Hello everyone, I'm Diane Griselle. I'm also known as Silver Disobedience to a lot of you. This is the Silver Disobedience Perception Dynamics podcast and we're recording at iconic Manhattan Center in New York City. Today we're going to take a deep dive into a topic that's a serious one. We're going to be talking about eating disorders, and my guest today is Maureen Kritzer Lang. She is a psychoanalyst who specializes in this topic. Eating disorders, bulimia,
anorexia, orthorexia. These affect men and women, lots of them, and they're mired in all kinds of just judgments. There are societal issues to them and we're going to explore them and look at what leads to them, what makes them so insidious. Why do people hide them? And with that, we're going to start with Maureen talking about your podcast, your let's get the title straight, the Your Hidden Life with an Eating Disorder. It's actually called My secret Life with an eating disorder, Diane.
Yes, Maureen, where did that? It's a compelling title. It's certainly an interesting topic. It got my attention. What's the catalyst behind that? Well, first of all, I am very excited to be here to talk about this, so thank you very much for having me. You're welcome. It's my pleasure. Thank you. So my secret life with an eating disorder came about because I had a terrible debilitating eating disorder that lasted probably from the time I was
about. I can get chills talking about it 1415 years old until I was almost 30 and for most of that time it was a secret. I always looked good. I was a high achiever. I was like that type A personality, so people didn't know that I had an eating disorder. My family did not know I had an eating disorder. Can I ask eating disorder what does? How are you defining what you were dealing with? Because were you anorexic? Were you bulimic? Were you throwing up what you
ate? What were you doing? Well, I want to just say that eating disorders are on a spectrum, right? So it's not just like the DSM, you know, the diagnostic book that we use, which is your anorexic, your bulimic, you have orthorexia, it can shift, it can be a combination, it can be just disordered.
It can start off as disordered eating, which is just kind of many, many people have, which is just worrying about what they're eating, being super careful, being restrictive, just really worrying a lot about food and how they look. Now for me, I will just start with a little bit of my story, which is that I was, well, first of all, I just wanted to say I'm from the Midwest. I'm from Dayton, OH, and I grew up in a privileged family and I'm the oldest of four kids.
And it really looked like we were sort of the quintessential sixties, 70s family on TV. My father was an obstetrician gynecologist. My mother was like the perfect wife, mother looked perfect. And around 13 or 14, I felt like I was just getting fat. And I never, I never was. And I was starting to just I was going into junior high school and I was just, we had just moved to a new big house that my parents had designed. Do you, do you mind if I stop either? Sure, you said to.
You said I felt I was getting fat. Now, obviously, when you go retroactively to how you felt when you were 13, there you particularly as a psychoanalyst, know you might not recall that feeling exactly. It's what you think you may have felt at that point of time. Did you start to feel a little out of control? Because I think there's a lot of tie between eating disorders and
a sense of wanting to control. And you hit 13, you're hitting puberty, you've got sexual hormones gracing through your body, which, whether people confront them or not, is, you know, there, there's just biology happening. You are changing shape one way or another. Your skin might be breaking out. So I think there's a lot of other things beyond that. Somebody starts to think they're feeling fat. What do you say to that?
Well, I think you raised some really good points there because things were starting to feel out of control in my family and I again, was feeling very insecure. But I will say that I started noticing some stretch marks. And what I feel like maybe maybe people will talk about it a little more now, but back then, because this was in the 70s, so way back when, nobody said what you just said, which is that as we start developing, our bodies change.
So you go, you know, I was going from this like, you know, kind of thin young girl to starting to develop hips and a sense of curviness. And I just thought I was getting fat. So I told my mom that I wanted to lose weight and I had investigated like a local Weight Watchers kind of place. Oh yeah, those were the days of Lucille Roberts. Weight Watchers both sit on that machine that would vibrate. My babysat after school for someone who did. That right yes yes, yes, yes,
yes yeah, yeah. So I. Stillman Diet. Atkins Diet. The grapefruit diet. The grapefruit has all of those like drinking the cabbage. I don't know all those like horrible diets, but I there was, it was a local, local Weight Watchers. It wasn't Weight Watchers, but a local like weight loss kind of place. And I asked my mom if she would take me and she said yes. And looking back, I think what was she actually thinking? Because I was really not that, you know, whatever that means.
