Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Your Body is Your Beauty

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

More people than ever before are struggling with body image issues as they compare themselves to the endless stream of perfect, filtered and photo edited images of what seem to be perfect bodies that confront them on social media.  In this Language of Love session, I speak to Laura. Laura is a mother of four who is dealing with the recent diagnosis of MS as well as the lingering physical scars of a Cesarian Section. The scars the surgery left behind are adversely affecting her body image, causing her to shut down from Sex with her partner. Listen in as I help Laura unpack her body image struggles , confront the misconceptions she’s been carrying, and begin to have a new conversation with her body and herself that’s rooted in love and appreciation for the miraculous vessel it truly is! Resources and Links Dr. Laura Berman Language of Love Podcast Laura Berman Instagram – Dr Laura Berman Facebook – Dr Laura Berman Youtube.com – Dr Laura Berman  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself, and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Laura, great name. I love it. Thank you. So tell me what's on your mind.

I feel like I've actually, since I first inquired about this, a lot has changed. I think my initial thing was I had been diagnosed with MS and it's changed my whole, I guess, perception on relationships. And it was really hard coming into a relationship with that diagnosis and with three kids from previous relationships. And then I've had this baby with my fiance now, and I think the labor didn't go as I was hoping. It's been a very rough road over the last year since I last inquired so it's probably like a really good blessing that this has happened now but I still feel like that has brought in even more difficulties for myself because it was like getting you get diagnosed that changed my perspective of me and then you know things started to go good and they

started to get better it was like trying to figure out how to get these kids in this relationship cause my, my other kids are older. I have teenagers and eight year olds and then, yeah. All right. Wait. So let me just bring everyone up to speed. First of all, I hear we're talking while you're outside. I'm assuming cause they're babies and kids inside, which is totally fine. But I just want to let you guys listening know that those noises you're hearing are just cars going by. But so if you hear some weird growls in the background, don't be, don't be, don't be confused. Those are just cars driving by. A. B, just to clarify, because you're alluding to this, Laura, we, you and I, we were in touch about a year ago about you coming on for a session.

And then right around the time we were going to have the session, you were having this baby who's now probably almost a year old. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. And so if I'm understanding you correctly, there's been an MS diagnosis. You first reached out just trying to assimilate to the diagnosis and what this would mean for your life and your relationship and your mothering of your other kids who are older and in their teen years. And now since then, you've had this baby. Sounds like you said a complicated or a labor that didn't go the way you intended. I'm assuming that means there were some complications, but I don't know. So what is the main issue as you see it now? Not even like where you were, although obviously that informs the now, but what is it

now that I can most help you with? I think it's my comfortability with my body and being comfortable with my, with my fiance. I find this to be like a really significant struggle because I've had the horizontal cesarean didn't go the way it was supposed to. So they had to do a vertical mm-hmm and that's left me with a really big scar and what formed with that was an incisional hernia so I actually look like I'm still pregnant and I just haven't been able to have the surgery for that because of getting over those wounds from that surgery to controlling my MS to trying to get back on the medication from that. So it's just like, I find me mourning myself a lot for what I used to be, which is really difficult because with the diagnosis, I mourned myself

because I felt like I lost myself, but now I'm like, I should have loved myself more. And it's hard for him because I watched, actually you posted something not that long ago about feeling disconnected when you have something like men are very you posted it men men rely on that sexual for the love and all that and so I actually sent that video to him because I was like this is like so us like we're so disconnected in that way because like I do feel like he's disconnected from me because I'm just so I don't I think that's wrapped up in my new my for now body. Yeah. So, okay. So let's just break this down. Your main issue, it sounds like is not that I'm assuming it's low desire. You're thinking that it's primarily low desire because

of body image issues, the changes as a result of the unexpected invasive emergency, probably C-section where they had to do a vertical incision. And there were some wound complications after that, that you feel made your body look bad. So you're self-conscious about that. And that, is there anything else would you say besides the self-consciousness about the way your body looks that is standing in the way of your desire to be sexual with your husband? I mean, I can guess at some, but I don't want to assume. So you tell me. I would say the hernia is like a huge, is a huge thing because it it's in the way, like it's, it's big. I look pregnant. People will comment on it, which makes it even worse for me. Like I don't necessarily go out to places anymore because of

