165. Glennon’s Diagnosis & What’s Next

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And I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me.

What are you doing?

I just feel like my eyes look tired.

Just trying to get them to wake up.

Hi!

How about that?

Jeez.

Yeah, good.

Yeah, that really woke me up.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Very appreciative of you.

Well, hello, pod squad.

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things and welcome to 2023.

We

are going to start this year

with a doozy, as we dozie.

And

accidentally, this is becoming a tradition for us that we can do hard things,

where we start the year

by making a

devastating announcement.

about

my mental health.

Okay.

So

what we're going to do today is I am going to tell you, Pod Squad, what is going on in my life,

a recent diagnosis that I got

that has changed my life in many ways.

And I have been kind of alluding to it in some episodes from last year, but

I didn't feel ready to talk about it.

And then over time,

it became impossible for me not to talk to you about it because it is so,

it's everything that's going on in my mind and my heart and my life right now.

So every interview that we do, I'm seeing it through that lens and I'm talking about it in terms of the work that I'm doing.

And it's becoming impossible for me not to talk about it to you.

What's interesting is that I've only talked to four people about this

and you, Pod Squad.

You haven't really talked to me about it that much.

So I'm, I'm nervous and excited.

I'm skited.

Yeah.

To hear from you because I don't really know that much.

Also, do we want to give a little trigger warning?

Yes.

This isn't a trigger.

This is like a this is like a grenade.

Okay.

So this is a content

blanket.

Yes.

Content weighted blanket.

If you have mental health stuff, if you have eating disorder stuff, and if listening to someone talk about it very openly and honestly and in the moment and in a raw way an unpolished way.

If that hurts you,

stop listening.

We will be here when you get back.

If it helps you, stay.

Okay?

Come to the right place.

Also, I need you to know that I have requested that my therapist, who is a renowned expert in all of these things, is going to listen.

to this episode and take out anything that she feels like is inappropriate for this me to say or for this community.

So there is some protections here going in.

Stay tuned.

Immediately following this will be the notes that my therapist had for me after listening.

So,

you know, our friend Lizzie Gilbert always says that you write about or work on what's causing a revolution in your heart.

And this is what has been causing a revolution in my heart.

And I don't know how to do this.

I'm not a person who compartmentalizes at all.

So I don't know how to do this work where I'm bringing my whole self to it and not share this.

And maybe if I waited a year, I would have a better perspective, but I also just think in a year, I'll just have a different perspective and not necessarily better.

And I like the idea of talking about things more when we're in the middle, messy middle of it.

Yes, I love that.

This world is too full of before and afters.

Exactly of like going through it.

You're like, oh, I have drawn my conclusions and my life lessons and I will impart them unto you, as opposed to like, here I am in this big old world.

Yes.

And if I waited till I was an after,

I haven't, I've never been an, I've, I don't know what that is.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

Who's an after?

Yeah.

I'm alive.

I'm in the middle of it.

I'm

here.

So

last year at this time, I shared with the pod squad that I had had a relapse of my bulimia and that I was feeling a little bit lost about it and not ready to make any big moves about it.

Just on the landing, I called it.

Go back and listen to that one if you haven't listened to it.

That I wasn't ready to make any moves,

but that I was at least standing still on the landing and not descending any further down the staircase.

But I was not ready to ascend, to take any steps because I was too freaking tired of dealing with this particular mental illness my entire life.

So

I

stayed on the landing for 10 months.

I just did nothing and just stayed hyper aware of the fact that I was going to have to start doing some work.

I was open to doing some work,

just not that day.

Do you feel like the 10 months was long?

or short?

Like, do you think now it feels like a blur, like short.

Got it.

And then

Abby and I were at this weekend with some dear friends.

And one of our dear friends was talking about her child who was anorexic.

And

she was talking about the program that her child was in.

And she said

an offhand comment, like, well, you know, obviously she does things like they have to eat three meals a day without any talking about it, without, there's no decision making.

They have to eat three meals meals a day and then, you know, and they said it like it was an obvious thing to me since I had been in the eating disorder world for so long.

And I stared at my friend like, that's the wildest thing.

Are you serious?

That's amazing.

That is something I should do.

I spend most of my day trying to decide whether I deserve to eat breakfast or lunch because of whatever happened yesterday or because of what.

So I spend a lot of my problem solving every day in my mind thinking about whether I should eat or not.

And I thought, what an amazing idea just to decide you are going to eat.

That would take away 80% of my mind.

