31: Overeating: Thinking Drives Behavior (any behavior or addiction) With Julie Simon
“It’s very important that you start today to build an inner nurturing voice… because you’re going to need that voice, even when you take your last breath.” -Julie Simon
Food! Food! Food! Who does not love food! Food is comfort. Food is life. Food is everything good in the world. We can say a lot about food but food can also say a lot about us. Today’s episode will give voice to that with our guest, Julie Simon. Julie is a licensed Psychotherapist and Life Coach and is specializing in emotional eating and food addiction. She has a private practice and is designing various programs for over 29 years now. Having experienced the struggle with overeating herself, she decided to listen to the voice that helped her reframe her life.
Often, we fail to see beyond what our eyes can see. And that’s not very helpful at all. Some people eat way too much and we say they lack self-control but the real reason beyond their overeating is unknown to us. Get the hang of the connection between early development and food, the role of your hormones in food addiction, the signs of an emotional eater, the skills needed to fight addiction and the right attitude towards those skills. Food need not be a problem anymore if you solve the problem behind food addiction. Engage in this yummy discussion that will arouse your appetite for recovery.
Highlights:
02:54 Julie and the Surrounding Culture of Overeating
06:31 The Science of Overeating
16:07 Are You An Emotional Eater?
32:20 Learn The Skills
39:41 Practice! Practice! Practice!
Resources:
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts- Close Encounters with Addiction by Dr. Gabor Maté
This week’s episode was sponsored by
Eat to satisfaction and not to addiction with @Julie2816028 and @TFRSolution #Foodies #DietNoMore Share on X
Connect With Julie
Website: https://www.overeatingrecovery.com/
Email: Julie@overeatingrecovery.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OvereatingRecovery/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Julie2816028/
Quotes:
04:57 “Any overeating pattern, any overeating challenge is not a simple act. Overeating itself is a complex behavior… There was the result of complex interactions between emotional, cognitive, biological, neurological, social, and even spiritual factors.” -Julie Simon
17:32 “If you’re using that food to tranquilize emotions, then you’re gaining no skill in terms of handling emotions.” -Julie Simon
18:16 “Clearly people use food for excitement and pleasure and distraction.” -Julie Simon
19:53 “It’s very important that you start today to build an inner nurturing voice…If you don’t have one, the good news is, it can be developed. And it’s very important to start now developing it because you’re going to need that voice, even when you take your last breath.” -Julie Simon
29:10 “The family that we grow up, and whatever is happening around us, people who we respect whatever they’re doing around us, whatever kind of self talk they have, whatever kind of behaviors they have, or rationalizations of those behaviors for children. It’s like, they learn that, they see that, and it becomes their norm.” -Julie Simon
38:38 “Obviously the problem isn’t about cutting down your intake alone. We have to address those deeper imbalances.” -Julie Simon
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions
MILESTONE RANCH AD
I’m honored to have Milestones Ranch Malibu sponsor this episode of this podcast. Milestones Ranch is a small 12-bed premier dual diagnosis residential facility that believes that addiction problems in a family do not happen in a vacuum. Everyone has taken on impact and everyone deserves healing from the ramifications of addiction. I’ve experienced milestones myself. I’ve been there, feet on the ground firsthand. Over time of working with this team, I’ve seen the benefit of a group of dedicated professionals supporting families long term positive outcomes, what they call the milestones method. I have the utmost respect for their team and their collaborative model of health. So, check out their website at www.milestonesranch.com.
JEFF: So, welcome everyone. This is Jeff Jones here and today my guest is Julie Simon. Julie is a therapist in California and her focus is emotional eating. So, I am just getting to know Julie. She has quite a bit of background and experience with emotional eating and the difference between emotional eating and food addiction. She is a book author twice. She has quite a bit to offer here. She has a 12 week program on her website and I’m looking forward to this conversation. One, so I can learn a lot myself. Welcome Julie.
JULIE: Hi Jeff. So glad to be here with you today.
JEFF: Yeah, thank you – thank you. And so if you could share a little bit more about who you are. Who is Julie and what you’re doing and kind of like what led you in this direction.
JULIE: Sure. So, you know, as you said, I’m a psychotherapist and I’m a life coach. And for nearly three decades, I’ve been helping over eaters and imbalance eaters heal their relationship with themselves, with their bodies, with food, lose excess weight without going on another diet and keep the weight off and certainly improve their health. And I got into this field, I was always very interested in weight and body image and, you know, struggle in that arena because I struggled with that myself for many years. I struggled with overeating and weight gain. I had a mother and a sister who struggled with it and it seemed like the culture all around me struggled with it.
