![Two Things Can Be True At The Same Time: Part 7 [The Mini-Series] (Normalizing the In-Betweens and Healing From Extremism) (Outweigh) - podcast episode cover](https://assets.metacast.app/images/episode/artwork/nmHuusmD)
I won't let my body out be outwait everything that I'm made done, won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning love who I am again. I'm strong, I feel free, I know every part of me. It's beautiful.
And then will always out way if you feel it.
But She'll some love to the d Why get there?
Take you one day?
Ana? Did you and.
Die out way?
Happy Saturday outweigh Amy here and I've got my co host, Leanne Ellington, Hello, and we are on part seven of our two Things Can Be True at the Same Time mini series, and today is about how you you can revisit old patterns, habits, circumstances, or you can be revisited by them, like they can pop back up, like you feel like, oh what I worked through that and it's back that can happen and you can still be evolving and growing past it, which Leanne sent me some notes
on this before and she was like, AKA, experiencing something that you thought was part of your past does not mean that you have regressed or are regressed. And I love that reminder because there was a time my mom
died and my eating disorder came back almost instantaneously. I can laugh about it now, because I thought I had been in recovery for almost twelve years, because I had not purged, but I had developed all kinds of other habits I didn't know were disordered, and so I thought, you know, I had my twelve year chip, my imaginary chip, like an alcoholic might have if they have been sober.
And I remember being so disappointed in myself when really my brain was having a trauma response and it went back to what it knew was gonna soothe me at the time. And what I realized all along is I wasn't in true recovery and I should have had more compassion on myself for that. And also just because I did, that doesn't mean that I can't still move forward or there's not hope for that pattern to be broken. And
then what when my dad died. I was in recovery like a year and a half in of the work, So of course parts of me we're a little nervous, like what's gonna happen the day after? Like, well, I know what my body, my brain and my actions were last time, and I didn't do it. But I think it's because I was I'd actually put in the work
and experience recovery. But I also have grace for myself that I know something had happened next week where that's not the case, and I know that I'll still be okay, and it doesn't mean that I haven't moved forward in all of this.
Yeah, And I think there's a couple of big things to touch on for that. And first of all, just receiving what you just said, it's so human of us to have a traumatic experience and experience loss and grief, and our brain favors recency. So that's what your brain knew as a coping mechanism, and it makes sense that it went back to that, you know, but also, like you said, giving yourself grace and compassion, Like this is
a trauma response. So point number one is like, this is a lifelong journey and there's going to be ebbs and flows and highs and lows, and it doesn't mean you know, what you do is not who you are, right And so that was the second thing I'm going to talk about, which we'll come back to, is that, like, that's why shifting your identity is so important, and shifting yourself image about who you are in relation to what
you do is so important. But coming back to this idea of you know, you experience something and you're like, yes, I've solved it, I've healed it, I'm done. Right, My first invitation to you is what if you're never fully done? But because you have to upkeep the practice, right, maybe you don't have to so intensively think about it because your brain has rewired and a lot of it just
becomes who you are. But just like you know, if you're working out of the gym and you just like all of a sudden stop going to the gym, the muscle's at yourophye, you know it's it's not same same, but it's same same but different as they say in Thailand, right, And it's one of those things where like you do have to upkeep some of those neural repetitions to get it.
But that being said, when you experience something, you know, some of my clients will be like, oh, I fell off the wagon or whatever, and I'm like, great, but this time you have new awareness. I can't even tell you how many times my clients will come to me and be like, hey, Leanne, this is what happened. I ate x right, but this but this is why I'm so excited because first of all, I didn't shame myself. Second of all, I know exactly why it happened. It
was almost like it happened in slow motion. I had so much awareness, and then I didn't beat myself up. But here's what I'm gonna do next time, because now I know what to look for. And part of it is we have to experience something again to get a heightened level of awareness, to really go fill in some gaps that weren't there, you know, like how do you ride a bike? I can't teach you how to ride a bike by reading a book, right, I can't write
tell you logically how to ride a bike. You have to get on your balance system, your equilibrium system, has to experience it. You probably fall a couple times before you you know, but then.
Eventually training wheels.
Right, there's training reels great, Yes, exactly, same is true of all of this, right, and the falling down is actually part of the learning process.
Right, But it doesn't mean that you are.
Regressed, have regressed air quotes messed up your back where you were. First of all, you're not who you are the last time you experienced what you're experiencing. You have the ability to have heightened levels of awareness. Like we talked about last episode, nothing passes you until it teaches you what you need to know. So what is the lesson? What have I not yet learned from this? What have I not gotten? What's the next level for me?
Right?
And then we'll talk about the identity and self image and why that's so important. But like, no, it's not one of those things where you're back where you started. That is the meaning, the drama, the thoughts that you're giving behind it, And it doesn't have to mean that. You can choose not to give it that meaning. You
can look at us like, oh, that happened. I don't have to like it, but I refuse to go down this rabbit hole of like, great, this is I told you, this is just who I am, this is what I do.
And again we'll talk about that.
But that's why it's so important you change your identity around this as well.
Yeah, so if you're in the process of trying to accept that you're still evolving, I guess let's talk about how there's no dead end, Like there's no Oh, I finally have reached the top of the mountain and I'm going to stay here forever, right, because I think if I go back to some of my thoughts, I had sort of romanticized recovery and healing, and that if I got to the top once I realized that I could, I wasn't going to stay stuck in this forever. I didn't want to stay in victim mode, but that it's
an ongoing process. So somehow I was picturing myself at the top of this mountain and I conquered it. But then, like, if I give you that image at the top of the mountain, what would you say about what happens once we're at the top.
