Which Came First: Depression or Eating Disorder?

die out? Hey? Amy and Lisa here, welcome back to another episode aboutweigh Our guest today is Lauren Larkin, and we're excited to have Lauren on because she's going to share her personal recovery story and what that looked like

for her. But also we're in for a treat because Lauren is a mental health counselor, so yes, eating disorder survivor, but also a mental health counselor, so win win here and you know, I have a shan out of the gate for you, Lauren, and we're just going to get right in because I did some therapy late last year with a therapist was superintense, and I've done therapy for years since I was a teenager regarding my eating disorder, but at thirty nine years old, was the first time

a therapist has said to me, oh, well, yeah, that was your underlying depression, And I said, but what what? I'm sorry, what because if you were to ever say to me that I had any type of depression or asked me, I guess not say. If you were to ever asked me if I had any experience with depression, my answer would be no. But then how hearing him phrase it that way, it was a moment where I stepped back and thought, oh my goodness. When I really dig into it, I saw what he was saying, and

it was definitely an AHA moment for me. So, you, being a mental health counselor and maybe even tying it in with some of your journey, when you hear me

say that, what comes to mind for you? So it comes to mind for me is that that was the exact lens that I was planning on telling my story through because of my clinical experience as mental health counselor, and because I've heard the other guests on your podcast and I've related to so many of the counting and the feeling like you're never going to have the perfect

body kind of image. But what came up for me when I was reflecting on my story most recently was the idea that there was this internal turmoil that I was struggling with since I was in high school, right and I was constantly trying to express this turmoil in different ways. And I think the first time I tried eating disorder behaviors was actually depression and anxiety trying to come out. And it was only later when I started getting really good at those behaviors and I said good,

but I don't mean good any bad. Was when it started to feed one another, almost like a triangle. So anxiety, eating disorder and depression were going back and forth with one another, and one was always the fueler of the other.

At some point I was diagnosed with O c D because my counting with calories and things like that, but it wasn't O c D. I was depressed and anxious, and my eating disorder was the only way I knew how to express my pain, not for anyone else to see it, but so that I could feel it because I didn't know how to work through what was going on inside of me. And when you said before, I would have never told like anyone I was depressed because of a happy life, right like I'm a happy person.

I have so much of my life. I never want to come across as ungrateful. But at the same time, depression and anxiety they don't discriminate against people who are outwardly happy. So that was a huge part of my story. Yeah. Well, and I'll explain to why I would answer out of the gate because in my mind I had such a narrow view of depression and that I'm like, well, wait, I wake up, I get out of bed every day, I go do my job. I have friendships, and I

have a family, and I'm a good mom. And that's how I was defining not being depressed, right, But there it's almost like you, I don't know, for lack of a better description, I'm just thinking like a functioning alcohol like like they wake up, they do their job, they go do their thing, but they got to have their whatever, you know. I think sometimes we're just functioning in our depression, are underlying we don't know that it's even really there.

So I think it's important that we talk about this today because for me, it was a revelation that I feel like I should have known about years ago, but I don't know. Just having that perspective was super helpful for me and I think there's a lot of stigma when it comes to things like depression, anxiety, and even eating disorders, which is, you can only be depressed if you lost your job, or you're grieving, or you can't

put food on the table, these major things. Right, Like, Lauren, I relate to you because for me, you know, being depressed, there was this well, I can't be depressed. I have so much to be grateful for it. Even though I am grateful, I'm still depressed, so I shouldn't be. And just to kind of widen that out to eating disorders, you know a lot of bigger bodies think that they can't have eating disorder is because they don't fit the idea of you know, being real thin or even remotely thin,

thin bodied at all. So so much of this discussion needs to just be anybody can go through anything despite what you have or you look like, and that's the only way that you'll ever also get the help that you need. And Lauren, so when you started to do the work and give in your background, you know that you have the tools. What did you realize was the root of the depression anxiety, eating disorder triangle? Well, so it's really interesting because I'm a career changer, So this

is my path that I chose after recovery. And I say recovery, but I don't know. We're all still struggling with everything all the time anyway, So I don't like to think of myself as like on the other side. But when I think about the route, I think it's a baseline. Everybody has a baseline. I think mine's just a little bit lower than other people's when it comes to depression. And when I started doing this work, it was there was a lot of self hatred underneath it.

