change our bodies, our lives will change. All we have to do is be thinner and so-and-so will like us more, or we'll be happier, or we'll be funnier, or we'll have more friends or whatever. And then inevitably, that doesn't happen because a fantasy is just a fantasy, and it's an illusion. Then we end up never being able to feel what we imagine we would feel in our fantasy and we are always disappointed. That's why coming to terms with fantasy and being able to be in a state of reality is so important.

Karlygash:
I agree 100%. Saying goodbye to the illusions and fantasies, which are in effect a coping mechanism, of course I didn't know anything else as I was a kid. Whatever I came up with as fantasy is what I had. Just saying goodbye to it is pretty challenging, but then I kind of… how to say, it's still better. It's still better to come to reality even if it's not pretty or… Also, it's liberating. It's painful. It doesn't have to be painful. It can depend. But in my case, it took time, it took work, but eventually I feel much better honestly.

I know that my life maybe at this point is not as proud as I pictured myself when I was a kid, but I had all this expectation, but I'm very grateful I'm still alive, and I'm still in my sanity, and I can do something to help myself. I also noticed that so many people are living in those illusions, and it's hard for me to deal with them because the moment I start to bring the reality and people oppose me, people fight me back, and I really don't like it. They treat me as if I'm the enemy.

I'm like, “How am I supposed to communicate?” Just to join their fantasy and say, “Yeah, let's do it,” but I can't. It's betraying my truth, and plus I want to exercise healthy, sane ideas, which lead to real results. I don't even want to join temporarily somebody who's delusional, because it affects my neurons, my brain. I mean, it kind of gets me off track of putting myself back on liberation and healthy thinking and doing.

So, I noticed myself just removing people from my life, like a long-term friends, 20-plus years friendships where I recognize that those are not friendships, those are just [inaudible 00:15:52] relationships.

Dr. Nina:
If people are not enhancing your life, and they're your friends just because you've been friends for 20 years, but they're not, let's say, I'm using this purposely, feeding your soul, if they're not nourishing and nurturing you as a person, if they're not there for you in a way that a friend should be, and they haven't been for a long time, then they're toxic, or at the very least they're just not good for you. If you wouldn't be friends with them if you met them now, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I have to do this, but I have to just go and get my dog out of the room. So I am continuing to listen to you. Karlygash, I'll be right back.

Karlygash:
Sure. He's very, very cute. I love him.

Dr. Nina:
I'll be right back.

Karlygash:
Yeah.

Dr. Nina:
I'm just getting rid of Zane before he destroys my-

Karlygash:
I 100% agree with you, and I also wanted to share a win.

Dr. Nina:
Yes.

Karlygash:
So yesterday I was talking to my mom in the morning. Actually it was a lot of fighting and screaming because she does what she does, which hurts her health, her wellbeing, but I took my time, explained to her with a lot of emotions, she kind of got it, and I showed her how to… It turns out, Dr. Nina, I always was thinking that I'm the youngest in the family, well they are supposed to know better than me because they're older and much more experienced, blah, blah, blah.

Karlygash:
It turns out that these people being 60, 50, way older than me, they just don't know how to feel their feelings, build relationships, how to treat themself correctly. In majority of cases in my family and among friends, I'm the person who finds this knowledge and truth first. I'm always the one who gets this knowledge fast and first, and I'm the one who brings this knowledge in. I just said, “You know, Mom, just listen to me. I'll tell you what to do.” What she did when I said, it turned out well, but then it took me my whole day off. I was shaking, I was anxious, I was bingeing. I was at such a bad place.

So today in the morning I woke up with an intention like, “Today, no matter how much pain I have, I will ask for to keep myself in a kind, good place in my own head and move towards my health goals and everything.”

Dr. Nina:
Good.

Karlygash:
In the morning, my uncle's wife left me a voice message which made me again shaky, and I said, “Okay, today's day is going to be rude. I'm going to show Beth because I needed a show Beth.” Then I said, “Wait a minute. Life is life. I have this sort of family. People will always bring havoc,” not always, but you know what it's like. I cannot wake up on a deserted island with plantain bananas and say, “Hey, I don't need to do anything. I don't have people. This is paradise.” No. Situations will come, people will do things. I cannot control them. But I said, “But, I will not let any situation and any people get into my mental space,” and feel bad the whole day [crosstalk 00:19:14].

Dr. Nina:
Good for you, Karlygash. What you're saying in effect is that you were able to challenge some of the notions that you had that, “Oh, if people are older, they're somehow wiser.” If you're younger that they know more than you do and how dare you have suggestions. And then you were able to say, “Hey, this did not ruin my day. This is a bad moment, not a bad day,” and that people will not be as you wish they would be.