that. And that's just something like, I don't let him see me. He hasn't seen me since I had the baby because I'm just like, I can't, cause I can't, it's hard for me to look at myself. Like if I'm being really honest. It's that, I can't imagine that anything could be that bad that you can't look at yourself. It must be, I have a feeling, I kind of want to show you my scar right now, although it's, it's healed a lot since I have it, had it, but I had an incision hip to hip for this complicated procedure. I had to have 10 years out of breast cancer, blah, blah, blah, to get my implants out, but it's called a deep flap. And they basically have to cut you open hip to hip. And then the incision opened up and I had like this gaping wound and then it keloided

over. And it's not vertical, but it's literally dividing my entire torso in half. And it is something I'm self-conscious about, but it feels to me that the degree, and you're not alone in this. I don't mean to make you feel weird, but I think a lot of primarily women, some men, but mostly women struggle with this, but for it to be the, and they struggle to this degree too, but it breaks my heart to hear that, that one would struggle with the external to the point after how many kids, four kids, you have three teenagers. Okay. So after four children, which is like a miraculous goddess level feet of physiology. I mean, just the fact that your freaking body created four lives and birthed them into the world makes your body the

most gorgeous, miraculous, amazing machine. I mean, it's just astounding to me what our bodies can do. And the fact that after that, the changes that happen to our bodies would be so disheartening because we're comparing ourselves to a screwed up woman, hating airbrushed ideal, right? That we're comparing ourselves to that. When, by the way, I guarantee you, your partner could give two shits about your hernia or your scar. It doesn't even see it or care about it. The last thing he's focusing on is your belly. I mean, lots of other places than your belly. I'm sorry to say, or I'm happy to say. So the fact that it is that, and I'm, and I'm confronting you on this, not to make you feel bad. I don't, and I'm sorry if I am, but because you're not alone in this,

there's, I'm speaking to you and every other woman listening now who is willing to hide in shame, even from themselves, because they don't meet some ideal when they are beyond the ideal because of the miracles that your body has created and the hardships it has gone through. I mean, I'm walking around with a huge scar across my left breast. And frankly, I'm just going to be gross for your sake here and for everyone else listening, but I'm literally, I have my left breast had to be reconstructed because I had mastectomy 10 years ago and I needed, I needed to get the implant out. And so they had to build it out of belly fat.

It was this whole crazy, complicated procedure. but I'm walking around with a huge keloid scar across my belly, a giant scar across the left breast, which by the way, has no sensation because it's nothing left there except belly fat and a huge scar across it and no nipple. Okay. And I'm walking around naked, like there's no tomorrow. And my husband is happy as a clam. I mean, I'm sure he would like my nipple and a breasts that could feel things, but he's fine because he doesn't, he's not focused on that. And I guarantee you, unless he's a complete and utter asshole, in which case I want you to get rid of him and not have sex with him. He's not looking at your belly. He's in awe of what your

belly has done. And he just wants to connect with you. And so what upsets me even more than being unwilling to have sex with him is you're hiding from yourself because the degree to which you're judging yourself is the problem here. If you weren't judging yourself this much, you would recognize that he ain't judging you. Right. I mean, he doesn't make comments. He's not one of those guys who expects you to look a certain way or only finds a certain shape or size attractive. I'm assuming. Right. No, if he, if he was like that, he definitely wouldn't be here anymore but I do I do realize that I do have high judgments of myself or I think too it's just like such a change like it's just such a drastic you know one day you're one thing and then the next

you have this and when it's coming up to like that year and you're still big and I and like I'm very aware of what people around me are doing and it's I don't think they mean to make it noticeable that they're looking at my stomach, but that noticing that has really stopped me from now doing a lot of things because I'm so who is it in your history? I'm getting mom vibes, but you tell me who is it in your history that implanted this degree of self-consciousness and judgment in you? I think it's definitely, it is my mom because she still talks like poorly about herself. And I try not to bring that into me because I don't let my daughters see that that's something that I don't let my daughters do. Like if they're around me, I really do go

into a mode where I can pretend to be good about myself because I don't want them to have that about themselves. Like I don't want them to sit and judge the way that they look or feel like they're unpretty to anybody. Yeah. And I hate to say this and I think that is 50% of it, right? I'm so glad you're doing that. And I'm so grateful that you're conscious that way. But the truth is, my love, even with you faking it, they know. I mean, you know, at this point, because they're teenagers, they feel it. They notice that mom doesn't walk on the beach on her bathing suit and that she like they

see it, they feel it. And our kids, you already know this. Our kids don't model after what we say or don't say they model over what we do, even if it's for their sake, but I would rather even be for yours. This is something that it's really important to move beyond. And it's a conscious decision, but it's also a release because what I feel in you is a lifetime, but it really started around, did you gain like some weight or something when you were 10 or 11? Was there some fat shaming or something? Like, I feel like there it was starting at around age 10 or 11. Yeah. Puberty really like didn't, it didn't start off.

