Getting Naked: The Podcast - Wasting Shame

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

A frank and raw conversation that gets into the nitty gritty, with therapist Abby Gold, about weight, shame, and - in a genuine lightbulb moment - how our relationship with past trauma doesn't have to be toxic.

Hi, I'm Valerie Bertnelli and welcome to Getting Naked the podcast. Today, I am speaking with a therapist. Her name, I've known her for a long time, so it's just like to see where she's gotten to and how smart she is. You guys get to like experience that too. Abby Gold, she is a specialist in eating disorders, body image, trauma and anxiety. She got me into EMDR. She really helped me find a perfect therapist that helped me with EMDR. And we'll talk a little bit about that in the podcast. that opened my mind. And I think our conversation may be incredibly helpful for a lot of you. So please stay tuned. Hi, friends. Welcome to Getting Naked, the podcast. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for listening. I just want to let you know what I'm hoping this podcast will bring for you. I'm hoping that it will be a place where you can identify with some of the things that we talk about here, make you feel not so alone,

some of the things that you're going through, that there are other people in the world that are going through some stuff, and sometimes we just need to feel like we're not so alone. So my hope is that you'll gather information, be able to apply it to your own life. You'll actually be a part of it, I'm hoping. I want this to be a community where you feel safe to ask me any questions. I want this to be a community of learning and how we learn and what we may learn. to improve our lives and make us feel just a little bit more comfortable in this crazy world. I like to start off every podcast with an inspirational quote. So today we have something from Kierkegaard. Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. And I could not

agree with them more. Amen. Amen. I think that the more we experience this life, and I have a wonderful guest on that I've known for a very long time, that she will be helpful in all of the ways on helping us to feel maybe more comfortable in our body, maybe give ourselves a little bit more of a break. She spent more than a decade of experience as a therapist specializing in eating disorders, exercise addiction, body dysmorphia, as well as anxiety, depression, trauma. I think EMDR, you were the one that helped me find an EMDR specialist for my own health and welfare. So thank you for that, Abby. Neurofeedback.

And here's what I'm especially interested in. I love this quote that you wrote. I am continuously astounded by human beings' capacity to hate and to love, to hurt, and to heal. We are miraculous and complex creatures. And my aim is to create a space for honoring that. Oh, Abby. everybody please welcome Abby Gold. Thank you.

I've known you for a very long time. This is really fun to have you here. So excited. You specialize in something that I have been struggling with my entire life, and I feel like I've finally gotten on the other side of it. But for those of us who are still struggling and wondering why we hate our bodies so much, this beautiful quote of yours, how did you come up with that description? So I was sitting there thinking, like, I'm supposed to sound professional.

and people talk about what they're going to do with you. They're making a safe space. And I hope people feel safe with me, but I realize that I have to be that space for them first, right? It's really, why do I even think I'm entitled to be that person for someone else? And I come at it from a very nosy place, too. I'm just genuinely curious about humans. And so I sat down and I was trying to write it in a professional way and I thought, well, what's my truth? And that is my truth.

That's really what came out and why I enjoy my job because I am so... You're fascinated by human beings and what makes me do. Yeah, we do such crazy things. Don't we, though? It's really wild. We watch ourselves do crazy things and we're like, what am I doing? And then we justify it. Yeah.

Like, I don't know, we span a whole spectrum of behavior. And it's all fun to watch. It's all fun to explore. And it also is so important to have witnesses. Yes. So to have a space where you can be that full spectrum is what's important to me. And not be embarrassed or ashamed by the things that are normally labeled shameful or embarrassing. Oh, my God.

But when you take that away from it, I've talked recently about being able to take my shame and alchemize it into compassion. And I think that's something that if we have, like you say, have a witness, have more witnesses to what make us human. and that shame actually built a foundation for me that gave me tools that I don't necessarily appreciate today, but I did appreciate them then. They kept me safe. But shame made me part of being a full human being. Like we need to have shame in our life. We need to feel shameful from some behaviors.

But shame that's given to us that we don't deserve. Right. It's the shame with the guilt that becomes problematic, right? Shame otherwise is just maybe an embarrassing moment. can we just go, ooh, I'm just aware of being seen by other people, right? But something that I like to tell clients is that we can't waste our suffering or our shame. Like we have to use those things and capitalize on them. Otherwise, what's the point?

I love that. We can't waste our shame or suffering. That's where we learn the big, bold, beautiful, life-changing lessons. Exactly. And where that's not the dominant narrative in your story, right? Like, that's just something you've experienced. It's worth you. one thing in the same way that the happiness is.

