I'll get a welcome to another installment of the U project, Craig Anthony Harper. It is me again. It's eleven oh seven on a Monday in the thriving metropolis of Melbourne and ten oh seven on the Sunshine Coast. I'm assuming where doctor Catherine Wholahan is sitting.
Hi.
How are you?
Hi? I'm very well, thank you? How are you?
Oh?
Very good? Now I can see you're at home because you've got the beautiful greenery behind you. Are you are you working from home? Or are you just bludging today?
Is there somewhere in the middle? I would say today, Yes, you've.
Got one foot in each camp and that's okay. Now, what aren't you rather than me read some bio office screen in front of me? What don't you just tell my listeners Catherine, who you are and what you do and what kind of your career and your research is about.
Yeah?
Sure, So I'm a clinical psychologist. I trained over in England and Amost ten years ago now, and then came over to Australia shortly after I completed my doctorate there. So that training involved a lot of kind of clinical work practicing as a psychologist, being a therapist, plus a few years prior to that just getting some work experience, and then since living in Australia for the past eight years,
I've worked in lots of different roles. I've worked clinically as a therapist of evidence based therapies, predominantly with people with eating disorders, but also other conditions as well, depressional anxiety, other common mental health concerns. I've also had a leadership role in a kind of new and developing services, so setting up therapy services, again predominantly in the eating disorder space.
That's kind of my specialty as a clinician. And most recently and currently I've made a transition from clinical practice into academia. So I'm working as a senior academic at the local university where I am running the clinic where our provisional psychologists do their placements their master level students.
They are essentially training the next generation of therapists. I'm doing some teaching and some research, and my research is predominantly again in kind of eating disorders and body image research, looking at new ways of treating people hopefully improving outcomes, but I also dabble in other areas anything really that I find really interesting, which is lots and lots of things in psychology.
Yeah, it's I mean when I read Melissa who runs My life, said you're talking to doctor Catherine, and I went, let me have a bit of a squizzerrony and I went, oh my god, we're paysing a pod in that. Well, probably I'm way more dysfunctional than you, so I shouldn't say that. But like, growing up, I was a fat kid, right more bal the ibase kid and then who got in really good shape. But I went from literally the fattest kid in my school to one of the fittest
kids in my school. But with that and that that, you know, that physiological shift is good, but it brought with it a myriad of psychological and sociological issues. Then I started to get my whole sense of self and self worth and identity from my appearance and perhaps more relevantly, what people thought of my appearance. And then I started to seek approval and validation and connection and belonging. And
the more jacked I am, the better I am. But that was forty five years ago, Like that was that was forever ago, and I feel like I feel like we haven't really that I think we've maybe gotten worse, Like I don't know. It seems like we've got more information, research and resources around you know, body dysmorphia or body image issues and disordered eating through to eating disorders, but it doesn't seem like it's getting a whole lot better. But that's just my take. What do you see?
It's a pretty accurate one, and it's a really good reflection I think in terms of the what we know from research is that people that actually have issues with body image and eating disorders that is increasing, and it's increasing, particularly in young people. And it's hard to say whether it's increasing or if we're just more aware of it.
Now.
That's always the difficulty with these sorts of studies because, like you say, awareness is increasing, and when there's more awareness, more people seek help. And the awareness has also spread to you know, eating disorders, not just being you know, a certain person, you know, young white women. We know that eating disorders and body image issues can affect anybody.
They do not discriminate, so it helps. The awareness has helped people come forward seeking help, which is when we get the data of knowing how many people are struggling.