But on the other hand, I was, I was. We had moved and it was a new school again. I didn't feel like I fit in. Can I ask you a question looking back on that, if you could try to get in touch with those emotions? How did it feel when your mother agreed? With you, I was glad you were glad back then because again, I really believe that I needed to
lose weight. But I will also say that I felt like if I lost weight, I would be prettier, smarter, more popular, fit in. I believe that being skinnier would change my life. So when she said yes, I was, I was so happy. And The thing is, she took me to this place and I was the youngest person there. It was all people my mom's age that were there. And I learned to count points or do exchanges and, and I got really, really good at it. So I want to share because I
think this is important too. As a younger, a young girl, I was very creative and I was in theater and I was involved in dance and I would make up stories, I would write stories. I would spend a lot of time just in my own head, my own imagination. But looking back, I can see my world shifting from getting away from my creativity to focusing on food and calories and my body.
Do you also think because when you see younger people and you're trying to find your identity, you're trying to separate from your parents and in between your thirteens and particularly at least your 20s, I mean, you like don't want to even know. Most kids don't want to even know their parents. They're embarrassed when their parents come to school events. You know, maybe those exceptional kids that don't feel that way, but it's a pretty normal formal development pattern.
When you're thinking in terms of that control, that creative aspect that you went from more creative to more focused on food. Do you think some of your creativity was involved in that as well 'cause I do think it is with people with getting. Disorders. I think that's a really good point.
Yes. I think I channeled it in a whole different way, but it was rigid and it was super focused to the point where, and again, I, I really, my mom was young when she had me, my mother was 20 years old, right? And she had four kids by the time she was 30 and she was very busy and our house was pretty chaotic. So I would start making my own food and literally these these crazy things like this pie of like cottage cheese and cottage, I don't know, it was like, and, and I also started.
But that is such a 70s thing, yes. Right, I know I I remember many girls in. Junior high school or high school that weren't imitating their mothers who were eating cottage cheese and tuna fish. I said that to my husband the other day and he's like, that sounds disgusting. Yes. My my mother lived. But The thing is, is my mother did not worry about her weight. My mother was not somebody who worried about her weight, who dieted. She ate whatever she wanted. Now, my mother smoked
cigarettes, right? Because that was the thing at then. And she had her glass of wine, you know, not a lot, but, but it was my dad who is the one who is dieting all the time, which is not necessarily what you hear about like mothers get a bad rap, I think. But it was my dad who was so focused. And again, let me just remind you, my dad was an obstetrician gynecologist. He loved women. He loved pretty women. And so I think part of it was also to keep my dad's attention, right?
And but I just, I really got so good at, at restricting my food that I would carry like a bottle of balsamic vinegar with me to a restaurant. I would, I just like so restrictive and I lost a lot of weight. And but nobody really, again, I look back and I think nobody said anything to me like, like, what is going on here? Or you're really getting thin? And then I also lost my period, which is something that happens right when you lose a lot of weight. And, you know, I was at that
point anorexic. And again, my dad just said, oh, I just think that it's, you know, something going on in your body. And I had to do all these tests. And again, it was this secret. And I didn't even really know. I, I had an eating disorder. I didn't know. You used an interesting word. It was this secret. Was it a secret within your family because your father, as a doctor did not potentially maybe want to deal? I think it was, but it was also. Or even your mother not.
I think it was denial, denial and it, but it was my secret because I also didn't want anybody messing with what I was doing. I didn't want anybody telling me I should eat this or I should eat that. That's, that's a very, you hear that theme when you speak with anyone who's dealt with or is dealing with anorexia or bulimia or any kind of controlling eating pattern. Yes. But I, I was, I was diving into like a really dark place also. And what I started doing is
journaling. And I started journaling because I decided that I want to be, I wanted to be a journalist and I also was interested in fashion. So I would literally study 17 magazine, Mademoiselle magazine, Glamour magazine. And I would study them because I thought that I wanted to work for fashion magazine and write and be a stylist. And so I thought that if I started writing every single day and again, I'm, I could be a very disciplined person that it
would help me do that. But it turned out that my journaling was in a way kind of saved me because it became this place that I could put down all these feelings of being lonely, sad, depressed, super anxious, beyond anxious, feeling like I couldn't do things. I was procrastinating. I hated myself. I read back on my journals and talking about how disgusting I was, how fat I was, how I hated myself so much. And so I again, I but I looked good. It looked good and.