So, in my ways, and then I have to jump off the call because I know we have another caller lined up, but in many ways, you are challenging these fantasies, not just about yourself and your life, but about other people and the world, and coming to terms with how the world is, being disappointed in people, without making that about a disappointing day. And then you feel better overall. When you feel better overall because you've come to terms with all of this, you don't use food for comfort because you don't need it.

I just want to, again, really recognize you. This is something I know you've been working on for a long, long time, and it's hard to do.

Karlygash:
It's really hard for me.

Dr. Nina:
But you're doing it, and you're doing it during a time when you're in physical pain, in a time of COVID, in a crazy time where we can't go to other people for comfort. We're inhibited from that, especially here in the LA area, and that's why food becomes more of a thing. But when you can comfort yourself as you're doing and you can reassure yourself, and you can be realistic, everything changes, and that is indeed liberation. So good for you, Karlygash. I'm really proud of you. Thank you for sharing your experience and giving other people hope.

Karlygash:
Thank you very much, Dr. Nina, for teaching me that, and I'm very happy it's coming into reality. It's getting tangible, real result, as usual there are tangible, real results, but you know, I'm so happy. I know I sound not very happy because I'm in tremendous pain right now. I'm barely sitting. My spirit is there and I'm very happy. Thank you very much.

Dr. Nina:
Thank you, Karlygash. I just want to read something else that Sharon said. She said, “You are so wise, Karlygash. Like you, I used to think people older than me always knew better. That philosophy led me to give power to people who did not have my best interest at heart.” Exactly. Got to listen to yourself. With age does not come wisdom. If only it did. But older does not mean wiser. Only when you work hard to challenge the way that you think, only when you can look at the way that you think while you do certain things, look at not what you are eating, but why can life change. Josh, are you here?

Josh:
Yeah. Hi.

Dr. Nina:
Hi, welcome. Welcome back to the show.

Josh:
Thank you very much. I was calling because last night I had… pretty much the whole day I had a really good experience, probably in anticipation of your show today. Things happen in the time before your show starts because I start thinking about it unconsciously. But in the morning, or around lunch time, I felt like I wouldn't want to eat anything, and I kind of forced myself to eat, and it gave me a lot of energy during the day, which I wouldn't have normally had.

Then at night, I felt like I needed to eat. Again, it was the feeling of being actually physically hungry. Under a lie detector test, I wouldn't have been able to know that I wasn't actually hungry. It was not conscious. I did a little homework, I became curious like you talk about. I tried to get into my unconscious using a little bit of free association, just kind of like whatever thought came to my mind, even if it was sort of nonsensical, and in that way I was able to find that I was not hungry, but that again, I was looking for love, again.

Dr. Nina:
You were hungry for love. Yeah.

Josh:
Yes, but the difference this time was that I recognize that since my body was made of food, that I actually wasn't separating from the love I was seeking.

Dr. Nina:
Can you say that again?

Josh:
Yes. So I realized that the love I was seeking, but I in a sense was the embodiment of the food or love that I was seeking, and I felt kind of peaceful with that realization.

Dr. Nina:
So are you saying, if I understand you right, that it seemed as if it's a yearning for love from another, but when you realized that you can be loving to yourself, accepting and loving, and give to yourself that which you would like someone to give to you, that that gave you peace, that you could be loving to yourself. The love that you were hoping for actually was resided within you.

Josh:
Yeah, I think that I felt as though, again, it wasn't an external thing I was seeking. So a little bit further than the last time that I brought this up, that I was in fact already kind of okay, like you're saying now.

Dr. Nina:
And the idea of being loving to ourselves is being reassuring, being nurturing, being supportive, being soothing. When we don't know how to self-sooth ourselves, which is a loving act, we sooth in other ways. And especially guys are socialized into don't have feelings. I've shared this many times, I was being interviewed on a podcast and a guy said to me that, “What you're saying is that emotional eating is not about food addiction, it's about something going on emotionally and you're eating to somehow resolve that.” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Well, I'm a dude. I don't have feelings.” Well, dude, yes you do.

Josh:
Right.

Dr. Nina:
So it's-

Josh:
The only other… Yeah, go ahead. I mean, I was going to say, the only problem, it sounds all rosy and peachy, was that I did uncover an addiction to, I think, food. I uncovered my own craving. If no one knows what craving is, it's sort of that addictive craving. Even though I was satisfied, I still found myself not being hungry, but craving food. Not a hungry feeling, like an addict who hasn't gotten his shot of drug.