First I had to learn how to eat, how to nourish my body in order to do the work that

was the depression and anxiety work afterwards. And it has happened as like a holistic kind of process, Like I ended up leaving New York going to an outpatient treatment or an inpatient treatment, then an outpatient treatment, really focusing on the food stuff first because for me, the depression got so bad and I thought it was because of the food, Like I had struggled with eating disordered behaviors on and off, on and off, and I was trying to fix it myself, and as we know, trying to

fix it yourself if you have no education behind it, like Lisa does. Right, you just feel like you're out of control because after starving yourself for so many years and going back and forth with the binge purge cycle and they interacts the cycle, right, your body doesn't trust you to feed it anymore. So for me, I didn't get help when I was at my finnest. Actually, I thought I was doing great at my finnest. I was proud of myself and my thinness. I thought I had

it together. It was when I realized, like, Okay, this isn't sustainable. The scales really low and I don't think I'm gonna get any lower. And I'm really sad and I'm leaving Equinox feeling horrible and there's nothing. I don't know what I like, I don't know who I am. I feel like I need to fix this. That's when I started trying to eat. And then I hated the reaction that I would have because I would eat too much.

And then I gained a bunch of weight, and then I was really depressed, and I was anxious about the food and the weight and depressed about the food and the weight, and it really like ended up being the psycle where I had to do food first, self love second, and just continue to work with the tools that I had learned and learned new tools and go back to school to be a therapist to help other people. And just as a sidebar, I think that even professionals need professionals.

So you know, you said, even though Lisa, you have the tools when you are dealing with something like an eating disorder, it's your professional tools, whether you're a therapist or a site or a registered dietitian go out the window. So just as anybody listening here, all people need help. Do you mind if I asked what career you shifted from.

Obviously probably what you went through motivated you to do this, but not a lot of people maybe go through something and there they have this moment of like, oh wow, this is what I'm passionate about. I want to do this for the rest of my life. Yeah, it was really interesting. I think part of my story was like never feeling good enough. Obviously we've probably all felt like that, But for me, I always wanted to be in theater and like be a singer, and I went to school

in Nashville and I didn't end up doing that. But I was like, well, I want to be like performance adjacent. So I went to school for PR and like wanted to do music PR like worked at Warners and internship there and all these things. And then I was like, I want to go to New York. I want to be a New York woman. Everything was like this idealized version of me. I wanted to go to Nashville because

I wanted to be like a Southern Bell. I wanted to go to New York because I wanted to expand and like be like this businesswoman and be super successful and all these things. So I was trying to make it in a career in like marketing, in communications, and I just felt like I was never ever going to be what I thought I should be in the world.

It was never going to be Carrie Bradshaw. Just like when I got to Nashville, I was never going to be the perfect Southern Bell because I'm from the North and I swear and I scared all the boys down there and it was not a good fit for me. Right. I still love Nashville and I love the South, but I just was trying to fit myself into molds that weren't working. And in New York. I mean it was like not fitting into a mold, but to a detriment for me. It really got to a point where I

didn't enjoy what I was doing day to day. I remember crying on my first vacation, like on the way to the airport, because I was taking this vacation and I felt guilty about it, because if I was going to be successful, I shouldn't take a vacation. I you know, what was I going to eat when I got there? That also there? Right? Am I going to be able to enjoy this? I'm so miserable. I was just in

this place where I couldn't be myself. I was constantly trying to mold myself into something else, and it took a really psychological toll. Like when I mentioned before, I didn't know what I liked. I had no idea. I remember trying to write it down one day, being like, what do you like? Who are you? And I had just lost all semblance of Lauren, like the person sitting here with you. My mom even said when she would see me um during those times, she like didn't know