But there is also probably a good argument to suggest that the incidences are actually increasing just because of the pressures on young people, because we know mental health generally is worsening for that group, and that's when these issues, even disors and body image start to develop most typically because it is a really important time in identity formation and self worth and self esteem, and that can quite easily be wrapped up in things like appearance, body shape,
body size, especially in our society, which promotes kind of these ideals that are really unrealistic, and this idea that you know a certain body shape or size will make you happy, which when we know that's not the case. So even if people go on these journeys for health reasons or otherwise, we know that it doesn't necessarily lead
to happiness. It actually can worsen this idea that self self image should be solely dependent on appearance factors, especially with I don't know if you had this in your experience, but because of the narrative in society, someone's body shape might change and it's positively reinforced by everyone around them, and so people can see that as a very good thing, and that can actually increase the thought that oh, okay, well I must keep going or I'm only worthy or
I'm only acceptable to others if I'm on this. You know, whether it's a weight loss track or whether it's getting fitter or whatever it is, it just measures the importance of the self esteem and the body image together when what we know really is, you know, our worth is should not be dependent on what we look like. What
we look like is largely due to genetic factors. We can't change it, and it doesn't really have any merit in terms of the qualities that we seek out in people, like how kind we are, how generous we are, caring, funny, all of those things that actually make us kind of who we are. So yeah, big complex issue, definitely on the rise in terms of the problems that we're seeing, the referrals we're seeing when it gets to clinical level requiring lots of support. We know that body image issues
are also problematic. But with that awareness, there has also and I'm not sure if you've come across these in your kind of podcasting as well, but speaking to people who have created more positive approaches, so I think in the past, there weren't really any movements or any circles where you could find messages that you know, being shaped different shapes and sizes is okay, but now there are there's kind of body positivity that's one approach to, you know,
loving your body and accepting your body for what it is. There's body neutrality, which is kind of just trying to remove any kind of emotion attached to the body. And there's body functionality, which is another kind of growing area of an approach to body image where you appreciate your body what it actually does for you. So it lets you walk, you know, if you're able bodied and you
can walk. It lets you walk around the park and take in these sites your eyes, let you see the sunset, you know, and you appreciate your body from actually the things that helps you do.
So I went on a bit of a.
Tangent that I know, trust me and.
Ask me if you want me to break anything down. I tend to go quite quickly on this.
No.
No, no, no, it's you're doing great. I love it, but you, I mean, I've got so many things I want to talk to you about.
Right.
Sometimes I get a guest on and I'm like, how am I going to chat for an hour or fifty minutes with this dude? Because I don't know anything you know, it's like, but with this, it's like, this is an area of fascination for me. So I'm excited. I agree with everything you said, and I think in a perfect world. We don't live in that world. But in a perfect world, no one judges anyone by how they look, and we don't get more or less affection or attention or accolades
because oh wow, he's attractive and he's not. So he's in the group he's not, or she's attractive, she's But in the real world, that is what happens. Like, So there's this dichotomy because the verbal message is, you know, it's not about what you look like, it's about your values and your behavior and your kindness and your empathy and what you stand for. And like, I'm with you, yep, But I'm also like the pragmatist is like, have you
been in the real world? Bro? Have you have you stepped outside of your I don't mean you, I mean have you stepped outside of your fucking laboratory of perfection? Because this is not what happens in the real world. You get accepted or rejected a lot based on appearance.
Now that's not negativity, that's just reality. And so we're kind of straddling these two kind of worlds, the one where you and I. I talk to people all the time about, you know, like what really matters with your body, and I get you know, you worry about what you look like. And I would lie, I said at sixty two, as a sixty two year old, like, oh, I don't care at all what I look like. Well that's a lie. I wish I didn't, but I do. But am I obsessed with what I look like?
No?
I once was right. So that's some kind of progress. But I think the human experience is that want it a lot, not like it or not. We all identify with what we look like, and other people identified with what we look like. So there's this ever present reality. Oh that's Craig. Oh how do I know? That's great? Because I can see his face, I can see his body.
I physically recognize him. It's not like an energy wafted into the room and the hairs go up on the back of your neck and you go, fuck, Craig's just arrived, right. So the unavoidable reality is that we do identify with our bodies. And I think one of the problems, one of the problems for me. Doc was you know, growing up where I was this fat, socially invisible kid. Then I turned into a kid, a teenager who wasn't a fat and who was fit and strong and lean and healthy.
I went from being invisible to not invisible, to being noticed to being you know, it's not like, oh, I was the most popular sought after kid, but I was definitely more included, more accepted, more sought after. Socially I got you know, I went from zero attention from girls, you know, to a little bit, which was you know. And then so you you as a human, well me anyway, so you associate, oh, when I look like this, these
good things happen. So what I look like matters most because before I lost the weight, I was still me. I was still a good person, I still cared about people, I was still kind, but that didn't do it. But then when I changed my body, I got all this external validation and so, you like, and it's very hard then to not think that, well, how good life is depends on how good my body looks.
Yeah, yeah, And it's such a complex issue, and.