How is one more powerful than the other, right? And so, and when you get into some of the neuroscience behind it, even like moments of extreme anxiety are literally happening in the same part of your brain as moments of extreme excitement. So why it's just language that we're putting to it. It is the narrative and it's like, what's helpful, what's hurtful? And I have started. I love that you brought that up because I get anxious a lot. I have a job where I know I'm being judged all the time.

I've gotten used to that. Can you? Can you? Is that? I think you can. But I think, yes, I think we're all judged all the time. And it starts here. Totally. And here.

So when I stop judging myself, then I don't care about how other people judge me. So then they can judge away and I'm cool with it. Yeah. Whatever. It's not my business. It's on them. Yeah. Exactly.

Find something more interesting. Talk about. Not my business is how you judge me. Yeah. Like this, interesting conversations about not wasting shame or not wasting experiences that then build bigger, better, I hesitate to say versions of ourselves because all that's always in us,

but we're just digging through some of the stuff that we've covered it up with. Yeah, yeah. Like I was thinking about some of this yesterday, and I think we really can pair it all down to, we're either like growing into ourselves, we're growing away from ourselves, or we're growing with ourselves.

And those are really our only options. That's so true. Who else we're going to be with? Yeah. And we have to be with us all the time. Yeah. 24-7. That's it.

We're in our head. We're in our hearts. The old ones, the new ones, the whatever ones. And so really, there is no one. We're just like. And appreciating every facet of ourselves. I've only learned that recently. You're way younger than me.

How you were able to learn this part is what I want to give other people that are listening or watching this is to not like finally get it at 65, 66. like I have. And I'm still, I still have a ton more to learn. I'm so grateful for what I've learned so far. But to learn that it's because of, just like you said, it's because of all the shame or the difficult experiences that make us who we are and that it had gotten us to be, because without the dark, we can't see the light. Totally.

And it's not even just the shame. It's what you've done with the shame, right? Because just the shame is going to keep you in just the shame. And doing shameful things because you're so in shame. of the shame. Exactly. So it's once you get to take a little bit of a step back and become that observer to the experience of shame and really get in touch with yourself or connect with, why is that bothersome? Why is it even here? Where does it come from? And do you want it? Do you want to keep it? What do you want to do with it? And once you can recognize there is something you can do with it,

then not only do you get to grow with it, but you get to be grateful for it. And I don't mean, like, grateful for shitty things. Well, gratitude is what gets me through some of the most difficult moments. And now I just remembered what it was that I was going to say, that you said anxiety and joy or excitement are in the same plane. So when you feel anxious, when there's something going on, I have literally started to say, okay, this anxiety feeling without denying it, like, okay, let me get curious. Why am I feeling anxiety? Oh, well, I probably have to go do this. Yeah, I know that I have to record this later. So, you know, I want to, you know, do it well. But how about if I reframe it and go, I'm so excited that I get to do this.

And then the anxiety just turns into the excitement. Like your brain is so malleable and so smart and you can tell it what you want to think. Well, it's just firing. We're the one telling it, telling a story about it. Right. But that's not the brain. That's us with our brain, right? Right.

Yeah. You can separate the two. Information is knowledge is power, right? That quote. Again, we are miraculous creatures. We are amazing. there's so much happening all the time. It's how we interpret it and what we do with it.

And so, yes, to be able to say... And we're always interpreting it through our own lenses. Totally. Like someone else could be right next to you having the same exact experience, and they will interpret it quite differently. Yeah. Because of our background, our ghosts, our different things that we've lived through.

Anything that's... And I mean, on both ends. And it's just like constant ping pong back and forth, right? If, like, I'm interpreting it through my filter. And now you're interpreting my interpretation through your filter. Oh, my God. Do you know what I mean? And it's like exhausting.

It is. Yeah. It's exhausting being human. Totally. But that's also why it's so important to have a conversation in life, right? To just be able to, I mean, communication skills are the most important thing because that's the only thing that gets you through that back and forth. It does.

Whether it's with yourself or someone else. Yes. Saying what you mean and mean what you say. I always had a problem with that because I felt like I could never quite make myself clear enough. I know those are from past traumas because I never felt like I was understood or heard. So I try too hard to overcomplicate and try to over explain myself. I have definitely let that go.

Which then makes up now you're in a whole new story. I know. It's like, yeah, I'm trying to explain so much that I'm actually building the story to present you the story rather than living your story. Just living it. Yeah. Yeah. And just be, I think there's a lot of things. Like I have seen some people say, I am the most authentic, you know, and no one's more authentic than me.

