This is Here After and I'm your host, Megan Divine. This week's show is a repeat performance. We'll be back with season two soon enough, but for right now, enjoy this episode and visit the back catalog of episodes too while you're at it. This is Here After and I'm your Host, Megan Divine. Each week we tackle big questions from advocates, therapists, and other helpers that let us explore how to show up after life goes horribly wrong. This week, it's all about body image, addiction and loss with special guests Cat de Fata of the You Need Therapy Podcast. Stay tuned, everybody, We'll be right back after this first break. Before we get started, one quick note, while I hope you find a lot of useful information in our time together, this show is not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related to your work. Also a content note. By its nature, show sometimes has some visceral imagery, either included in the actual subject matter or tucked inside some analogies. Hey friends, So, one of the things that's so cool about this show is it lets me meet and have conversations with some of the best people and that interactive inter relating elements solves one of the big challenges of being both a therapist and a writer, namely spending too much time alone in a room with no one to talk to you about myself. In researching today's guests, I learned that she too felt kind of cut off by those therapy office walls, and she took that need for connection one step further. Psychotherapist Cat de Fotas started her podcast You Need Therapy to bring the conversations we usually have behind closed doors out into the public sphere. She specializes in body image and addiction, and as you'll hear in today's show, she has some beautifully useful things to say about the way Paine speaks through the body. Cat, Well, I am so glad to have you in the studio with me today the Zoom the Zoom Studio. Thank you so much for being here. Of course, I'm so excited. So one of the ways that you describe your podcast is that it's a combination of fun and scary, and I feel like that it's a combination of fun and scary is like the most clear overlapping than diagram of awesome, making the scary stuff like really approachable is sort of how I view my work as well. So I think you and I are doing a conversation together is brilliant because I mean, what better people to do scary stuff with than the people who make the scary stuff fun? Right? So the other thing that you and I agree on is that therapy is for everybody. Can you tell me a little bit about therapy being for everybody? Yeah, well, I think And I don't know if you had this idea in your head before you began like actually working in mental health. But back in early days, even when I was in grad school, I thought that people went to therapy when they had like really really really really really really serious issues that like we're life debilitating. And while that's true, what I've learned is that everybody can benefit from digging into their stuff, Like there's always room to grow for us, and I think that there used to be a stigma, and we're working towards it. Of like, therapy is embarrassing. You don't want people to know that you had a therapy. But a lot of what I'm doing is helping people just like identify like deeper parts of their life. We're not talking about everyday, serious serious trauma that happened when they were younger. While we do do that sometimes, but everybody can get something out of talking to somebody who doesn't know them previously, who might help them get to know themselves better. And I don't think that that was expressed to me. It was like, you're going to go to therapy if you're in the depths of a needing disorder, or if you have clinical depression, or if you've experienced significant trauma as a child. It wasn't like, oh, you can like feel lonely and go to therapy. Oh, by the way, everybody feels a lonelys go in their life, everybody. I think this is also like it's that fear of the unknown too. We've got that sort of messaging that you only go to therapy if something is wrong, therefore you're broken. So going to therapy is an admission that you are not good enough in a way. There's there's that message. And also the therapy relationship is behind closed doors, so we don't know what it is, right And if you think that, like I'm going to go to therapy and they're going to ask me questions and it's gonna like destroy my relationships and destroy my sense of self in the world, like I'm gonna hate my parents exactly. You know what I'm thinking as you're saying that, It is like if you look at like media, TV, shows, books, all that, how that a therapist used to be portrayed, and they still do this sometimes, like how a therapist is portrayed. It's like where these like very like closed off people, our offices like stuffy, and there's like a hard couch you sit on and we sit with our back towards them, or we just not at them, or we just like maybe make some judgment. It's like the how a therapist used to be trade is so not my experience of therapy, and so of course I wouldn't want to go to that. And we actually we actually talked about this in the other episode. It seems like the other day, but the other episode where we're talking about media portrayals of grief and therapy and that like therapists get portrayed even now as like these bumbling, vending machines of platitudes and why would you want that? I also love what you just said. They're about, like I feel like everybody deserves a neutral party in there. Well, I guess that's an oxymoron, right, A neutral party in their corner doesn't actually make sense, that's not logical. But like this idea that you have somebody in your corner that you can talk to about your daily life, that there's no ramification for that. Like if you talk to your partner or you talk to your best friend about something that's troubling you, then that's a thing. Like if you're having a challenging time with some relationship stuff and you bring it to the people you're in relationship with and then well, then that's a thing. But having a therapist, you get to say what's really true for you without worrying that you're going to hurt somebody else's feelings. Yeah, and you don't have to worry about how giving information about your best friend to your partner might impact your partner and your best friend's relationship. Exactly. I don't know your best friend and I don't know your partner, so what I really think about them doesn't really matter to you, Exactly. I love that about therapy, So pro therapy, yea, we love it. One of the things that that I certainly hear a lot and spend a lot of time focusing on is when people are wrestling with grief of any kind. So we've covered this a lot, like grief is anything from you know, the loss of a job to the loss of health or wellness through the death of people you care about, all of these things. Like people are sort of afraid to go to therapy for those things, for all those reasons that we talked about, but also like a lot of therapists aren't really up to speed with grief not being something that has a solution to it. Yeah, so what's your relationship with grief, either as as a person or as a therapist? Okay, I was hoping that we were going to get to this because I've said this on my podcast before, But when I was in grad school and even in like probably the first like five years of being a four or five years of being a therapist, I was like, I can handle most things, Like I can handle a lot, Like I worked in a treatment center that like threw me into the fire. But what I don't do is I don't do grief work. And I even would say that when people like what when I was starting private practice and people are like, what do you specialize in? What do you am? I I do this, this, and this. What I don't do is grief, which to me, I'm like sitting here being like, I can't believe I said that, but like