Dr. Nina:
Okay, but I want to make a very important distinction here. You're craving food to resolve something emotional. That is not food… If we're going to use the word addiction, we're going to say it's an eating addiction, not a food addiction. You are not addicted to the substance of food. You may be addicted to using food, eating as a way of managing uncomfortable states.

Josh:
I like that because what happened was… So I was never going to give into that craving then, certainly not now. Certainly not at that point was I then going to give into the cravings. So I let the cravings be, and unfortunately, I hate to say this on the air, I felt a lot of pain. There was pain underneath the craving that I just had to endure.

Dr. Nina:
And you did, right? You did.

Josh:
Yes, and I did, and it wasn't so bad. So if anyone listening is afraid of the pain that they know is there, because I've said it, and they know what I'm talking about, it doesn't last… It's like getting a shot in the arm maybe from a vaccine, it's very short, very quick, and you get over it very quickly. I'm not saying I'm cured or anything, but it was interesting that I went through all of this last night leading up to your show, and once the pain dissolved, I did have a better experience of love and surrender and all of these feelings, like liberation, that one would want to have. Our goal in life, I had some really big kind of feelings and realizations once I got through the pain.

Dr. Nina:
And I think this is such an important thing to talk about, which is that you can survive your pain. I like to think about it like a wave. When a wave is building and building and building and building, and you're feeling more and more and more pain, it can feel as if it will always be there, like it's just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse. But like a wave, it eventually crests and then it falls and then it diminishes. But when we're in that build-up stage of a wave, it just feels so powerful.

Josh:
Yeah, and I think one of the ways that would help maybe your listeners get through something like that, is it depends on how absorbed you are. The analogy that I would give is in sports sometimes a guy breaks his leg and doesn't even know that it's broken until someone has to tell him, You know what I mean? Because he's so absorbed in the moment, his adrenaline is pumping, and he almost can't feel it. That's the kind of state that you can get into to get through this pain that seems to lie underneath the craving for, in my case, food.

Dr. Nina:
Which is really a craving for some kind of loving connection, from you to you, and from someone else to you.

Josh:
Yeah.

Dr. Nina:
Right? That the craving seems to be for food, but it's for something else, and food, it's a substitute.

Josh:
Maybe it's the liberation. Maybe it's for inner peace, inner love. Maybe it's not something external. Maybe it's a longing for actual freedom and happiness.

Dr. Nina:
Yes. Or both. You're yearning for some sense of peace within, and not only wanting to be… I think that we as humans, we don't just want to be loved, we want to feel lovable, because there are plenty of times where people love other people, but if the people don't feel lovable, they can't take that love in.

Josh:
Yeah.

Dr. Nina:
The idea of feeling lovable just as you are, not having to change anything about yourself, but to be perfectly imperfect and lovable and likable is a beautiful, safe, comfortable place to be in the world.

Josh:
Yeah. And I think it helps to just recognize yourself in other people. Other people aren't other people. Everyone is basically the same. I mean, when a doctor looks at a heart, he doesn't know if the heart is a brown, Black, Jewish, Christian heart. He just sees it as a human heart. I think to see people as we see ourselves, I think can also help, don't you think?

Dr. Nina:
Absolutely. And to be as kind to ourselves as we are to other people. Sharon, who's here on Instagram, posted a couple of very positive, encouraging, supportive things to Karlygash, and I said to Sharon, I'm sure you heard me, “Please be sure that you are equally as kind to yourself,” because often people are so loving and kind and understanding to other people, but when it comes to themselves, they treat themselves in a very different way. If we could just be consistent, be kind to ourselves, comforting, supportive, reassuring, loving, then you don't need food to escape that wish or to express it.

Josh:
Yeah, or maybe it's someone that's anorexic, maybe they do need food. I mean, it depends. I don't want to get into the same difficulty I had in saying something that someone would not appreciate, but I do feel like in the morning I needed to eat. For me it's both. It could be just as bad in the way that I'm not eating when I should.

Dr. Nina:
Yeah, so just-

Josh:
I feel like it's just as bad.

Dr. Nina:
I just want to say something about that. Not eating is also a way of denying needs.

Josh:
Yes.

Dr. Nina:
It's like saying, “I don't need anything, anybody, and I don't even need food.” Denying basic needs and feeling a sense of efficacy or like you're really proud of yourself, like you're doing something good because you can deny your own needs.

Josh:
Yes, like someone self-harm is good.