It's like, are you though? Because can I just like, let me just see what you're like. Yeah. You know. I mean, I don't know. If I'm authentic, I don't know what authenticity is except just being yourself. What? No, I just, I think I'm really excited about what you're about to say.

I used to have a necklace. It was cool. It was like an old wax seal talisman. And on the back, it had a meaning about it. It was a griffin. And on the back it said, to be rather than to seem. And I just always go back to that quote when I think about authenticity. That's it.

That's all it is. Just be. Yeah. Just be. And if you have to tell something that you're just being, You're probably not just being. Now you're pretending to be something that you probably are not. Yeah.

And I'm definitely not going to think you're more that thing if you have to tell me. Right. Right. I'm not going to think you're more authentic just because you tell me you're so authentic. Totally. Or I'm not going to think you tell the truth. So what do you want me to not think you were just lying about? Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. So I don't know. I think we're all trying to be our most authentic selves, but there's still this veil that we keep over as protection. Like I think because I know that I, I, I talk about it in my book that there's a part in my book where I just want to see, like, who am I seeing when I look in the mirror? Am I seeing the version of me that other people know because I've been around, so God bless it long?

Or am I actually seeing me? Am I seeing the little girl that I was that just wanted to be protected? Because I feel like I'm turning into that woman that would protect that little girl. So who do I see when I look in the mirror? And who are you looking for? More importantly, who am I looking for? Yeah. Yeah.

And recently, I've just been looking for the little girl because I want her to feel safe. I just want that little girl, that little child that never felt safe to feel safe. You're still looking at your little girl's eyes. Yes. Eyes do not grow. No. They're always the same. And when I look like really look, I have to take my glasses off and look at a magnifying mirror.

Because I can't see anymore. But when I really look into my brown eyes, I see that little girl that just wanted to be loved just for who she was. and not for what she did and not how she behaved. Yeah. I think all of us really want that. Why wouldn't we? That's all that. We want to be loved for our authentic selves and we can't even find our authentic selves.

That's the fear that drives all of the rest of it, right? But yeah, that. Will I be loved if I take off my mask? And what is it mean if I do? What is there? And what is the mask? Where does the mask end and where am I? Totally.

Okay. Okay. So I was writing about in getting naked that I just brought up that I would risk writing about who I see when I look in the mirror and how what's the version that other people see us. I know that I still have a lot of guilt about being a part of the diet industry. A lot of guilt. I was raised in a diet industry. My mom was always dieting. My mom never felt beautiful. And that kills me to this day because she was a stunningly beautiful woman when I see pictures of her. But she was always being. told she was too big, too big, too big, too big. And sometimes you get to the point, you're being told you're so big that you finally get big. So I think, I didn't like that I was a part of the diet industry because I had, you know, I believed it, hook line and sinker. And I don't any longer. Believed the diet industry. I don't. Yeah. I don't. I believe that people will release weight the way that they can. Everybody's different. Yes, it's calories in, calories out. But I think,

and I can only speak for myself until I dealt with my emotional health and my mental health, nothing was going to be released. It would come off because I could white-knuckle anything, and I have white-knuckled everything. But at a certain point, you have to let go. And when you let go and dig into, again, it came back to me dealing with shame and dealing with my emotions and getting curious about them, then I was able to, like, weight would release because I wanted to treat myself better. I wanted to be better to myself.

It took a very long time. I didn't have to lose a lot of weight, but I lost a lot of weight with it. Like, it took me about three years. But it's because it came off slowly and gently because I was slowly and ungently uncovering myself and my real self. Yeah. Because what you're saying when you say, I stopped buying into the diet culture is you were risking entering into a stage of saying, okay, what if I drop everything I think I know and know

nothing for a second and relearn and get to be a better consumer of what it is that you are learning and believing from there. And that's a lot. It is. Generationally a lot. It is. It is. I mean, we're still passing stuff down to, you know, eight, nine, ten-year-olds that it's just like, you're not even supposed to be thinking about your body. I know. You're not. It's, I mean, makes me think of last night where my son, like, my, I just hope he, he's going to be two tomorrow. It's wild. But I, one of the things that I think about a lot for him and my mom anxieties are I want him to feel like he's got a place here. Like, I just want him to feel like he belongs somewhere.