I did, and that was like the truth. But they don't teach you this in school. I had one class on grief and loss, and to be honest, in grad school I didn't soak much of that up because it didn't seem important. I was just like, well, I'm not going to work in that, so I'll pay attention to the addiction class, I'll pay tension to the trauma class, but I'm not doing grief and loss, which is hilarious and horrifying. I know it wasn't the way that. What I remember from back then is nobody really made it that big of a deal to me. And that's that's what I mean by hilarious and horrifying. I don't I don't want you to think that. I meant that, like you are hilarious and horriforing, but that that every person who walks through your door as a therapist is carrying grief of some kind, every single one of them, or else they wouldn't be there. And so like to know that graduate programs are not framing every single topic that they teach as this is all a grief issue like this. This just infuriates me because we're putting clinicians out into the world who aren't aware that no matter what you say you specialize in, you specialize in grief. You have to. You have to, well you already do. You can be aware of it or not aware of it, but you already do. And what's funny it is like I'm sitting here being like I'm going to specialize at this point, I was like getting heavy into addiction work, and I'm like, well, the reason that people, most of the time that I'm working with they have some kind of addiction, it's because they've experienced some grief or some loss, and when we help them find a path towards recovery, they have to grieve their addiction. Like that's a loss in itself because that's something that at some point to them was helpful exactly very close to them. Yeah, like that addiction met that need. There's actually a quote from you that I pulled that that really illustrates what we're talking about here. So there's something that you wrote on your Three Chords Therapy website about body image and addiction. And you said addiction is a way to meet legitimate needs in illegitimate ways. So the question here isn't why the addiction, It's where is some unmet need causing you pain? The question isn't why do you have a negative body image? The question is where are you hurting? H And I love that that's exactly what we're talking about. I love the layer that you just added to that though, that you know, we think addiction about a new kind of addiction, terrible thing, And the reality is is that addiction meets a need. Can I tell a little story? Yes, I didn't make this up, and I wish I could credit it to somebody, but I have no idea who created this. But this is how I describe addiction, why it's so hard to get out of it, and why we might want to look at it a different a little bit differently. You might have heard this story too, But imagine you're like swimming in a river and it's great, it's beautiful, everything's wonderful, and then all of a sudden a storm comes and there's all these waves. You start to like feel like you're drowning. You don't know what to do, and you're grabbing things and you're just flailing, and all of a sudden, you grab and you find a log and you hop up on this log and it's kind of like a raft and you hold on really tight, and so then you're you're safe and through the storm, you sit on this log, hold onto it, and you survive. And then the storm passes and then you're still sitting on this log and you're still like gripping it really tight, and there's no storm anymore, so you don't really need to grab on this log because you actually can't swim. But all you know is that this log saved your life. And there's so much fear around what's going to happen if I let go of this log, because before I was holding onto this log, I thought I was going to die. And all you have to do is let go of the log and swim and maybe you can get over to land or wherever you need to go. But you are refusing to let go of it. So what saved your life is now keeping you from living your life. And that's how I describe addiction to so many people who are like I don't understand why I can't just stop, or even friends and family of people who are struggling with some kind of addiction. It's like, this is what it feels like to them that if they stop doing this thing that is actually killing them now, they're going to die. I mean, we can ground this in something really simple here. So if you are a smoker and you're trying to quit smoking, right, but you use a cigarette break, I'm doing air quotes here. You use a cigarette break as a way to get yourself. You know, I need a break from work, and the only way you can get that is to take a cigarette break. Or like, I'm at a party and I'm feeling really overwhelmed, so I'm gonna go take a back smoke break. Right. If you just try to quit smoking, but we don't address other ways for you to deal with your overwhelm or to advocate for yourself to ask for breaks, you're going to go right back to smoking. Yeah. Unless we talk about what smoking is serving, just to harp on smoking here, Like, unless we really speak honestly about the benefits that smoking gives you, we're never going to help you quit smoking. And that's true for any addiction, Like they are all serving a purpose. And if we just say stop it, we're not addressing what that thing is starting. This is why I love motivational interviewing, right because motivational interviewing is a whole fun thing, which we should totally do a different show one, But basically it starts with the premise that, like, tell me why your addiction is a great thing? Why is smoking wonderful? Why is heroin amazing? Why is exercise bliemia? Like why is exercising until you like fall to the floor exhausted, Like why is that great? What does that give you? Exactly? Because until we do that, we can't actually move forward with any sort of sustainable recovery or you know, whatever whatever language we want to use around that. So it's really really ricky. And this is why we come back to like everything is grief. I can make everything about grief, like I can make the most ordinary things about grief, but addiction truly, truly is a grief issue. It really really is. Yeah, Because if I think that if we're not asking those questions, then one there might not be an awareness that I can get that need met in a different way, like in a legitimate way. But also I think that there's space to like honor that your addiction, however unhealthy it was really did serve a purpose and give you something. It might sound weird and twisted to some people out there, but there might be this attachment to it that like it feels like a real loss to them. I tell people who have eating disorders all the time, A lot of times you're eating sort of becomes like your best friend. Like that's a relationship. So if we ask you to let go of that, we're also going to be carrying you through a breakup. And if a breakup is not grief, I don't know what I mean, of course, and like thinking about eating disorders there too. It's like the scene of the addiction is so intimate, so of course it's like a best friend, right, which actually leads me into our first listener question, which is a super messy, complicated body question. Are you ready? And this is a good time to like throw this in here because I think we're heading in this direction anyway, So you're ready, I'm ready? Okay. I love this is like we're just jumping into the deep end as always because we already identified that we like have a good, fun scary intersection like that. It's all good, Okay, So this Lestener wrote in My best friend was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer at thirty and went through rounds of chemotherapy, double misstectomy, and finally has reconstructive surgery coming up soon. She has battled disorder eating at times throughout her life, and in preparation to go through this reconstruction