And about 30 years ago when I became a therapist, I began a support group for women who ate for emotional comfort. And I was on a quest before I started becoming a therapist. I myself was on a quest to kind of understand all the pieces of the overeating or the imbalanced eating puzzle because like I said, I saw it in my family, I saw it in the culture around me. And I always intuitively thought, you know, we’re not designed to be overweight or underweight, clearly. We’re designed to have a natural weight. And so, it didn’t make any sense to me in the years that I was kind of counting calories, and carbohydrate, and fat grams, and weighing and measuring my food, and weighing and measuring my body. It didn’t make sense to me that we should have to do that. So I wanted to understand, you know, what causes people to eat more than their bodies are needing? What causes people to eat when they’re not hungry? What causes people to compulsively binge eat? What’s underneath this, right?
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: And certainly, you know, any overeating pattern, any overeating challenge is not as simple act. You know, over eating itself as a complex behavior. All over eating behaviors, mindless or excessive snacking, over eating the meals, or like I said, compulsive binge eating, they’re the result of complex, what I discovered on my own journey. There was a result of complex interactions between emotional, cognitive, biological, neurological, social and even spiritual factors.
JEFF: Oh my gosh! Yeah – yeah. Just listening to you talk Julie, I’m kind of wondering like how to make this really simple because it’s like, yeah, it can get real complex real quickly. And I’m thinking to myself, oh, you know, that bag of chips that I ate half of it as I was driving or something and that felt really good. Or you know, when I go to the grocery store and, you know, always liked to have like some snack as I’m driving home from the grocery store or something. And if that’s a pattern, is that a problem? When is that not a problem? And so, oh my gosh, yeah, the complexities, nuances, the various factors that contribute. Can you say a little bit more to just kind of like break it down in a very simple form?
JULIE: Well, you know, it’s interesting because so many people come to me and they’ll say, you know, if I asked them: “What do you think is causing your challenges with food?” And some people will say: “I just love to eat. I just love food.” And other people: “I’m a foodie.” And some people will say: “No, I have an addictive personality.” And some people will say there’s just too much processed food around. Right? It’s too hard to manage. Right?
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: And certainly all of these factors play a role. All of these factors play a role. But we would kind of, you know, have to ask ourselves, again, it really goes back to even if there is a lot of processed food around or food really does taste so good, we have to ask ourselves, and this would be the question with any addiction or any wayward behavior that we’re having trouble controlling is, why are there some people, so let’s take food, why are there some people that can have a bag of chips and take a handful and close it up and say that’s enough. And other people, once they have the handful, they can’t stop.
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: Okay? So, I think that’s really the bigger issue is what is it that makes it so that we can’t stop? And what recent advances in brain science have uncovered is that a theme that comes through for people that have trouble regulating their behaviors, we call it self regulation. It’s the crucial role of their early social and emotional environment. Okay? So that early environment, if we don’t receive consistent and sufficient emotional nurturance during our early years, our brain and our nervous system can become wired for high arousal. This makes it more difficult for us to soothe ourselves and it leaves us at greater risk for seeking comfort from external sources. So the person who had a really difficult day and goes and buys a bag of chips and has a handful but has an ability to soothe and comfort herself, she might say: “You know, that was a good handful of chips, but I don’t want to eat this whole bag. I’m really upset about the day. I need to go get a workout, or I need to go unwind, or I need to go take a hot shower. I need to do some meditation.” Another person who’s missing those kind of self soothing skills, and those are only, you know, some soothing behaviors or more skills that we’ll talk about, but someone who is missing that might just not be able to control their intake of that bag of chips because they need to eat that whole bag to kind of quiet the storm in their brain, right? The dysregulation that’s going on in their body.
JEFF: Right. Right.
JULIE: So this is something that, again isn’t talked about so much is the early environment and how the brain gets wired for high arousal and how when we have sufficient and consistent nurturance in our early years, which means our caregivers have a soothing and comforting voice, regulating voice, we’d begin to develop that regulating, soothing, and comforting voice in our own head, right? It gets wired in. Connections between that part of the brain that’s in the upstairs part of the brain, the regulating part of the brain, those connections get wired into the lower part of the brain, if you will, the kind of emotional part of the brain. And there’s good connection there. So what does that look like? So that looks like when you’re driving home and you’ve had that really stressful day and that emotional brain is sending out fire alarms, you know, like: “Ah!! Stressed out. Difficult day.” That you have a regulating function in your brain that can say: “Yeah, that was a really difficult day. We need to do some unwinding now.” Right?