Anyway, I think what's interesting about that conversation you had was that you didn't know that.

Exactly.

Exactly.

What was amazing about that is exactly that, Abby.

It was that we went into a bedroom after that.

And I was like, how is it possible that that sounds revolutionary to me?

I've been in the eating disorder world for how long?

And this idea that she said to to me offhand like I would know it, I pretended to know what she meant.

I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course.

Of course.

Like it's like mental health 101.

Exactly.

Like, this is not advanced work.

Yeah.

Right.

It was eating disorder 101.

And it sounded to me like an incredible revolutionary idea.

And so that dissonance

was confusing to me because I thought, if people know that stuff, maybe there's a lot of other stuff that would help me that I don't know.

Can I I ask you a question?

Was the revolutionary part about it that

one would eat three meals or was it that there was a rubric, a structure that you could adopt that would eliminate a lot of the mental anguish and gymnastics in your head all day?

It was that.

It was the second.

It was the

ladder.

I never know.

It was the

trick about that ladder sounds like later.

It's the later one you see.

Oh my gosh, that's so good.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Baby.

Wow.

Jesus.

Wow.

Well, now if they don't get anything else from this pun, they'll get that.

Okay.

So what sounded shocking to me about it and such a relief that I wanted to cry was like, wait, it's like someone decided you've lost your privileges of deciding whether or not you should eat.

Like that's not, it's above your pay grade.

So we have a system for you.

And then structure liberates.

You structure liberates.

I thought, oh my God, what if there's other things?

Still

did nothing.

Okay.

I'm just like looking at the stairs.

I tell Abby on our way home from that weekend, I should call that friend and find out who these people are that are working with her daughter.

But of course, I did nothing.

So then Abby one day reached out to them and said, please give me the information for the people.

Because you, you weren't, you couldn't stop talking about it.

Yeah.

You were still just so amazed.

And I could tell there was a little hesitancy.

And I did it unbeknownst to you.

And then I

asked you, I said,

would it be okay if I contact this woman?

She had already contacted me back.

And you were like, yeah, of course.

And I was like, awesome.

And then I didn't write her back, right?

You didn't.

Right.

Yeah.

So

finally, somehow.

I put you on an email somehow.

Somehow I got into contact.

I have an idea of that.

I connected you with the doctor that she gave me.

Yeah.

And then you took it from there.

Yeah.

And

interestingly enough, in the days before I was to have that first meeting with this doctor,

my bulimia came back hard.

Okay.

Was it already scheduled?

Yeah.

Okay.

It was scheduled.

That makes sense.

And I was like, what is going on?

Why am I doing this again?

Remember when you told me?

What did I tell you?

You came into the bedroom because every single time you've confessed or whatever, told me about your relapses, you come in and you're like so soft and sad.

And you're like, I did something bad.

That's what you always say.

I did something bad.

Oh, that's interesting.

And I knew what you meant.

And I said, what happened?

You know, and you said, I relapsed again.

And I knew that this meeting was two days away.

And I just said, come here.

You're just, you're so, this is, this feels so natural to me that like, you would want to get like your last bits in before you actually start going to do the real work.

Yeah.

And like we held each other and you were so sad.

Yeah, I was.

I didn't understand what was happening.

And then the doctor that I talked to first told me that that is the case, that very often, right before somebody goes into the treatment that they actually believe is going to take,

because they're considering telling the the truth and doing the real work.

It's like the last gasps of like, yeah, it's your protective self, is like, you're, they're going to take this thing away.

Yeah.

Right.

It's getting high on the way to rehab.

Like that.

That's right.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

So

here's what happens.

I meet with this doctor.

She's totally amazing.

Someday I'll tell all of you all who these people are.

I'm just not ready for all of that yet.

But

I meet with her.

And then this two-week

or longer, it was so long, this intake process happens.

Basically, I'm just like surrendering myself.

I'm like,

it feels like the people who like commit a crime and turn themselves in.

That's how I felt.

Like I told the whole thing

from the time I was 10 to now, all the best that I could with where I'd been all that time.

And then for the first time, they started doing all of these tests, like doctor tests, like tests on my body and like my period, just

medical tests.

And so it was this very blood test, bone density, blood tests, bone density, all the things.

So.

Which you did all on your own.

You didn't, you didn't require my help in setting up any of this stuff.

I was really impressed by that.

I mean, they really held my hand a lot, but yes.

I know, but you, you walked yourself through that.

I just feel really impressed.