There are there's lots of different points there I want to touch on because the first one that you're talking about kind of leads to the biases that we have as individuals, and the first step in that is we all need to be really working hard all day every day to know our own internal biases, how we make judgments, where we make judgments, and not kind of judging ourselves for that or each other, because our biases come from a lot of our external experiences, and we are heavily
influenced by the media society what we're shown, which is kind of worse than ever now given that we're constantly glued to devices that are constantly pumping advertisements and literally
shaping our worldview. But I think recognizing when we have biases, whether we're treating people in a different way or whether we're noticing that there's something happening there, because I think every person individually doesn't want to have those biases or doesn't want to act on any kind of negative biases that will discriminate between people, But sometimes that can happen because of the messages we've had, because of the associations
we've made, so that can be down to appearance. And again, looking across the lifespan, I think there are periods of
time where those biases might be more present. So if you're thinking about young people, you're thinking about the kind of life stage where romantic attachments are super important, thinking about the school dynamics and you know, the groups of it's not always boys and girls necessarily, but just to use a bit of a stereotype there, and attraction to the opposite sex, and of course there are obviously also like evolution is working for us at all times in
terms of wanting to be attractive to the opposite sex because we're programmed to mate, obviously, but I think what happens, that's a natural process that we're not really able to untangle that much or think about, because society has taken over and told us what attractiveness is. It's not evolution really, that's told us that society. You know, I say society,
I mean like corporations that are trying to sell us products. Really, when it comes down to it, have told us, you know, this is acceptable, whether it's like this hair color is better than that hair color, this eye color is more attractive, this body shape, this body height, this body type. That's all kind of been manipulated over time, and it's changed
over the years. You can go back one hundred years and look at what was so called sexually attractive, you know, back in one hundred years ago, and it's completely different to what it is now. So we know it's not some natural evolutionary things. It's what we're being kind of told and how we're being shaped by big kind of
the powers that be. But I think knowing that that ultimately means that we do have bi is there and then actively shifting to work more in ligne with our values and less with our biases in terms of how we're treating other people. So yeah, this is probably most prominent in those younger years. I think as we get older, we do become a bit more.
Aware, and then.
I think the attractiveness, you know, like you say, it's not about oh, I don't care about what I look like. I don't want to be or feel attractive. Some people can live like that and that's great, and that's great for them.
It's it is individualized.
But I think in terms outside of a romantic relationship, where like physical attractiveness seems to be way more important at least in that early kind of stage of a
romantic partnership for me. I think if you ask most people in fact, I don't know ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of people how important is someone's appearance informing a relationship with them outside of a romantic relationship, And most people would say it's not at all, you know, in terms of who my friends are, who my family is, I know, we can't choose that, but who we choose to actually spend our time with. And this is some
of the work that I do. With people who do have very high, you know, concerns and issues with body image, we start with looking at, you know, how are you judging yourself?
How are you judging your own self worth?
And with people with eating disorders, we can kind of create a pie chart and you slice up all the things that give you your kind of worth. The majority of it is what my shape is, what my weight is, and my ability to control those things. So we look at that and we say, okay, well that makes sense because who you are with a needing disorder seeking therapy, and there's reasons that that's happened to you.
But here we are.
We've got kind of a you know, seventy five percent plus importance of shape, weight and the ability to control them in your self worth.
And that's different, by the way, too.
That's what separates someone with a clinical level problem to someone with say, body dissatisfaction, which I think we can all say most of us have experienced body dissatisfaction in our.
Lives to varying degrees.
But the difference between so called normal body dissatisfaction I'm using air quotes in normal body dissatisfaction to say someone with severe body image concerned or an eating disorder is the importance on the self worth. So many many more of us can say, yeah, okay, I don't like insert body part here. I wish that looked a bit different. I wish this was a bit different. But I know I'm a good person. I know that I have integrity. I know I appreciate my own values, and I know
that my worth isn't based on that. However, I'm still a bit, you know, unhappy with these things.
Someone with an.
Eating disorder or very significant concerns actually put, I don't like this, and that makes me a bad person therefore, and that makes me not worthy.
So the attachment to that self esteem.
So anyway, we look at that pie chart, and we look at you know, okay, and then we ask okay, well, let's just think about kind of attractiveness generally, and attractiveness doesn't mean physical, it just means your attractiveness. You know, how attractive you are to others or how attractive people are to you in terms of wanting to spend quality time with people and what's important to you in other people.
And if we look at what most people say is important to them, physical appearance becomes usually.
This tiny, tiny slice, if existent at all.
And what goes in its place in terms of importance and attractiveness is personality qualities we've talked about so and these are going unique to us, but some people really value humor, kindness, pairing, ambitious, driven, and all of these qualities in terms of who we want to spend our valuable time with and who we want to connect with
day to day, week by week, month by month. And then we look at those two things, and it's a really helpful exercise because if you're judging other people in a very different way to how you're judging yourself, that's a problem and you shouldn't be. And actually, if you want to work on your own body image or your own self worth, then a really good starting point is to ask yourself, Well, how do I judge others? How do I value other people? And who in my life
is the most valuable to me and why? And can I actually apply those same criteria to myself in terms of how I'm judging myself, Because often when we're feeling unhappy with ourselves.