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah.
JULIE: If you don’t have that function well developed in your brain, you’re going to be like, if you picture an animal, you know, like cornered somewhere, right? You’re panicked, you’re kind of over reactive or highly reactive and you’re going to look for something, anything to stop that storm in your brain and the dysregulation in your body. And the quickest way there, we’ve all learned it in modern America especially, quickest way there, drugs, alcohol, food, substances, right?
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. You know, as I listened to you speak Julie, one of the things I think about, in my office I have a picture of a mom holding an infant and the infant is probably like, you know, eight or 10 inches away from the mom’s eyes and they’re locked in this eye contact kind of thing.
JULIE: Yes.
JEFF: And my understanding of that is when the mom and the infant are locked in this eye contact, and it’s like the mom is creating this very safe space for the baby. This eye contact and this exchange one, there’s chemicals like oxytocin in the mom’s body being flooded and in the baby there’s like millions of neural networks being connected every second there. It’s like when the baby doesn’t get that, then it’s like those connections, there’s like a lack of connections, and that’s the endorphin system, like pain relief and reward and it’s like the soothing that I was hearing you talk about. And so –
JULIE: Yes. You know, there’s a quote from Doctor Gabor Mate, he wrote In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
JEFF: Yes. I love that.
JULIE: Yeah. He works a lot in this field. And he says the addictive urge actually represents a dopamine or endorphin hunger in the part of the brain system that early in life lacked the necessary conditions for full development. He says the three environmental conditions absolutely essential to optimal brain development are proper nutrition, physical security, and consistent emotional nurturance.
JEFF: Consistent emotional nurturance. Yeah.
JULIE: Right. Consistent emotional nurturance. And, you know, to your point, when we talk about consistent emotional nurturance, we’re talking about, this is what you just said, we’re talking about those attuned experiences.
JEFF: Right.
JULIE: And one other quote from Doctor Mate, I love his work. He says as infants and small children, we need to be in an attachment relationship with at least one reliably available protective, psychologically present, and reasonably non stressed adult.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. And that is everything right there. And when the child doesn’t have that then it’s like their nervous system, their brain development is compromise. Like the example I was using with the child, the eye contact that builds the endorphin system, which translates to the natural opiates in the body and –
JULIE: And the dopamine system. Don’t forget the dopamine system.
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: That’s so critical too in overeating, you know, is the kind of the dopamine creates like foraging behavior, you know, when you don’t have enough dopamine, you forage.
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: Right? For food.
JEFF: And that’s what we’re talking about here is emotional eating. And so it’s, yeah, I’m getting from you too. It’s more related to dopamine than the endorphins.
JULIE: I think both. I don’t think it’s more or less, I mean, I think it’s going to be the way some someone’s brain formed, you know, whether they’re going to be going for endorphin hits and what they’re going to choose or they’re going for dopamine. Right?
JEFF: Yeah. So in this conversation, I’m wondering if we could kind of like break it down to be as simple as possible because, one thing that I think about from the standpoint of addiction is that a lot of times eating, like I’m not going to get a DUI if I eat a bag of chips while I’m driving or even if I have two bags of chips.
JULIE: Right.
JEFF: And so what are like warning signs? I mean, because some people, they may like be having emotional eating kind of thing after a hard day of work, like your example was or something. And that’s just a habit and that’s like, they don’t even see it as a problem. You know, if I have a whole bag of chips, I’m aware of it. I may do it, but I’m aware of it. So there’s one just being aware of it and sometimes people aren’t. Then there’s another, if I’m aware of it, but I’m still doing it.
JULIE: Right. And you know, I think what sends people to come see me for example, is that either they’re weight is climbing and it’s not where they want it to be, or their health is challenge. And so like you say, I mean, if you overeat periodically and you’re not having any health problems, you’re not having any weight problems, you may not see it as any big deal. Right?
JEFF: Right.
JULIE: But you know, there are also people who come to me for example, who don’t have any weight or health problems, but they come because they say, you know, my relationship with food is very out of balance. Right. And so let’s talk for a second about how do you know if you’re an emotional eater? Let me give you some examples, in my second book. My first book is called The Emotional Eaters Repair Manual. And my second book is called When Food is Comfort. The second book is a deeper dive into what I cover in the first book. And so in both books I talk about, well the second book in particular, I have a questionnaire that helps you determine if you’re an emotional eater. So, some of the items on that questionnaire are, you know, do you use food as a tranquilizer to dull feelings that are difficult to cope with? Like sadness, loneliness, anger, frustration, right? So you can kind of see, even if you didn’t have a weight problem or a health problem, if you’re using that food to tranquilize emotions, then you’re gaining no skill in terms of handling emotions. And emotions are, I always say emotions are like street signs, you know, they’re precious signals from within that guide us in terms of meeting our needs. So, you’re using food as a tranquilizer. Perhaps you’re using food to comfort and soothe yourself. Maybe you’re using food to quiet, self defeating thoughts. You’re using food to regulate your nervous system and calm down.