who I was anymore. Not that I was completely different, but she just felt like there was something hollow there. I don't know when I decided exactly to go back, but I came back to the city and I started naming because that's something I had done in college and it was something that I knew I could do to sustain myself after my treatment and focus on wellness. And when I was manning, I thought about, how can I use, you know, my story, how can I maybe I start

writing more. I like dabbled in that for a little bit. Maybe I do this, I do that. And I kept going back to this moment when I was in a day program in Connecticut and a friend of mine, well she wasn't a friend at the time, but a new girl joined the program and she walked in and she was like, you're one of the therapists, right, And she didn't realize that I was like her, I was there for treatment. I was there for you know, the program.

We were going to go and we're gonna have to eat together, and we're gonna have to do all these things together. And I said no. But for some reason, that moment wouldn't get out of my head. I was like, what if I had been a therapist, What if I could be a therapist, and I was like, maybe I could actually do that, and I applied and I started doing it, and it's been super rewarding work. I haven't looked back a day where I thought, oh, this wasn't for me, this was the wrong decision. And when I

finished days with clients. It's exhausting, and sometimes it's hard and you have to go take care of yourself and and set that boundary. But I don't regret it ever.

I read a really beautiful blog post that you wrote about how recovery itself kind of the before stage of what you're talking about now is really isolating, and how you know this firsthand but kind of helped to heal that as second hand as a therapist, but just for the first hand component when you were looking for recovery, I know that you look to blogs and people who have gone through it, and for whatever reason, it felt like everybody else kind of figured it out with a

snap of their fingers, but for you, it wasn't like that. Can you tell us about that experience of kind of looking for someone else to understand. Yeah, I think I've been thinking about that a ton in the last few weeks, thinking about your podcast because I'm like, if this existed when I was absolutely desperate, I would have felt so much less alone. What happened for me was I went

to a treatment program, literally in patient. I don't know if your listeners know what impatient is, but four weeks at a location where you have no phone, where you almost like feel like a prisoner. That also was very isolating, but it ended up helping me. But I relinquished all control.

And then I got there and I saw women of all different sizes, women of all different ages, and in group therapy, they started saying things that were my deepest, deepest, darkest secrets I never thought I could ever admit to anyone. And that's kind of what you have people do on this podcast, right, like it just makes you feel like

you're not alone. And I remember I had this distinct image of the isolation that you're talking about, laying in my bed at my old apartment midnight, scrolling through diet pages, scrolling through fitness people, macro people all were saying, you know, I used to have a little bit of a problem, but you shouldn't and I don't anymore. And I would like, I was like, where's the how, where's the step where what.

That's why I'm very vocal about going to treatment and like absolutely like surrendering to the process, because for me that was absolutely necessary. Like I had tried to see a therapist, I tried to see a nutritionist, similarly like Amy and you said to the alcohol comparison, like it was like going to rehab. You know, it was like taking yourself out of that environment where all your triggers were in order to rebuild. And that was necess arry

for me. I'm not saying it's necessary for everyone. I think it's totally doable if you have a great team, and you know, if it's more disordered eating rather than eating disorder, or if you don't have the depression and anxiety component to it, and it's really just like food based. But for me, the how wasn't there. It was like you guys all got to point B, and I don't know what's in between. Where's the bridge from point A?

I'm so type A. I'm like, where's the checklist? I can just tick off all the boxes and be cured and be fixed and be all of those things. And that's also why I said before, you know, it's been a holistic kind of mind, body, spirit process for me, and it wasn't like I just did both the programs that I did and left and it was a perfect healing process. It took a lot longer after that to really like love myself and get back to a place where I'm the person sitting in front of you. Yeah.