I was tiny and then puberty happened. I gained a lot of weight. And then I found like high school to be very difficult, kind of mean girls. Yeah. And your mom, your mom was accidentally, I don't think she was intentionally a mean girl, but she was kind of echoing what these girls were saying, like in her own comments and actions was kind of giving you the message. Well, if you were a certain size or looked a certain way. And this isn't to make her bad. She had the same issues that you have now. She's passed them on to you, right? This is what we do. But there's this story that gets adopted by so many of us. I would say the majority of girls that if I want love and acceptance, I have to look a certain way. And that's just not true. That's just not true.

And in fact, 99% of people, not you wouldn't believe it if you look at social media, but 99% of people don't look the way they want to look and don't match the ideal. I mean, I'm 30 pounds heavier than I am at my normal weight. I'm not even talking about my ideal weight, right? And that could totally derail me. That could easily, I could, I mean, I come from that history. My mother was feeding me Dexatrim. I don't know.

you may be too young for that, but she was feeding me diet pills when I was a teenager. Like I was totally, it was totally like made clear to me that I was not a value unless my body looked a certain way. And I looked a certain way. And I think the majority of us grew up with that overtly or covertly, but the inherent message in that is that I am only lovable. I am only desirable if I look a certain way. And if I don't look a certain way, then actually the opposite is true. I am disdain worthy. I am disgust worthy, right?

And that's the way you're treating yourself. Listen, regardless of your sexual orientation or your gender or your relationship status, every single one of us has struggled at one point or another with a lackluster or disconnected sex life or difficulty finding the partner that we most desire. So I have designed an amazing program for you. Seven days to better sex. Each day, you're going to get a video and an information packet, all designed to help you jumpstart your love life. Just go to www.drlauraberman.com. I still feel like my mom does that to me a little bit because even when it came to this, she'll be like, well, you know, you're only one day. It'll be gone one day. It won't be there.

Like if you just lose a little bit of weight that might help you right now too. And it's like, I'm doing so much as it is. Yeah, no, she's, she's hasn't healed. So she's going to keep doing that. Right. And on a soul level, just like I did, just like many of us do you signed up for this, right? Why do you sign up for this? Because in this lifetime, you signed up to learn what pure, true self-love looks like. And self-love starts with true self-acceptance. Okay. My body may not look like it looked a year and a half ago. My body may not look like I want it to look, or I imagine it's supposed to look. It may not match the images that I see all over social media or in the magazines or in the images that society says are worthy of admiration.

But my body is a freaking miracle. Just the fact that you get to breathe and eat and poop and pee and live in this body and create four freaking lives with this body and grow them inside you and birth them into the world is worthy of all the love and all the admiration in the world. And my guess is you have this kind of sort of limited vision. You almost have these blinders on. And if you were to widen your perspective, I guarantee you, you're going to start seeing tons and tons and tons of women that are larger than you, that are mushier than you, and who

are walking around the world with confidence. And we've all known women like that. We know women who don't at all match the ideal of beauty in our society, and they light up the room and are magnetic. Why? Because they are filled with self-acceptance and self-appreciation. They understand their worth. They aren't measuring themselves by something, quite frankly, as fleeting as your looks.

I mean, we're living in a society where people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to surgically change their appearance and inject themselves with things, trying to fight time and looking like fricking, I don't know, like aliens. Not something that nature came up with at all. not, I mean, like looking messed up, but they don't have any wrinkles and they don't have sagging skin, but they look like complete freaks. Right. And that's what they're doing to themselves for the same reason that you're doing what you're doing to yourself. Right. Like we're, we're in an epidemic of self-loathing because of something that is so fleeting. I just said that to my 27 year old, we, he took me to the climbing gym and I climbed all the way up to like, I don't even know, 20, 30 foot wall or something. And he was like, oh, I can't call you an old fart anymore.