Dr. Nina:
Exactly.

Josh:
I mean, I'm not thankfully one of them, but in a sense, I am a person that does self-harm if I'm not eating when I should be. I mean, talk about people who cut themselves and stuff like that, but I'm basically doing that, like extreme aestheticism, like self-torture, things like that, yeah.

Dr. Nina:
The nobility of suffering. And also the sense of there's you and your body, and you're not going to give into the needs of your body. I'm not talking about you specifically, Josh, I'm talking about someone… I mean, it could be you, that there's this split, this body-self split, and so people are like, “I'm not going to give into my needs. I'm going to beat my body. It's going to want something and I'm not going to give it. I'm not going to give into it,” as if you're somehow superior by ignoring the needs of your body, like you and your body are two separate entities instead of, “Okay, my body has a need and I'm going to meet it. I'm hungry. That's a signal from me to me,” not from this other to you.

Josh:
Yes. I think those are some of the hardest things to figure out because we don't allow ourselves to be a part of the picture we're looking at. We always like to look at things or look at people. And that's why it's so hard to think negatively about other people because you're really actually being mean to yourself because you're not actually allowing yourself to be in the picture of what you're looking at. I mean, you could say, “Oh, this person is the worst person,” but maybe you have a problem that you could have solved instead of looking at this other person. So even that is almost kind of being mean to yourself.

Dr. Nina:
And that's why being curious, “Why am I doing this if I'm…” which I hear you doing. “Oh, I'm not hungry, but I want to eat something.” Being curious about that, what's this about. Or, “I'm really hungry and I'm not letting myself eat.” What's that about? What am I expressing? It's an expression of something internal using food. It's not about food. Food is just a symbol.

Josh:
And I think it also has to do with appearance. I mean, if we think of ourselves as skinny, if we think of ourselves as fat, I think all of us are somewhere in the middle, you know what I mean? I don't think there's anyone that can be really seen as outside that. How does that relate to what our needs are?

Dr. Nina:
I can tell you one thing, many people who struggle with eating disorders and have body image issues will look in a mirror and think, “Hey, looking good,” and literally two seconds later will look in the same mirror and go, “Oh, my God.” It's as if that normal mirror has turned into one of those Disneyland distorted mirrors and you just can't…

Josh:
Yeah.

Dr. Nina:
So again, symbolic. If you think you want too much, let's just say you have a notion that you want too much, you need too much, you think you're needy when really you're just human, but you've been led to believe that you want too much, you can actually see yourself as too big, too much.

Josh:
Okay. That makes sense. So I would be seeing myself distorted, and the distortion I would be placing on, say, a mirror image of myself as I look in a mirror, would be related to how my behavior is? Is that what you're-

Dr. Nina:
Let me just give you a quick example actually using me, because when I was five years old, I seemingly, suddenly, randomly looked down at my legs, I remember the moment perfectly, looked down at my legs, I was a totally normal weight child, and I decided that I was too big. My legs were too fat. I was too big. I remember the moment absolutely crystal clear. It happened to be my dad was playing tennis with some woman who was not my mother. I'm sure it was just a normal thing, but she was really skinny and wearing this cute little tennis outfit, and I probably was comparing myself as a five-year-old to this woman, but whatever. And thus began my descent into eating disorder hell, and I had every single eating disorder.

Much later, I came to realize why at age five did I suddenly and randomly decide that I was too big, because I was getting a message constantly that I was too much. My parents are college professors, well my dad's semi-retired, but they were college professors, very academic, very serious. Very serious. And I was a lot more spirited than they were, and I was loud. I didn't want to sit and read a book when I was five. I want to play, I want to do things. I was just me. And the message I was always… “Calm down. You're so dramatic. You're too much.” So that too muchness in my five-year-old mind became, “There's too much of me. There's too much me.” So this idea of too muchness-

Josh:
Did you have to go in the opposite direction? Did you feel to heal… Did you feel like so that you could heal… I forget who said this, but I think it was Masud Khan, which was a British psychoanalyst, he says, “We need to cure ourselves from our own self-cure.” I wonder if you felt-

Dr. Nina:
Well, I think he was talking really about… Masud Khan was a brilliant analyst who kind of went a little bit crazy at the end and did all kinds of very experimental things, but I think he was really talking about Freud, who is famously the only person who ever tried to analyze himself, and there were huge gaping holes in his self-analysis. So Masud Khan, I think, was a little bit pointing to that.

Look, I had to realize that trying to shrink myself and then going into this… I'd restrict and then I'd binge and purge, and then I'd binge. I had to realize the symbolism of everything that I was doing.