I think it's important to definitely remind people, even for Lisa and myself hosting this, that it's not an overnight snap of the finger thing. And even when Lisa and I darted Outweigh last March, I was fresh out of a disordered behavior. I had dropped the eating disorder for so long, but I didn't realize all these little things that I was doing. We're also me just kind of holding on tight because it's like I didn't want to

fully let go just yet. But thankfully Lisa was able to bring some stuff to my attention through fork the noise of like, oh shoot, yeah, that's still some noise that I'm dealing with. But I knew for me hosting out way with Lisa, I was like, I gotta get rid of this because I can't. I can't come speak to people. But had I had I not surrounded myself with people that are much wiser and ahead of me in this process. I don't know that I would have

noticed that it was still a disordered behavior. And so I mentioned that just because sometimes people listening don't know that what they have going on makes them sick enough or disordered enough, or is this really that bad? So maybe I don't need help, or it'd be weird if I went to get help for this. I don't know. I'm just throwing out like different thoughts that might pop

into people's head. I mean, talk about your experience and what you would say to someone that might have those thoughts, which I think ultimately we could conclude that they are lies in their heads. Right now, I mean, I absolutely thought that I had all these terrifying fears that I was going to go to treatment and I was going to be the biggest person there. I wasn't going to deserve to be there. I would be taking the spot

of someone else who needed it more. That's absolutely not true, one, And it takes a long time to unlearn those thoughts. And I'll give you an example, right like us, you both hosting this podcast, us working with people. Lisa and I like working with people on this day to day, one on one I had a moment in my training where I was working with a woman with an eating disorder, and my supervisor said, you know, sometimes you can bring yourself into the room and ask, you know, what's it

like for you to talk to me? He's like, because you look like a healthy person. I remember that being like, look like a healthy person, and that was that's a compliment, right, that's a compliment. That should be something that I you know, I'm able to be like, thank you. But for me with that eating disorder brain, it still came in and it was like, you look healthy. You probably don't look like you have an eating disorder. You probably you know, should start right. But I didn't act on that voice,

but they still come up. Me being healthy in that moment was a bad thing all of a sudden, because I reverted back to who I was when I thought I was never going to be thin enough and definitely not thin enough to get help. Okay, so you're encouragement people is like, there's eating disorders, which we say here all the time, but I'll just say it again. They don't discriminate their little monsters, and they don't have the

right to take over your true self. Don't let those voices tell you those lives and don't believe them, like believe what's really I think they'd call it your capital s self deep down if you push all of the parts of view away, the angry heart, the depressed part, of the anxious part, Like if you just have this one capitalist self, what would that tell you? And like mine would tell me in a moment like that you're healthy. Healthy is a compliment. You want to be healthy? Healthy

is good? And kind of talk back to that voice, that inner critic that's telling you, you know, you're not good enough. You you don't deserve it, You don't deserve help, you don't deserve recovery, you don't deserve to live a life that's full. And I just want to say to just to remind people, wait has nothing to do with health. So if someone even is regardless of what their intention is that when they tell they're telling you you look healthy,

Like what are they basing that on? They have no statistics on what's really going on inside of you mind, body, and spirit. And I know that owning your story is a really powerful way for you personally to move away from living in shame. And it's one that you advocate for your clients as well, or your patients. Sometimes when we tell our stories to people, it lands on years that could say something back that's triggering. I don't know

if you've experienced that personally. I know that I've been in situations where people say the quote unquote wrong thing, and it has the potential to set you back if you're not in the right mindset. I feel like for you at you're a really good example of somebody who

moves away from shame by owning your story. You're a clinician, but you're like, I get it because I've been there to the ugliest places of this disease, which I think is just refreshing from a mental health counselor point of view, where you oftentimes feel like you know they could talk down to you or they don't get it. But in your personal experience, how can we own our story, tell it without shame, but protect ourselves from what people may

say back. This is a really good question, and I actually use this technique a lot with my sexual trauma survivor clients, because when you tell the story like that, it has the ability to really retrigger you based off what someone else is going to say. So I tell them to do a lot of work with language and coming up with what language is healing to them and helpful to them, and what language is not, And sometimes an activity or something you can practice doing when you

tell someone. And I would always recommend telling your safest people first to get good practice so that you aren't retriggered and kind of go back into that shame bubble for eating disorders or for any kind of trauma or any story that's like shrouded in shame. Tell people what you need to hear afterwards, because the connection there and the moment between the two people who are sharing the story,

that moment right after is so important. And so if you need someone to just say I'm so sorry that happened, I'm so proud of you something like that, that's just like really encouraging. Because people don't know how to respond to the taboo topics in the world. And it's not their fault, but they don't know how to respond, and their own response could completely send you in a spiral.