It's interesting that dichotomy that develops that duality of it's a, a form of a self loathing in a way, with this incredible desire to control and have this image that we think is going to be more loved than how you know someone is feeling. You know, it's that external gratification that we're hoping we get or someone gets. It's it's. It's complex. It's very complex. And I, my parents at one point had decided that I should go to because I was interested in theater and dance, right?
This camp, an arts camp, which is called Interlochen Music Camp, up in northern Michigan. And when I went there, I finally felt like I found like my people and fit in because where I grew up, I call it like Friday Night Lights, right? It was literally about football and sports and academics weren't that, I mean, they were important, but it wasn't a focus. But I just again, was trying to find my place and where I fit in. But when I went there, I also realized that that was super
competitive. But and, and I would with my friends, we would talk about food. We would go on these little binges, you know, the teenagers do where they eat like junk food and things like that. But for me, it became a bigger situation than that where again, I would literally, I have, I have notebooks where I would write down every single calorie I ate all day long. And I was in their dance program. And literally like, like how little could I get by with eating? But I call it a secret too.
I don't know, maybe secret denial, whatever. But I in some ways I feel like I almost wanted somebody to know how bad it was. I. It was a crime for help. In some ways for help it was. I think it's a way of saying I'm overwhelmed. I can't handle this anymore. I'm not getting the attention I
need. You know, I think what I have observed with people who've had severe eating disorders at some in some way, they're the person who's trying to balance out a family dynamic and they're feeling the weight on their shoulders of, you know, craziness is happening over here. Craziness is happening with the, you know, my brother or sister or, or they have a brother or sister that's disabled in some way or their parents have, you know, something that's just not functioning.
I mean, there's all kinds of dynamics within a family. But somehow that child that whether it's a boy or a girl somewhere in those early teen years, says I have to almost make myself invisible and make myself so perfect and make myself be the the balance because God, I can't disrupt anything. But within that is this painful cry. Like, can't you notice that I'm falling apart too? Is what I hear people say over and over again when I talk to them about this.
Well, that's a perfect explanation. Or a perfect description of of what it was like because my parents marriage was falling apart and. That doesn't surprise me because it's, it's, it's a common and even if it doesn't completely fall apart, it's often some kind of catalyst. There's some tension going on there, right, that a child is picking up. On yes, yes, and, and things were all kinds of craziness in
my family. But if I could focus on food and calories and how I looked, I did not have to think about all those feelings. Because you could be in control of something when you feel out of control of everything. Yes, yes. And and somehow I always knew, like even back then I thought my journals like I thought I'm going to use this to write a book one day. I'm going to get better. Like I knew somehow I was going to get through this. I had no idea how.
And I, I, I set my sights on going out east to college and I wanted to get out of Ohio and get away from my family. And I was determined to go to Syracuse, which I, I did go
there. And but again, because and people will even say this to me now because I always look like I had it so together, nobody knew that I was really having a hard time and I. You know, one of my favorite expressions is I have quite a few friends have gone through a A and I bought, ended up buying all the a a literature and one of which applies for eating disorders or any kind of, you
know, obsessive behavior. And one of my favorite lines is don't compare your insides to other people's outsides because most people I know who have had challenges, whether it's drugs or alcohol, until it gets, you know, goes into that area of real severity. You would look at them and say, wow, they really have it all together. You know, they, you know, everything's going great in their life and they become almost the comparison. So there's a status with maintaining it, which makes the
whole cycle somewhat insidious. Yes, yes, well, and also my website is called Don't Trust the Mirror, right, Because what you said before, which is, you know, your insides don't match your outsides because what you see in the mirror is just a projection so often of how you are feeling on the inside. So how do you get them to match up a little bit too, right?