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: And you may be using food to rebel on someone or something. If you use food to procrastinate, maybe you use food to ward off sexual advances, you know, all kinds of, it’s clearly people use food for excitement and pleasure and distraction.
JEFF: Yeah. Well, I mean I am thinking to myself, Julie I’m a little bit playing the devil’s advocate, but I’m kind of going, is it okay for food to be comfort? Like, you know, is it okay for me to use food to just kind of like calm myself down? I mean, like it’s a problem when it gets my weight, when it’s my health, when it like my body, my metabolism is out of order. And then the other thing that I’m hearing you say is, you know, that’s a coping mechanism that is old, it’s habitual, it’s numbing and it’s not really a very high level coping mechanism.
JULIE: Right, because we’re not building any skill when we have to go get Cheetos, when we’re upset, you know, or when we’re very sad we have to go buy cake. You know, even if we don’t do it daily and like we said, our weight isn’t suffering or our health isn’t suffering, we’re still not building any skill to handle those states. And ultimately, you know, life throws a lot of curveballs. So what are we gonna do when the bigger, bigger stressors come. Right?
JEFF: Right.
JULIE: And I always say to people I work with, you know that it’s very important that you start today to build an inner nurturing voice if you don’t have one. If you have one and it’s kind of wobbly, it’s very important that you learn to strengthen that voice. If you don’t have one, the good news is it can be developed. And it’s very important to start now developing it, because you’re going to need that voice even when you take your last breath. Right?
JEFF: Yeah. I like that. Yeah, that strengthening your own internal nurturing voice. I think of it as like self talk or something like that. But I like that your own nurturing voice because we’re constantly talking to ourselves all day long kind of thing.
JULIE: Right. And I break it down and make it really simple in my book. So I say the young part of you, that emotional brain part of you that you know, the part of you that reacts very quickly in fight, flight, or fright, that part of you I call the feeling self, you know? And that’s where all the feelings that are sad, happy, scared, worried, ashamed. And then I say, you know, your adult self can be either an inner nurture, a neutral voice, you know, just a voice that says, you know, when you hear a voice in your head, the adult voice just says, I should wash the dishes, right? It’s just a neutral voice or an inner critic. Okay? And so most people that struggle with, I see this across the board with all the over eaters and imbalanced eaters I work with, struggle with a very overdeveloped inner critical voice. Okay? A voice that’s constantly judging and criticizing them that they’re never good enough, never perfect enough. The majority, I would almost venture to say 100% of the people that I’ve ever worked with do not have a well developed inner nurturing voice.
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: And this inner nurturing voice, this inner nurture has a lot of roles. This voice is going to soothes you. This voice is going to comfort you. This voice is also going to reassure you and provide hope. This voice is going to encourage you and very importantly, this voice is going to set limits. And so this voice, this inner nurture, it becomes your inner limits setter, so that means limits are set from a nurturing place, not a critical place. So for example, one of my 12 week groups this week, someone was talking about setting some limits with herself and I said: “It sounds like the way you set limits is you access that inner critic, like a drill sergeant tells you: ‘Better stop eating those chips, you’re going to get fat.'” Right?
JEFF: [chuckles] Right.
JULIE: And I said, I like you to set that limit with your inner nurture and maybe dialogue between feeling self and the inner nurture. So maybe the inner nurture says: “You know, probably we should stop eating the chips, you know, we had a handful.” And the feeling self says: “I don’t want to stop. I want to finish the bag. They taste so good.”
JEFF: Right. Right – right.
JULIE: Maybe this nurturing voice, instead of a critical voice, says: “Well, that’s ridiculous. That’s why you gained the weight and you’re never going to get it off doing that.” Right? Instead of that voice, let’s access a nurturing voice. It says: “I can understand wanting to have more of the chips. They tastes good and you had a really hard day. I’m wondering what you’re feeling right now. If we really want to have the chips, we can have them, but before we have more chips, tell me what you’re feeling. What’s going on? What came up today?” Right?