And I was like, listen, you're welcome to call me an old fart, but just understand this. When I was your age, I was calling my mom an old fart. I was commenting on her sags and her flabs and her strength and lack thereof. And in literally a hot second, I am here. And in a hot second, honey, you are going to be here. So just be aware of that when you're calling me an old fart, that in one hot second, you too, before you know it will be an old fart. If that's what I am, which I don't think I am, but that's the goal, right? Because you're only going to get older. you are we all are if you're lucky I don't think I like I'm I'm happy to get older especially now that I've been diagnosed with a disease that could really be so generative on myself but I think too

just from previous relationships I've really carried this I need to be a certain way or I don't want to say nobody will want me because somebody will always want me but it's like it just, it's really played an impact on me. Like you're right with what my mom has done while I was a child, not knowing that she was doing that. And then the fathers of my other children, how they left me. And I was just, it's very difficult to navigate through those. And I didn't realize that they were issues until recently. I didn't realize that I carried that until, until recently. Well, that's a beautiful thing to recognize. And quite frankly, MS is a degenerative disease. It's also an inflammatory disease. And I know so many people who live with

MS and what I'm talking about with regard to the self-love, self-acceptance and healing and releasing of all the traumas. And you've had a lot of traumas. They don't necessarily, I think there's some big T traumas in there, but there definitely are a lot of little T traumas of rejections, abandonments, bullying, neglect, hypercriticism, right? And then I think there's also emotional abuse in your history. I'm not saying by your parents, but I get the sense that there was emotional abuse in your history as well. So as you heal, if you're willing to and release all of that, and that's something that ideally is with the help of like a somatic experiencing therapist or a trauma therapist, it will actually drastically reduce the inflammation

in your cells. And that is going to eliminate many, or at least manage a lot of the MS symptoms. So doing what we're going to be talking about in a second around like conscientiously healing, but also moving towards self-love and self-acceptance even before it feels natural to do so is actually going to help heal your body as well as your emotional life. And the bottom line is you seem to really care about and love your fiance, right? Yeah. Okay. And you're scared that he, like the others who didn't deserve you and who weren't emotionally mature and healthy, that he will leave you because you look, don't look according to a certain way or a certain ideal. And what you're doing is guaranteeing you that the relationship is going to disintegrate,

Mm-hmm. Right? What you're doing is locking him out of intimacy because the video that you were referring to was saying that anyone who is in their masculine, and I'm talking about men, but also for some women who really live in their masculine energy, so I don't want to make it only about men, achieve that sense of emotional closeness and connection that women or people who live a lot in their feminine get through kissing, cuddling, sharing, connecting. They get through the physical act of sex. So you refusing to have sex with him, even if it's for a reason that has nothing to do with him, is like him saying to you, I will not hold your hand or talk to you about your day because I don't like the way my voice sounds. Yeah. And you're like, I don't

have any problem with your voice. What the hell are you talking about? Your voice is great. Nope, I don't like my voice. So I'm not going to talk to you about anything important or about my feelings or have any conversation with you that makes you feel closer to me because I'm self conscious about the way my voice sounds. Which sounds so ridiculous when you put it in that perspective. Well, that's what you're doing. Yeah, no, it is. It really is. And I do. I watched that video and I kind of like the end of it. It was like talking about how if the woman, you know, went through something like that, it would kind of shut them down. And I was like, that is what I'm doing. I am shutting it down. What do you mean? What, what, what are you shutting down?

The intimacy, the intimacy of being close? Like, yeah, I'm shutting that off. Yeah, you are. And then what happens, and I don't want this to happen, but playing it out into the future, then what happens is he leaves or cheats because he feels totally abandoned in the relationship and lonely and isolated. And like, you don't care about him. And then either he ends up falling into some cheating situation. I'm not saying that anyone who doesn't have sex with their partner deserves to be cheated on. I don't mean to imply that, but the relationship starts to disintegrate. Either he cheats or he leaves. And then that just reinforces up. It's that hernia that he couldn't hang with my my fat belly so he's gone right it's true that's not what it is

it's that you've totally shut him out yeah I have I have it's definitely me yeah and does he know what you're self-conscious about have you told I'm not saying you should point it out incessantly but have you told him why you're avoiding intimacy yeah he's aware he's he's very well aware that I have issues with it. I have issues with myself and having it like, and what does he say? Does he criticize you at all? Or is he supportive and says you look beautiful? And yeah, he is. He is a very supportive man. He is. I'm like, I, I'm very lucky to have him because I do recognize that he's supportive and it's the first time that I've really felt supported, but I think like, I'm really just doing this to myself.

