BEYOND
BEYOND
Ep. 17 BEYOND Body Image: Anxiety and Transformation with Jenna
Have you ever felt the pressure of trying to maintain the body image you had in your younger years?
In this episode I coach Jenna as she courageously shares her personal journey of grappling with body image and the societal pressures that come with it.
We delve into the power of self-reflection and the transformative impact of using "I" statements to tackle insecurities and embody ownership.
We continue our conversation by addressing the deeply ingrained notions about food and body image that many of us develop from childhood. Through personal anecdotes, Jenna and I transform the exhausting internal dialogue that can accompany eating certain foods, and the coping mechanisms that evolve over time.
I then guide you through a step-by-step process of reframing ineffective thoughts into effective thoughts, illustrating how this shift can transform anxiety into happiness and gratitude. This episode is a heartfelt reflection on the journey to self-love and body acceptance, offering insights and practical tools for anyone facing similar battles.
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Hello, my friend, and welcome to Beyond the personal growth podcast for the people who are healing beyond their conditioning and beyond the cycles that played out before them. My name is Katie Lynn and, with 20 years of experience in the field of psychology and human behavior, I am bringing my natural curiosity, expertise and personal life experiences here for discussions that are guaranteed to be informative, inspiring and entertaining. I'm glad you're here. Let's get started. Okay, today we have Jenna on the podcast. Jenna, thank you so much for being on. I'm so grateful to have you as a guest, and where would you like to begin?
Speaker 2:About finding more confidence in myself.
Speaker 1:And can you give me an example?
Speaker 2:It's like when you feel like I know I'm securing myself, but there's also things that, like I'm very much in that fake it till you make it mentality, and there's those insecurities that I deal with and I want to learn how to face them head on instead of letting them be. You know things that still exist in my life, because faking it till you make it works, but you need to really, you know, stay accountable to what's actually going on and speak to your truth and actually that's actually what's going to help you feel better in the long run.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome. So I'm going to offer you one thing to start, and the first thing is when you speak, I'm going to ask you to replace the word you with the word I. Yeah, yeah, just so that we bring it in and we make sure it's like I'm acknowledging what I experience so important Bringing it, you know, and.
Speaker 2:I feel this so much, so easy to forget, just because that's how I was raised, to like not use I statements and speak more generally. For sure, yeah, and it's really.
Speaker 1:It's a muscle muscle that we build and grow and sustain. It's a muscle muscle that we build and grow and sustain. So can you give me an example, like a specific example, of where you might want to experience more confidence?
Speaker 2:I want to feel more confident in my body and as a woman and someone that I don't look the same way that I looked when I was 16, 17. I'm 20 now, so obviously I don't. I've grown up, I've changed, and I don't think that I was really prepared for that, because it's almost like a second puberty that I'm dealing with right now and no one really talks about it.
Speaker 2:How is women when when I, when we get older, it changes like we change so much just in the how we, like our birth, like our personalities change and mindset changes and just do change so much? And I'm definitely experiencing that right now and it's not easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, my gosh, I really hear this, and one of the things I talk about often with my clients and anyone that I'm teaching or supporting is, as a woman, I'm now 38. And I wish that somebody would have told me that I will live a hundred different lifetimes in this one and I will be so many different iterations of myself, and that that's a part of womanhood. So, when it comes to body, I hear the sentiment I would like to feel more confident in my body because it doesn't look the same that it did when I was 16 and now I'm 20. So if you tuned in to your internal dialogue like what's happening between your ears, what's running, and we put a little microphone in there and we listen to it, what might we hear about your body.
Speaker 2:I think it's easy on social media to scroll through and see people, but I always try to remind myself that a lot of the time it's very easy for someone to angle themselves a certain way or to look different way, and also they to me. They may look perfect, but they might also be dealing with a lot of internal stuff, whether that's about their body image or other things that they're dealing with. I think it's really important to keep that mentality. But even when trying to stay in that mindset, it's so easy to play the comparison game. I think so many times I'm someone that likes to advocate against the comparison game because it's so easy to play the comparison game.