We've really.
Gone off course with our own our own system for judgment, and we're tending to judge ourselves very critically, very harshly on things that aren't very good to judge yourselves on, like our appearance. For others, it's a different story, and we would never hold those people to the same standard in terms of assessing whether they were worth our time and energy. So that's something that I like people to think about and take away from, is how are you judging others?
Is it different to how you judge yourself? And why? And if it is, can you close.
That gap and actually judge yourself as if as you do others, which is maybe more about like your humor your kindness.
Yeah, thank god, there's humor and kindness. It's all I got. Yeah, it's I'm with you. I agree. I agree. However, it's like people still go out and the prettiest get the most attention. That's the hard thing. And so then the pretty girl learns or the pretty boy or or the or other. You know, it's like, yeah, I agree with you, and it's like it's all like I've worked obviously as
an exercise scientist. I've worked with thousands of people with body image issues, eating disorders, interesting relationships with food, terrible self esteem, great self esteem, and some of the most attractive people. If I can say that men and women that I've worked with are that most insecure because they get their entire sense of self from almost from you know. So anyway, let's I want to ask you a few
specific things just that's help all. That's great, by the way, but helpful maybe for some of our listeners who are like, do I have an eating disorder or do I have eating issues? Or do I have disordered eating? Can you just kind of separate those a little bit for me?
Yeah, absolutely so.
Disordered eating and eating disorders are kind of closely linked.
Disordered eating and a pattern of.
Behaviors and thoughts related to either food or body image or kind of control over these things. Exercise is also a behavior that can be kind of disordered in this area, and eating disorders are when disordered eating has become so extreme that it meets certain criteria in a kind of diagnostic manual. So, for instance, if some of the if some of those behaviors are happening a certain amount of times per week and have been going on for at least x amount of months, you would be given as
eating disorder. The other crucial thing is that the disorder part in any disorder, but also true for eating disorders, it has to have a negative impact on your life, on your quality of life and you're functioning for anything to be a disorder.
And I would argue that disordered.
Eating does have an impact because just the way that the brain in the body responds when it's not getting enough nutrition.
I'm sure you're aware of this from your own work.
And the kind of obsessiveness and the anxiety and the need for control that can come from disordered eating, but there might not be as perceived, as you know, as big a problem with some of disordered eating. But disordered eating can predate an eating disorder. So left unchecked, and if anyone's listening, I think my biggest advice if it's I know we're in Australia at the moment, so I would talk about the Butterfly Foundation. They have a free help line and you can if you're worried for yourself
or for someone else, or just interested in resources. They have a website around the globe. You know, the UK has BEAT, that's their charity. I'm sure America has. Every country should have ideally a national charity for NGL, and those ones are good even if you're not in the country, just to get some advice and resources and information in terms of.
How to seek help, where to seek help if.
You do want to explore more what's going on for you.
I had this kind of awakening doc when I was I started working in gyms when I was eighteen, and just as a gym instructor, I knew not much and I didn't do my first degree till a decade later. But and I remember talking to people like writing programs.
I was a bodybuilder, so I was always training, and I started training hard when I was fourteen, and so by the time I was twenty, I'd already been working in gyms for two years and I had six year background in training, and so I understood reasonably well right, but how to train and how to write a program and how to teach someone a squad or a deadlift or whatever, or a chin up, or or how to teach someone to whatever run or skip poor, not brilliantly
but okay. But I think by the time I was early twenties and I'd been writing fitness programs and strength programs and flexibility programs and high performance programs for athletes and teams and doing all of that, it dawned on me that getting in shape, whatever that means, fit a stronger, leaner, different body composition, was primarily about psychology and emotion and a little bit about physiology, and it's almost like changing your body. And I have this revelation right which probably
other people had way before me. But my revelation was, Oh, I know about anatomy in physiology and biomechanics and nutrition and progressive overload and adaptation, but I don't know about humans. I'm like, oh, and how come this guy with not much potential gets amazing outcomes and that guy with more potential gets a worse outcome? And how come that girl who was really inspired stopped after three weeks and that lady who was really like a bit ambivalent, she's stuck
with it? For two, Like, it's such an emotional and it like changing your body whatever that means. We're not the talking necessarily about getting skinny or losing weight or whatever it is, but just changing you know, to improve functional strength or speed or fitness or cardio escular health or reduce pain. But it's such a psychological and an emotional journey and almost like the bodies just the consequence.