Yeah. And it's really a decision, not only to accept and love yourself against your better impulses or not better, but against your impulse, but also I think really important. It's about trusting him, right? Trusting that he really does love you and that he really is attracted to you and that his attraction to you goes way beyond your belly and any bumps or hernias or fat or cellulite or whatever else may be there. Things that are missing or things that should be there, things that shouldn't be there. He's not paying attention to any of that. I mean, how much time, think about your sex life. How much time has he ever spent gazing adoringly, kissing and caressing your belly? Like he still does. He still tries. I think he's made a

conscience effort to not touch my stomach. Right. Because I shoo his hand away. So he has made that decision. I think himself, we're just going to avoid that area. But does he find that like, is that an erogenous zone for him, your belly? My guess is it's an area he attends to between your breasts and your genitals, right? But really he's focused on your breasts and genitals. Yeah. It just, that's just the middle part in between that he would pay a little bit of attention to, but yeah, not just as he's grazing by or whatever, but that's not like if we were, if I were to say to him, Hey, what is the most erotic part of Laura's body? Like what is the area that you really find sexy and sexual. And this, I could have asked him this two years ago,

right? Or a year before you were even pregnant, he would not have said your belly. No, no, he wouldn't. That's not something that he would, he would say. That's not right. He's not paying attention to that. If you want to see what he sees, dim the lights, stand naked in front of a mirror and kind of blur your vision out. So you aren't really looking at one particular part, but you're looking at the whole silhouette and what he's really focused on and what 99% of men, unless they have a particular fetish for feet or bellies or ears or something or whatever, what the majority of men with women are looking at are their breasts, butt and genitals. Yeah. That's what they're focused on. And the whole experience of being

held and the experience of them being stimulated. And so my suggestion is that ASAP, you turn off the lights and light some candles, even wear a t-shirt at first if you're self-conscious and don't want to be totally naked and work yourself up to no t-shirt. I mean, I even did that in the beginning when I had a really angry, ugly scar. I was just like, I'm keeping this t-shirt on because I'm feeling a little freaked, but that didn't last long. I took it off, but you know, you can do that. Dim the lights and just focus on the sensations,

right. And tell him, you can even say he knows now not to linger on your belly, but even if he does, he's trying to give you the message that he loves that part of you too. And that there's nothing wrong with that. It's just bumps. And those, and that hernia is a badge of honor, right? Like you went through a really traumatic birth. It sounds like I did. It was really bad and you survived it and you have a healthy, beautiful baby and your body did that. Yeah. And when you, I don't know how into personal empowerment and spiritual stuff you are, but there's a well-known, she's no longer with us, but there's an amazing spiritual teacher named Louise Hay. She's the one that Hay House, the famous publishing company, is named for. And

she did this long, extensive research on different illnesses and the emotional roots of them. Not that they don't have environmental or genetic roots, but the emotional roots that play a part in them. And in most inflammatory diseases, there is a self-abandonment in particular of the body. And my sense is if you could start to really embrace, just like you embrace the imperfections of your children, because they're perfectly imperfect, right? They're all not perfect. So just like you embrace them for their whole selves and you love them and you want them to feel good about themselves, I want you to do that for yourself.

And if you can start to just, even if it starts by just honoring what your body has done and not beating it up for that alone, I'm not saying you're physically beating it up, but you're emotionally beating, you're mad at your body and you have disdain for your body and you're disgusted with your body, none of which is deserved, but you are, and your body is getting the message. I am. I think, I think I have such disappointment with my body for just like getting ill in the first place. And then this happening, it's just created such like a hate for myself almost

that I don't feel like I had before. And now I'm just like, man, I can't almost stand myself, but I try not to have that thought either because I'm like, I know that's bad. And I know that I have these kids looking to me. Not only is it bad, it's undeserved. Yeah. What if one of your kids got sick, would you be mad at your kid? No, absolutely not. No. And when our bodies get diseased, it's dis-ease. It's a call and a cry for something. I'm not saying when you answer the call or cry, all your problems are solved or that this is all because of emotional issues. I don't mean to minimize it that way, but I can guarantee you that disdain and hatred for your body is only going to make you sicker and what your body is calling for, what our bodies are all. I mean,