JEFF: Yeah. I love what you’re saying Julie, and really increasing the awareness. And it’s like mindfulness kind of stuff.
JULIE: It’s totally mindfulness. My whole second book is a seven skill mindfulness practice called Inner Nurturing. The mindfulness practice, we can go into some of those steps. I can share them with you. It is all about mindfulness. It is all about building that voice and building an alliance between that voice and that very young part of us that has trouble regulating and rewiring that brain so all of this gets much easier as we go.
JEFF: Yeah. So it becomes habit. This becomes the habit.
JULIE: Yes. And I’m like a living, breathing example because I did this work before I knew about the neuroscience. I mean, I did this work on myself.
JEFF: Right.
JULIE: Over time, I mean, I always say to everyone that I work with, you know, you’re looking at somebody who did not have an inner nurturing voice years ago. You know, when I was young, and I didn’t come from very nurturing parents, and so if I could develop it, anyone could develop it. I had a very strong inner critic voice and over time I built that other voice. It’s incredible how my brain got rewired because I just don’t have a strong inner critic voice in my head anymore. It’s just really shrunk that voice down.
JEFF: Yeah. Well, I mean, Julie, you’re talking about like I’m guessing many years of practice.
JULIE: Many years of practice, but the way I saw it was I knew I didn’t want to live with the kind of thoughts I had. I remember a point in my own journey where I thought, wow, I learned about cognitive therapy at that point in time. And actually before I was a therapist and because I was always really interested in this and I was a psychology and psychobiology major, and you know, in college, and so it was always studying and reading this, cognitive therapy came out. I was thrilled because I always wondered like, how do I get rid of all the negative thoughts I think. I think so many negative thoughts about myself all the time. How do I stop that? I can’t just go buy a CD and plugged it in and change my brain. I can’t change the thought. So how does one do that? When cognitive therapy came out, I realized that I could kind of catch, this is how I call it in my books, catch and reframe. I could catch those self defeating thoughts, you know, really have to be mindful that I just said something to myself like, I’m never going to, or I wouldn’t be able to or I can’t, you know, something negative and self defeating and that I could find a reframe that fit. Prior to my doing this, you know, this was a time when affirmations were really big. And I used to find that affirmations there were fine, but they didn’t really work because it didn’t work for me to say: “I look hideous in this outfit.” And then say: “I’m a beautiful child of God and everything is fine.” You know, like it didn’t touch it for me.
JEFF: [laughs] Right. Right – right. Yeah.
JULIE: And so, you know, I read every book on affirmations and I was doing it. I was like, that’s not changing how I think. Like I don’t think I look beautiful. I can’t say I look beautiful and I don’t think I look beautiful. But when I learned how to say something to myself, let’s say I had a thought like I look terrible in this outfit and then maybe I had a thought that said something like, I’m proud of myself for choosing something comfortable to wear today even though I’m not liking as much how it looks. But you know, I could find a way to honor myself that I picked something comfortable even though maybe it was too loose or whatever. And then something was moving, something was changing, you know?
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, one, becoming aware of thinking that happens automatically that is problematic that leads down a same old path and that same old path could be emotional eating or drinking or doing drugs or whatever. And then, you know, what I’m hearing from you is that you really like set yourself out on a path to, you know, you acknowledge that thinking was not what you wanted to have in your head or in your life and you started trying things to combat that thinking. Maybe that’s the wrong word there, but to change it.
JULIE: Or to replace it over time.
JEFF: To replace it. Yeah.
JULIE: I really practice a lot of self witnessing and self observation. You know, I would notice if I thought negative thoughts or even there was a point in time where I noticed that complaining, complaining and venting to friends. I would notice that when I did that I felt more depressed about whatever it was. And so I began to feel [inaudible], look what happens when I complain a lot. I don’t feel better. I actually feel worse. So, I wonder if there’s something else I could do. So perhaps instead of complaining, maybe vent for a second but then maybe find another way to look at the problem rather than just stay in the venting. So I was kind of observing all of these things.
JEFF: Yeah – yeah. So I want to, you know, kind of take this conversation and expand it a little bit to the family system kind of thing. I think you mentioned it right at the beginning, and that is like the family that we grow up in, whatever is happening around us, whatever we see our God and goddess, our mom and dad or our caregivers, people who we respect, whatever they’re doing around us, whatever kind of self talk they have, whatever kind of behaviors they have or you know, rationalizations of those behaviors. For children, it’s like they learn that. They see that and it becomes their norm.
JULIE: Yes. I mean, that’s all they know.
