Simple Truths to Heal Your Relationships w/ Food, Body Image, Exercise, & Relationships

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Things We Dive Into In This Episode:

1. Q&A - How long did it take for me to recover from my eating disorder?

2. Importance of simplicity in health, wellness, and life

3. Simple truths to heal your relationships with food, body image, exercise, and relationships
   

📘Resources

• Nutrition & Intuition Retreat - Book a Commitment Free Discovery Call!

• Back To You Intention Setting Ceremony

• The Podcast For The Person Who Is Trying To Lost The Last 10 Pounds episode

📌Episode Highlights

Q&A

How long did it take me to recover from my eating disorder?

Instead of just asking with a “concrete” amount of time, ask yourself these questions to help bring some compassion to the frustration of wanting to recover from an eating disorder or disordered eating as fast as possible:

• How do you define recovery? What is it that you really want in your life, in your relationship with food, in your relationship with exercise that you don't have right now? What is it that you're really looking for? How do you define a sense of freedom?

• All of the things that you feel like you're missing and all of the things that you feel like you're really frustrated with have a root cause.

  • You might have to go quite deep in your healing and in your therapy in order to uncover that root cause. You need to ask yourself, what does healing from that root cause look like?

  • It is really important that you feel comfortable sitting with, exploring, and feeling the emotions of the root cause.

  • Without the emotional intelligence and emotional capacity to explore the root causes of the eating disorder, some of the behaviours might come back until you are able to truly get to the root cause.

• Consider whether you are feeling worthy of full recovery. Are you feeling worthy of the joy, the peace, the freedom that comes with complete recovery from an eating disorder?

  • If you're feeling stuck in your recovery, it's really important that you feel worthy of recovery, that you feel worthy of all the joy and the pleasure, the abundance, the better life that comes with recovering.

• We can't compare our journey and our timeline to someone else's.

• AND don't forget to celebrate the little wins along the way.

• Don't forget to celebrate all those little wins along the way, because I think if we miss those little wins along the way in healing our relationship with food and recovery, we feel like we haven't made any progress. But we've got to celebrate every little win. You can't shame yourself into the next step of recovery. You need to celebrate yourself as you move along. That makes the journey so much easier.

• Working with a provider is also really helpful. It’s an essential part of this process in not getting frustrated in your recovery timeline.

Simple Truths to Heal Your Relationships with…

With Food

Dieting straight up feels like crap. Dieting feels shitty. Intentionally restricting yourself from carbs, intentionally restricting your energy intake, being really rigid about added sugar intake, going keto, eventually if not at first, really feels like crap. It really shrinks your life. It really shrinks your relationships. It really blocks your digestion. And it really doesn't feel good to be sitting at a dinner table with your really close friends where you should be enjoying your life the most and thinking about dieting.

Obsessing over your body shape and size just doesn't feel good. Let's try something that feels better. Let's try to let go of control so that we can have freedom, so that we can have happiness.

With Body Image

We cannot rigidly control our body shape and size and keep our body at a weight that it was not meant to be at while also living a full life. It's just not possible. It is not possible to maintain a body shape and size that you deem as the ideal one that isn't really the natural weight that your body's supposed to be at and live a full life. We have to let go of control.

With Exercise

Exercise is about so much more than changing your body shape and size. Exercise is literally a healing, relieving, energy clearing spiritual practice. And if we hyper fixate on exercise needing to be about controlling our body shape and size and toning up and leaning up., we miss all of the beautiful benefits of the practice of movement.

With Romantic Relationships

If they don't want you, you don't want them. You should never have to convince someone of your worth. You should never ever have to convince someone of your worth, choose the people who choose you back.

The reality is that a relationship is never going to be nourishing if the person on the other end doesn't fully choose you. And you've got to choose yourself enough to walk away from that.

With Relationships

We need to maintain a sense of self.

Just because I am meeting my own needs doesn't mean I'm not also helping other people meet their needs. We need to maintain a sense of self and a sense of boundaries. When we give to ourselves we are able to also give to others.

Thanks for listening! 💖 Stay tuned to my website for more episode updates and other exciting programs and resources.

Transcript

Caitie: I have had spiritual awakenings during movement classes. I have had emotional breakthroughs during movement classes. I have had friendships formed during movement classes. I've had an incredible sense of relief and grief shed off of me from movement practices. And to think that I was ever moving just because I wanted my stomach to be flatter and to think that I was ever moving just because I wanted my arms to look different in photos makes me cry. It really does because when you can tap into movement as a spiritual practice, as a stress relieving practice, as a so much more than a weight loss pursuit it is life changing. It's really life changing. 