But I when I went to Syracuse again, kind of a fish out of water here I am from Ohio and this is a sort of a funny story where I go the first day and it's almost like I thought people would have name tags on and be introducing themselves, right? I carry, I'm very naive that way. And I went to the bathroom and I said to her, she was, I guess a couple years older than me. And I said, people don't seem to be all that friendly here. And she said basically like, honey, you're not in Kansas
anymore. This is New York. Like you better really toughen up here. So and I'll never forget that. And so so I made my way, but but it was really hard and, and it was around and I joined a sorority. And so, you know, I found like a group of people and but things in my family were getting worse. And, and I'll just share another funny story that when I went away, I had my own room in our house growing up and my two
sisters shared a room. And when I left for college, my younger sister got my room, which I still kind of torture my mother. And I'll say like, see, like I lost my room when I went to college. I lost the family when I went to college. And, and, and many, many years later, my younger sister said to me, she's like, I really never even wanted your room. She's like, I really like sharing your room with Suzanne,
who is my other sister. She's like, but I had to take it. But I really felt like I was losing everything. And as I was away at school, my family was deteriorating. So when I went back home after my first year in college, my family had was not the same family. And what happened is is I you can only well. So now you're about 23 and you said this eating disorder. Went well. I was still like. 20. Yeah, I was. Still about 30. Right.
So what happened is I couldn't, I couldn't keep starving myself. And so I was home for a summer and things were bad in my family and I started binging. Well, I didn't start throwing up yet, but I just started binging. But then I got terrified because then I started gaining weight and I will never forget. And I talk about this episode in my podcast, which is that my mom
was sitting at a desk. My other, my younger, one of my younger sisters was there with me and my mom got a call from my dad and he he would like jerk around back and forth, back and forth. My mother just really just wanted to be back with my dad and my dad was with somebody else. So he invited her out for dinner. And I was like, don't go, don't go, don't go. And she was like, yes, I'll go out for dinner with you. And I was like, I was so angry.
And then my sister turned to me and she said to me, So what are you making for dinner? And I was like, I don't know, can I swear on this podcast? I was like, like, no effing way. Are you kidding me? Like, how is this my responsibility that I now have to deal with this? And I don't even know where I got this idea, Diane, but I ended up going into the pantry eating and I was like, you know what, I'm just getting rid of all my food.
And I went in the bathroom and I stuck my finger down my throat for the first time and, and. And that becomes an extra insidious cycle because you can, as the expression goes, you can have your cake and eat it too, and then you can get rid of the. Evidence that was like the perfect solution. That's what most people describe it as.
Oh, it was the perfect solution. And that's a very difficult mental state to deal with when you're working with a patient, you know, and they're saying, but but why doesn't everyone do this right? It's right. It's that twist of. But it does catch up with you and also. Lost teeth, digestive disorders, you know, people who have, you know, Barrett's esophagus or different, you know, throat issues, throat cancer. I've seen it. Right, right, and. And I've seen it in men and women.
Well, and, and I'll, you know, Fast forward is that I've had to have veneers put on all my teeth because my enamel on my teeth were, was really destroyed for many years of, of, of binging and purging. But there's also a physiological effect because you get a relief like it's this like discharge, just relief of anxiety when you throw up. So it's the emotional piece. It's like the physical, like you think you get rid of all your food, which you really don't.
And there's the like physiological piece too, which is addictive as well in some ways to that feeling. And then you have the further physiological piece, which is what I worked on with clients when they were referred to me was the further physiological 1 is your body starts to burn calories differently. So because your metabolism so screwed up your sugar, how your body's processing sugar has been
completely altered. It's releasing insulin and adrenaline at the wrong times all around and not related to food you're taking in that you're trying to digest because it's like, well, some is here to digest, but rotten, not really enough for what I just released. And it's a vicious cycle. It's a vicious cycle. So it just got worse and worse and it got really out of control. And, and here I was again, this like picture of me that didn't match. I was, I became president of my
sorority. I, you know, graduated college. I then went to Dallas, TX because I, I wanted to go to New York, right? And my dad said to me, how are you going to get to New York? Like what, what are you, how are you going to do that? And I was like, I don't know, aren't you going to help me? He's like, I don't really think you should go to New York. And my dad was very, I would always go to him because I always thought he knew better,
right? I lost my sense of, of knowing me. And so I went to Dallas, TX. It was a time when the Dallas TV show was really big and it was like a singles community. It was like, and I knew and I was going there on my own. But again, I was like this a parentified child, this adult sort of like looking adult, like really not really feeling like this little girl. And I went there and everything fell apart. It really caught up, caught up with me in that way.
And, and so I, my eating disorder got worse and worse. I became more and more isolated. I literally would spend like lost weekends with just like binging and purging, binging and purging, going through the garbage can like and and also I started taking laxatives. I was really, really getting sick and. So where was your turn around?