Thanks, Gabe.

So

we have our first

big meeting that is like, this is our findings.

You have to sit down with the doctor and she tells you your findings and diagnosis.

Right, right, your diagnosis and your

plan.

So I sit down and please understand, Pod Squad, that I have come to these people and said, I am a bulimic and I've been recovered for this long and now I'm having relapses.

And I just need to understand what the hell and how to get these relapses of my bulimia under control so I can be less scared and freer and not in danger.

And the doctor sits down and she says,

Okay,

this might be jarring.

So, what

our diagnosis of you based on your history and all of your medical tests is that you are anorexic.

There are a couple forms of anorexia and one is anorexia with purging, okay?

But

she says you are anorexic.

And

I,

I mean, if I could, there is no way that I could explain to you the level of

bafflement.

shock, denial, confusion, the shift of

my identity as bulimic, bulimic, bulimic, and anorexic, anorexia is a totally different thing.

Okay, it's like a different religion.

It's a different identity, it's a different

threat, it's a different way of thinking.

So confusing, and it shook me very deeply,

and I did not believe it.

I was like,

that's just wrong.

I didn't say that, of course but i was just like uh-huh

okay

i guess we'll just get through this somehow and then i'll find my way out of this ridiculous situation that i'm in

then at the end i said

i

feel like this is an amazing overreaction i don't i do not think that i'm anorexic I know anorexic people.

I see what anorexia looks like.

I don't feel like I look anorexic.

I don't feel like I.

And

the doctor said, that is a very anorexic reaction to have.

And I was like, oh,

I feel stuck right now in this conversation because I feel like what you're saying to me is that if I say, okay,

I believe you, then I have anorexia.

And if I say to you, I do not believe you, then I have anorexia.

So I don't know what to do right now.

And basically what she said was, I am an expert on this.

We've done all the tests.

If I were a doctor and I went to a person and said, you have a cancerous mole on your back,

the reaction likely wouldn't be,

no, I don't have a cancerous mole on my back.

You have a cancerous mole.

That is not a normal reaction to a doctor's diagnosis.

And then she told a really, really interesting little tidbit that was like, me telling you that you're anorexic and you saying, I don't think I'm anorexic because I know a person who's anorexic who's, you know, five times skinnier than I am or whatever, is very similar to calling a firefighter and a firefighter coming to your house and getting out the hoses because flames are coming out of your house.

And you looking down at the sidewalk and saying, I've heard that when houses are on fire, the sidewalk's bubble and my sidewalk's not bubbling.

So could you go home now?

While the firefighter is saying, but there's flames coming out of your window.

So

I

finished that meeting.

I told Abby

that night, or maybe it was the next night, we were in the kitchen and it had been a kind of a quiet couple days and Abby was cooking something and the Indigo Girls song, Power of Two,

came on.

We were standing by the refrigerator and you just kind of hugged me and grabbed me.

And there was, there's that line in there that's like,

I'm stronger than the monsters beneath your bed,

stronger than the tricks played on your heart.

Look at them together and we'll take them apart.

And I, in that moment, that's one of our songs, Power of Two.

And I, in that moment, was like, Yeah, it's okay.

Abby's here.

She's got me.

It's going to be okay.

And then

you

pulled away from me and you said,

I can't do this for you.

Ooh.

Wow.

That was really brave, Abby.

Holy shit.

Do you remember this?

She pulls away from me and says,

I can't do this for you.

And it wasn't accusatory.

It wasn't like,

you have to do this.

Like, it wasn't like that.

It was like she.

It wasn't like, this is too much for me.

It was like, I'd do it if I could.

Yeah.

And I can't do this for you.

You have to do it.

It was like her having this realization in the moment.

First of all, she knew what I was thinking in that moment.

She knew I was thinking, she's stronger than the monsters beneath my bed.

She's got this.

And I think when you are a person who is a little, I don't know how to describe the word, like is a little wobbly, you find people who are

not as wobbly.

And then you somehow feel like you are us.

Like, I am not just me, I am us, and you're not wobbly, so I'm okay.

And

it was Abby's way of saying, Oh my God,

I can't, this is up to you.

And this is like scary news for both of us that this is up to you.

I can fix every remote.

I can go, I can go through the house and follow you around and make sure things, everything's working, but I can't do this.

And

that was, if I could explain to you how chilled to the bone I was by that moment, I did not speak for the rest of the night.

I went to bed very early.

I laid there like

fuck.