I want him to feel comfortable in himself. I can't stand the idea of him ever having, like, some different ability as someone else, and then going, oh, so I'm worse than that, or I'm less than them. You know, I want him to really just embrace himself. Yesterday, he was playing with a ball, went under the bed. He grabbed the ball but hit his head on the bed, and he goes, oh, sorry, body. And I just froze. I loved it, and I thought that's exactly, can he just maintain that for the rest of his life?

That's what I want him to have. That's what I want all these kids to have. That's what I want all these adults to have. That's what we need is we go, oh my gosh, not I did that wrong. Right. Oh, I didn't navigate the space correctly. Yeah. Like, oh my gosh, my body.

My body is an actual thing I need to take care of. Right. It is not just here. It is. Yeah. So, you know, like we actually are born that way. We are born wanting to do that, having space, thinking it's cool when someone else can do something else. It's like, yeah, we need to teach that on every level.

And that starts with something as silly as bumping your shoulder. and, you know, not taking it into your psyche as something you've done wrong. He's so far ahead of me. Because I wrote a whole, like, meditation on apologizing to my body because I've been so mean to it for too many years. And I think we all need to take up what a little two-year-old says. Oh, sorry, body. Exactly.

I mean, it's so simple and it's so rich. Oh, it's beautiful. Hi. Welcome to Valerie's Place. Come on in. I like to think that while this is my house, Valerie's Place is our home. It's a destination hub. We can share lifestyle, cooking, fashion.

What I really want to do is share stories. I want to build this place together with all of you. You can sign up today, go to Valerie's Place.com, find out which tier you want. They start at $2. The first week is free, and then come on in. So how do cultural expectations of women and men really shape the way we move about this world as human beings? I think, you know, and how can we change them? Good luck. How can we change them? How could they not? Culture is synonymous with community and we are not creatures in isolation, right? So we need, we,

we crave community. Yeah, it is a primal need. Yes. Right. We just didn't build a very good one when we started. You know, we really was, everyone was fighting for, it comes from a place of, I would say, fear again, right? So we have to move collectively. out of that. How do we recognize our own space, though, and protect our bubble, our personal bubble from what is going to be happening? We are going to need to just be better consumers of the culture and better participants in the community. It is going to be a reciprocal relationship, right? We're continuously being shaped by expectations of how we care, like how we care for ourselves is really the key there. The cultural expectations are going to be

there. Can we know that is the first thing, right? Knowing what those are, identifying them. If we don't know what they are, then we're a victim of them, right? Automatically. I think that's where you're talking about buying into the diet culture. It's like it actually wasn't necessarily diet culture at the time. It was just culture. Now it's diet culture. Do you know what I mean? We're kind of evolving and labeling and doing these things that shift. And so then we respond and we react like, oh my gosh, how did she do that thing, but, well, you were following that thing, too. Like, how did we all do that thing? Right. We can talk about that instead. It's not this individual. Yeah, because you can't fix something if you don't, if you ignore it. Right. You can live within it, but it's never going to get fixed.

No, and then we'll recreate it and we'll probably add on more layers of it. To more generations and more generations. Exactly. I did that a lot in my life, and my, especially my two-year journey to get to getting naked is really peeling back all the layers and getting naked, emotionally, getting naked physically, looking at myself and really not judging myself any longer. And definitely not burying or covering up things that caused me shame anymore, especially the ones that weren't mine ever to hold in the first place. Yeah. The transition across all of your books, it kind of mirrors that question, right? How do we not let culture influence us or how do we protect ourselves from the cultural influence, whatever that question was, you're unpacking it as you're figuring it out.

And then when you figure one thing out, you go, ooh, I can also go backwards and look at some other things and keep unpacking it. So I actually think we do need to change collectively. I think if we do our own work, we will collectively change. Absolutely. It has to start from within. And you also wouldn't have been able to get naked if you didn't look at what was impacting you and then make a decision.

So really it's about not just like settling with what is there and feeling like, how do I deal with that? It's what do I want to do because of this? Right. And what does it mean for me? Now I know it and I know where it came from and I know, I mean, I talk about in the book quite bluntly that I was sexually abused when I was 11 years old. That makes me automatically see myself in a different light. And then there were things that carried within that. of, you know, not being able to talk about it, not being able to tell anybody, not being able to

release this guilt and this shame that I had that isn't even mine. Yeah. And that and then turns to a body image and not liking my body and not liking, like, why is all of this happening? Totally. And what you're also talking about is taking on other people's shame, right? Yes. And what other people are uncomfortable with, period.

A lot of that wasn't even yours, and then a lot of it came from places you probably couldn't even name because really something like that happens to you and you're a child as well, but it doesn't matter what your age is. But how do you make sense of that? You're not going to go, let me tell you this thing that just happened. Right. That's not, it's not like this. I knew it was wrong. Yeah. But another part of it.

