Welcome to Part 2 of: How to overcome fears holding you back!
We are covering how to overcome the fear of being yourself and the fear of others’ opinions. This blog post was inspired directly from responses from community members! If you did not read Pt. 1, do not worry, you can loop back around after reading this. But, you’ll definitely want to read it, as I addressed the two most common fears expressed in community members’ responses. Pt. 1 dove into the fear of control/the fear of “letting go” and the fear of weight gain.
This week we’re diving into how to overcome the fear of other people’s thoughts and opinions around food and body image. We’re also diving into how to overcome the fear of investing in yourself and finding care that you trust.
One of the biggest things I see from people wanting to go on a journey of finding food freedom and becoming an intuitive eater is feeling worried or petrified about what other people will think. I’ve heard from people that the idea of other people knowing can be crippling. Or, the idea of what other people will think. This is normal! This is something a lot of people experience.
In group settings with clients, when going over starting to make peace with food and navigating through that, one of the most difficult parts is being able to navigate social situations. Oftentimes, social situations can make you feel like your safe intuitive eating space is invaded by others still stuck in diet culture. These social situations can happen anywhere—a party, work, a date—and can be heard from so many people—friends, strangers, coworkers, loved ones, family members. The broad nature of the social situations we are put in contributes to the scariness of integrating two drastically different frameworks of eating (diet culture vs. intuitive eating)!
I want to share a couple powerful messages with you all…
If you are letting the fear of what other people think of you & your life dictate your actions and how you live your life, you will always be disappointed.
If you live your life trying not to disappoint others, you will always disappoint yourself.
I find these to be so profound. And they can be applied to so many more areas of your life besides food and body image.
The mission, goal, and idea of intuitive eating is regaining trust in yourself. That you can feed yourself. That you can live without guilt and shame with food. That you can speak kindly to yourself. That you can engage in movement that feels good. That you can build coping skills in addition to food that will help you in emotional situations. If you are putting your trust in other people’s opinions and making decisions because of other people, you don’t have the opportunities to build trust with yourself. This is a great parallel to diet culture because diet culture focuses on placing our trust in external rules. It could have been trust in portion size, weighing your food, weighing yourself, a meal plan, a trainer, a coach. Diet culture is trusting anyone else except yourself.
Moving into the food freedom/ intuitive eating space can feel scary because of who or what you’ve previously been led to trust. You might wonder how to even begin trusting yourself. Now think about this in relation to the fear of other people and their opinions. It is the same exact thing, just in a different example. If you are not going to move forward because of other people’s opinions, repeat the previous message I shared earlier…
If you live your life trying not to disappoint others, you’re always going to disappoint yourself.
This can be an intense scenario to imagine this message, but, think about when you’re on your deathbed, breathing your last, what do you think you will look back on and think, “I wish I did this… I wish I did not do this.” Something I hear from every single person I work with, regardless of age, is they wish they started their food freedom journey earlier. They wished they released the guilt & shame around food earlier in their life. You may not even be thinking about food freedom when you imagine what you’d be wishing for at that point in your life. You may imagine a relationship, or a person, or another situation entirely. Either way, I think that reflection can be really helpful to ground yourself and identify if others are dictating how you live your life.
The things other people say to you about food & body have everything to do with how they view food, their body, and bodies in general & nothing to do with you specifically. People exist in this world projecting onto others, to some degree. Think of a social situation where someone may have said a triggering statement to you about food or body. They are projecting onto you when sharing comments, thoughts, or opinions. This has everything to do with them and nothing to do with you.
Knowing this does not necessarily make the comments from other people any easier. But, a product of finding food freedom and intuitive eating is having a boundary around yourself so that you can step out into the world, and in turn diet culture, and not be triggered. Having this protective boundary is so useful because there’s always going to be diet culture triggers. Diet culture is a $72 billion industry. It will manifest through people’s comments, commercials, social media, and more.
So, how can you build a rock-solid foundation of trust within yourself so you no longer look outside of yourself & do not get shaken by others? Again, we’re all human. We all experience emotion and have emotional responses. These are all valid, allowed, and welcome. But, I want you to have a strong foundation.
That is a big part of the work of intuitive eating. After making peace with food and body image & movement, the work shifts to how to protect this progress and keep moving in this direction, because we are constantly going to be triggered.