JEFF: Right. Right – right. Exactly. And I mean, so one of the things that I do with families is have a very simple diagram where I’m just talking about behaviors in the family. And it’s like in the middle is the person who’s in the identified patient role or the victim or something like that. And then there’s roles that happen around them. And so one can be helping and other one can be blaming and other one can be avoiding. So, it’s like just in like the blaming, I can imagine whatever kind of words are coming at someone or even a child is hearing a parent blame, even if they’re not blaming them. It’s like they’re blaming the boss or, you know, the economy or whatever. So it’s just like –
JULIE: Monkey see monkey do.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. And it isn’t like it’s someone’s bad because of it, but it’s like this is like a crucible that we grow up in. And it’s so important and that we assume that we’re getting everything we need to grow up and develop and be all that we can be or to contribute in the world and the way that we feel most blessed. However we do that, but the thinking behind that, it’s just the childhood part of that just seems so important. And then if there’s addiction in the family, regardless if it’s alcohol or drugs or food or whatever, then those patterns are what someone is surrounded with and they assume are normal.
JULIE: Yes. And that’s why, you know, for anybody who’s in recovery, it is important to have the people that are closest to them. Learning skills as well. You know, learning how as a family member to provide that consistent and sufficient, you know, emotional nurturance. Learning how to, let’s talk about some of those skills. For example, learning how to listen reflectively to the person who’s struggling with something. You know, listen reflectively means, you know, put all your own stuff on hold and really stay present to what the person is sharing with you. No fixing, no problem solving, no advising. Just staying present to hearing that. Perhaps even helping the person who’s sharing, you know, even identify more of their emotions, maybe their needs, what their thoughts are. And then a really critical skill that I think family members, caregivers, people offering support need to be capable of again, this is all covered in my second book is Validation, right?
So, when the person who’s struggling with alcohol or food, you know, says: “You know, I feel really sad about my life. I feel a lot of regret about my life.” Let them know that it’s okay to have that feeling, right? Or I feel like I’ll never have recovery. Well that’s understandable to have that feeling. I can understand feeling that way. Validation is massively critical. It’s so critical when our brain is forming, but it’s no less critical when we’re adults. We were all thirsty for validation. We walk out in the world, all of us looking for validation, looking for someone to say our experiences make sense, our feelings are acceptable and understandable. Right?
JEFF: Sure. Absolutely.
JULIE: And then even more, should we cover a few more skills that we want our family members to take on board?
JEFF: Sure. That would be great.
JULIE: So in my book, when I’m talking about inner nurturing, I’m teaching the reader to go inward, pop the hood and identify like we said, those emotions, and needs, and bodily sensations, and thoughts, and learn how to self validate. We just talked about caregivers validating of the person who’s struggling, but also we want to learn how to self validate. And then as we’re building that inner nurturing voice, we want to use that voice to do a few tasks. Okay? And so we can either be doing this ourselves, we’re building an inner nurturing voice and we’re learning the skills I’m about to share. Or we can be a caregiver or a family member and we can practice these same kinds of skills. So, one basic skill would be to reinforce the alliance between you as a nurturing being and the person who’s struggling. Reinforcing that alliance.
So what does that look like? You remind and you reassure the person that you’re there, that you love them, that you care about them, that you’re there to help, right? You offer love and support. I love you. I care about you. Any way that I can help you, I’m going to. You offer comfort and soothing and this means learning what comforts your child who’s struggling with overeating. What comforts your husband who’s drinking too much. What do they find comforting. What do they find soothing?
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: So these are all skills, and we have to learn these ourselves. We have to learn how to remind and reassure ourselves that there’s a part of us that is sick and take care of us. We have to learn how to love and support ourselves and we have to learn how to know how to comfort and soothe. Right?
JEFF: Yep.
JULIE: And these are all skills we should be learning. Could be learning when we’re very young. But something that I think is going on now, maybe for the past 50-70 years even is what I call, I write about this in my book is a Global Nurturance Crisis. You know, I think this is why we see, I personally believe this is why we see more obesity and addiction, not because there’s more available drugs and food. Yes, that’s true. But I think it’s because 50 70 plus years ago we had large villages of people and we got a lot of connection and we got a lot of people. If mom and dad weren’t so good at nurturing the lady down the street was, or grandma was or, you know. And now we have nuclear families, we have two parents who are stressed out working a lot of hours, perhaps too tired or unskilled to do the nurturance that they need to do and brains are getting formed this way.
JEFF: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean there’s a lot of people who are like working online and they may have a fair amount of connection online, but they don’t have that much face to face, eye contact kind of connection or like just human connection kind of thing.