And so I can't tell anybody because then. And they're going to be uncomfortable. Right. Right. And you start protecting. everyone instead of yourself, but it is in the form of protecting yourself because you don't want to be more uncomfortable than you already are. That is a serious level of discomfort. Right. Right. And so to have that whole level of discomfort, add on our society, add on what you witness

with your mom and how she related to herself. It's so much bigger than just an issue with body or diet culture. You're being taught things you don't even see. They're all subconsciously being taught to you these things that we don't need to carry into. It's all back to be rather than to seem. You're being taught to seem all the time, not to be. Just to be. And so we need to get back to that. Yeah.

And that's, again. And that took me digging into this. And thank God you found me a great EMDR therapist. And really digging down for me, EMDR was really helpful. EMDR, which is, I never remember the electric magnetic eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Okay. Because I think electric because I held the pulters. There's three or four different ways to do EMDR.

I like the one where you hold these two small paddles and a pulse goes in each one and what it does. And for people that like the light, the light goes back and forth. And what you do is your body and your brain start to realize that there's a pulse happening with EMDR. So mine was an eye movement, but it was in my whole body was being. given this rhythm. And as the rhythm takes place, it calmed me down. And it let me dive into a place that was really scary for me that I didn't want to talk about. And I really touched on. So when I was able to go into the night that it had, the first night that it happened, and I talk about the entire experience in my book, if you're curious about EMDR, it was so, it was such a relief and a

release that I expected to have 10 years previously when I first said I was sexually abused because I thought, well, once I say it out loud, it's going to be all over, right? No, that's the thing you didn't do. So sure. Yeah. Yeah. So by doing that, it calmed my brain down so that the emotions were able to take a step back and I could walk through it analytically.

And in the meantime, I was sobbing, but I didn't, like, I don't remember the entire experience. kind of disassociated. It's really fascinating how that happens. It's sort of like your brain goes, we're going to work on this thing. We don't have to be present for the rest. Yeah. Like, but it helped me. Oh, yeah.

Exactly. So what happens with trauma, it could be big T trauma, little T trauma, as people say. It doesn't matter because it's subjective here. Is your brain, when it deems that trauma, goes into this fight or flight or freeze mode, and it goes, ooh, there's so much information we're processing all the time. even just like the colors, our surroundings. We're like taking in, we're observing, we're doing, there's so much happening all the time.

So in a moment of trauma, our brain is going, oh, okay, well, there's, I can't, that's too big. Can't process. At the same time, I'm going to keep that here. Our brains know when we go to sleep and we are like, have you ever gotten to sleep, so pissed? And then you wake up and you're like, oh, not that bad. Yes. Glad I didn't send that text.

door, whoopsie, I have an apology to do. It's like that. So that's REM. Our brain is processing what's happened, processing emotions. Our eyes are literally going back and forth, like in EMDR during REM sleep. So we do it naturally, right? Again, miraculous creatures. Yes.

So our brain is doing it naturally. In a state of trauma, it can't do that. It doesn't know how. It's like, this is too much. I'm going to need to park this over here. It doesn't know how to go back and get that information, retrieve it, and move it across both sides of the brain. Back and forth.

So EMDR is simulating that experience, bilateral stimulation where you're saying, okay, let's see, like give the brain an opportunity to do that thing that it can't do during everyday life while it's trying so hard to do everything else. No, we're trying to squash it down because I can't be thinking about that right now. Yeah. Like, exactly. So what you were able to do with EMDR is give your brain, which it wants to be okay, right? It wants to have good posture.

The brains are actually on our side. It's just we're always talking to our brain and telling it shit. 100%. We're always like, you're in the way. And it's like, ah, you don't get it. It's you, my friend, right? So what you did is you gave your brain a space and, like, a moment of not having to do something else, having other tasks other than just like keeping yourself alive in that moment, which you can do naturally. Right.

So you could look at what was too hard. So what you did was you focused on that and it moved back and forth. Like you did the laundry that it wasn't able to do that was piled out. Oh, the laundry, you know. It cleaned it out a little bit for me. Yeah. It doesn't make it go away. No, and it never will go away.

It's an experience that I had. And it's always going to be something that happened to me. Right. But it doesn't run my life. It doesn't, it has brought me to a moment to where I actually can stand in my ground and stay grounded and know that no one, Like, my vulnerability, my shame cannot be used as a weapon against me any longer. Like, I know who I am. And if you, like, it doesn't matter what someone says or, um, or whatever about me.