So if you know that, think about language that would be healing, Think about language that you would want to hear, Like what would be the most comforting things for you after you tell your deepest, darkest secret, and you can

ask for that back. You can say I have something to tell you, and all I need you to say back is this, because I know you're going to be at a loss for words, and it's really powerful, especially I know it's hard to be in person right now, but especially in person with the eye contact, with the like rewiring of the brain to go away from that shame because you have a connection with the person and it's a healing connection. Have you read Body Keeps the Score,

one of my favorite trauma books. It's so good. I'll just throw that out there for anybody right now that if you have big teas or little tease. I know you're talking about the big s, but any types of trauma.

I'm only about halfway through it while we're recording this right now, but it's been a very eye opening book for me, not only to have compassion for other people and what they've been through, but then compassion for myself and different behaviors and ways I react and maybe why my I do that because of whatever X y Z upen to me at at a at a point in my life, and when you mentioned big s, it made me think of you know you're reminding yourself what is

your true self? What is true to you? And so I'll also take this moment just to remind people that when we do have those lies in our head, not to just shut down the lies of like, Okay, that's not true, I'm moving on. Recognize yes, that they're not true, but then stop and take the time to tell yourself what is true. And that could be your big s Right, it's like an in between step, right, Like, there's so much black and white thinking that I see with clients.

There's so much negativity, and it's hard for clients to go or for people in general to go from these truly negative thoughts to just be positive. Just just go to the other side and tell yourself something super positive. Sometimes you have to get to a medium step. Sometimes you have to tell yourself something neutral in order to start to move towards the positive of as like a

little small step. Yeah, I think that's so important. I don't know if you would agree, but I feel like the missing ingredient is that there is no negative and positive. There is only compassion if you want to see yourself out, and compassion is a foreign thing self compassion specifically, but also compassion to others. But self compassion is a foreign, unlearned thing, and I know that for a long time I saw things very differently than I do now. I saw that devil voice as the devil voice, and I

need to speak back to it as the positive. So whatever the negative was, I'll just say the positive to chase it away, and it just needs to be gone. But what I've learned in the last three years of my own mindfulness work is what erupts in the middle there to really make a difference is compassion. And it's not chasing away the devil. It's the softness that we're afraid to be with ourselves, to hold ourselves and say

this hurts. Hearing that from myself hurts, These deep fears about myself hurts, and and we're almost it's like we're afraid to be intimate with ourselves, and so we just ping pong from really negative to oh, I'll just be positive to that doesn't really work because we're not really dealing with the negative. So UM, I guess it's just something that I think about all the time, is the work that compassion can do to really shift those inner voices.

It makes me think of Lauren, one of the things that you're all about, and you know a lot of people are, but just it's okay to not be okay, Absolutely, it's okay to be messy, it's okay to be struggling, even when you're helping other people. It's okay to be everything in between. But that self compassion is so important.

And like when you're talking Amy about doing trauma work or going back in the past and being a compassionate witness to yourself and all the different versions of yourself, I think is really important as well, reliving certain things and hugging that version of yourself. For you know, I think about myself and the deepest, darkest throws of my eating disorder, and it's so easy to be critical of her and to wish that she just had more knowledge back then, but I just have to like hug her

and love her and tell her it's okay. I'm going to make it out. I felt that for myself a couple of Saturdays ago. I think a thought came to me and I even put it in a post on Instagram or just thinking of how far I had come, and I was like, wow, I have compassion for who I was and gratitude for where I am now, and I meant that wholeheartedly. And you know what, it was all because I was able to drink a creamy latte

that morning. That should win, because I mean I used to just drink black coffee, you know, Oh God, black coffee makes me so sad. I had a similar moment where I was on vacation recently and I thought about the time there and I was like, I think I ate French fries like every day And I was like, who am I what? And I didn't do anything to get rid of them, or I didn't, you know, go to the gym and eat green juice only or detox key or any of the things the next week because