Well, it's so it's so beautiful that you say it like that, because we do.
We romanticize, we fantasize, We have.
Almost like delusional optimism about how perfect our life is going to be.
You know, So what if I just had this and once I get there, then it'll all be swell, you know.
So one of the first things I invite my clients into is because keep in mind too, a lot of us.
That are coming from this world of disorder.
We're falling for the short term gratification trap of this.
It looks like control, but it's not.
It's really the more we try to control or deprive, the more out of control we feel, or it's that relinquishing control.
Screw it, I don't care.
Give me everything in sight before my inner food police comes in and kicks back in, and it's that cycle.
Back and forth.
However it shows up for you, right and so that short term gratification or it's the short term gratification of like, oh, I'm just going to lose a bunch of weight really quickly, you know, and then then I'll feel good. It's really a short term gratification thought process. So one of the first things I invite my clients into is what if
short term pain for long term gain? And when I say pain, I mean investment of time, energy, thought, and intention to really heal this so that you have it for the rest of your life, but shifting your beliefs and getting out of the delusion that this is a one and done Oh, I'll just be healed and happy
and problem free for the rest of my life. What if you just assume that you're human and human stuff is going to come up, like loss and stress and all these things, And what if you could plan for that, account for it, and have the tools that you can use to access when it does come up.
And what if you talked about your forever self.
So one of the things I invite my clients into is like, let's say they're forty five or fifty five. I say, yes, I care about the forty five to fifty five year old version of you, But who do you want to be at sixty seventy eighty. Let's get
optimistic one hundred and five. So you can be the version of yourself that you were born to be and know that even when crap hits the fan and adversity strikes, you show up in a way that you're proud of because you have tools in your toolbox and you've created this foundation of beliefs in a self image that empowers you that you don't dig back into those rabbit holes. But again, notice I didn't say like everything's roses and butterflies.
Life's going to happen. But can you respond instead of react? How far do you fall? How Like that bubble of resilience gets so much better and stronger and more resilient, and you're not it's not happening so often. It's you're not falling down so far it doesn't take you so long.
To pick yourself back up. But notice I didn't.
Say it stops happening, right, So what I would say about that metaphorical mountain is I would not to burst anyone's bubble, but I would I would invite them into the possibility that that is an illusion, that this top
of the mountain is not real. But the climb to the you know, the first big climb where you feel like your brain has the first like evidence of Okay, there's a map where I'm free and at peace and this doesn't define me and this doesn't hold me hostage, knowing that that it's possible to create that.
Map more and more in your brain.
But also eliminating the illusion and illusion that this is how it's always going to be and it's always going to be air quotes perfect.
I'm sort of picturing, Okay, if you like that, you want to reach the top and you want to be up there, it's almost like, Okay, while you're up there, you equip yourself and you've got your backpack and your tools for like, if you fall down the mountain, your backpack's there, it's got you. You've got your your snacks in there to sustain you. You've got your tools to climb back up, like I don't know, just to maybe picture yourself at the top, yeah, and just know that that's.
While you're up there, and while you're in.
This space of like I did it, like still gather all your tools and make sure you have them with you because if you if you go back down, then hopefully the thought behind that would be that you get back up faster. But even if you don't have compassion and grace for yourself, there's no clock other than like, we do have this one life, and so it is important to sit down and assess and say, how do I want to be spending it? Yeah, what do I want to be doing? Who do I want to be with?
What memories do I want to make right?
And you know, within that, one of the big things I have to discuss with my clients is changing their definition of success, because if their definition of success is never eating anything with sugar or never having a bad thought about themselves or whatever, of course they're going to always think that they're regressing or not living up. So part of it is we have to change or redefine
their definition of success. Yes, but that kind of segues into this whole identity piece of the puzzle, where you know, one of my favorite quotes is what you do is not who you are, right, and it's about like who who you're being, not just what you're doing. And so if all of your self worth and self image eggs are in the basket of like, great, this is what
I did or didn't do. I hate to say it, but you're going to be at a loss, Like you're always going to be feeling unworthy or unfill in the blank.
If all that you're defining.
Yourself by is like what you do, what you wear, what you did or didn't eat, your gene size, your bank balance, your how many likes you got on Facebook, whatever it is, it's going to show up empty for you.
So part of it, too, is.
Like when all you're doing is looking at the action items of your life as like the end all be all, anything that strays from that is going to feel like you messed up, backpedaled, regressed.
Anything like that.
So changing your definition of success, but also the big picture kind of paradigm that you're living in has to transform to or else you're always going to be identified in these ways that are chaining you to the disorder, and just remember.
That two things can be true at the same time, because just because you have a setback doesn't mean you haven't evolved and you're not capable of more. Because I could see how someone gets stuck up, like I mean, I did it all the time.
Like anytime I.
Would quote unquote mess up or slip up or whatever you want to call it, I just feel like, yeah, it's exhausting. I want to throw in the towel. But like you said, there's a little bit of pain. I got to get there, got to be get into the uncomfortable, and sometimes if we just want to stay in the comfortable, even though that's painful too, it's what we know.
It's all we know.
Yeah, okay, Leanne, Where can people find.
You stressless seating dot com if you want to hear more and learn more about the brain we were rewiring when it comes to food, your body, your definition of success and health, all of that good stuff.
And then over on Instagram at lee Anne Ellington.
And I am at Radio Amy Radioamy dot com. We will be back next Saturday, but the final part art so the two things can be true miniseries, So we'll see then.
Bye bye, MHM