I can know, okay, that it doesn't change who I am. Right. I am who I am. I own everything that I've done. And if I've done something to hurt you, I will own that and do my best to make it up to you. Yeah. I've done that with beautiful. friends in my life and they graciously accepted my apologies, but we work through it because

I owned it. So I think... But you're in relationship with it. Yes. But you weren't able to be in before. Before it is there. I mean, the relationship, I guess, is there. It's just, it's tense and toxic because you can't stand each other or something, right? But to make space to be like, do your thing. Oh, that was brilliant, Abby. Yes. That's it. Thank you. Like, I know. It would because the relationship was always there between the trauma and me. Yeah, it exists. And I was able to work through it. So now it's not toxic.

It's just like, oh. Exactly. Well, that happened to you. That really sucks. Which is a relationship with the event, with yourself, with all parts of, yeah, everything that that does for you. And it's also saying, look, like, it is not bigger than you. It is a part of you.

It can't be bigger than you. It's just, yeah. It's bigger than you when you don't ignore it because that's what a toxic relationship is like, right? Right. Yeah. Oh, my God. That was like a light ball moment. That was so good.

Because we're always going to have a relationship with all the trauma that we've had in our life. It's always going to be there. It's your experiences. But it doesn't have to be toxic. Right. And so if you can also be in charge of those, like if you engage in those relationships, if you know what to be in relationship with or if you're willing to be in relationship when you notice something comes up, then whatever other people are saying to you,

it's not about that. Like it's not hard to say sorry. No. I'm sorry I hurt you. No. It's like it's not hard to say, ooh, I'm going to let that be your problem, even though you're saying it's mine. Yeah, I'm going to let that be about you. Yeah.

Yeah. It helps you navigate all of that with like sort of a shield because you're like, no, no, I got myself already. Yeah, totally. This is what's so amazing. And I've been like none of this happens overnight, by the way. And I want people to know that this is stuff like I did my first EMT. DR maybe two years ago, and I'm now gotten to this point. Like, it's just been a process. But that...

It's also a lot. It's a privilege to be able to dive into trauma, which is a crazy thing to say, but it's true. Not everyone has the bandwidth to deal with what comes up when you look at your trauma outside of the sessions, right? And that's totally understandable. Like, there's no judgment here if you don't want to do... Your own timeline. Absolutely. But if you can, if anybody can take anything from this particular conversation that we've had is that you're going to be in relationship with your trauma anyway. So how about we make it less toxic? Exactly.

I love that. Okay. Same thing with your body. Same thing with your body. You're going to be in a relationship with your body anyway. Love it. Look what it does for you. You can get out of bed.

You can go pee. You can take your dog for a walk. You can feed your cats. You can... Totally. I mean, I think this not frequently enough. but I do think it, that we don't have enough gratitude. If I were on subway takes, this would be my take.

We do not have enough gratitude for the days when we are not stuck with a cold or the flu, right, when we can actually just, like, breathe through our sinus passages. It feels like we've had it forever. I don't know, at least for me. Oh, when I get sick, I'm like. It's never going to get better and it's never been good. It's like, oxygen's never been available. Yeah.

And so, I don't know, I just feel like that's so true. We do not have the gratitude for everything it's doing all the time. And then we try to, like, you know, cross our fingers and pray or something, whatever you do. When we are sick, as if, like, oh, my God, we're not going to make it out. Yeah, I know. But we've made it out of all of it so far. 100%. We've made it out of 100% of all the difficult.

Like, imagine it would be so much easier to be sick and be like, this really sucks. And I know my body's doing its thing. What can I do to support it? Right. Yep. Yep. So I'm so sick of talking about my weight, and at one point I will never, ever speak of it again. You know, I'm never ever going to give anybody diet advice because I don't know what works. It all works, and none of it works, basically.

What does work is going and looking into our mental health and looking into our traumas. But I spent years, decades, just wanting a magic number. And the magic number always changed for the scale. Like, I just want to be this much weight. I want to be that much weight. I want to be... I mean, when I was a teenager, I was 110 pounds, and when I got to 120 pounds, I thought I was huge. No, I wasn't.

I was growing. I was developing hips. I was developing boobs. I was like, you're growing. You're becoming a woman. And just, it's not about the number, but how do we get people off of the number? Because all of our bodies are different. You can look at a line of 10 people.