surgery, she has to eat more than she's comfortable with in order to create belly fat for the surgery. As someone who loves her, how can I support her as she battles both body image issues as well as fighting for her own survival through cancer. Little gory content warning moment here for some of you who might not be aware of some times, in some versions of that surgery, they actually harvest fat from your belly in order to reconstruct your breasts. So that's what this question is about. This person has to basically use her own body to grow more fat, eat more food than she's accustomed to. So where do we go with this complicated mess? So she's asking how she supports her friend? Yes, right, so this is complicated at the same time, To me, it's kind of simple because what I hear here is like, how do I make this better or like, how do I try to help make this better? And I don't have the answer for that because we're all different. And so what would it be like for you to ask your friend how can I support you? Like what do you need? Versus how can I fix this? Because to be honest, this sounds like a lot and I don't think there's a way to just make this better. It's just gonna be hard. Yeah, it's it's just an impossible situation with so many layers to it too. Right, You've got this terrifying diagnosis. And then it sounds like this listener has known their and it has has had conversations about body image and disordered eating histories. They know each other intimately in this way. What I wonder about this question here is has your friend mentioned it? Has your friend mentioned I worked so hard to come into a good relationship with my body and now like I know where I feel good, and now I have to sort of violate that boundary for myself or violate that relationship with my own body in order to save myself? Like have they brought that up to you? So throwing this back to you cat, Like what if the friend has not mentioned the connection between this reconstructive surgery and a disordered eating past. The friend is like, do I mention it? Do I not mention it? Yes, you do mention it. I feel like we tiptoe around stuff so often when really like what we should just do is like ask the question in a supportive way. You're not going to just straight up, ever give somebody an eating disorder just by one question or one comment or one whatever. You're not going to do that. But it might be the thing that saves somebody. Right, maybe she feels and I don't know because I don't know her and I don't have a lot of information, but like maybe she feels like she shouldn't talk about it, or she's scared to talk about it, or she's waiting for somebody else to talk. Who knows. But what I would do if it was my friend is I would say like, hey, this is what I know about you, and I know we've had these conversations, and I'm just reaching out because I know that if I were you, I would feel X y Z, but I'm not you, So how can I support you and what's going on? And I would just open it up. I think that's a great approach with that idea of how can I support you versus Hey, this must be what you're feeling, this is what you need, this is how to fix it, because a lot of times that's not the way or the light. I mean, in recovery speak, we would like, don't take somebody else's inventory for them, Like you don't want to make assumptions about I know this is hard. Here's what you should be doing. You should be wanting like whatever, Like you don't want to do that to somebody. I love that approach, though, because something you said in there I hear from a lot of grieving people and stressed out people all in generally that I don't want to say anything because it's weird and maybe like nobody wants to talk about it or they're going to try to fix me, and I don't want to be fixed. I love that you said you're not going to cause an eating disorder by asking the question. You're also not going to cause somebody to follow through with suicidal ideation by asking them if they're feeling suicidal. Like asking the question, it's uncomfortable and awkward, but it is better to ask if somebody wants to talk about something, rather than just assume that they don't, right, So in this situation, yeah, like you could say, I don't know if this is something that has come up for you. I just want you to know that I am absolutely ready to listen to it if you want to talk about it, if you want to problem solve some stuff, I'm happy to bounce ideas with you. I just want you to know that you can talk to me about anything, right. It's this permission giving so that we can override that sort of internal silencing where we're like, nobody wants to hear it, I don't want to say anything, right. Well, I think you said that in it might have been your first epoch. So it about like it's awkward if we talk about it, sure, but it's also awkward when we don't talk about it, because then it's just sitting there between us. So you might as well just talk about it. Awkward is in the chat, no matter what you do or say. Awkward is always in the chat. Okay, So not awkward is we need to take a little bit of a break and then we are going to come back and we're going to answer one more question, beautiful, and there we go. There was a really awkward silence there but that's what we do here. We're all about awkward art. We'll be right back, Okay, welcome back, friends. So Cat, you and I can clearly talk about this stuff forever. So I want to make sure that we can get to our second question. You ready, I'm ready, ready, Okay. This listener writes in I recently lost my mom, and one of the big ways I'm surviving this is by exercising a lot, cycling, running, I just took up boxing. I've been reading a lot about grief, and I know you say that anything I'm doing to support myself is normal. So I have two questions. One is this kind of exercise normal? And two? Should I be coping in a different way? So I think we can assume cut for this listener that maybe they've had some body image issues. We don't have enough information about the background of that, but the fact that they are wondering if a lot of exercise is okay or not okay? What do you think? So I think that one of the questions I would ask back is like, how often and how much are we really doing this? Is it like two hours a day? Am I able to take breaks? Is this the only thing I'm using to cope. Because what an exercise addiction um which can fall into the category around eating disorders and body image, can do is it can pop back up really like stealthily if that's even is that a word? Stealthily? Okay, it's not. It is now, okay, great as a way to help you dissociate from what you're feeling. So rather than coping, what we're doing, especially with things like binge eating and exercise, is we're actually dissociating from our feelings. So we're literally when it comes to running, you're running away from your emotions. And so that's what I would probably ask back. It's like, are you still able to feel what you're going through even though it doesn't feel great? Are you still able to feel? And it's this the only thing you're doing to cope. I think there's some also some real kindness and permission in the in the answer that you just gave that like under stress, under hard times, or in emotionally challenging times, old patterns come back up, and I think that there can be for a lot of people sort of a sense of failure like this came back up again, Like I thought I was over this, I thought I was past this. But this is also like this is part of recovery, like what you know, yeah, and remembering like where you and I started this conversation, which was addiction is pain, trying to speak if you're in pain, right, like your body is going to say, I know how to deal with us. I got this. I know how to manage pain. And you know, if if you're questioning into things the way that you just suggested or encourage this listener to do, if the answer