Right.
Absolutely, That's how I see it, and that's how we try and kind of teach it in education. And I've done some education with gyms and schools and anywhere where you know, people are more vulnerable to these problems. And I think the discourse I was talking about this with a couple of colleagues the other day, the discourse is changing a little bit. Like even from like the eighties and nineties, you know, where it was all about being skinny and being thin, and it's we're talking a bit
more about health now again I'm using air quotes. We're very much talking about health and health and health goals, which is good on the one hand, because it should really be about our health goals. It's like living well, living without disease or disability for longer, so that you can live the life that you want to live. And if you pursue health goals, then your body will do what it does given your genetic makeup when those health
goals are achieved. So if you pursue, you know, a cardiovascular goal, to get your blood pumping around your body stronger so that you can just walk upstairs, you know better and for longer, so that you can go to the National Park and climb the steps to the top of the hill so you can take in those beautiful views.
That might be a cardiovascular goal.
Now you achieve that goal and your body changes because of that. You know, it might be weight increase or decrease. Your muscle composition might change as a result of that, but it's a symptom and not you know, with weight anyway, My belief is that weight should never really be a goal. It should be a symptom because our these do all sorts of different things in terms of wait and it's very very nuanced.
It's not just about the number on the scale.
Yes, And I'm curious to know in your career how much of that it's like the need for you know, the psychological understanding in terms of either behavior change or in the health and fitness space. Was that or is that talked about? Have you seen a change there or has it always been part of the kind of educational.
Programs you know, it's a really that is a really smart question. So there's definitely been a shift. I don't want to get in trouble, right, but I think a lot of people who work in especially in the fitness industry, have got just as many psychological and emotional and eating issues and body issues as the general public, maybe more. I definitely was that I wouldn't say I have no issues.
Now I definitely do. But but I think so you've got people who which is okay because like a lot of people who were work in the addiction space, we're addicts. They make some of the best counselors. So like for me, I can speak from a psychology point of view as a researcher and an excise physiology point of view, but I also can speak experientially and I talk all the time about my relationship with food, which has been just
like a tumultuous love affair. Right. But I think now specific to your question, people are starting to understand the nuance of what it is to help someone create a healthier, more functional body in a healthy, sustainable way from a physiological, clinical, psychological, even sociological and emotional perspective, because you know, everybody's lost weight, but almost everybody who lost it regained it.
Right.
The the thing is not do you want to get fit and strong? The thing is do you want to change your thinking and habits and behavior and operating system so that from a functional and a physical and a behavioral perspective, you've got a new normal. So when people say to me, how do you find the motivation to lift weights every day? The answer is I don't because
it's hardwired into my normal operating system. It's just, you know, it's like I've never had alcohol, I've never had booze, I've never been drunk, i've never been high, I've never smoked cigarettes. And I don't say that sound good. That's just what I've not done. So it requires no discipline or self control for me to not have a beer
on a Saturday. So I talk to people about this idea of let's create a new normal and then you don't need to find willpower and discipline and self control and grits and inspiration because it's like nobody has to get pumped up to clean their teeth, because it's just
what they do on autopilot. So I talk about this idea of how do we take those sometimes when I'm motivated behaviors, the ones that align with who and how I want to be, and turn those into all the time hardwired of course that's a metaphor, but almost not hardwired habits, you know, and when something's a habit, now this is me just being me, so, but I think there's been a you know, people have had to understand if it was only about energy in and out and
lifting weights and joining a gym, well we would have cured this problem a long time ago, and we haven't.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, it's much more about the psychological.
I mean, as I was when I was leaving the UK.
There's a big campaign in the National Health Service over there and it was called no health without mental health, and it was just an agnowledgement that, yeah, it isn't such a thing as health and mental health because we're not brains and bodies separately in that age duality, you know, conversation around is the mindsetarate from the body, and kind of.
We know that you can't.
Just separate those two things out and just look at physical things and ignore the mental and vice versa, because how we think and feel and all of those things impact what our bodies do and also how we approach making changes to you know, like you said, habits, if it's around like physical exercise and things like that, all.
Kind of starts in the brain.
And then when our bodies are changing, then that kind of the feedback loop goes back to our brains, and our brains can start responding a bit differently. And we know, for example, the links between like exercise and mood, So if you exercise, people report improve moods, so there's a clear link.