So what happened is that I, first of all, I went to a group at, at Southern Methodist University that I had seen and, and it was horrible because I just learned like better tips on how to like be a better eating disorder person. But I knew that I was going to, I, I was really afraid of somebody finding me dead on the bathroom floor. And so I found a psychiatrist and I do not remember her name. I do not remember her office. I do not remember anything about
her at all. But I remember what I wore. I wore this Navy polka dot dress with like puppy sleeves and pearls, right? And she said to me, you were sitting there looking perfect with a smile on your face and telling me that you think you're going to die, you're not safe here, and I need to call your parents. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, you cannot call my parents. And she was like, you can't stay here anymore by yourself.
And I said, if you call my parents, you cannot tell them that I have been binging and purging. I said, you can tell them I'm depressed, but you cannot tell them that I have an eating disorder. And she was like, OK, fine. So she called my parents. My parents were like, what? And my dad at one point said to me, what are you talking about? Like, I got you this far. Like you're pretty, you're intelligent. You're, you know, well put together like what?
What could be the problem here? And so it turns out I went home and and then I went into a psych ward of a hospital because I didn't know where to go. I couldn't go home because my family, there was too much chaos. I couldn't be in Dallas by myself. So I went to Cincinnati because I couldn't be in Dayton either because my dad was very well known.
And so I went to Cincinnati. And I remember in some ways feeling so relieved that I was going to this hospital because it felt like a safe place for me. I remember them taking my shoelaces. I remember them. But. What an interesting line. You couldn't stay in Ohio. I couldn't stay in Dayton. I mean, in Dayton, you couldn't stay in Dayton because your dad was so well known. Yeah, that's a, that's a pretty, you know, all bullets loaded statement. Right, right, right.
Because he because it was a small community and and. A lot of images keep up. Exactly. Exactly. And the interesting thing is that, and this is such a like a dichotomy, which is that again, pretending. So I, they took me to the hospital on Yom Kippur and we went to services as a family that day. Can you imagine like, going to services, greeting people, seeing people I knew growing up, knowing I'm going to the hospital after this?
No, I can't. Imagine and and nobody's like saying anything either, so. It's almost like the irony, the hot, the, the high holiday where everyone's fasting, right? I mean, it's like very. Exactly, exactly that's. Pretty intense. Yeah, yeah. And so they took me there and, and dropped me off. And I remember obviously having a second like, you know, thinking about it again and feeling like maybe I shouldn't be here, but I should. And I ended up staying in the
hospital for six weeks. And again, I went to the hospital. They thought I was depressed. It was still a secret. My eating disorder was still a secret. But it couldn't have stayed a secret that long because either 1 you stopped it, or two, they would have noticed. Nobody noticed for six weeks that you were eating and throwing up what you ate. Well, in the hospital I started starving again. And nobody noticed that. No, six weeks.
Pretty much. And, and at one point they had a a stationary bike in a in a exercise room. And I would spend hours, I would spend hours riding and I would spend hours on this exercise bike. And that was allowed. Yes, this is before eating disorder programs. Before anything like that. And at one point I said to my I was going home for a pass. And I said to my psychiatrist, I'm really afraid to go home because I'm afraid I'm going to throw up.
And he said just keep your fingers out of your mouth. And I was like, what, What did you just say to me? Keep my fingers out of my mouth like. Well, it's good advice, but it's a little. Harsh. Like yes, yes, yes. Like like it's to the point. Yes, yes, yes, yes. If it could be that easy, yes, that would be great. That would be great. So yeah, that would be great.
So where was your turn around? So my turn around was really, I spent a year in Ohio. I went to a therapist in after I got out of the hospital in Dayton. And she's like, I don't know that much about eating disorders, but I'll help you if I can. And finally I did have to tell my parents that I had an eating disorder and I turned out then I ended up going to getting to New York because that was my goal still to get to New York.
And I went to paralegal school in Philadelphia and I got myself to New York and I was reading Glamour magazine still, right. And I saw and I would look in bookstores for books on eating disorders. I would there was a book, I think Cherry O'Neill Pat Boone's or daughter or something had a, had a book out, but very few things on, on eating disorders.
And I was reading Glamour magazine and there was an article in there on eating disorders and it talked about the center in New York, the Center for anorexia and bulimia. And the woman's name in the, in the book was the magazine was Ellen Short and it talked about you could get help there. And so I called and a woman called me back and she, I set up an appointment with her and I almost want to cry because I started seeing her and she saved my life. And her name was Ellen Agri Chandler.