is, oh, you're right, this is the only thing I'm doing. I feel like I'm doing this in a way to punish myself or to stop feeling things. That's not a failure. That is information, right that your your body is saying, your mind is saying, this is so much pain. The only thing I know how to do is X, Y and Z, old patterns, old habits, right, grab onto this log, grab onto the log. And so this is like this is just some offering yourself some kindness and saying what other ways might I respond to this kind of pain like this old pattern, these old habits, That's one option. I know where that road goes. What are some other ways that I might manage this pain or sit with this or or any of the other things that we always talk about. I think a really easy quick question to ask yourself when anybody's questioning and I for exercising, is is this thing that's actually really great? Exercise is awesome. We need to be moving our bodies. Is this actually now causing me distress in any ways? Is it giving me more anxiety and I suffering from fatigue? Am I rapidly losing weight? Am I not able to go to other functions because I'm worried about what I'm going to exercise? If it starts taking over your life and that becomes the most important thing, then that's like a telltale sign that maybe something's off. I'm going to bring us back to where you and I started, and you'r you. We opened our time together today with you saying, you know, back when I was a young new therapist, I didn't want to work with grief at all. And of course, as you said so beautifully, what you learned is then grief walks through the door every time you see somebody. So knowing what you know, what do you wish other therapists would know about that intersection of body image and loss. I mean, let's do time travel for a minute. Here, Let's go back to yourself in grad school. What do you wish you had learned back then about that intersection of addiction and loss. I like looking at this as like what I wish I knew. I what I wish that I knew is that when I was asking people or expecting people to do certain things, and when I was giving people a path to recovery and they weren't grabbing onto it, I wish that I knew that I was missing a vital piece, that when I was asking them to walk down this road towards recovery, I was also asking them to leave everything that they knew that was safe and helped them survive. I wish everybody knew that. Sometimes I wish I knew that better than I do. Like that would be awesome, because I still get that way sometimes when I get frustrated, because as a therapist, I will say I'm a human and I can get frustrated with the trajectory of clients sometimes too, and I have to have mind myself, is what I'm asking them to do is not that easy, and to offer grace, not offer them excuses, but grace that this is not as simple Yeah, this life might be better down the road, but right now, this is the worst case scenario for them. Yeah, and not offering a solution into that, but offering I love that, like this idea of offering grace inside that from both you know self to self as the person who is struggling with whatever life is serving at this time, to offer yourself that grace, to ask yourself those questions about where am I in pain and how am I supporting myself? And also because we are pro therapy here, like looking for that in a therapist, in a helper or supporter, that they're able to offer you grace into the nightmare. Yeah. I think that's a really beautiful end note for our time here together on the pro therapy thing. Because your podcast is called You Need Therapy therapy exactly, so I'm throwing I hope you pick it up. Okay, So obviously we are going to link to your podcast in the show notes, but let everybody know where they can find you your podcast and anything else you want them to know. Yeah, well, you can find the podcast literally anywhere you listen to your podcasts. So just type in you need therapy, and then if you want to follow the podcast on Instagram. You can do that and that handle is at you Need Therapy podcast and then if you just want to follow me you can do that as well, and then my handle is at Cat dot defata. We will put all of that in the show notes everybody, so you don't need to spend time figuring out how to spell everything. Okay, thank you so much. It is so much fun. We should do this again. Yeah, you need to come on you need therapy now, that'd be great. We'll do that. Okay, well listen for that. Everybody will make an announcement when we swap places, and coming up next your weekly questions to carry with you everybody, and how you can send in your question for us to use on the show. So don't miss that part. Friends. We will be right back each week. I leave you with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. It's part of that whole. This awkward stuff gets a lot easier with practice, thing, and I definitely want you to practice. So Cat and I talked a lot about how different things affect the relationship you have with your body. Age, illness, stress, Everything affects your body because you live in a body. So learning to be in relationship with your body is a constant conversation. So this week a new reflection question. How does your body tell you when you're in pain? Not just physical pain, I'm talking about other pain, like what is sad feel like in your body? What does shame or even loathing I feel like? And then conversely, what does things like joy feel like in your body? Where does elation live in you? Does it have any room? Sometimes I think my body doesn't have any room for relations So that's my reflection question for this week. How does your body to communicate with you? And how do you usually respond? As always, there are no right answers here. It's all about curiosity and reflection. Speaking of curiosity and reflection, I want to submit your questions from me to possibly answer on air. Remember that this show is nothing without your questions. It is literally a Q and a show. You can ask me anything you'd like. Bring me your clinical questions. You're I'm trying really hard to be a good friend, Frustrations, the things that scare you. Ask me how to handle that one thing that always leaves you feeling like a deer in the headlights and you really need a script for it. Let's talk it out call us at three two three six four, three three seven six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find the number in the show notes or visit Megan Divine dot c O. If you'd rather send an email, you can do that too. Write on the website Megan Divine dot c O. We won't to hear from you. I want to hear from you. This show, this world needs your questions. Together, we can make things better even when we can't make them right. You know how most people are going to scan through their podcast app looking for a new thing. They're going to see the show description for Hereafter and think, I don't want to talk about that stuff. Well, here's where you come in your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all that bad. In here we talk about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word in your workplace, in your social world on social media and click through to leave a review. Subscribe to the show, download episodes, and send in your questions. Want more Here After. Grief education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. Life is full of losses from everyday disappointments to events that clearly divide life into before and after. Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic think positive posters is an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for every human trying to make their way in the world after something goes horribly wrong at Megan Divine dot c. O Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Kimberly Cowen, Tanya Jujas, and Elizabeth Fossio, Edited by Houston Tilly, and studio support by Chris Uron. Music provided by wave Crush.