They'll all be the same weight. They will all look different. So how, what is the magic number? There is none. And how do we get ourselves off of that sick loop, basically? First I would say, and I feel very passionate about this, unless you have a medical condition that necessitates it, throw out your scale. Nobody needs to own a scale. If you say it's for luggage, there's ones that are handheld and you can pull it out.

Same thing with doctor's appointments, you don't need to see the number. tell them, like, to let you know if they find an issue. But otherwise... I never look when I get weighed at my doctors. And you don't need to get weighed as much as they actually weigh you. That's true. So how do we get off of it is, I would say, so there's so many things to do with it. But that's kind of it.

What does it even mean? When we say, like, let's not focus on the number or there is no magic number. No magic what? You mean what is the number representing for you? Like what, so, okay, it's, it's X number, but. But it doesn't mean you're going to fit in a certain size jeans because someone who's 130 pounds will fit into either 8, 10, 12, or 14. Yeah.

You don't know. No. And brands vary. I'm so pissed off at the fashion industry and the sizes that they have showed us that we're supposed to be about how I find a pair of jeans on the shelf. Not what it says about me. Totally. Size is supposed to be.

Where is my... Information. Yeah. How do I, like, put something on my body? Like, I am anywhere between a size 10 and a size 12. Totally. Like, 10... And you should just know I'm between this area.

Like, there's automatically, when you say it, something, it seems, something comes up with numbers. Once again, right? We can say the size. Who cares what size you are? You know. Right. We don't need... Like, what does it mean to you to be...

one number or another? What was it that you were looking for on a scale? Like the way I think you talk about this too is that I used to, you know, label food bad or good. Food isn't bad or good. It has no emotions. It feeds you and nourishes you, period. But I used to think, oh, this is a bad food. I still, to this day, I'll start to eat something. I go, isn't that interesting? Because I used to think this was bad for me, you know, like I didn't want to eat black olives because I thought they were so full of fat. Olives are so good for you. You know, they taste good. It's like, stop it, you know. Exactly. So there is no bad or good food.

No. It's, again, it's what your relationship is with it. Right. Same thing with the number. What your relationship is with that number is going to tell you everything about why you're attached to their being a perfect number. It's going to tell you about you, not about your body. Yeah, because the number won't. The number is like just your gravitational pull to Earth.

So really. It's simple. It's simply your gravitational pull to Earth. That's what that number on the scale is. Yes. Oh, my God. Mm-hmm. And isn't gravity cool?

So, you know, exactly. So what is it mean? What are you looking for? You know, if you think you said it perfectly. The number on the scale is your gravitational pull towards Earth, period. Let it go that way. It's like, wow, I'm really being pulled towards Earth a lot. Like, thanks, you got, you really got me.

Cool, I'm down on Earth. Yeah. Yeah, look how much support, you know? Exactly. Let's take some viewers' questions. I think you're perfect for some of these. Oh, okay. Jane Sylvia asks, how do you stop worrying about what people think and stop people pleasing?

We talked a little bit about that. I still, okay. Because let's look at that. The whole Jenny Craig diet industry thing. Right. I, oh, boy, that talk about wanting acceptance and wanting to be loved, and you get the opposite of that, too. I don't know if I'll ever, ever stop people pleasing because I want people to have a good experience around me. And I want to give them a good experience.

But I'm no longer going to fight for my life if you don't want to be a part of it. Yeah. Like I think I know when to raise the white flag now. And I... Not at the expense of yourself. No longer at the expense of myself. Right. I'm pleasing because I want to cook for you because it makes me happy.

Okay? And I know that you love this dish. So I want to make you happy. So people... If you call that people pleasing, that, yes, I still love to do that. But if I'm going to try and convince somebody that I'm worth loving because I can please them enough, I'm not doing that anymore. Yeah. Because I know I'm lovable in and of myself just by being every single solitary person on this earth is lovable enough just as they are.

Well, except for a few in politics, but we won't go there. I can definitely agree with that. But basically, everybody in your life, in their own way, because they're so, we're human beings, we're here having a human experience. and we're here to learn and to love. And that makes us lovable, just being here. Because we all took this journey together at this particular time. Isn't that exciting? It's incredible.

I mean, like we're just here, and then it's a blank slate. And we continue by virtue of being here, we continue to have an ability to choose what we do with being here constantly. Even when you don't like what you just did with being here, you can do it again differently now. You can know that. Like, we actually are so powerful. We have so much capacity for change that is not getting utilized enough. And I think that is when we redirect, misdirect our energy and people pleasing sometimes. It's like, okay, I'm here.