So I think, like an education and I get it.
I get that, you know, we are also humans with brains that like shortcuts and conserving energy and not having to do the hard work. And the way that the whole health system has been set up, and then subsequently, like the education system, Yes, you go to you know, you do an exercise physiology degree or a psychology degree, or you're become a medical doctor, and everything's kind of
in these silos. And I think we need to get a bit better at looking at that kind of more holistic view because things do impact each other in the space of kind of health and health and wellbeing as well.
But yeah, it's the really one of the things that I'm also just noticing as a kind of I mean, I'm not really on social media so much just through personal choice, but something I've definitely noticed as a consumer of you know, media, just you can't get away from it, is that there's it's great if someone has an individual goal to change something or to make improvements towards you know, goals, life goals that they want to be able to live
us in a certain way. But we are getting so many messages at the moment that we should be all of us all.
The time working on something.
And this is another massive psychological problem because you know, I talk to friends who are you know, pretty young, healthy individuals, no disease, you know, and they're talking about, well, I need to work on my sleep, and I need to work on my exercise. I need to start strength training, and I need to work on my nutrition. And we kind of say, well, why what has a doctor told you you need to do that? Have you had some
ill health recently? And it's kind of this discourse of like, no, I don't know why I just feel compelled to be working towards these goals because we're constantly, you know, there's so much noise that we should, should, should, should, and that actually creates psychological problems of anxiety, worrying that we're not doing well, not feeling good enough, just being very overwhelmed with information and losing sight of our own goals and our values, and then worrying that if we don't
do it, we're going to undergo some serious consequence is either now or you know, later in life. So I think it's important to going on to that that this is also a byproduct of how social media has come.
About comparison culture, right.
How we get it in geting our information, get our information, and how the discourse is promoting all of these goals.
And it's really easy to jump on that bandwag.
And I mean, I know all this, I'm a psychologist, and I still find myself thinking like, oh, I need to should do that, and I should do that, and I'm like, why why am I thinking that? Some of those back by research, But you don't want to live
a very stressed, out, overwhelmed life. So that you can live, you know, a few years longer by working on all these health goals you want to be able to and you're never going to be able to tell you know, there's no of course, there's research showing people that do this maybe live longer, or people that do this have better physical health outcomes, but this research is not We're not able to fully apply that to ourselves because none of us can get to the end of our life
and say this is exactly these choices that led me to where I am now. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't be focused on our health.
Of course, good health allows you to live like a better quality of life, but quality of life is hugely impaired when we start becoming anxious, preoccupied, overwhelmed, fearful, regretful, worried about what.
We're doing and just how much we're doing. And I think a lot of us are actually feeling quite overwhelmed.
I feel like for a lot of us, me included, at times, no matter where we are literally or metaphorically, it's not where we want to be, right. We're terrible at contentment, you know. It's like, my life's good, my body's good, I've got a good job, people love me, I've got healthy relationships, I can walk, I can turn on and I tap. There's fresh water, I can push a button, there's air conditioning. I live in a safe place. My life is amazing. I'm so grateful. I'm so happy.
It's almost like that's giving up. Oh no, dude, you've got to have goals. You've got to grind, you got to hustle, you've got to be winning, you've got to be moving the needle. It's like, yeah, I don't think so. Like maybe I don't think there's anything wrong with grinding, hustling and moving the needle. But I also think like I tell people, excuse my language, but I tell them
to have fuck all days. I go have a fuck all day where you do fuck all, achieve fuck all like and you don't and it's great and you love your fuck all day. It doesn't have to be what am I achieving doing being creating? No, Because and the other thing is if you turn down like the volume a bit and you just step back from people who are constantly hustling and grinding, I don't think the overwhelming kind of state of those people is happiness.
And that's important because we can lose sight of our goals, Like, is the goal to be happy because and what's realistic within that? Because happiness is an emotion and all emotions are temporary. So if we're pursuing a goal to be happy, how happy do we want to be? Do we want to feel moderately happy at least three times a week? Do we want to feel super happy at least once
a week. We can't really have a goal to feel happy all of the time because that's not realistic and we will constantly feel like we're not achieving that goal, which will also create negative emotion and send us off on this spiral contentment different to happiness. But is my goal to be more content and to move less forward?
You know, like you're saying have an f all day, you know, once a week or once a month, or just practicing gratitude, you know that actually does lead to positive emotion and remembering where we've come, looking back where we've come from, rather than always where we want to go to. And I think it is part of the human condition that we do want to move forward. And once we achieve a goal, we're very good at saying, great, what's the next goal, But the practice of.