This is Here After and I'm your host, Megan Divine. This week's show is a repeat performance. We'll be back with season two soon enough, but for right now, enjoy this episode and visit the back catalog of episodes too while you're at it. This is Here After and I'm your Host, Megan Divine. Each week we tackle big questions from advocates, therapists, and other helpers that let us explore how to show up after life goes horribly wrong. This week, it's all about body image, addiction and loss with special guests Cat de Fata of the You Need Therapy Podcast. Stay tuned, everybody, We'll be right back after this first break. Before we get started, one quick note, while I hope you find a lot of useful information in our time together, this show is not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related to your work. Also a content note. By its nature, show sometimes has some visceral imagery, either included in the actual subject matter or tucked inside some analogies. Hey friends, So, one of the things that's so cool about this show is it lets me meet and have conversations with some of the best people and that interactive inter relating elements solves one of the big challenges of being both a therapist and a writer, namely spending too much time alone in a room with no one to talk to you about myself. In researching today's guests, I learned that she too felt kind of cut off by those therapy office walls, and she took that need for connection one step further. Psychotherapist Cat de Fotas started her podcast You Need Therapy to bring the conversations we usually have behind closed doors out into the public sphere. She specializes in body image and addiction, and as you'll hear in today's show, she has some beautifully useful things to say about the way Paine speaks through the body. Cat, Well, I am so glad to have you in the studio with me today the Zoom the Zoom Studio. Thank you so much for being here. Of course, I'm so excited. So one of the ways that you describe your podcast is that it's a combination of fun and scary, and I feel like that it's a combination of fun and scary is like the most clear overlapping than diagram of awesome, making the scary stuff like really approachable is sort of how I view my work as well. So I think you and I are doing a conversation together is brilliant because I mean, what better people to do scary stuff with than the people who make the scary stuff fun? Right? So the other thing that you and I agree on is that therapy is for everybody. Can you tell me a little bit about therapy being for everybody? Yeah, well, I think And I don't know if you had this idea in your head before you began like actually working in mental health. But back in early days, even when I was in grad school, I thought that people went to therapy when they had like really really really really really really serious issues that like we're life debilitating. And while that's true, what I've learned is that everybody can benefit from digging into their stuff, Like there's always room to grow for us, and I think that there used to be a stigma, and we're working towards it. Of like, therapy is embarrassing. You don't want people to know that you had a therapy. But a lot of what I'm doing is helping people just like identify like deeper parts of their life. We're not talking about everyday, serious serious trauma that happened when they were younger. While we do do that sometimes, but everybody can get something out of talking to somebody who doesn't know them previously, who might help them get to know themselves better. And I don't think that that was expressed to me. It was like, you're going to go to therapy if you're in the depths of a needing disorder, or if you have clinical depression, or if you've experienced significant trauma as a child. It wasn't like, oh, you can like feel lonely and go to therapy. Oh, by the way, everybody feels a lonelys go in their life, everybody. I think this is also like it's that fear of the unknown too. We've got that sort of messaging that you only go to therapy if something is wrong, therefore you're broken. So going to therapy is an admission that you are not good enough in a way. There's there's that message. And also the therapy relationship is behind closed doors, so we don't know what it is, right And if you think that, like I'm going to go to therapy and they're going to ask me questions and it's gonna like destroy my relationships and destroy my sense of self in the world, like I'm gonna hate my parents exactly. You know what I'm thinking as you're saying that, It is like if you look at like media, TV, shows, books, all that, how that a therapist used to be portrayed, and they still do this sometimes, like how a therapist is portrayed. It's like where these like very like closed off people, our offices like stuffy, and there's like a hard couch you sit on and we sit with our back towards them, or we just not at them, or we just like maybe make some judgment. It's like the how a therapist used to be trade is so not my experience of therapy, and so of course I wouldn't want to go to that. And we actually we actually talked about this in the other episode. It seems like the other day, but the other episode where we're talking about media portrayals of grief and therapy and that like therapists get portrayed even now as like these bumbling, vending machines of platitudes and why would you want that? I also love what you just said. They're about, like I feel like everybody deserves a neutral party in there. Well, I guess that's an oxymoron, right, A neutral party in their corner doesn't actually make sense, that's not logical. But like this idea that you have somebody in your corner that you can talk to about your daily life, that there's no ramification for that. Like if you talk to your partner or you talk to your best friend about something that's troubling you, then that's a thing. Like if you're having a challenging time with some relationship stuff and you bring it to the people you're in relationship with and then well, then that's a thing. But having a therapist, you get to say what's really true for you without worrying that you're going to hurt somebody else's feelings. Yeah, and you don't have to worry about how giving information about your best friend to your partner might impact your partner and your best friend's relationship. Exactly. I don't know your best friend and I don't know your partner, so what I really think about them doesn't really matter to you, Exactly. I love that about therapy, So pro therapy, yea, we love it. One of the things that that I certainly hear a lot and spend a lot of time focusing on is when people are wrestling with grief of any kind. So we've covered this a lot, like grief is anything from you know, the loss of a job to the loss of health or wellness through the death of people you care about, all of these things. Like people are sort of afraid to go to therapy for those things, for all those reasons that we talked about, but also like a lot of therapists aren't really up to speed with grief not being something that has a solution to it. Yeah, so what's your relationship with grief, either as as a person or as a therapist? Okay, I was hoping that we were going to get to this because I've said this on my podcast before, But when I was in grad school and even in like probably the first like five years of being a four or five years of being a therapist, I was like, I can handle most things, Like I can handle a lot, Like I worked in a treatment center that like threw me into the fire. But what I don't do is I don't do grief work. And I even would say that when people like what when I was starting private practice and people are like, what do you specialize in? What do you am? I I do this, this, and this. What I don't do is grief, which to me, I'm like sitting here being like, I can't believe I said that, but