JULIE: And touch. Touch is very important.
JEFF: Yeah. So I thank you very much for being real clear about those skills. One of the things that I’m wondering about with what you do, Julie, do you see people who may have, like, you know, they had an addiction in the past, they’re in recovery or they’re not having problem with whatever they did in the past, but now what they’re doing is they’re doing something else to access or a problematic place like emotional –
JULIE: Yes. I mean, I see that all the time when my emotional eaters are overeaters, especially if they’re going on a diet, which is not something I encourage. I done it in my work and my 12 week program, I don’t encourage dieting. It’s kind of an anti diet program because obviously the problem isn’t about, you know, cutting down your intake alone. You know, it would have to address those deeper imbalances. But oftentimes people will just put themselves on a diet cause they just want to lose some weight really quickly. And typically what happens is that they put themselves on a diet, they cut back on their eating and all of a sudden they come in and they say: “I’m shopping. I’m way over shopping. I’m doing way too much internet watching. I’m binge watching television programs.” So the same challenges of seeking comfort and seeking excitement and seeking stimulation, you know, outside the self.
JEFF: And then like the skills you were talking about are skills that really anyone with any kind of, you know, problematic, excessive compulsive or addictive kind of behavior would benefit from.
JULIE: Totally, yes. Any addictive behavior, I mean, anyone with any problem where they have trouble regulating their behavior could read my books. And people always say that, they say: “Boy, your books aren’t just for overeaters.” People could read these books and they can begin to practice these skills. And I like to say to people that one of the reasons I think people don’t practice the skills is because any of this skill building, including everything that I cover in my books, is no different than if you want to learn to play the guitar or the piano, or you want to learn to speak a language, another language. Okay?
JEFF: Right.
JULIE: You have to have some way you’re going to learn it, right? So you’re going to learn the guitar and you have your books and maybe your teacher and you’ve got to go through your drills, right? Or you’re learning your Spanish and you’ve got to practice your speaking and listening in English and Spanish and whatever. You’ve got to practice. You’ve got to practice and practice and practice and practice and practice.
JEFF: Right. Yeah.
JULIE: And I use the example of Spanish because I’m learning Spanish. I’ve been learning Spanish for like a year and a half in my car when I have time. I used a Pimsleur cds. And when I was first doing it and they would kind of speak fast, I would think, oh, you know, have kind of a negative, I’m never going to get this. Like this is so challenging. And then of course I said: “No, I’ll get it. You know, just go slow and I’ll get it.” And then after practicing and practicing and practicing and practicing, I started to notice that the skill was kind of developing in my brain. It was coming more naturally for me to just come up with the words in Spanish. This is the same thing if you’re learning the guitar, when you start out, you have to reach your fingers and place your fingers and the strumming is awkward. And then after a while your fingers are learning it. Your brain has kind of wired it in, right? But it’s not fast. I mean learning the guitar typically is not fast learning, languages is not fast. And this is where I believe where people struggle is in the practicing of the skill. I can teach them all the skills they need to recover. I really can.
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: I say to people when they come to see me, they say: “How long will it take?” I say: “How much will you practice?”
JEFF: Right. I am so on board with what you’re saying Julie. I mean, just when I think about like what I’m doing with this, you know, different family groups and stuff like that. There’s a lot of wonderful treatment centers out there and some of them have family programs, but the family program is like a long weekend or even a week. But if you go there and you hear a lot of new information, even when it’s great and I think about like stuff that I’ve learned in my life, you know, and then I’m at some workshop for a week or something and then I go home and I try to integrate it into my life. And it’s exactly what you’re saying. It’s like I need to have practice, practice, practice. I need to have a structure in my life where I’m going to be reminded of it, I’m going to use it and I’m going to get a little feedback about, or I’m able to either journal or something like that, but some way to kind of keep myself accountable like, well how did I do with that? What worked well? Where were the challenging areas and when it got challenging, then what did I do kind of thing.
JULIE: Right. And if people would stick with, you know, I think if someone has a skill building program, that’s the other thing that you have to stick with it. When people come into my groups, we’ll work on, you know, these particular skills. Like there’s a skill I teach in my first book called an Inner Conversation. And it just gets you getting the parts talking, you know, like what am I feeling? What am I needing in a particular situation? And bring that inner nurturer voice in. And so when every week when I run my groups, I’ll say: “How many of you did your inner conversations for homework?” And people say: “I didn’t do it. I thought I would do it.” People will commit. I’m going to do it. Like we make commitments and intentions. I’m going to do it every day. I’m like, okay, let’s see if that happens. You know, they come in and they say: “I didn’t do it at all.” And so what happens when I work with them as I say, okay, let’s get a pad and paper and pen and let’s do it right now. Okay?