I've never felt so alone in my own body.

So I am the sick one,

apparently.

Everyone's telling me.

And I'm also the one that has to fix the sickness.

Like,

how,

how?

So, and for a pretty codependent couple, that was a really hard thing to experience through because I think

I realized that maybe my proximity to you was enabling some of this

in some way.

Not that it's my fault or anything, but I just think that it was really important to say that out loud for you and for me.

I think it was incredibly courageous.

You're the one who got her connected to the doctor.

It was almost like that was necessary,

necessary, but not sufficient for her to get well, but she wouldn't have been able to get well unless she or started unless she really took it on as hers.

It's like getting sober, you know, when you make it about you and someone else, it's never, ever, ever going to work.

Yep.

And I,

I pride myself.

I mean, that one of my greatest identities is being your partner and being able to care for you.

And in my mind, I think some, some ways better than you would care for yourself.

Well, yeah.

And so it's like, this was a hard thing for me to say because I had to let go of this part of my identity.

and get how I get my worthiness and how I feel and express love.

Yeah, for you to say, I can't do it.

It was hard.

It was a really,

I just knew in that moment what you were thinking, and I knew I had to say it.

It had to be out loud because you needed to take complete ownership over this process.

Yeah.

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It was a big shift in thinking to me because I was like, and I don't know if anybody in the pod squad can relate to this, but I was like, I did it.

I'm doing the best I can with what I have.

And I have surrounded my children with the people that they need.

And I have created these units of health and strength.

And that's good enough.

And then I realized, oh, I

inside here.

If I don't figure this out, I could die.

And then what good is all of this like

unit that I've created for my kids?

And my,

it was just a very interesting night.

Yeah, you've built a really beautiful life to leave early from.

Right.

Yeah.

So, so then the next morning, I picked up the book that this doctor had written.

Okay.

And I started reading about anorexia.

And

the grief that I had the night before, or the terror, I guess, that I had the night before, just intensified tenfold because I started reading this book about

what an anorexic life looks like.

And I don't know how to explain the feeling of reading things that you have that you thought were part of your personality and who you were,

and reading that they're actually just a collection of symptoms

of an effing disease.

So,

you know, I don't know how to explain all this to the point, but it was like, it was explaining what a hungry brain, how a hungry brain walks in the world and sees the world and experiences stress and experiences anxiety and all the things that people who are anorexic do, like create intense, ridiculous, overwhelming boundaries, like becoming overprepared for everything, including every moment of life, living with high, high anxiety, trying to be unimpeachable in every way, just being extremely, extremely disciplined.

It's like partly anorexia becomes like a religion of control.

As you were reading that morning, I'll never forget it.

You just kept going.

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

Just, you couldn't believe it.

It was like you were reading a biography of yourself

and somebody saying, This is actually not a biography.

This is just eating disorder brain.

Yeah.

And it was so weird because it was like,

well, first of all,

it is stunning to be a person whose life and work

is about self-examination.

Okay.

Like is about

discovering the nuance and minutia of who we are and talking about it every day and then not know

this information about yourself.

It's like

humiliating on a level.

It's pretty impressive also

that you could ignore this part of yourself.

I know.

It is interesting when you think about, I'm reading this book about anorexia and it's all brand new, spanking new information to me.

And it's blowing my mind as if it's the first time I've ever heard of any disorder.

And the first meeting I had with the doctor after this, when I was open to this idea,

she looked at me and I had, I was in my office, I have 4,000 books behind me because all I do is read books.

And she said, Have you read all those books?

And I said, Yeah, I have read all these books.

She goes, Do you think it's interesting that you do not know the first thing about anorexia?

All of those hundreds and thousands of books, and you haven't read one book.

You have avoided information about this disease like

you knew you needed to.

Yeah.

It's so interesting though, because it's like when your only tools a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

I'm sure there is some deeper psychology to you knowing at some level and avoiding it like hell.

And

if you thought, because you were diagnosed when you were 12 or whatever, with bulimia,

you thought that the periods where you were quote unquote sick were the periods where you were exhibiting that.

And that the periods in between when you were exhibiting that, you were just yourself.

Exactly.

So your only point of reference was, that is the indicia that I am sick when I am purging.

Exactly.

And all the other times is just, I guess who Glennon is.

And so you didn't realize that the whole time you were sick and the way of thinking in between those periods of purging was also diseased thinking.

Yeah.

And it was just punctuated

by the bouts of purging.

You just thought that was you.