like I did, and that was like the truth. But they don't teach you this in school. I had one class on grief and loss, and to be honest, in grad school I didn't soak much of that up because it didn't seem important. I was just like, well, I'm not going to work in that, so I'll pay attention to the addiction class, I'll pay tension to the trauma class, but I'm not doing grief and loss, which is hilarious and horrifying. I know it wasn't the way that. What I remember from back then is nobody really made it that big of a deal to me. And that's that's what I mean by hilarious and horrifying. I don't I don't want you to think that. I meant that, like you are hilarious and horriforing, but that that every person who walks through your door as a therapist is carrying grief of some kind, every single one of them, or else they wouldn't be there. And so like to know that graduate programs are not framing every single topic that they teach as this is all a grief issue like this. This just infuriates me because we're putting clinicians out into the world who aren't aware that no matter what you say you specialize in, you specialize in grief. You have to. You have to, well you already do. You can be aware of it or not aware of it, but you already do. And what's funny it is like I'm sitting here being like I'm going to specialize at this point, I was like getting heavy into addiction work, and I'm like, well, the reason that people, most of the time that I'm working with they have some kind of addiction, it's because they've experienced some grief or some loss, and when we help them find a path towards recovery, they have to grieve their addiction. Like that's a loss in itself because that's something that at some point to them was helpful exactly very close to them. Yeah, like that addiction met that need. There's actually a quote from you that I pulled that that really illustrates what we're talking about here. So there's something that you wrote on your Three Chords Therapy website about body image and addiction. And you said addiction is a way to meet legitimate needs in illegitimate ways. So the question here isn't why the addiction, It's where is some unmet need causing you pain? The question isn't why do you have a negative body image? The question is where are you hurting? H And I love that that's exactly what we're talking about. I love the layer that you just added to that though, that you know, we think addiction about a new kind of addiction, terrible thing, And the reality is is that addiction meets a need. Can I tell a little story? Yes, I didn't make this up, and I wish I could credit it to somebody, but I have no idea who created this. But this is how I describe addiction, why it's so hard to get out of it, and why we might want to look at it a different a little bit differently. You might have heard this story too, But imagine you're like swimming in a river and it's great, it's beautiful, everything's wonderful, and then all of a sudden a storm comes and there's all these waves. You start to like feel like you're drowning. You don't know what to do, and you're grabbing things and you're just flailing, and all of a sudden, you grab and you find a log and you hop up on this log and it's kind of like a raft and you hold on really tight, and so then you're you're safe and through the storm, you sit on this log, hold onto it, and you survive. And then the storm passes and then you're still sitting on this log and you're still like gripping it really tight, and there's no storm anymore, so you don't really need to grab on this log because you actually can't swim. But all you know is that this log saved your life. And there's so much fear around what's going to happen if I let go of this log, because before I was holding onto this log, I thought I was going to die. And all you have to do is let go of the log and swim and maybe you can get over to land or wherever you need to go. But you are refusing to let go of it. So what saved your life is now keeping you from living your life. And that's how I describe addiction to so many people who are like I don't understand why I can't just stop, or even friends and family of people who are struggling with some kind of addiction. It's like, this is what it feels like to them that if they stop doing this thing that is actually killing them now, they're going to die. I mean, we can ground this in something really simple here. So if you are a smoker and you're trying to quit smoking, right, but you use a cigarette break, I'm doing air quotes here. You use a cigarette break as a way to get yourself. You know, I need a break from work, and the only way you can get that is to take a cigarette break. Or like, I'm at a party and I'm feeling really overwhelmed, so I'm gonna go take a back smoke break. Right. If you just try to quit smoking, but we don't address other ways for you to deal with your overwhelm or to advocate for yourself to ask for breaks, you're going to go right back to smoking. Yeah. Unless we talk about what smoking is serving, just to harp on smoking here, Like, unless we really speak honestly about the benefits that smoking gives you, we're never going to help you quit smoking. And that's true for any addiction, Like they are all serving a purpose. And if we just say stop it, we're not addressing what that thing is starting. This is why I love motivational interviewing, right because motivational interviewing is a whole fun thing, which we should totally do a different show one, But basically it starts with the premise that, like, tell me why your addiction is a great thing? Why is smoking wonderful? Why is heroin amazing? Why is exercise bliemia? Like why is exercising until you like fall to the floor exhausted, Like why is that great? What does that give you? Exactly? Because until we do that, we can't actually move forward with any sort of sustainable recovery or you know, whatever whatever language we want to use around that. So it's really really ricky. And this is why we come back to like everything is grief. I can make everything about grief, like I can make the most ordinary things about grief, but addiction truly, truly is a grief issue. It really really is. Yeah, Because if I think that if we're not asking those questions, then one there might not be an awareness that I can get that need met in a different way, like in a legitimate way. But also I think that there's space to like honor that your addiction, however unhealthy it was really did serve a purpose and give you something. It might sound weird and twisted to some people out there, but there might be this attachment to it that like it feels like a real loss to them. I tell people who have eating disorders all the time, A lot of times you're eating sort of becomes like your best friend. Like that's a relationship. So if we ask you to let go of that, we're also going to be carrying you through a breakup. And if a breakup is not grief, I don't know what I mean, of course, and like thinking about eating disorders there too. It's like the scene of the addiction is so intimate, so of course it's like a best friend, right, which actually leads me into our first listener question, which is a super messy, complicated body question. Are you ready? And this is a good time to like throw this in here because I think we're heading in this direction anyway, So you're ready, I'm ready? Okay. I love this is like we're just jumping into the deep end as always because we already identified that we like have a good, fun scary intersection like that. It's all good, Okay, So this Lestener wrote in My best friend was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer at thirty and went through rounds of chemotherapy, double misstectomy, and finally has reconstructive surgery coming up soon. She has battled disorder eating at times throughout her life, and in preparation to go through this reconstruction