Speaker 2:I think so many times I'm someone that likes to advocate against the comparison game because it's not something that I'm proud that I practice at times.
Speaker 2:But I think, as someone that was raised in front of social media, it's kind of an unavoidable at times when we're doom scrolling and social media can be so uplifting and it's led me to so much good in my life.
Speaker 2:But I feel like sometimes they can have so much toxicity because you can try to stop comparing yourself to everybody or but it's still going to be in your face.
Speaker 2:It's still going to be everywhere and as much as I feel like content and media shifted to be more body positive, there was still so much ingrained into society that is so hatred towards people having basically normal bodies, the way that I would see it, and living and existing like something that irks me is like you'll see some social media creators of um or someone on tv and it's a bigger woman, maybe dating a man that is really physically fit, maybe they're a bodybuilder or they're doing something, and people have so much judgment towards that relationship when you have no idea the way someone looks has nothing to do with their physical activity or their health and I think in society we need to get past that.
Speaker 2:But when you're seeing these creators that you love and then you read their comments that are so some of them are really harmful and hateful and even from an outside perspective I feel awful for these people but selfishly it's like it hurts me too because I'm like, as a woman, like am I never able to be a little bit bigger and date someone that's in shape and like? It's a really hard. It's a hard game in your brain. It really can mess with you a lot and affect your mental health as much as you try to avoid it.
Speaker 1:I'm going to pause you there. It can mess with me a lot.
Speaker 2:I'm going to pause you there. It can mess with me a lot, it can mess with me a lot.
Speaker 1:Is that true to you?
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, because obviously I can't speak to everybody's experience. You definitely could. Just for the purposes of our time here together, I really would love to focus on your experience because you have a desire to feel confident in your body and I really truly believe that every human, if they have that desire, they get to be afforded an opportunity to create that experience for themselves. You know, as we work together today, I'm curious if you forget about social media for the time being, forget that it exists, and you sat with yourself and maybe even you close your eyes for a moment and you really landed in your body. What do you mean by landed in your body? You become really present to it, like you become aware that you have limbs and a heartbeat and a belly and a head and a neck. And if I asked you, jenna, how would you like your body to?
Speaker 2:feel, I'd like to feel empowered Okay, what else? Inspired and fulfilled and healthy.
Speaker 1:So I heard empowered, inspired, happy, fulfilled. Did I miss one? Healthy? Healthy there it is Empowered, inspired, happy, fulfilled. Healthy, healthy, healthy there it is empowered, inspired, happy, fulfilled, healthy. How would you know that your body feels?
Speaker 2:this way, I think I would feel a lot better when I like go shopping, or there are things which I'm getting there, but it's's still you still have. I still have those internal battles that I deal with every single day, and I know I'm not the only one.
Speaker 1:So what's?
Speaker 2:one of the internal battles I think it's the learned notions that I grew up learning but I think are the big is, even if you take away social media, it's like before I even had social media when I was a kid, as someone that grew up female and with my friends, and I started feeling pretty not great about my body when I was so young.
Speaker 2:But it's sad because I shouldn't have had those types of feelings when I should have been playing with my friends and not caring. I was growing. I remember the first time I ever tried to go on a diet I was probably like nine or ten and like that's like wild to think about. But even if you take away the social media part, it's the bias from friends, the comments from family members, the comment from teachers, to be honest, because I remember being in school and back then in health class you still had to talk about calories and food and food had moral value in school and now we know that that's not okay. But that's how I was brought up in school and I think that really is what gave me those internal battles that I deal with as an adult because, as we know, childhood resonates a lot and those are my learned values that I still grapple with to this day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Can you put one into a sentence? What's one internal value that you grapple with today?
Speaker 2:That foods are bad, that there are bad foods that exist that have like that make you a bad person if you consume them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, this is yeah, okay, do you have an example?
Speaker 2:of one.