Welcome to Whole, Full, & Alive, a podcast helping you feed yourself, feel yourself and be yourself. I'm Caitie Corradino. I'm a registered Dietitian-Nutritionist, a body image coach and the founder of Full Soul Nutrition, a method that combines nutrition counseling with a powerful toolkit of somatic healing modalities. I have guided hundreds of clients to freedom with food, their bodies and every aspect of their lives. I've also been through this healing myself, and on this podcast, I want to help you eat with confidence, embrace your body, form aligned relationships and create a life that you're in love with. I'll share actionable tools, no bullshit stories and interviews that will remind you why you have everything you need within you to feel whole, full and alive. Are you ready? Let's get into it.

Hey, welcome back to another episode of Whole, Full, & Alive. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I am stoked about today's topic. I have one listener question that I'm going to answer related to eating disorder recovery, but I believe that it's going to apply to a lot of other things that you might be experiencing in your life. And I'm also going to dive into simplifying your life. Simplifying your relationship with food, simplifying your relationship with exercise, making relationships more simple, making body image more simple. And I promise that I'm gonna do that in a really simple way. I'm gonna cover all of those topics in a very clear, concrete, tangible, simple way that I think you'll really be able to take away from this episode and implement in your life right away. So I'm stoked. 

But before we dive in, I want to invite you to take a deep breath. And also, wherever you are, I wanna invite you to sense the bottoms of your feet and sense the palms of your hands. I find when I'm having a hard time grounding into my body and connecting to my body, whenever I take a moment to really feel the bottoms of my feet and maybe feel the surface that they're connected to and just feel the energy and the aliveness in the palms of my hands, I feel a little bit better. So we're going to take two deep breaths together actually, two. And we're going to sense the bottoms of our feet and the palms of our hands. So wherever you're tuning in from, whether you're multitasking or just tuning in, let's take a nice deep breath in through your nose, fill your chest, feel your back expand, and then exhale, let it go. One more time, inhale through your nose, and then exhale out your mouth. Nice, long, complete, full exhale. And really feel that energy, that aliveness in the palms of your hands and feel the groundedness that comes with sensing the bottoms of your feet. I hope you're feeling a little bit better than you were 30 seconds ago. 

So anyway, before we dive into today's episode, I also just genuinely, sincerely, completely, fully want to remind you about some invitations I have for you. You are invited to join my Nutrition & Intuition retreat that is happening in Scotland next month, in March 2024. This is going to be five nights, six days of magic in the foothills of Scotland. We are going to be doing breathwork practices, movement practices, intentional workshops designed to help you really nourish yourself and heal your relationship with food and just make amazing friends and connections and explore the foothills and the castles and the amazing cities of Scotland as a group. You're going to walk away from this retreat feeling nourished and confident and connected to other people. And you're also gonna have a toolkit of holistic wellness modalities that you could actually take away from the trip with you. That is my number one mission with this retreat is that it's not this rigid wellness incubator that you'll never be able to replicate outside of the retreat environment. It's gonna be something that could actually translate to your everyday life when it's over. So if you're interested in joining really limited spaces available, but just DM me, retreat on Instagram. My handle is at @caitie.c.rd, or you can see that in the show notes. And you could also look at fullsoulnutrition.com/retreat to learn all the info. 

And you are also always invited to join my monthly Back To You Intention Setting Ceremony. This month I'm actually doing it on Valentine's Day, on Wednesday, February 14th. You can learn more about that on my Instagram and also more about that on my website. But this is a monthly community space. We meet via Zoom. We do a really nourishing breathwork and stretching practice, little journaling exercise, all that's happening with your camera off so that you can really come back to you. And then for the last 20 or so minutes, we just have time for community and connection and to talk about all the things that we talk about on this podcast and ask questions about food and movement, body image and breath work and all those good things. So you are invited to be part of those two community spaces if you really resonate with the content on this podcast. I would love to have you join either one of those spaces, my in-person space on my retreat and my virtual community in the Back To You Intention Setting Ceremony. 