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah.
JULIE: Because I need to build that muscle. And I understand sometimes when it’s not fun and it’s not quick, like I want to eat the bag of chips, I don’t want to take out a pad of paper and pen. That’s too long. It takes too much time.
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: And so, you know, I give them tips. I say: “I know it takes time. So allow yourself to have the bag of chips after you write.” Make it like a reward. Like if I do my homework, if I do my inner conversations, then I can still have the bag of chips.
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: But it’s that getting people to practice that is the make or break issue really is not like what do we do to recover? We know what we do to recover. It’s how do I get you to consistently practice these skills until their second nature.
JEFF: Well, and the other thing that I’ve thought about along this same line is there a way to make this fun or enjoyable or to be able to celebrate milestones or can I remind myself of the reward at the end kind of thing.
JULIE: Right. Right.
JEFF: And it’s like, I love what you’re saying and it’s like, there’s no silver bullet here. It’s like this takes work. And it’s like what your clients say like: “Julie, how long is this going to take?” And you come back and say: “Well, how much are you going to practice?” [laughs]
JULIE: Exactly. Because if you practice, practice, practice, practice, it’ll be much faster. Right?
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah. Right. So with your course or your books, is there anything else that you want to highlight? We’re kind of bringing this to a close, so I want to give you opportunity to kind of shine light on some areas that you may not have yet.
JULIE: Well, in terms of the work that I do.
JEFF: Yes.
JULIE: First off, I want people to know that they can go to my website which is overeatingrecovery.com and there’s lots of blog articles about overeating, emotional eating, food addiction. They can also download two free chapters of both of my books from the website. My 12 week program is actually my first book, The Emotional Eaters Repair Manual is actually based on my 12 week program. My 12 week program, I’ve been running for about 27 years. And I wrote the book because I wanted people outside Los Angeles area to have a chance to learn the skills that I was teaching in the program live in Los Angeles. And then after I wrote the book, I developed a program and also a teleseminar coaching format, so people could uniformly take the 12 week program from anywhere in the world.
JEFF: Yeah.
JULIE: I just want people to know about that, that there are, you know, there are resources, you know, programs to help you address emotional eating. And also, you know, lots of caregivers and professionals who work with overeaters who’ve taken program, because as we’re talking about today, you know, assisting people that are struggling with this. The more information we have, the more we understand, you know, when, when people look outside, when they’re running around and they see someone who’s obese, right? And people just, you know, are kind of unkind to people who have weight challenges and they just think, oh, it’s just all about that person’s overeating. And you know, I’d like people to understand that there’s something deeper going on and there is good recovery now. Really when I started working on emotional eating, I mean, I never I thought, I don’t even know if I did, but I thought I coined the term because I never heard anyone use that term 30 years ago. I just wanted to start helping people because there were no real good recovery programs for people who are struggling with food issues.
JEFF: And just in listening to you, I mean you’re framing this as food issues, but I’m hearing too and I’m inspired to, you know, take a look at your book and stuff. But it seems like really anybody would glean nugget of wisdom that they could if they were willing to “practice” that they could benefit from.
JULIE: Totally. I mean, if you have any kind of challenge with regulating any kind of behaviors, you can read my books and just plug in your behavior for the food stuff.
JEFF: Wow. Yeah. And it’s like how many people do you know that don’t have any challenges with anything in regulating any behaviors like –
JULIE: Right, exactly.
JEFF: I mean, do you know any people like that, Julie?
JULIE: No. And if you look at the skills that I teach in my book, most people could use learning how to reframe some of their self defeating thoughts. Most people can learn how, one of the chapters in my first book is practicing unconditional self love and self acceptance. You know, really learning how to have compassion for yourself. Another chapter is on self connection. Learning how to go inward and identify what you’re feeling. So everybody, everyone needs these skills. There’s no doubt about it. Everybody’s life would be improved by working on these skills. No doubt about it.
JEFF: Yeah. This has just been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it. I am motivated to take a look at your books and what you’re up to and thank you very much for what you’re putting out in the world. I appreciate it.
JULIE: Well, thank you for having me. It’s my pleasure to join you today and your listeners.
JEFF: Yeah. And so Julie Simon overeatingrecovery.com. Yes?
JULIE: Yes.
JEFF: Okay.
JULIE: Thank you.
JEFF: Thank you.