Speaker 1:Anything that's high sugar, I didn't share much about my background, but I navigated a pretty intense eating disorder for 10 years in my 20s. Yeah, in my 20s, I really deeply empathize with and have so much compassion and understanding for what you speak of, you know, in this conversation, because as soon as you said there are foods that make you a bad person, the first thing that came to mind was ice cream. Yeah, Like sure, and it's like okay. Is that true?
Speaker 2:No, it's milk with sugar.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're getting really nuanced here and I'm really grateful for it. And thank you for the specific example, because this is really helpful for me to understand what we're navigating For sure. Let's say you, jenna, you go out and you've already had three full meals today and you decide you're going to go out for ice cream and you have the first bite of ice cream. Your situation is I took a bite of ice cream. What's the internal dialogue? Do what happens inside your brain.
Speaker 2:It doesn't feel great. Still to this day. Okay, in my brain I think things like um, is this gonna, you know, make me gain weight? Is this gonna make me, you know? I have thoughts of like, even just thoughts, things. They're so ingrained from growing up, even after all the recovery I've done and the work I've done to grow myself past this. It's even just thoughts of like it's close to bedtime. Is this too much sugar? Am I going to be able to get a good sleep? And if I can't be as productive at work in the morning, is that my fault? And it's like all of those things that are so silly, but it's like, it's such a true experience. Or like should I be eating this dairy? Am I going to get acne? Am I going to be bloated?
Speaker 1:Am I going to so how would you, how would you describe the feeling? So you take the bite of ice cream and then it's almost like I feel like your mind goes on a rampage. Yes, and the thoughts, are the thoughts, really fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like really fast and it's exhausting. I am good nowadays better than I was of like pushing them away and being able to move past it and having coping mechanisms, but these are things that any single time that I go get a meal or a snack, I think about these things. It's so ingrained in myself and it's something that I don't know if those tiny thoughts are ever going to go away.
Speaker 1:Okay. Thought is is this going to make me gain weight? The feeling is what Scared? Scared, Anything else.
Speaker 2:There's guilt and anxiety, else there's guilt and anxiety and yeah, it's difficult.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so scared, guilt, anxiety. Where do these feelings show up in your body? And you can close your eyes if you want, if you want to just tune in, yeah, I feel them of like just anxiousness.
Speaker 2:It used to be so bad I'd get like sweat and I just I couldn't do it, like I couldn't physically put myself in those situations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm going to encourage you what I mean by where does it show up in your body? I really want to invite you to facilitate a body connection. You're so young that I feel so honored, jenna, I really do. I feel so honored to be in this space with you today, because I'm like most women don't tackle this until they're like in their early thirties, mid thirties, sometimes forties or fifties. So the fact that you're here and you're in your 20 and you're doing this, I'm like celebrating you so hard. Right now. I'm going to ask you to close your eyes, because your eyes are the lenses of your ego, your mind. So if you close your eyes and you feel into the fear, the guilt, the anxiety, does it show up like in your belly? Do you feel it in your heart? Is it in your arms.
Speaker 2:I feel it in my head, in your head, okay, anywhere else In my head, and then like my feet, your feet, great.
Speaker 1:And then what happens? What behaviors come up? You take the bite of ice cream. You have all these thoughts. You feel scared, guilty, anxious in your head. It's in your feet. And then what do you do?
Speaker 2:I usually tend to put on a front to pretend that there's nothing wrong because, okay, I internalize a lot of the things that I deal with.
Speaker 1:Great self-awareness Anything else you put on the front, so you don't tell anybody. This is happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to cope with it, I tend to be more fidgety, or just might want to walk around a little more, or Okay, do you keep eating the ice cream. Yes, okay, because fun times and life is better than your bad emotions. And bad emotions are temporary, and I don't want to turn 80 years old and say that I never went out with people because I was scared that I was going to gain weight. So that's the mentality.
Speaker 1:Okay. So then what's the outcome for you?