surgery, she has to eat more than she's comfortable with in order to create belly fat for the surgery. As someone who loves her, how can I support her as she battles both body image issues as well as fighting for her own survival through cancer. Little gory content warning moment here for some of you who might not be aware of some times, in some versions of that surgery, they actually harvest fat from your belly in order to reconstruct your breasts. So that's what this question is about. This person has to basically use her own body to grow more fat, eat more food than she's accustomed to. So where do we go with this complicated mess? So she's asking how she supports her friend? Yes, right, so this is complicated at the same time, To me, it's kind of simple because what I hear here is like, how do I make this better or like, how do I try to help make this better? And I don't have the answer for that because we're all different. And so what would it be like for you to ask your friend how can I support you? Like what do you need? Versus how can I fix this? Because to be honest, this sounds like a lot and I don't think there's a way to just make this better. It's just gonna be hard. Yeah, it's it's just an impossible situation with so many layers to it too. Right, You've got this terrifying diagnosis. And then it sounds like this listener has known their and it has has had conversations about body image and disordered eating histories. They know each other intimately in this way. What I wonder about this question here is has your friend mentioned it? Has your friend mentioned I worked so hard to come into a good relationship with my body and now like I know where I feel good, and now I have to sort of violate that boundary for myself or violate that relationship with my own body in order to save myself? Like have they brought that up to you? So throwing this back to you cat, Like what if the friend has not mentioned the connection between this reconstructive surgery and a disordered eating past. The friend is like, do I mention it? Do I not mention it? Yes, you do mention it. I feel like we tiptoe around stuff so often when really like what we should just do is like ask the question in a supportive way. You're not going to just straight up, ever give somebody an eating disorder just by one question or one comment or one whatever. You're not going to do that. But it might be the thing that saves somebody. Right, maybe she feels and I don't know because I don't know her and I don't have a lot of information, but like maybe she feels like she shouldn't talk about it, or she's scared to talk about it, or she's waiting for somebody else to talk. Who knows. But what I would do if it was my friend is I would say like, hey, this is what I know about you, and I know we've had these conversations, and I'm just reaching out because I know that if I were you, I would feel X y Z, but I'm not you, So how can I support you and what's going on? And I would just open it up. I think that's a great approach with that idea of how can I support you versus Hey, this must be what you're feeling, this is what you need, this is how to fix it, because a lot of times that's not the way or the light. I mean, in recovery speak, we would like, don't take somebody else's inventory for them, Like you don't want to make assumptions about I know this is hard. Here's what you should be doing. You should be wanting like whatever, Like you don't want to do that to somebody. I love that approach, though, because something you said in there I hear from a lot of grieving people and stressed out people all in generally that I don't want to say anything because it's weird and maybe like nobody wants to talk about it or they're going to try to fix me, and I don't want to be fixed. I love that you said you're not going to cause an eating disorder by asking the question. You're also not going to cause somebody to follow through with suicidal ideation by asking them if they're feeling suicidal. Like asking the question, it's uncomfortable and awkward, but it is better to ask if somebody wants to talk about something, rather than just assume that they don't, right, So in this situation, yeah, like you could say, I don't know if this is something that has come up for you. I just want you to know that I am absolutely ready to listen to it if you want to talk about it, if you want to problem solve some stuff, I'm happy to bounce ideas with you. I just want you to know that you can talk to me about anything, right. It's this permission giving so that we can override that sort of internal silencing where we're like, nobody wants to hear it, I don't want to say anything, right. Well, I think you said that in it might have been your first epoch. So it about like it's awkward if we talk about it, sure, but it's also awkward when we don't talk about it, because then it's just sitting there between us. So you might as well just talk about it. Awkward is in the chat, no matter what you do or say. Awkward is always in the chat. Okay, So not awkward is we need to take a little bit of a break and then we are going to come back and we're going to answer one more question, beautiful, and there we go. There was a really awkward silence there but that's what we do here. We're all about awkward art. We'll be right back, Okay, welcome back, friends. So Cat, you and I can clearly talk about this stuff forever. So I want to make sure that we can get to our second question. You ready, I'm ready, ready, Okay. This listener writes in I recently lost my mom, and one of the big ways I'm surviving this is by exercising a lot, cycling, running, I just took up boxing. I've been reading a lot about grief, and I know you say that anything I'm doing to support myself is normal. So I have two questions. One is this kind of exercise normal? And two? Should I be coping in a different way? So I think we can assume cut for this listener that maybe they've had some body image issues. We don't have enough information about the background of that, but the fact that they are wondering if a lot of exercise is okay or not okay? What do you think? So I think that one of the questions I would ask back is like, how often and how much are we really doing this? Is it like two hours a day? Am I able to take breaks? Is this the only thing I'm using to cope. Because what an exercise addiction um which can fall into the category around eating disorders and body image, can do is it can pop back up really like stealthily if that's even is that a word? Stealthily? Okay, it's not. It is now, okay, great as a way to help you dissociate from what you're feeling. So rather than coping, what we're doing, especially with things like binge eating and exercise, is we're actually dissociating from our feelings. So we're literally when it comes to running, you're running away from your emotions. And so that's what I would probably ask back. It's like, are you still able to feel what you're going through even though it doesn't feel great? Are you still able to feel? And it's this the only thing you're doing to cope. I think there's some also some real kindness and permission in the in the answer that you just gave that like under stress, under hard times, or in emotionally challenging times, old patterns come back up, and I think that there can be for a lot of people sort of a sense of failure like this came back up again, Like I thought I was over this, I thought I was past this. But this is also like this is part of recovery, like what you know, yeah, and remembering like where you and I started this conversation, which was addiction is pain, trying to speak if you're in pain, right, like your body is going to say, I know how to deal with us. I got this. I know how to manage pain. And you know, if if you're questioning into things the way that you just suggested or encourage this listener to do, if the answer