Okay, here we go. Let's dive into today's topic. I actually am gonna keep this episode fast. I'm gonna keep this episode an express episode. I think I've been every week saying, you know, I want to have a fresher energy on my 2024 episodes. I want to move them a little bit faster. I want them to be a little bit shorter. But I think what I've decided after one month of that intention is that I think my solo episodes are going to be shorter. My guest episodes might remain a little bit longer though. I can't rush my fabulous guests. I'm interviewing two people tomorrow and I know that what they have to share with you is just going to be so amazing and juicy and nuanced and beautiful, and I never wanna rush my guests. So when I am on the microphone solo, I think you can expect the episodes to be a little bit shorter. And when I have guests, I wanna keep them a little bit longer. As you can see, my episode last week with my best friend Nicole was a little bit longer. And I feel like that's just the pattern that I'm probably gonna follow. So that's what you can expect. 

So let's get into today's listener question. This is a question that I actually received from a current client of mine who also is a listener of the show and he thought it was a really beautiful question to explore here a little bit. She asked me with the most compassionate, loving sincerity and also a little bit of frustration in her heart, how long did it take me to recover from my eating disorder? And I can't imagine that my beautiful client is the only person that is healing from an eating disorder or from disordered eating, or just from a funky and messy relationship with food that is wondering how long is it gonna take me to kick this? And so I wanna answer that question here for anyone else who might be feeling that way. 

And the first thing that came up for me when I went to answer this question for my client was more questions. Rather than, oh, it took me this long or it took me this long or it took me this long. I think it's actually more important that instead of the person who asked this question, having an answer, a concrete, solid answer of three years, five years, 10 years, 20 years, it's actually more important that they have another set of questions that they can ask themselves. There are so many things in life that we're seeking a concrete answer for that we aren't going to get a concrete answer for. And what we need instead is just another set of beautiful questions or just one more beautiful question that's gonna help us make peace with this thing that we're grappling with. And so when it comes to how long does it take to recover from the eating disorder, or how long did it take you to recover from your eating disorder, here is how I wanna answer that question. 

First, I wanna know, how do you define recovery? What is it that you really want in your life, in your relationship with food, in your relationship with exercise that you don't have right now? What is it that you're really looking for? How do you define a sense of freedom? 

I'm actually gonna have another one of my, I'm actually gonna have a colleague of mine who is also a recovered eating disorder clinician, come on the podcast in a few weeks from now to talk about how different recovery can look and feel for everyone. You know, my recovery has been about having the capacity to travel and have my own business and teach fitness again. And there's been a lot of things that have kind of defined recovery for me that aren't gonna define recovery for another person. Not everybody wants to incorporate traveling in their life to the extent that I did. Not everybody wants to be a eating disorder counselor that recovers from an eating disorder. Not everybody wants to teach fitness again or cares as much about having a relationship with group fitness classes. And recovery is gonna look different for every single person. So it is really important first to define, what is it that you don't have in your life right now or in your relationship with food or relationship with exercise that you really, really want? That's the first thing. 

The second thing is to remember that all of these things that you feel like you're missing and all of these things that you feel like you're really frustrated with have a root cause, right? So if we're talking about binge eating, for example, if you are really struggling with a binge eating or feeling legitimately addicted to food, which is a controversial topic, by the way. And I don't want to go off on a tangent about it. But my belief is that even though we can't be physically addicted to food in the way that we can be truly biologically addicted to a substance, food addiction can still feel very real. That feeling of being addicted to food feels very real. So like if that's what you're struggling with, what is the root cause of that? You might have to go quite deep. You might have to go quite deep in your healing and in your therapy in order to uncover that root cause. We need to ask ourselves, what does healing from that root cause look like? If the root cause of your binge eating is a lack of boundaries. You're not setting boundaries at work. You're not setting boundaries in your marriage. You're not setting boundaries in different relationships. You're letting people walk all over you. What's the cause of you not being able to set boundaries? And where did that come from? And how deep do we need to go, right? I'm not necessarily saying that you won't feel relief from binge eating until you've gotten to this one magic like cornerstone moment of your childhood that just like needs to be relieved that actually isn't necessarily true. But it is really important that you feel comfortable sitting with and exploring and feeling the emotions of the root cause. So that's another thing that will impact how long it takes to recover from an eating disorder. There were certain things for me that, you know, I didn't really have the emotional availability to explore until I was a little bit in my later twenties. Even though I went to eating disorder treatment for the first time when I was 15 or 16, I didn't have the emotional intelligence and the emotional capacity to explore some of the root causes of my eating disorder. And therefore I was able to get rid of some of the behaviors, but for a while they kept kind of coming back and I kept kind of relapsing because I wasn't really healing or nurturing some of the root causes that had caused my eating disorder in the first place. 