Speaker 2:I find when my life, my love, my life is definitely comes in waves, like like most people, um, and my life is really difficult at that time, like especially exam season, or stressful ever after death of someone, I find that I struggle a lot with food.
Speaker 2:That's one of the ways that I really. Some people tend to eat more when they're not feeling great, but I tend to not eat a lot and I think that's some of my ed behaviors trickling back into my life when I get a lot of stuff going on. So whenever I have a big, big, scary thing happening or a lot of stress, I tend to really affect it. Sometimes it will make me hard to go to sleep at night, but most of the time, if my life is going normal, I'll feel bad about it for a bit, but then I'll be like, oh, wow. Like I'll feel bad about it for a bit, but then I'll be like, oh, wow, like I'll try to remind myself of all the amazing things that happen, because most of the time when you go to get ice cream is with my partner or with my mom and we're able to share those memories together and you never know when you're going to lose someone and that's going to be a laughing scream that you share with them.
Speaker 2:I never know when. I'm gonna, when I'm gonna, lose someone that I love, so to share those moments with them is super important yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. If you take the bite of ice cream, does it make you gain weight?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Okay, so then is the outcome? I made a memory with someone I love.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, okay, did you have fun while you were doing it? Most of the time, yes. The situation was you take a bite of ice cream. The thought is the initial thought. There's a bunch of thoughts, but the initial thought is is this going to make me gain weight? The feeling is scared, guilt, anxiety in your head and in your feet. The behaviors are to like put on a front, fidget, walk around, keep eating ice cream, maybe keep socializing. If you're with people that you love or friends, um, and then the outcome is you made a memory with someone that you love and it was mostly fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, if we look at this particular example, did the ice cream ruin the experience?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:So what created the not so fun in this experience? What was the starting point of it?
Speaker 2:I think it's mostly my, so I struggled with anorexia for majority of my teens, so I think it's baggage from that experience in my life that still exists in my brain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you look at these lines right Cause I wrote down there's a situation which is I eat ice cream, your brain wants to go really big, which is a part of what our brain does. Right it. Your brain does not want me to drill down this specifically, because if I drill down this specifically with you, we will eradicate this belief and it will change who you are. And so your brain is like no, we cannot do that. We know this familiar pattern, we know this loop. We must stay in it. Right? So the first line is I took a bite of ice cream. Second line is is this going to make me gain weight? Third line is the feelings of scare, guilt, anxiety. Fourth line is where in the body or head, feet right Behavior is you put on a front? You act like nothing is really wrong, act like you're not experiencing this internal chaos and upset, and the outcome is making a mostly fun memory with people that you love. Okay, so which one of those lines causes the problem?
Speaker 2:Am I gonna gain weight, having those thoughts?
Speaker 1:Yes, the internal dialogue line. So if we want to change the outcome, could we change the internal dialogue? Yes, what are some possibilities?
Speaker 2:It's trying to overcome those thoughts and like get rid of them. What's it Like? Get rid of all of those behavior, like all those thinking patterns, and reframing them into other statements. So what's a possible other statement? This tastes so great. Yeah, I'm so lucky that I get to have ice cream, because a lot of people in the world do not have access to anything like this.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting because a lot of the thoughts that I've heard you share are tied to morality, like goodness, yeah, are you a good person? Yes, okay, I'm just double checking. I'm asking because do you like ice cream? Yes, yeah, that's enough, that's good.
Speaker 2:That's it. I like ice cream. All it has to be.
Speaker 1:That's all it has to be. So let's say, in this situation, we're rewriting it. Okay, so you take a bite of ice cream and your internal dialogue goes yeah.
Speaker 2:I like ice cream yeah.
Speaker 1:It's honest. Right, it's honest. It's simple. I like ice cream, as long as it's true. That's why I said is it true that you like ice cream? Cause sometimes, sometimes, our brains will trick us and we'll be like I don't even like this. Okay, so I like ice cream. So then, if you put that in there, I like ice cream. What are the feelings that come up for you? Happiness. What else? Excitement.