Exactly.

And more than that, I think

what happened is that I solved my bulimia with anorexia.

Okay.

Like, yeah.

I,

it, so a bulimic, and I was bulimic.

That's like a no-brainer.

Yes.

But it's like becoming a dry drunk.

If you're comparing it to alcohol, it's like you don't ever figure out, I was

horrifically bulimic for a very long time.

And then I got pregnant and I was like, done.

I am done with the shit.

I am done with this shit.

I never, not once

went back and really figured out what the hell happened to me.

I just wrote, I was overly sensitive and I,

and this is just who I was.

And I didn't excavate.

I didn't look at things.

I didn't do the work.

Had I done the work, perhaps I

would have discovered more of this.

But instead, I just used control and discipline and willpower

to crush my bulimia.

And that happens all the time.

Think of the people who have been traumatized by an infidelity.

And then they go on and have relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable.

So they never have to risk having an intimacy and a breach again or make themselves invulnerable to connection.

And they're like, look, I have this relationship.

I got over that.

But you're like, did you?

Yeah.

Because you're creating a world in which you never actually have to go to that place again.

Yes, that's what I did.

Yeah.

Believe me, it was obvious.

The purging, it's just an obvious that that's the.

the thing that makes it anorexia is a little bit more confusing to diagnose.

But in retrospect, the anorexia is obvious too.

I know.

I kind of feel a sense of responsibility of that too, because

it's clear.

I'm not trying to self-centralize this, but we do so much

interrogation of like, you were a little kid and you were going through all of this.

And how come we didn't all bring it out in the open and deal with it together?

And it's been very clear that your restrictive, controlled eating for years has not been a source of ease or joy or peace for you.

And I look at pictures now, and part of the embarrassment of it is

looking at myself and feeling like maybe it was obvious to everyone else.

I can't even think about that.

Like I look at pictures now and I'm like, like, I look at pictures of me before the untimed tour and I'm like, what the oh my God.

Like

it

looks so obvious.

It's like embarrassing to me.

And, you know, some of the other things, it's like the heart, my heart rate is way too low.

My period, my hair, my, like,

I don't know, all of the bones, all of these things.

And also the, the couple people that I've told,

what is makes my heart go blah is that when they don't look surprised,

they're not like, wow.

They're like, huh.

It feels like

bulimios is like being an animal.

And then I fixed it by becoming like a robot.

And I feel like,

you know, thinking about the embarrassment of it, thinking about, okay, this writer of Untamed was like anorexic the whole time I wrote it.

Like, it's so freaking weird.

But I just keep thinking about how hard it is to be both

the detective

of your life and the mystery of your life.

Yeah, that's fair.

Because a mystery's job is remaining a mystery.

Exactly.

That's the mystery's job.

Exactly.

And I am good at it.

I am like a great criminal.

I am a great mystery.

I'm like, no, there's more turns.

And it's like the mystery of me just outpaces a little bit the detective of me because I'm a really good detective, too.

I'm just not as good as the mystery.

Yeah, and you're a really good writer.

So you're like, how it works is as long as the mystery stays just one step ahead of the detective, then the detective can be good and so can the mystery.

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I have a question.

So you said there's this embarrassment thing, and I wonder what's underneath embarrassment of it all.

Because I know that your intellectual mind and your body and your emotions around it, they're very heightened.

But I do think embarrassment is giving a lot of

out there power.

So what would you say is like underneath the embarrassment that you feel or that you've been feeling around

because you know, the patriarchy has its fucking talents in all of us, and so the fact that you do this excavation of yourself and the fact that you want to be honest and work into the minutiae of yourself, you didn't write untamed, and at the end of it, are like, Well, now I'm untamed and I'm free.

Well, I think what I did is what I

wished for other people to do, which is that I wrote the truest, most beautiful self I could imagine.

Yeah,

And

that freedom,

I can taste it.

It's right there.

You know, it's why I'm willing to do this work because I'm doing this for my 50-year-old self.

That's what I keep telling myself.

Like, I am doing all of this right now because I love my 50-year-old self so much already.

And I want her to be a little bit freer than I am right now.

And

I hope, hope, I truly,

at the moment, I really hope that this is the last

mystery.

You know, I mean, I feel like my mom.

It's like, take this step and the path will appear.

Yeah.

You're like, I'll take this next step, but only under

the

assumption that it's the last fucking step.

Yeah, I feel more.

I mean, I'm done with surprises.