I think another question to consider when you're asking how long does it take to feel full recovery from my eating disorder is are you feeling worthy of full recovery? Are you feeling worthy of the joy, the peace, the freedom that comes with complete recovery from an eating disorder? So you have to define recovery, you have to consider that there's root causes to an eating disorder that don't necessarily need to be resolved or solved, but just addressed and nurtured and considered as part of the equation, as part of your recovery. And we need to consider, do you feel worthy of recovery? I'm gonna use an example that's not related to recovery to just illustrate the importance of worthiness. I'm leading my first retreat, that's totally on my own this year. I've been part of quite a few retreats over the years. I've been a workshop facilitator on other people's retreats for a really long time, but I've never let a retreat entirely on my own. That's like, I'm the leader, I've created the mission for it, I chose the retreat space, I invited people, it's on my website only, it's part of my business. And so selling it has been a journey. Inviting people to come has been a journey. And I was feeling pretty blocked around it recently getting these last couple of spaces filled. You know, I don't wanna push people to come to this experience. And so I don't wanna talk about it too much, but I also really want people to feel invited to come because I know it's gonna be a life-changing experience. And frankly, I also, I need to sell these spaces for my business. I have a business and I won't be able to do another retreat if I don't fill this one. And so basically I realized over the last couple of weeks through having really beautiful questions asked to me by my therapist and by my mentors and my friends, I realized that I actually didn't feel worthy of selling out my retreat. I just didn't. I was like, if I keep pushing this, I'm going to be seen as self-indulgent. And I am self-indulgent if I focus on selling out my retreat. That's a very self-indulgent thing. Like I should be happy that I have all the people signed up that I have signed up and not focus on filling it up. And I had to really sit with that and be like, why? Why is it self-indulgent for me to continue to promote this retreat that first of all is a really beautiful space for people to heal and foster community and have a better relationship with exercise. And I recognize it was because there was this wound inside of me and this part of me that didn't feel worthy of an abundant business that feels like I need to pay for or earn or suffer still a little bit. And I'm like, whoa, that's, that's part of my, that's part of my eating disorder coming back a little bit. That part of me that feels like I need to suffer to experience abundance, that I need to suffer to experience joy, that I need to suffer in order to host this retreat in Scotland. And I was like, yeah, there's this part of me that just inherently feels unworthy. And so I'm not gonna fill these spaces until I actually feel worthy of filling them. And since I started working on that, I've had so many more people booking calls to sign up for the retreat, and so many more people asking about the retreat, and there's just a completely different energy around it. And that's a lighter example than eating disorder recovery specifically. But I think it is relevant. 

And I want you to remember that if you're feeling stuck in your recovery, it's really important that you feel worthy of recovery, that you feel worthy of all the joy and the pleasure, the abundance, the better life that comes with recovering. And so we can't compare our journey and our timeline to someone else's. That's also a really important thing to say, obviously, but I feel like a lot of people would answer that question by saying that. So I just didn't want to answer it in a basic way. But that's also part of this too, right? Is that your recovery timeline is not gonna look the same as mine or anyone else's. And I don't think I ever benefited from comparing my eating disorder recovery journey to someone else's. And so your timeline is your timeline. But remember that even if you're not objectively in what you think is like full recovery, like no risk of relapse, like even if you're not there, your life is still gonna start to feel so incrementally better one step at a time. So don't forget to celebrate the little wins along the way. Don't forget to celebrate that time where you feel like you're out to dinner with your friends, not thinking about the portion sizes, not debating what to order before you go, not looking at the restaurant menu before you go. When you're in the shower and you can just let your lower belly breathe and just be in your body. When you're at the gym and you're getting tired and you're like, maybe I should stop my workout. And you do stop your workout. Don't forget to celebrate all those little wins along the way, because I think if we miss those little wins along the way in healing our relationship with food and recovery, we feel like we haven't made any progress. But we've got to celebrate every little win. You can't shame yourself into the next step of recovery. You need to celebrate yourself as you move along. That makes the journey so much easier. And working with a provider is also really helpful. It's also really important. And working with a provider is also a really essential part of this process in not getting frustrated in your recovery timeline. A provider is going to legitimately support and celebrate and gas you up along your recovery journey. So remember that too on the days that you're feeling frustrated. And also just remember that there are so many people out there who are experiencing fully, completely, full complete liberation from disordered eating. And you can too, and you're worthy of that. 