I highly recommend writing the messages from before down in your phone, so when you’re faced with something triggering, you can read the message, take a deep breath, and work through any emotions that arise. Again, they are:
If you are letting the fear of what other people think of you & your life dictate your actions and how you live your life, you will always be disappointed.
If you live your life trying not to disappoint others, you will always disappoint yourself.
There are ways to navigate diet culture conversation with family, friends, loved ones, strangers, and so on. You can dive deeper into that topic specifically here listening to our “Setting Diet Culture Boundaries” podcast episode!
It is not my job to come here and preach that you are not going to diet. It’s my job to come here to plant seeds in your head through curiosity. Get curious about your life, in many areas. How do you want to live the X amount of years left in your life on this Earth? What if you keep living your life letting others determine what you do, how you show up, and if you are present? I work with too many people to know that every single person we’ve ever worked with has said they wish they’d done this work sooner. So, again, plant a seed in your brain. Reflect in a journal, or reflect in the notes on your phone.
Let’s dive into the fourth fear to overcome—the fear of investing in yourself and finding care that is appropriate. This is the fourth point of this two part series but can be broken down further into subpoints. First, the cost of care is a big barrier to finding and accessing the care you wish to have. This needs to be validated, 100%. Socioeconomic factors play a large part in our ability to participate in and receive fair, unbiased health care. Being able to seek care, whether it’s a general physician or through an inpatient eating disorder center or working with an outpatient team like Find Food Freedom®, is a privilege. Working with any health care professional should be understood to be a privilege. If you haven’t thought about this before, check out this information from the Journal of the American Medical Association. I want to acknowledge that everyone reading this blog post is in a different financial state. It would be unfair for me to speak on this as if I were speaking to one person. So, I’m going to go into different ways to navigate through this fear. I seek to help everyone find support, whether that means support from a paid professional or through affordable resources.
I’m going to start with the resources I know really well. The Find Food Freedom® team offers free and low-cost options, as much as possible because access to care can be a difficult area to navigate. First, we have a free Facebook group. In this group, you will be surrounded by thousands of people walking a food freedom journey. This is a great place for people who are curious to learn more about intuitive eating and are looking for a resource to explore. Connecting with other people seeking support is important to progressing through your journey.
Another resource is the Find Food Freedom® membership, our lowest cost option for support. In our membership, we provide the counseling aspect of care, as well as application of intuitive eating learning. Membership is only $27 per month and comes with a monthly training or episode of a training series in which you are able to log onto a private Zoom call with other members. In these calls, we break down different topics within intuitive eating. In these calls, we include research, analogies, presentations, and reflection questions. It is very much an interactive learning experience. And, all of our trainings are recorded for later viewing. So, let’s say you join membership now, you will have lifetime access to the membership recording library. Also, members get to participate in a monthly, live Q&A with the Find Food Freedom® team. In these Q&As, you can log into a call, with a notebook or journal, to grow from member experiences. We encourage members to write down questions beforehand about what you might be struggling with or what obstacles you’ve faced along your intuitive eating journey. Members also get to join a private Facebook group! Being in this group is such a great example of how supportive and inclusive the intuitive eating community really is. And, a reminder—it’s only $27 per month! That is less than $1 a day, every month. But, I still want to be delicate about the very complex financial situations each of us lives in. If you’re able to, try to think of the silliest way you have ever spent $27. Use this as comparison to joining our membership. Look at your finances from a place of curiosity, with no judgment or shame. If $27/month seems like a feasible financial investment for you, really ask yourself what the best thing for you at this moment is.
There is no obligation to do anything with this information. But, if you’re thinking, “I really need help or support,” consider these options, as they’re great in terms of affordability, access, and benefit. If you check out the “Work With Us” page of our website, you can read client testimonials. And, there are no cancellation fees! You can step back at any moment, cancel your membership, and jump back in whenever you are able to.
I am so grateful to help you overcome some of the fears holding you back from your food freedom journey. If this blog post resonated with you, you can hear more by listening to our podcast episode talking about the additional fears holding you back from starting your intuitive eating journey. Click here to tune into the episode! You can listen to our Find Food Freedom® podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
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