Pausing and slowing down and.
Recognizing where you've come from and kind of celebrating is it requires discipline, but it can be really beneficial for mental health overall. And choosing your goals wisely and making sure that they're in line with your value. So don't just work on good sleep if you don't believe that you have bad sleep. No one's told you that you have a sleep problem. But just because everyone else is working on sleep, and if you're waking up geeing.
Refreshed every morning, or you know, or even.
If you you know, if you have a small child who wakes you up five times a night, you can't work on your sleep for now. That's not I shouldn't be a goal. You know that the time will come that you might be able to get some fathers sleep. I say this as a parent and someone who used to really worry about you know, all this bad sleep. What's it doing to my brain? All I'm hearing about is how bad it is to get sleep. But I literally can't help it because there's a young person that
needs me in the middle of the night. So making realistic goals, not having too many goals at anyone time, because you're unlikely to be able to just have that much energy to put into them and making sure that goals are in line with really your values or your phase of life. It's probably, yeah, a good way of just not feelings overwhelmed or consumed with productivity and having
to move forward. And then there's some people, some amazing people who take that to the extreme and do live a very contented life with very minimal and don't have these kind of Western goals of make more.
Money, get the promotion.
More and more, and they're able to kind of check out and say, I'm going to go and live, you know, in a forest and be content with the world around me, which is also wonderful.
It's almost like we live in and I'm just talking about generally hire not everyone, of course, but in this mindset that we try to fix internal stuff with external solutions, like we try to fix emotional and or psychological issues with you know, in my case, bigger biceps or wider shoulders or less body fat or another motorbike or and I know this sounds very ridiculous and egotistical and shallow, but that you know, for a while that was part of my life and I wasn't the only one in
the club. You know, that whole kind of if I, oh, I'm insecure, so if I look good, I'll be less insecure if I you know whatever, fill in the blank. I'm lonely, but if I'm more attractive, then I might not be lonely or and we kind of learned these lessons for obviously I was going to say for better
or worse. Probably for worse, but you know, this this very common I think human practice of trying to resolve psychological and emotional issues with stuff, and whether that's body or money, or title or brand and not there's anything wrong, of course with money or title or brand, but I don't think it's necessarily a solution to shitty self esteem.
Now, it's really not.
And it's so normal to make that pursuit because if you're unhappy with something, we try and solve that problem, which is actually a great thing that.
That's what we're driven to.
We're trying to move away from pain and the messages and the lessons we've had probably in terms of how to do that sends us down a bit of a tricky road, you know. And then this comes back to kind of internal biases. We're told from a very young age, this will make you happy, this will make you happy. The motorbike will make you happy, This will make you more attractive, this will make you feel better. So when we don't know what to do, of course we're going to use all of that in terms of where we
want to go. But really is that kind of inner work, And as a therapist, this is mainly what I help people do is move more inward, which is very hard to do because there's often quite.
A lot of stuff there and that stuff might.
You know, go back a very long time, and it might be very serious stuff that's kind of unresolved, or it might be stuff that's actually quite hard to pin down. You know, but I had a great childhood and I haven't had any significant trauma, But why am I not feeling you know, content or happy with myself all my life? Or it could be that there has been very serious and significant things happen that undoubtedly have led to not feeling you know, good about oneself.
So doing that inner work.
Is the harder route, it's the more painful route, which is why a lot of us avoid it.
It takes a lot of time and energy.
It usually requires a good person, whether it's a therapist, a trained professional, or someone who's very trusting and able to kind of contain a safe space while you do that work, and.
It can really take a long time.
It can take years of self growth and self reflection and practicing different things and understanding the why.
Before you see any real change.
And that's not as pretty or as shiny as you know by this now and you'll be all right.
Yeah, of course, I know there's no three step plan or any number of step plan. I know that. But for people who are listening and there they go, yeah, I've got eating issues, or I've got disordered eating or an eating disorder, or I've got you know, I look pretty good, but I simultaneously hate everyone tells me I look good. But I don't think I look good. I think I look shit. I think I'm to this or
too little that. Where do we start, like, and again, I guess it's a different for different people, but this is your area of expertise.
We break it down into steps absolutely to The first step is recognizing it and kind of admitting that there is a problem. Because with these sorts of issues, we can kind of also think it's quite common for people to minimize it.
It's not that bad.