Thank you so much to the amazing human being who asked me that question. Okay, well, let's move into today's topic of simplifying everything. I think if there is anything that I notice in pop nutrition media and pop psychology and pop health and wellness media, it's an over complicating of everything. An over complicating of nutrition and wellness especially. There's this trend on Instagram right now that's like the girls who know, and it says like, the girls who know that you need red light therapy and 30 milligrams of magnesium and like, blah, like all of these things. And I don't, it's not the correct milligrams of magnesium, but you get the point. It's like, there's this long list of things that they say we need in order to feel good. And the girls who know to do these things are the ones who are gonna thrive. And that's a whole bunch of bullshit. I mean, so much of that is just marketing and people are trying to sell red lights and vitamins and products. And so much of that is just disorder and people seeking some sense of control in their life and getting obsessed with all these complicated wellness practices as if we need them to feel good. As if we can't live without them. 

And don't get me wrong, I'm not like shitting on every single intentional wellness practice that some of these influencers do, right? We can incorporate different wellness practices into our life that make us feel good. I love sitting in a sauna sometimes, even though I don't have all the science as to why that feels good. I love taking vitamins. I take probiotics and prebiotics. I really like ritual vitamins. That makes me feel like I'm taking care of my body. There are certain things that you can do, but you don't need to over complicate your wellness. You get to choose a few simple practices that help you feel grounded and well. And I was really inspired to talk about this idea of simplicity, not only because of all the complicatedness that I'm observing on social media, but also because on Saturday, a couple days ago, I had a morning where this theme was just thrown in my face. I flew back to New Jersey where I'm from on Saturday, and I had the privilege of having breakfast with my dad, who is a very spiritual man. Let's just say that. We all have complicated relationships with our parents and you know, there's been some ups and downs with me and my dad. And for the most part, he is one of the smartest people I know, one of the wisest people I know, and one of the most groundedly spiritual people that I know. And he often just spits out things that I'm like, yeah, that's great. So one of the things he said to me when we were having breakfast last Saturday, he was like, you know, every single time I have an aha moment, I know it's an aha moment because it's so simple. It's always so simple. It's always just this really simple truth that just like smacks me in the face and really changes the way I move throughout my day and the way I view my life. And I was like, yeah, that's really true. And then about an hour later, I was taking a fitness class with my amazing teacher, Natalie Kuhn, who I really hope will be on the podcast soon. I've been poking her about it for a little bit. She was teaching the class and in the middle of the class, she just burst it out. She was like, you know guys, past all your worries and past all your grievances is a truth, a really healing truth. And you know that you've hit that truth because it's simple. You'll know you've hit the truth when it's simple. There's nothing overly complicated about it. And when Nat said that I was like, oh, I guess this is really the message I'm supposed to be receiving today because my dad said it and it hit me. Natalie said it and it hit me. And I was like, I guess I gotta talk about this on the podcast. And so that is what I wanna serve you today is what are some really simple truths that can uncomplicate your relationship with food, your relationship with exercise, your relationship with body image, and your relationship with relationships of all kinds, and your relationship with relationships, interpersonal relationships of all kinds? 

So here's what I've got for you today. A simple truth about nutrition that can help you heal your relationship with food is that dieting straight up feels like crap. Dieting feels shitty. Intentionally restricting yourself from carbs, intentionally restricting your energy intake, being really rigid about added sugar intake, going keto, like all of these things, eventually if not at first, really feels like crap. It really shrinks your life. It really shrinks your relationships. It really blocks your digestion and it really doesn't feel good to be sitting at a dinner table with your really close friends where you should be enjoying your life the most and thinking about added sugar, calories, carbs, energy, digestion, all of these things. 