Josh:
Okay. Yeah. Because I think that… I know from my experience, if I feel like I'm overweight, I will probably recognize that sometimes as though I'm curing a feeling from childhood that was sort of like, “You are too skinny,” or something like that.

Dr. Nina:
Reversing. I think what you're talking about is reversal.

Josh:
Yeah, like my self-cure is to be overweight. In other words, my self-cure for early bullying may be because I was too skinny, is to be now fat, something like that maybe.

Dr. Nina:
Exactly. And that's called reversal. It's like you're reversing the original situation rather than process it. Process what was it like to be bullied and told you were too skinny, what was it like for that.

Josh:
We can't use words like skinny and fat though. That's what I got in trouble for. I forget what it was, but saying that-

Dr. Nina:
No, you didn't get in trouble. You didn't get in trouble. You just said, “Food was poison to fat people.” But you know what? We're not go back there because you had the courage to call in and talk about that when a couple of-

Josh:
But I mean, I don't even think we should use words like skinny and fat.

Dr. Nina:
But you said you were shamed for being too skinny. So whatever word we want to use, the shame of being bullied needs to be process so that you can just go and live your life rather than do the opposite now as an answer to that earlier shaming.

Josh:
Yeah, so my own self-cure is the problem, not the solution. My own way of doing it wasn't good enough, you know what I mean?

Dr. Nina:
Exactly.

Josh:
Does that make sense? Yeah.

Dr. Nina:
Yes, yes. You were trying-

Josh:
Because everyone's heart is in the right place. I mean, we're all working towards liberation, but sometimes we think, “Maybe I shouldn't be using drugs as much as I am.” Maybe it's not exactly what I had in mind. We kind of fall off a little bit sometimes, and hopefully no one will be upset at me for what I just said, but I just mean it in the best possible way.

Dr. Nina:
Josh, I don't want you to call it and worry and parse your words. It was just one phrase and you were man enough to call in and talk about it, and so don't worry so much about what you're saying. What you're saying is making a lot of sense. So, just look at what is the symbolism here, what is this doing for me, am I avoiding something, expressing something, nullifying, reversing, whatever it is. What is the symbolism? That's what I-

Josh:
Yeah, probably hurt me a lot to feel as though I was too skinny. It probably was painful to think… There's nothing you can do about it. I mean, if you're overweight as a kid, what can you do about that? That's just who you are. So in the same way, if I was too skinny or even if I was just normally skinny, which I feel like I was kind of, I would still be like, “Well, that's not good enough,” because of whatever reason. I bet you that really hurt me a lot in the moment.

Dr. Nina:
And that is the kind of hurt that you want to process now because if we don't deal with the pain of the past, it follows us into the present. It just takes different forms as you're seeing now. So there was some shame of being bullied that has followed you into the present and that needs your attention so that you can heal and move on, and not feel compelled to reverse that original pain.

Josh:
Right.

Dr. Nina:
Josh, I just want to thank you as always for your thoughtful and insightful contributions to the show. We are almost at the end of our time, but please call me back next week and let me know how it's going, and keep up the curiosity.

Josh:
I will. I feel like we're on the same page, and I want to thank you for that.

Dr. Nina:
You're very welcome. Very welcome. Take good care.

Josh:
You too. Bye-bye.

Dr. Nina:
Bye-bye. Before I go, I want to mention what Erin is saying on Instagram. She says, “My father always seemed lit up by tiny people, and I was just average. I decided if my body were tiny, I'd definitely get more love and attention from him.” So, that's great insight, Erin, and very much probably still with you, this idea that you would be more likable… that you'd light up more people if you're smaller. And that's the illusion that by changing your body, you change the way that people relate to you, that somehow you change your likability and your lovability by changing your weight.

Dr. Nina:
Again, imagine what a wonderful super-power that would be. We could control the world by controlling our weight. Doesn't work that way. So, that is the end of our time together today. Thank you so much for joining me here on the Dr. Nina Show on LA Talk Radio and Instagram. Starting next week I'm also going to be streaming live on Facebook. So find me on Facebook there. You can also ask me questions same as on Instagram. Also, if you haven't already done so, you're going to want to go to my website drninainc.com. D-R-N-I-N-A-I-N-C.com and watch my free webinar that I have up there for you. So, have a wonderful week. Stay safe, stay curious, not critical, and I'll see you next week. Bye for now.

Speaker 2:
You're listening to the Dr. Nina Show with Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin only on LA Talk Radio.