I feel like, you know, five years ago, I thought I was a straight,

bulimic Pisces.

And now I'm a queer

anorexic Aries.

And I just feel like I don't want to next year to go to some therapist and find out like I'm actually a Republican or something.

I just,

I feel

that would be a plot twist.

Right.

That's when I'd come to the pod and say it's over.

Women in their 50s and 60s right now are giggling because they know that there is still so much more to uncover.

But let's just work.

Let's just think about today let's think about today yeah today yeah what's also under the humiliation of it and i'm getting through that i mean humiliation it's humble it's of being of the ground humus is the the root of that it's it's we're all made of dirt we're dirty like we're messy we're dirty yes you are being being humble is just admitting that you don't know exactly from where you came and where you'll be going.

And that's where I am right now.

I think that being a woman who has made herself public and talking about this kind of thing and knowing what might and will come on the other side of it, because I'm so grateful for the pod squad right now.

Like I feel like I'm going to speak for myself to you because I want you to know and then I'm not speaking to anybody else about it.

It's a family meeting.

It's a family meeting.

And because of that, they will say what they're going to say.

And that's just like

part of it.

I haven't worked it all out, but it's just part of the fear, the embarrassment.

And also, I'll say to the people who would say, oh, telling everyone to get free and she was anorexic the whole time.

That is a person who doesn't understand what untamed is about.

Yeah.

Because it's the same person who would say, she wrote Love Warrior and then left her husband.

Of course, when you get to the path of the love warrior and you understand the next step is that, you do it

because

it's the thing you need to do.

And if you stayed because you were the love warrior, you actually wouldn't have been a love warrior to begin with.

And you go through the untamed process and you're peeling back and you take that brave next step and the next step appears and you either tell yourself, oh, I'm not going to take that because then that will give someone ammunition against me.

Then you're just as caged as you were before.

Like you have to allow yourself to take the next step and next step.

And that is actually what untaming is.

That's exactly right.

And I also want to say this, because there is the element of part of the embarrassment is like,

you know, the

refrain of untamed is, you're not crazy, you're a goddamn cheetah.

So

getting to this point in my life and having yet another whack-a-mole manifestation of mental illness come into my life, because that's what it feels.

It's like my whole life is like, it's addiction, it's bulimia, it's depression, it's anxiety, it's anorexia.

It's like just, it just keeps popping up in different forms.

One could start wondering if it's like,

I am crazy and I'm a goddamn shit.

Like

not,

right?

So there is that element.

But I will also say this.

I am thinking about all of this on a very wide level.

I am thinking about the fact that I

have always been an extreme version of what is happening to all of us.

And there is a part of the, and I'll talk about this on another episode, but I'll talk about how this treatment is going for me.

What I will say is

how the treatment is going for me is a little bit like when I lost

the dogma of Christianity and I was so discombobulated that I didn't know what to do.

That is what this treatment of anorexia feels like to me.

It feels like

the discipline, the discipline.

I just kept thinking in my first couple months of treatment, analyzing the discipline with which I have led my life, the discipline in body, the discipline in beauty, the discipline in work, the discipline in parenting, the discipline.

And I just kept thinking,

if you are committed to discipline, that means that you are a disciple of something.

What the fuck am I a disciple of?

And

what I think that I am a disciple of, or

what I think that anorexia

could be looked at as a discipline of, is

white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

Stay quiet, stay good, stay perfect, stay hustling, stay grinding.

It's like you know, that quote from Naomi Wolf that I've always loved so much that a woman's thinness is not about beauty.

It's about obedience.

It's about

being a soldier, a warrior for

control.

And there is something

underneath that that all of us, I hope,

I don't want to make disciples of that.

I don't want to be that.

I don't want to

live in fear of anyone in the world seeing proof of humanity on my body, seeing proof of joy, seeing proof of indulgence, seeing proof of

deliciousness, seeing rebellion against all of that.

Yeah, but when we are addicted to this idea of

thinness, it's like

refusal to prove ourselves human as women.

I was walking on the beach that I've been doing a lot of walking and

I was thinking of over walking or not.

No, just quiet walking.

Yeah, yeah, no, not like I'm not allowed to do that.

And I just kept having this thought of like,

I'm going to have to replace my religion of control and discipline.

And it made me think of Liz and how she used to tell me.

I used to have such a problem with the 12 steps.

And because of the patriarchal ideas there, and she would say, you just have to decide, you have to create your higher power.

You have to create one that you can

get behind following.