So I've shared this on the podcast before, but one time I was talking to my friend Nicole, who was on the podcast last week. And she is someone who I've helped heal her relationship with food. She came through my group coaching program and I've seen her come really, really far in healing her relationship with food. And I was talking to her one time and I was like, Nicole, you're my ideal client pretty much. I want more clients that are like you that are in the situation that you're in and I want to help more people like you. Can you tell me what has been the most helpful for you in working with me and learning about nutrition with me? And she was like, well, dieting just feels like crap. It just doesn't feel good. And my life just feels so much better now that I've let go of the pursuit of weight loss and accepted my body. Now I can actually focus on health. And now I'm actually sitting at a gathering with my friends, not thinking about what my arms look like, or what my body looks like. Now I'm sitting at a gathering with my friends, just enjoying the food and moving on. And it's no big deal. I just don't feel like crap anymore. And I was like, huh, maybe it is really, maybe it can really be that simple. Is that dieting, it just doesn't feel good. Obsessing over your body shape and size just doesn't feel good. Let's try something that feels better. Let's try to let go of control so that we can have freedom, so that we can have happiness. I think that our ability to be happy and feel fully alive is equivalent with our ability to let go of control. I really do believe that. And so that's the simple truth with nutrition is that restrictive dieting and rigid eating practices. First of all, they're really insidious. I think sometimes people think, Oh, I'm not on noom and I'm not on Weight Watchers and I'm not on Whole30. I'm not rigid. But they are, they are kind of rigid still. And none of the explicit dieting practices feel good and none of the sneaky insidious wellness rules feel good either. Let's try something that feels better. 

Simple truth with body image is that we cannot rigidly control our body shape and size and keep our body at a weight that it was not meant to be at and also live a full life. It's just not possible. It is not possible to maintain a body shape and size that you deem as the ideal one that isn't really the natural weight that your body's supposed to be at and live a full life. We have to let go of control. There are certain genetic and metabolic factors that are going to make it hard or impossible for some people to be lean, for some people to be thin. And that is just the way bodies are. Bodies are all different and they're all beautiful and they're all worthy of care and they're all worthy of proper health. It annoys me to no end that someone who lives in a larger body is prescribed eating disorder behaviors. It annoys me to no end that someone who lives in a larger body is prescribed eating disorder behaviors. And then someone who lives in a smaller body that's exhibiting eating disorder behaviors is like, you have an eating disorder. And the way our society pivots around this idea that we can completely control our body shape and size is killing us. It's literally killing us. It's causing an eating disorder endemic. It's causing doctors to treat people in larger bodies much differently and much more dismissively than they treat people in smaller bodies. It's a big problem. Weight stigma is a big problem. And I'm not sitting here saying that, I think, I talk about this a lot in my episode called For the Person Who's Trying to Lose the Last 10 Pounds. I'm not saying that we shouldn't care about our health and I'm not saying that we shouldn't pursue more balanced nutrition and that we shouldn't pursue joyful and healthy movement practices. I am saying that we have to let go of this idea that we have complete control over our body shape and size. And we really do need to lose this narrow minded pursuit of weight loss in favor of the pursuit of health. If you're more curious about this simple truth that I'm sharing and you want to go into some of the nuances of this simplicity, please do listen to my episode called for the person who's trying to lose the last 10 pounds because I really go deep into this on there. But that's just the nugget I want to share for you today. 

Simple truth when it comes to exercise is that exercise is about so much more than changing your body shape and size. Exercise is literally a healing, relieving, energy clearing spiritual practice. And if we hyper fixate on exercise needing to be about controlling our body shape and size and toning up and leaning up. We miss all of the beautiful benefits of the practice of movement. I have had spiritual awakenings during movement classes. I have had emotional breakthroughs during movement classes. I have had friendships formed during movement classes. I've had an incredible sense of relief and grief shed off of me from movement practices. And to think that I was ever moving just because I wanted my stomach to be flatter and to think that I was ever moving just because I wanted my arms to look different in photos makes me cry. It really does because when you can tap into movement as a spiritual practice, as a stress relieving practice, as a so much more than a weight loss pursuit, it is life changing. It's really life changing. And yeah, that's going to be a big part of my Nutrition & Intuition retreat is helping people use movement as a tool to access their intuition and a tool to heal and a tool to feel. Yeah, honestly, that's all I'm going to say about that. Let's keep it simple. 