is, oh, you're right, this is the only thing I'm doing. I feel like I'm doing this in a way to punish myself or to stop feeling things. That's not a failure. That is information, right that your your body is saying, your mind is saying, this is so much pain. The only thing I know how to do is X, Y and Z, old patterns, old habits, right, grab onto this log, grab onto the log. And so this is like this is just some offering yourself some kindness and saying what other ways might I respond to this kind of pain like this old pattern, these old habits, That's one option. I know where that road goes. What are some other ways that I might manage this pain or sit with this or or any of the other things that we always talk about. I think a really easy quick question to ask yourself when anybody's questioning and I for exercising, is is this thing that's actually really great? Exercise is awesome. We need to be moving our bodies. Is this actually now causing me distress in any ways? Is it giving me more anxiety and I suffering from fatigue? Am I rapidly losing weight? Am I not able to go to other functions because I'm worried about what I'm going to exercise? If it starts taking over your life and that becomes the most important thing, then that's like a telltale sign that maybe something's off. I'm going to bring us back to where you and I started, and you'r you. We opened our time together today with you saying, you know, back when I was a young new therapist, I didn't want to work with grief at all. And of course, as you said so beautifully, what you learned is then grief walks through the door every time you see somebody. So knowing what you know, what do you wish other therapists would know about that intersection of body image and loss. I mean, let's do time travel for a minute. Here, Let's go back to yourself in grad school. What do you wish you had learned back then about that intersection of addiction and loss. I like looking at this as like what I wish I knew. I what I wish that I knew is that when I was asking people or expecting people to do certain things, and when I was giving people a path to recovery and they weren't grabbing onto it, I wish that I knew that I was missing a vital piece, that when I was asking them to walk down this road towards recovery, I was also asking them to leave everything that they knew that was safe and helped them survive. I wish everybody knew that. Sometimes I wish I knew that better than I do. Like that would be awesome, because I still get that way sometimes when I get frustrated, because as a therapist, I will say I'm a human and I can get frustrated with the trajectory of clients sometimes too, and I have to have mind myself, is what I'm asking them to do is not that easy, and to offer grace, not offer them excuses, but grace that this is not as simple Yeah, this life might be better down the road, but right now, this is the worst case scenario for them. Yeah, and not offering a solution into that, but offering I love that, like this idea of offering grace inside that from both you know self to self as the person who is struggling with whatever life is serving at this time, to offer yourself that grace, to ask yourself those questions about where am I in pain and how am I supporting myself? And also because we are pro therapy here, like looking for that in a therapist, in a helper or supporter, that they're able to offer you grace into the nightmare. Yeah. I think that's a really beautiful end note for our time here together on the pro therapy thing. Because your podcast is called You Need Therapy therapy exactly, so I'm throwing I hope you pick it up. Okay, So obviously we are going to link to your podcast in the show notes, but let everybody know where they can find you your podcast and anything else you want them to know. Yeah, well, you can find the podcast literally anywhere you listen to your podcasts. So just type in you need therapy, and then if you want to follow the podcast on Instagram. You can do that and that handle is at you Need Therapy podcast and then if you just want to follow me you can do that as well, and then my handle is at Cat dot defata. We will put all of that in the show notes everybody, so you don't need to spend time figuring out how to spell everything. Okay, thank you so much. It is so much fun. We should do this again. Yeah, you need to come on you need therapy now, that'd be great. We'll do that. Okay, well listen for that. Everybody will make an announcement when we swap places, and coming up next your weekly questions to carry with you everybody, and how you can send in your question for us to use on the show. So don't miss that part. Friends. We will be right back each week. I leave you with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. It's part of that whole. This awkward stuff gets a lot easier with practice, thing, and I definitely want you to practice. So Cat and I talked a lot about how different things affect the relationship you have with your body. Age, illness, stress, Everything affects your body because you live in a body. So learning to be in relationship with your body is a constant conversation. So this week a new reflection question. How does your body tell you when you're in pain? Not just physical pain, I'm talking about other pain, like what is sad feel like in your body? What does shame or even loathing I feel like? And then conversely, what does things like joy feel like in your body? Where does elation live in you? Does it have any room? Sometimes I think my body doesn't have any room for relations So that's my reflection question for this week. How does your body to communicate with you? And how do you usually respond? As always, there are no right answers here. It's all about curiosity and reflection. Speaking of curiosity and reflection, I want to submit your questions from me to possibly answer on air. Remember that this show is nothing without your questions. It is literally a Q and a show. You can ask me anything you'd like. Bring me your clinical questions. You're I'm trying really hard to be a good friend, Frustrations, the things that scare you. Ask me how to handle that one thing that always leaves you feeling like a deer in the headlights and you really need a script for it. Let's talk it out call us at three two three six four, three three seven six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find the number in the show notes or visit Megan Divine dot c O. If you'd rather send an email, you can do that too. Write on the website Megan Divine dot c O. We won't to hear from you. I want to hear from you. This show, this world needs your questions. Together, we can make things better even when we can't make them right. You know how most people are going to scan through their podcast app looking for a new thing. They're going to see the show description for Hereafter and think, I don't want to talk about that stuff. Well, here's where you come in your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all that bad. In here we talk about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word in your workplace, in your social world on social media and click through to leave a review. Subscribe to the show, download episodes, and send in your questions. Want more Here After. Grief education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. Life is full of losses from everyday disappointments to events that clearly divide life into before and after. Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic think positive posters is an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for every human trying to make their way in the world after something goes horribly wrong at Megan Divine dot c. O Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Kimberly Cowen, Tanya Jujas, and Elizabeth Fossio, Edited by Houston Tilly, and studio support by Chris Uron. Music provided by wave Crush.