Speaker 2:Okay, anything else, gratitude.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and where does that? Where do those feelings exist in your body, my?
Speaker 2:heart Anywhere else, like my whole body, it's like my soul, just being so grateful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then what are the behaviors now?
Speaker 2:Feeling happy to be eating my ice cream and hanging out with people and living my life, even if I'm not hanging out with people, eating ice cream alone and enjoying my life.
Speaker 1:Are you more present? Yes, okay. And are you fidgeting? No, okay.
Speaker 2:And then what's the outcome now you eat the ice cream and move on.
Speaker 1:I eat the ice cream.
Speaker 2:I eat the ice cream and move on, and then maybe, if I liked it, I'll tell somebody that I recommend that they should go try.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And if you're with somebody, are you having good conversation? Absolutely yeah. And if you're with somebody, are you having good conversation? Absolutely yeah. So is it more of a good experience in this scenario yeah, would you say than the first scenario? Yeah, yeah. So what did we change? The thinking yeah, the I call it the internal dialogue, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know about you, but I have like a committee that lives in my head. That is like chatting all the time, and if I don't keep it in check, they make really poor decisions on my behalf, and so I get to keep it in check, and this process is one of the ways that I do that every day with myself, and so I want to thank you for walking through it with me. What did you learn from it, if anything?
Speaker 2:I learned how to reframe my thinking from negative to positive. Yes, and that doesn't need to always be such a massive transition, it doesn't? You don't need to always think it's hard, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:There's two things I'm going to offer, as I hear you share this. That is for you, but also for anybody who's listening. When I was in my journey of recovery having an eating disorder, one of the things I really wrestled with was like consistent hum of not enjoying being in my body. And then I would hear people being like well, you have to love yourself, and so it was such a difficult task for me at that time to go from it's hard for me to look in the mirror to I love myself. That's a big swing.
Speaker 1:So I always encourage anyone that if you're going to be changing your beliefs which is what we started to do here today together take the most accurate next step, which is I'm in a body, I live in a body. Or, like we did with the ice cream, I like ice cream. Simple, true, relevant, free from any judgments, very neutral. I like ice cream. The second thing is I would invite you, as you continue on in your life journey and you go forward and become even more magnificent, to consider and entertain the idea that maybe it's not about good or bad, or positive or negative. Maybe it's about effectiveness. For sure Is it effective Because in those of us that wrestle with, like anxiety or any type of addiction or eating disorder. What can happen really subtly is there's like this, what I call the governor that lives in our brain and it is constantly judging what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong. That governor doesn't have to be there unless we keep it there.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:This is the woman that I choose to be. If I'm choosing to be this woman, then is this behavior effective for me, is this thought effective for me, or is it ineffective? Does it take me further away? Does it take me further out of alignment? What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:I think it's really true for a lot of parts of my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too, me too, it's like.
Speaker 2:I just saw Inside Out 2. So that's like it shows all of this.
Speaker 1:That character anxiety.
Speaker 1:We used to be best friends, best buds. You know what I mean, and that character was the governor of my life for a decade or so longer, until I really began to practice this new way of being, this new way of thinking, this new way of being, this new way of thinking, this new way of feeling, this new way of relating to my body that we just walk through, and so I really want to thank you for your vulnerability and I really want to thank you for your transparency, because this episode is going to help so many people. Jenna, like I'm so grateful for you. It's a gift, but I'm really grateful for you.
Speaker 2:It's a gift, but I'm really excited for this. Thank you so much for having me Absolutely.
Speaker 1:My pleasure. As we complete this episode, I would love to know your insights, takeaways and feedback. You can message me on Instagram at katielinrojano, or send them via email to katie at katielinrojanocom. Any products or digital downloads I mentioned can be found via the link in my Instagram bio. If you enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to share it with at least one friend and leave a five-star review so we can get these impactful dialogues into the lives of even more people. I would also like to thank my guest for their vulnerability and generosity in allowing us to learn from them and grow alongside them. Until next time, friends, let's go beyond.