And then a simple truth when it comes to relationships. Maybe I think I want to share something in relation to romantic relationships and then something in relation to just relationships of all kinds. So let's get the romantic one out of the way first. So simple truth when it comes to romantic relationships. If they don't want you, you don't want them. You should never have to convince someone of your worth. You should never ever have to convince someone of your worth. Choose the people who choose you back. I don't think I really realized this until my late twenties. You know, I heard it probably well before I was like 27 or 28, but it didn't sink into my bones until after like my second big breakup. I had one breakup that was a relationship of five years that was, you know, obviously really hard for me when it ended. And then in 2022, I had another breakup that was a relationship of a little over two years. And when that relationship ended, I realized that dude was not choosing me in so many ways and I exhausted myself trying to convince him to choose me. There were so many nuances in that relationship and obviously I could talk about it for like five podcasts, but a big simple truth of that relationship is that he just was not choosing me. And I was really doing the most crazy song and dance 24 hours a day, seven days a week, trying to convince him to choose me. When really the reality is that a relationship is never gonna be nourishing if the person on the other end doesn't fully choose you. And you've got to choose yourself enough to walk away from that. You have to choose yourself enough to walk away from that. It's simple, I didn't say it was easy. It is simple though. And there are subtle ways in which people don't choose us. It isn't always as explicit as like, my ex was telling me he didn't want to move in with me and I was like, well, all right, well, that's a pretty explicit way of him not choosing me, right? But sometimes it's really subtle, the ways people don't choose us. They don't choose who we are in our fullest, most authentic, in our fullest, most authentic expression. And we might live with them, we might be married to them, and they still might not be choosing us. And being chosen fully for who you are, gotta define what that looks like and accept that a relationship will never work unless the two people are choosing each other. 

And then a simple truth about relationships of all kinds is that we need to maintain a sense of self. I think this, a lot of people say, oh, this person's so selfless or that person's so selfless as a compliment. And I certainly grew up in an environment where selflessness was viewed as the ultimate moral virtue and being self indulgent was seen as the biggest sin of all. That's like, you can just blame that one on Catholicism, but also a lot of other things. And we can't, we can't be selfless. Being selfless is not the antidote to being self indulgent. We don't have to worry that we're going to become self indulgent just because we have a sense of self. And you know, as I'm speaking this, I guess you can really tell what I'm working through right now. But that's certainly something I've had to really reckon with over the last couple years of my life is that just because I am meeting my own needs doesn't mean I'm not also helping other people meet their needs. We need to maintain a sense of self and a sense of boundaries. And we need to have an idea of what helps me stay regulated and what helps me have the fullest cup possible so that I can give from a place of overflow. That's another thing that's become really apparent to me over the last couple of years is that I don't fill my cup so that I can pour my entire cup out to other people. I fill my cup so that my cup will overflow and then I can give from a place of overflow. I used to think that the full cup I had was for other people, but really the full cup is for me. That I can meet my needs, I can survive, I can stay alive, I can feel good, I can be the best version of myself, and it's the overflow that's for other people. Don't lose yourself in the idea that you have to meet other people's needs first.

And I know it can be really difficult when I'm talking to people who have kids, or I'm talking to people who are caretakers like myself, or people who are in the helping professions like myself. I know that this is really, really hard and it's not always going to look perfect. All I'm asking is that at least some of the time you remember that you need to maintain a sense of self while you're putting yourself out into the world as someone who is of service to other people. It's so important that we maintain a sense of self. I have a self and you have a self. I honor me and I honor you. It can't be one or the other. It can't be I sacrifice myself so that I can honor you or I sacrifice you so that I can honor myself. We need both. And that's just like one of the simple doorways to starting to explore codependency, which is this idea that we, you know, get our sense of self by how we're able to help other people. It's something I really struggle with, something I really do want to open up about a little bit more on the podcast. But that's a really simple truth that has helped me recently and remembering that the full cup is for me, the overflow is for other people. 

And it kind of comes full circle back to what I said in the listener question, which is that you're worthy of recovery. You need to believe that you're worthy of recovery. Not only when you help someone else, not only when you meet other people's needs, not only when someone deems you're worthy of it. You just are. You're just inherently worthy of that and whatever else it is that you desire or enjoy. And I hope that you go do something you enjoy. At some point today, let yourself tap into a little bit of joy, whether that's through playing your favorite song and dancing for five minutes or taking yourself out to a nice meal or reading a book for pleasure or just making whatever it is you're doing a little bit more joyful, a little bit more you. 

I hope you have a really peaceful rest of your week. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I'll be back here next week with an amazing guest who I can't wait for you to meet. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do me a little tiny act of service that I am feeling very humbled by asking for. Please write a written review on Apple podcasts. Please give me a five star review and write a written review, even if it's two words. Or leave me a five star rating on Spotify, or share this show with someone who you think needs it. It really does help me out when this podcast gets into more people's ears, and when more people feel invited to the experiences that I'm hosting and the communities that I'm holding. 

All right, let's end with one more deep breath. Inhale through your nose. Nice long exhale out your mouth. See you next week.