And so on a deep level right now, like, that's what I feel like I'm doing.

I'm doing treatment, but I'm also wanting a new God

that is not control, that is not, I'm not good enough, that is not self-restraint, that is not self-denial.

I think what's so interesting about that, of everything you've just said with the disciples of white patriarchy and all of that, I think you're a disciple of control.

And you came to that because you were so desperate because of your love for your kid

to control your bulimia.

And you controlled the hell out of everything.

And you have so much love for your family for this community for everything that you thought

that if you just applied what you knew about control in every aspect of your life you could keep yourself safe from believe me from everything you keep your people safe

and that could be what you could do to to know how to get there and when women are controlling themselves when people are controlling themselves what they are not doing is reaching their natural intelligence Sonia Renee Taylor tells this beautiful story about Marianne Williamson.

She retells it from a framework of radical self-love.

And Marianne Williamson talks about an acorn falling from a tree and that no one trains the acorn to grow into a tree.

No one controls it and teaches it how to be a tree.

It just has the natural intelligence.

And we trust that that is true.

But we do the opposite with ourselves wow we control the out of ourselves and when we control the out of ourselves we

cut off at the roots our natural intelligence and when we cut off the roots our natural intelligence what

grows in place of that is white supremacy because what is going to take that down is on us unleashing our natural intelligence, our full power, our full liberation.

Because when we do that, there will be no structure of white supremacy being upheld.

And so

what I might suggest you become a type disciple of is your own natural intelligence, your own appetite, your own joy, your own going towards that.

Like you've always said, what feels warm, because that is the thing that you have controlled out of yourself.

I think that, first of all, thank you for everything you just said because it's so freaking beautiful and exactly right on.

And I think we're saying the same thing about the last part.

When I think of creating the higher power, the reason why Liz is saying create it yourself is so it's an expression of your natural self, right?

It's not like I'm making up this God that I think will then be flying in the sky.

That's not it.

The higher power is everything that you can think of in terms of beauty and goodness and freedom.

And then that higher power is inside of you.

And so when you're looking for wisdom and joy and your best natural expression, you are looking at your truest, most beautiful, best natural expression as your own higher power.

I also think that it was probably really confusing for you for so long because you were getting positively affirmed with your control and

your success.

Nothing but rewarded.

And the kids are, you know, well adjusted and good.

And all of the things were making it really hard.

It was just like all this evidence was stacking in the control's favor.

Well, the world loves a sick woman.

The world loves

a sick woman.

The only

negative symptom of a woman who fully controls herself

is that she feels crazy.

Yes.

And that negative system

helps

the outside system.

And so you have to say, notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary, that is affirming the shit out of my controlling of myself.

I don't want to feel crazy because you're not crazy.

You're a goddamn Jesus.

Like the craziness inside of you is

whatever your particular thing is.

With you, it was controlling the shit out of yourself, which was making you feel crazy because you wasn't you.

It was hunger brain.

Right.

Right.

Because following directions,

if you're following directions well

of our culture, you will be sick and feel crazy.

Yeah.

But I will keep insisting that it's just following directions.

It's just

being an A-plus student

of what the world tells us women should be.

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I think

we'll stop there.

And I want to continue this conversation for the pod squad because I do want to tell them what

it has looked like for me.

And I want to assure them of what the work that I'm doing.

And I I just want them to know right now.

It's too much to get into right now, but I do want you to know that I'm doing all of the work.

And I do know

one of the things that when I was sitting on that couch reading that book that I read was that anorexia is the second most deadly mental health disease in the world, second only to opioid addiction.

So we understand.

And

I am

working towards being a much freer freer 50-year-old.

And

at the risk of sounding

grandiose,

I am

wanting to do this work for me, but also for all of us.

I so

value and am constantly amazed by this community and just the fact that we all get together here together.

And I know that listening to my voice means something to you.

And I want to help us all

not be disciples of pain.

You know, I've been sitting here, and for whatever reason, I never do this, but I was just like listening to you and thinking.

And I've been right here with you, watching you go through this.

And

I'm just so grateful

to whatever kind of

God you are creating right now and the learning and the

the difficulty that i have seen you go go through during this process is for me feels miraculous and you've taken a huge leap of faith in yourself

and you know i think i'll speak for the pod squad here like we want you to stick around for a long, long fucking time.