Everyone hates how they look, everyone else is on a diet. You know it's not much of a problem, but really acknowledging it to yourself, Okay, this isn't how I want to live. I want to make a change, and then seeking help would be the next step. So if you have a trusted person in your life that you could just share those concerns that can help you on that
journey reaching out to a GP in the first instance. Again, these helplines national eating disorder, disordered eating, body image Charities, they will always have pages of resources helplines.
You can call.
Different contacts for different professionals, but everyone should be able to access a GP, whether it's telehealth or you know, in person. But a general practitioner with those concerns then should be able to do some follow up questions and some screening. There are amazing psychological therapies that are the best we've got. That is the first line evidence based treatment.
And the success rates kind of range from very very high for maybe perhaps more recent slightly less severe concerns, and if you know a problem has been very very long standing and is very very severe, then the response rates to the treatment are a bit lower. Say that kind of two thirds of people get better, which is still better.
Then it's the best that we've got.
And often when people start a journey of kind of recovery from eating issues again, it is like a long journey with maybe a few different it looks different at different stages. Maybe there's doing it on your own for it, maybe they're seeking help from a therapist or getting more intensive support, and then there's periods of kind of maintaining those changes and then taking the next step maybe a
year or two later. It can really look like that, but it's a really really worthwhile journey obviously because then you come kind of fully recovered in a new life with all these new insights. But definitely speaking enlisting any support that you have in your social or family kind of circles, just having that person there to help seeking a GP, and the GP should then be the stop gap in terms of screening and then identifying the correct
services for you. And then there are those charities and services that are specifically designed for people with those concerns that can offer help and guidance and resources, and even if it's for a loved one, you know, the lots of resources for care as and parents. If you're noticing in your children or your friend or someone that you know.
They can also for advice.
Perfect.
Hey, so doctor Catherine's website is doctorcatpsych dot com dot au. Did I get that right, doctorcatpsych dot com dot au. She's got a blog. I read some of her posts or her blog posts. Very good, Go and have a look at those. So doctor cat psych dot com dot au forward slash blog. But you'll find it when you go to the site. Anyway, do you want to steer my audience towards anything else.
Doc, I also do have an Instagram account which is doctor cat Psych and or want to make kind of educational videos about psychology and therapy and tips and chicks and things like that if people are interested.
My last question before we go is, so I spoke before about you know, when I was a young trainer and I had this revelation that it's not actually about like I kind of got it wrong. I thought it was all about the body, and then I went, oh, it's not all about the body. Is there any not necessarily anything that you wrong? Maybe you got something wrong or you just had a light bulb where you went,
oh this is new. This is a revelation for me in your journey with you know, eating disorders and so on, did you have a light bulb moment where you realize something that you previously didn't think.
Yeah, it's such a good question.
I mean as a career as a therapist, there are so many light pulments.
So two come to mind.
One is definitely related to work with eating disorders.
When I was a bit more junior.
And starting out in the field, I think I had the same you know, stereotypes and stigmas towards people with eating disorders as the general public, you know, just from what I've seen and how they're presented in the media. So just thinking it was all about the food, you know, people just don't want to eat, and why don't they want to eat? It's certain foods and they just need to learn about different foods and that they're okay and then they will just eat.
But of course, actually it's not about the food.
I mean, the food is kind of the symptom, and yes, there is a lot about the food that you have to work through, but really, you know, things like that. Same with other mental health problems. It's often like addictions and things, it's not about the substance. It's not about the thing on the surface, it's actually.
That's the symptom.
And I think really with eating disorders and body image concerns, now what I've learned is there was a problem. It might might be a past problem, so there wasn't once a problem, or potentially that problem is still there and the eating disorder kind of developed as a solution to that problem, but now it's become a problem in its own right. So we we first have to treat the eating disorder because it's kind of taken over. You can't
go straight back into trying to understand the underlying problem. Well, there's an eating disorder going on, because they have how eating sort of affect the body, in the brain, and just someone's kind of overall psychology. So you do have to kind of fix a problem that was originally a solution someone's best to go, you know, that's not their fold. It was the best goal of trying to fix a
different problem. And then once the eating disorder has kind of resolved, then you can start working on what the other problem was and either looking at it in a different way or healing from it in a different way because it's a past problem, or if it's still a current problem, just solving it in a different way that's much more healthy and in line with people's personal goals and values.
Wow, that's very insightful. That's your You should do this for a job. You're quite good at it. Thank yeaf Hey doctor Catherine, thank you so much. We will say goodbye off here, but.
For the minute. Thanks for being on the new project. We really appreciate you my pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me