And I would go, she lived in, I'd go to her office, she had it in the, I think around 16th St. and 5th Ave. And I would see her like two or three times a week. And, and she taught like somebody asked me recently, like, how did she help me? How did she help me? And I think she just tolerated all my messiness, like all this messiness inside of me, she tolerated it. And and I think just by talking with her and talking about my feelings, I started. I mean, I was still really bad.
I tried all kinds of medication. I don't know how she even tolerated all like how she must have really worried about me a lot. I was in a couple of abusive relationships at the time. And so I feel like little by little, I started kind of figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. I was really unhappy as a paralegal. I always wanted to go to social work, school and and so I feel like my symptoms just started
decreasing a little bit. And I'll never forget, she said to me at one point, she said as my symptoms started getting less and less and it was hard and it was like 2 steps forward, one step back. She said to me now the therapy can begin because we were managing my symptoms really for so long. Yeah, it's very, it's very difficult to deal with someone that is physically, I mean to address a mental or psychological issue when someone
is physically unstable, yes. You know, it's like another a, a thing they say, you know, don't talk to anybody for 24 hours to 48 hours after they've been on a binge, right, right. Because you are not dealing with someone who's mentally no balanced in any way. Everything in their body from sugar, you know, to everything right is off. So it's very comparable. Yeah, yeah.
So she really just listened to me and she really just helped me figure out what I wanted to do to help me feel better about myself. And, and at that time, I had met my husband at the time and he also encouraged me to go to social work school. And, and I knew that I wanted to
be a therapist. I wanted to help people with eating disorders, but I also knew if I was going to go to social work school, I had to, I had to be well enough to go because otherwise it was going to, I was going to fail. I wasn't going to be able to concentrate. I wasn't going to be able to get through school. So I knew. So that was something that I
really wanted for myself. So I really worked hard and it was hard to sort of, you know, deal with the urges I had to binge to deal with the urges I had to throw up, to restrict. And, and little by little, my symptoms got less and less. But the work was real and continues to be hard
emotionally. So at some point you went into private practice, and my guess would be that you recognized your own voice and the importance of sharing your voice because that's an underlying factor in so much with eating disorders. What do you have to say to that? Yes and yes. Is that I think with an eating disorder or, or my eating disorder or many people I see with eating disorders, it takes away your voice.
You're afraid to speak up. So that's you use your symptoms as a way of expressing yourself rather than using your voice. And so I did go into private practice and I really felt passionate about helping others with an eating disorder, with their eating disorder or disordered eating. And I always say that I had my own journey and my eating disorder, but everybody's journey is different.
But I would hope that even through my podcast, through speaking here, that people can identify with certain things that I'm saying and it can offer them hope. And I, in developing my podcast, I really felt like I wanted to get out of my office because I can only see so many people in a week, right? And I really wanted to reach a wider audience because I feel passionately about helping people, about giving people hope, about helping them find their voice, feeling better about themselves.
So I decided and I, and like just to go back a bit to my journals, right? As I had all these journals and I was like, what am I going to do with all these journals? And so I I incorporated them into my podcast, which is I started with telling a bit of my story and then reading some journal entries and then talking about as a therapist, what I would have wanted my younger self to know.
Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, and really being able to kind of go back to that young girl and what she was struggling with and how hard it was and being able to talk to her and what. Would you want a younger person to know a younger you? Any person, male, female, that's dealing with any kind of struggles they're having with food, whether it's they're restricting it, counting every calorie, throwing up what they eat over exercising, what would
you, what would you say to them? What would you give them as a ray of hope or a direction that they could go towards? I would say that there is help, that there is hope and there's help. And because when you you struggle like that, you are in your own personal hell and prison with it. And that there is a way out. And by by finding your voice, by finding support, by developing a village of people who love and care about you and who are positive that you can find another way.
And that's really what what I have done is, is, is been able to. I always knew that I was going to get better. I just didn't know how and I didn't know the trajectory of my life and exactly how that would turn out. And and, and I also, you know, people ask me about recovery and I think that's a very, you know, it's not like drugs or alcohol where you just you don't use them anymore. You have to eat.