I was there. But a creamy lot or a French fry, or a pizza or a cupcake not a small wind. No matter how far you are out of recovery, sometimes it's still a really big win. I think it's good to acknowledge that. What would you tell your clients or other people that are having little small winds? Like, what would you advise them when it comes to spending time

with those wins? Like not just brushing them off? Because I think sometimes you might be like, oh, well, okay, fine, I did that, But mentally, what do we need to be doing with those winds? I think you need to

be sharing them with people. I think you need to be sharing them with a friend who's maybe struggled with something similar, or sharing them with the therapists, because when you speak about your wins out loud, because I have clients do this and they still don't even seem like they're that proud of themselves, but they know, I'm going to be like, you did what you had, even if it's vegan ice cream, you had ice cream of some kind, like that is huge. When is the last time you

did that? How did it feel? Who were you enjoying it with? Right, you can ask yourself these questions, but I also think it's really powerful when you share it with someone else and they can be your cheerleader, because sometimes we're not at the point where we can be our own cheerleader yet. And even if you ask those

questions to yourself, it might turn negative. But if you share it with someone someone you love or someone you know supports you in this journey, right, they're going to be ecstatic for you, and you might feel like it's just a couple of ice creamer, just a latte. Right, it's silly or it's not important, but it is so important and and sometimes we need external validation to like

really drive that point home. Since you bring this up, and we'll kind of wrap with this, since you do work with trauma, I mean, and people, it's not just eating disorders. You know, you mentioned you have clients that have all kinds of things that have happened to them. For you, what's the power in speaking and being able to identify and say out loud what you're feeling and

what emotions you have. Like some people were taught to never show emotion or not to acknowledge their feelings, and on a ste that's what leads to a numbing behavior like in eating disorder or alcohol or drugs or whatever. So just affirm people in the fact or talk about what happens when we say it out loud. And that doesn't mean you take it to Facebook and Instagram. That's

not what I'm implying here. I'm applying like a trusted friend, family member or therapists, Like, what does that do for someone when they talk about it the trauma or whatever they're they're feeling or the emotions. It does everything, honestly, And I'm not just saying that because I'm a therapist, and I'm not just saying that because my own experience

with therapy has changed my life. But like I have seen healing from childhood trauma from talking about it with someone else, with a therapist or with someone else who understands, like in a group setting. I have seen people overcome social anxiety understand like oh, on this way because of that, because they have someone gently just guiding them through or ask seeking them, Hey, can you tell me more about that feeling? Where did you feel it in your body?

What comes up for you? Like do you feel angry against that that side of yourself? Do you love that side of yourself? Like you said, They've never had anyone ask those things before. So it's almost like when you get in a room and you start talking and sometimes you don't have any rhyme or reason to where your your session is going. I love when clients say I don't have anything to talk about this week, and I'm like, let's roll up our sleeves because something's going to come

out today. It's something big. Because when we're just sitting with ourselves all the time, we don't notice all the things that someone else will notice, and we don't dive deeper into things because maybe they're too painful or maybe

we're not ready. So having that person and having that space, I think just having the container of forty five minutes every week can be really powerful to just know that you have that time to work on yourself when you might not get to do that anywhere else in your world. And just speaking your truth, whether it's small or big, whether it's a deep rooted issue or something that you're just struggling with on the surface, maybe it doesn't feel

that heavy. Just having a witness to that and having someone can who can connect with you really empathetically and genuinely over it can change the way that you think about yourself. It can change the way that you interact with relationships in your life. It can change the way you eat, the way you move your body. It can change so much because you just have a better understanding

of who you are at the core. Awesome love that we're gonna link your website in our show notes, but it's Lauren Elizabeth Larkin dot com and Lauren, thank you so much for sharing your story and your wisdom with us today. Thanks so much, Lauren, thank you so much.