Well, what do you think that means? What does it mean to you to be here? What does it mean to be, like, who needs you to do that in your mind? How are you not feeling love that you think you need to people please? Yeah. Or earn it. Or why do you think you have to earn something? someone's love. You're lovable just the way you are. So I think, and I understand what Jane is saying,

because I've been through that a lot. And I think we also, we all do it on a micro level and a macro level. Like, we do it all the time in little things. It's to what degree is it impacting our life and our mental health, right? To what degree? If it's keeping us fine and happy and the other person's fine and happy, then yeah, it's people pleasing in a good way. Right. This is where we have to recognize the relational aspect. of it. And it sounds like she's coming at this from a place of, oh my gosh, I do this. Like, it's my day job. How do I stop? Right. And I would say, so, well, why are you still doing it? Question implies you know you don't like it. Right. What's keeping you continuing to do that? Because she has the power. Yeah. We all have the power. Yeah. To stop doing something that maybe we

know is not so good for us. And even when it's like, oh, it's too hard. It's too hard. It's definitely hard. Yeah. But also, why does that mean you can't? Like, that is the operative word here. You know, what keeps you wanting to do the thing you're not wanting to do anymore? And bodies in our minds are so powerful. We can do anything we put our mind to.

Yeah. We really can. Yeah. I like to talk about just simplifying and getting back to the basics of what we're saying. And so in that scenario, it is that. It's, well, you're saying you don't like that you're doing something that you're doing. Now what? Yeah.

If I don't like. I can't change you, you know? Right. So what do you want to change about yourself? Or what are you telling yourself about your ability to change too? Right. Right. Dawn Alexander asks, how do you remember to stay in the moment, remain present, and avoid

disassociating? Oh. There are a lot of like just basic skills you can do. Okay. Like looking around the room and counting five things of a certain color. Or just naming five things. Or just naming where you're at, literally. Like, I am in a room.

Start with, again, the most basic. With dissociation, we want to make sure that we're actually grounding in a reality. That's when we're kind of exiting the moment, right? Another version of just not being present in the moment. So want to do the opposite. Come back to being present. How do you come back to being present? Well, where are you?

Right. Like, let's, again, simplify. Oh, there's a table right there. There's a microphone. Yeah. Here's a cup of water. And why do I have this? That will give you a clue about where you've been, what your intention was before you started checking out, right?

In those moments, we don't really need to be investigators as much as we need to be observers. So that's key. Then also feet on the ground as I sit up. Yeah, no, no. But, you know, feet on the ground and actually feeling that, feeling like where you are in space, but also back to our weight, our support, like our roots, then we know we're just, it's not just us. We're not just floating. Right.

We're rooted. We're standing. Taste, smell. What do you hear? What do you see? Going through your senses. On another scale, less practical scale, I would say, do you want to be present? Oh, God.

Yeah. Do you want, I mean, is there. Sometimes I don't want to be. Yeah. Like, you know, I think we can stop labeling things in such black. and white terms and as wrong, right, bad, good, whatever. If you're not present in the moment, before we go, ooh, I've lost it, well, what happened? Right. Where'd you go? Right. How come? Right. We've got to get curious. Getting curious is the most, that's another title you should have.

Yes. Oh, getting curious is like my mantra. Yeah, I'm constantly getting curious. It is the only skill you need. Yep. I mean, I don't know if I stand by that statement for real, but I think it's true. I think I do. I do think getting curious about things is, I almost had a tattoo to my arm because I was like, I've got to stay curious about things. I cannot, you know, because when, like, just as something as simple as the anxiety and going, oh, okay, what am I anxious about and then turning it into excitement. That was me starting with getting curious about why am I feeling anxious. Yeah. And then how can I turn this right? So that, that's the curiosity. It's the most powerful question. Yeah. Why, right? So, or how or whatever

it is. So, yeah, getting curious about what, why you're having the experience, you're having, again, that you don't like it. Okay. Why don't you like it? Get curious about that. Like, curiosity is your best friend. It's also so scary when you actually don't want to be present. Yeah.

So. Yeah. I mean, and sometimes it's okay to not be present. Totally. You can pull yourself back. Sometimes I need to not be present so I can be present. Right. Yeah.

Right. So our conversation isn't over yet. After this quick break, we're going to jump into the full reveal. That's our segment of the podcast, especially made with the help of the members of Valerie's Place. Thanks for listening to Getting Naked, the podcast. If you want to listen to this episode's full reveal, head over to Valerie's Place.com and sign up. For just $2 a month, you'll get to hear the full reveal and get early access to every episode of the entire podcast.