And so you really have to develop a whole different relationship with food and with yourself and your body and be able to accept yourself and also, you know, when working with people who want to be at a certain weight, right. And I'll say to them. Do you want to live your life like you can be at that certain weight, but your life is going to be really, really limited and do you want to enjoy food? Do you want to enjoy going out and being social?
Then how do you accept your body at a place where it really wants to be and learn to love yourself and, and not just focus on the outside, but really focus on the inside and really being able to take care of yourself? The other thing that that the reason I was so afraid to tell people is because I was afraid that people would take away my eating disorder. I would. I was afraid like that psychiatrist. Yeah, it's an identity. And I was afraid. Well, you're going to tell me to
stop, but I can't. I can't. And until you develop other coping skills and other ways to deal, like speaking up, talking about your feelings, whether it's through journaling, meditation, movement, whatever it is, and being able to express yourself and deal with really dark places, you can't just give up your eating disorder. Well, I often say to people when I'm advising them on, on all kinds of things, is who would you be if you gave up the story?
Because we're all storytellers and we get caught up in a story and that story becomes our identity, whatever it is. You know, I'm a cheerleader, I'm a football player, I'm an athlete, or I'm, you know, I'm an anorexic or I'm a bulimic. Whatever the story is, we build a life around that in one way or another and identify with it. So I think it's always an important question and it's an abrupt question, but who would people be if they gave up that story? That's a good question. Yeah.
And who would people be? I feel like at this point in my life, doing this has given me really a, a platform to speak out about. It's an intersection of my personal and professional life and something I feel like I said very passionately about in terms of really being able to get a message of hope to people. And also, I feel like I've gotten back to who I was, that little girl, because that little girl that was creative that, you know, had such an imagination.
I'm really channeling it in a different way to continue to heal myself and to be able to help others with that through writing through my podcast. I'm working on a book right now and I felt like I, I wanted to put my story into a book and be able to share it with people that way too, and also use my journalism background and come full circle with that and, and really bring it all together. I I'm just curious how is it for you to relive this story? That's a good question.
I don't know if it kind of makes me teary. I I feel really sad for that little girl. Yeah. I really sad it's I feel like I've been through a lot and I also feel like it's been important to to look at the people who are in my life and feel like I need to be with people who actually see me, not just what I look like, right, because I can get a lot of. Attention inside because she's got a lot of heart. Yes, yes, but who I am from the heart as well.
And, and it's, it feels like it's, you know, my eating disorder is still a part of me in some ways. And we were talking a little bit off off Mike off camera, just in terms of my life has changed where I've I've left a marriage after a long time and I like relearning what it's like to be with myself again. My, my own little room that I
had is now an apartment. So now I have my own room in an apartment, but I'm having to learn how to feed myself again, how to cook, how to do things that when I was married, it was all taken care of for me. So it's, it's like I continue to, to have my conversations with that little girl and be able to give her the empathy and the compassion for what she went
through. And also be able to see the courage and the determination I've had and be able to offer that to other people that you, you know, people are brave and courageous to really seek help to, to really work hard on
themselves. It really is quite the journey, quite the journey it is, and it's quite the journey to guide other people through because we each have to find our own answers, wherever those answers are and wherever they'll lead us. And hopefully people seek them before they have something very seriously adverse happened to them. Right before it's too late. Yeah. What would you encourage somebody to do today who's listening to this?
I would say to find somebody to talk to, to find a support system, even if it's one person that, that you can speak to, to talk to, to share your truth. Not to feel like you have to be somebody or somebody's expecting you, but to really look and listen to your heart in terms of what you really need. And, and to sit quietly also. And I will also, I will also share this, which is, and I, I continuously tell myself this is that our thoughts and feelings always change.
As bad as it feels at that moment, it will shift and it will change. That's a really good point. I'm constantly reminding people don't act in the moment because your thoughts are like the tides. They go in, they come out, they go in, they come out. Yes. Yes, well, this was a fascinating conversation and I hate to see it and everyone I have been speaking with Maureen Kritzer Lang, She has a great podcast. All the information's going to be below. Highly recommend you pay
attention to what she's saying. She she has a lot of heart. This episode will be found on every major channel. Again, it was recorded in the great Manhattan Center, but all of Maureen's info is in the in the links below this. So please feel free to share this, tell your friends, subscribe. And again, Maureen, thank you very much. Thank you, Diane. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much. Truly mine. Thanks everybody. Hit subscribe and share.