And I was just saying little thank you prayers to whatever God is, because i think that

so many factors had to be kind of perfectly laid in this path for you and for you to actually

hear

or or acknowledge that these little whispers life was giving you takes an extraordinary amount of courage and you are rewiring your brain and you are redeveloping a sense of yourself.

So

well, I remember Alex said,

because I was like, 46, seriously, 46, we're going to start this shit over.

We're going to, I'm 46.

And she goes, yeah, but this is probably the first time you've ever been stable enough in your life to do this kind of work.

When were you going to do it in the middle of your last marriage?

When were you going to do it when you were building this thing?

When were you going to do it when you were dripping with children?

Like, this is the first time where you've had someone so stable next to you that you were able to fall apart.

So, you know, it's important not to judge the timing of our lives because it's maybe exactly right on time.

Yeah.

And I just want to say back to you what you've always said about there's no such thing as one-way liberation.

And

I have just noticed about myself in the past couple months that

watching you be so brave with this

has changed me too.

And it's been like an exhale

of

not only about you and saving your life, but like

what I'm allowed to do with

my life

and

my hunger.

And

I just think that what you're doing is so

personally powerful.

And I think that me as a pod squatter,

that what you're doing is revolutionary because

I think we can all take a deep breath and be like,

oh, we're not doing that.

We're doing a new thing.

Yeah, let's do a new thing.

I love you both.

I love you, pod squad.

Thanks for being here with me today.

Thanks for listening.

Let us do a new thing.

See you next time.

Hi, everybody.

I'm

back with a new segment that we're calling This Is What Glennon's Therapist Said to Tell Everybody After Listening to All the Things She just said about eating disorder.

So I am asking my amazing therapist to listen carefully for anything that could be triggering or wrong

in what I'm saying, because I'm fully committed to making this a helpful, safe conversation to have and not anything that could be hurtful.

So my therapist listened to the episode that you just listened to and here were her notes.

First of all, she noticed that when I told you all about the diagnosis, I said that my doctor said, you are anorexic.

Okay.

My therapist said that she would highly, she highly doubted that that's how my doctor would have said it to me.

That that is likely what I heard, but what the doctor would have said was that I have anorexia, that I am a human being who has anorexia, who is suffering from anorexia, but that

we don't, she doesn't like to put a disease name after I am, which is so interesting that I did that because my entire book is about never putting anything after I am.

So

she actually said the words to me, what we tell ourselves is important.

So instead of saying, I am anorexic, what I would say is, I have anorexia.

And maybe one day i will not have it um okay

another thing she noticed is that i said you know i was bulimic and now well maybe i was never bulimic and now i'm anorexic and she said

these things morph okay it's just like

this could be just like gender or sexuality and things aren't on a binary, things aren't this or that, that often these things just morph and change in our lives.

She also says she does not call anorexia a disease.

She calls it a disorder that we can be reordered from.

She also noticed,

which I thought was interesting, a little bit of me disavowing my sensitivity is what she called it.

Like I was saying, well, I thought I was just sensitive, but actually it was all these things in my family and in the world.

And she said, maybe it's an and both, that I actually am an extremely sensitive human being and that that should not be discounted.

And that it's actually a very strong, beautiful thing to be.

So there's an and both there, not an either or.

And then the last thing she noticed, which I love, is that she noticed when I talked about

learning that being anorexic is a lot about control and discipline and wanting to be,

what am I going to replace that with now?

What am I going to replace it with?

And what my therapist is often talking to me about is my tendency to be extreme about things.

So I am either this or that.

And when I'm trying to undo something, I tend to do the opposite of that thing and go the opposite way in extremes.

And that what is going to replace that discipline and control is balance, not that I'm looking for the absolute opposite of that thing to run towards it.

Like on, I don't know, day four with her where I told her I was going to cut all my hair off and get rid of all of my clothes.

And she said, maybe

we slow down and look for balance because, in lots of ways, rebellion is just as much of a cage as obedience.

And what we're looking for is this elusive balance.

Maybe one day.

Thank you, Pot Squad.

I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

I walked through fire, I came out the other side

I chased desire,

I made sure I got what's mine

And I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me

And because I'm mine,

I walk the the line.

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on the map.

The final destination

we lack.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do a heart game.

I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

I'm not the problem,

sometimes things fall apart.

And I continue

to believe

the best

people are free.

And it took some time,

but I'm finally fine.

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

Our final destination

we lack.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do a hard pain.

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay with that.

We've stopped asking directions

in some places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do hard things.

Yeah, we can do hard things.

Yeah, we

can do hard

things.

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