I learned this with cancer. When I had breast cancer, I realized pretty quickly that the reason my, we all have cancer cells in our bodies and it's inflammation that causes it to kind of start growing and, and reproducing, you know, as well as well as genetics and environmental toxins and but it's a big part of it is inflammation. And I realized that I had not properly grieved the loss of my mother. I was living on a hamster wheel. I wasn't checking in with myself. I wasn't attuned with my body. I wasn't listening to my body. I was mad at my body. And my body finally was like, hello, fuck you. I'm going to get your attention. Yeah. And that's what our bodies do. And so hating them further for that, then when the body feels like it's in trouble or

abandoned, it's no longer working with us. It really starts to shut down. Even with the healing of this wound, I had to kind of come to a place where I even named her. In fact, maybe you could name your hernia. I named my scar cutie pie. I do remember watching you talking about cutie pie. Yeah, cutie pie.

I named her cutie pie. So I was like, you know what, you are not ugly and evil and trying to destroy me. You are scared and hurt and feel like you're in trouble. So I named her cutie pie and I started being really nice to her and talking to her and like loving my body and being like, God, look what you've been through and appreciating it. And then I immediately started to heal finally, but it's a process and it begins with making the decision to stop being mean to yourself, even if you stop there, right?

And then start moving toward appreciation. And even if there's so much you could list that you can't appreciate or don't appreciate about the way your body looks or the MS, look at what it has survived. Look at what it's created. Look at what it has accomplished. Look at the fact that it's still here and it's still operating and you're still breathing. I mean, it's a miracle that we actually get to be in these bodies. It really is.

It is. And I feel very blessed that like I've been able to have four beautiful little humans that are healthy and happy and here. Your body did that. Even if it turns into mush and big hernia balls all over it, it deserves all the love an appreciation in the world for what an amazing feat it has done. I agree. I agree with that. I need to start being a lot nicer to myself. Yeah, I have. So what are we going to name your hernia and your belly? I'm going to have to come up with a creative name for that because I don't know,

like I was just sitting here thinking like, what am I going to name it? Yeah, well, ask her what she wants to be named. It has to be something affectionate and positive. It can't be, it can't be like derogatory. It can even be a name, but a name or a word that reminds you of how sweet, powerful, and worthy of love she is. And even though I don't normally, you know, I spend so much time with people trying to get them not to disassociate, not to leave their bodies or see their bodies as something outside themselves. With someone in your situation, I want you to kind of humanize your body as a separate entity. You know what I mean? To start like talking to her in your mind or even in the mirror when you see it and your eyes want to like

go there and judge yourself. Be like the equivalent of like, hey, cutie pie, look at you with your little bubble there. Thank you for helping me create life. I know you're not going to be here forever, but I love you and I appreciate you. And I know you are a symptom and a symbol of what my body can do. Well, that's what I was thinking in my head. Like, it's just, it's kind of a symbol of like, like I would, I would might be off to call it love because just be like, hi love, because it is like a symbol of like my son that I just had. And your relationship and the life you've created and the life you're creating together with this new baby that you guys have, I think that's beautiful. So your homework is to commune with love, meaning your body named love

and with love in general, and to go do it with your fiance ASAP. I will dimming those lights tonight, dim the lights, put on a t-shirt at first, whatever it takes and just stay present. And when you start to feel self-conscious, just say, it's okay, love. We're here. We're acting from love. We're living from love. I accept you. I love you. I'm proud of you. I'm really, really proud of you. That's the attitude I want you to start cultivating and the relationship I want you to start cultivating with your body. And if you can, if you haven't been to any of it, we're going to have another one, I think in September, but with shelter in the spiritual storm with my friend, Bobby Vogel,

she is a medical intuitive and a psychic and a medium. And she really helped me. In fact, I think she was the name that came up with the name cutie pie. She was the one that came up with the name cutie pie. She really helped me after my surgery because she literally is like, she speaks to the body. Like she's a medical intuitive and she'll tell you what your body is feeling and saying and what it needs. And she works with tons of people with inflammatory diseases and cancers and things like that. So maybe check her out, check out the podcasts or the lives I've done with her. I think they're on YouTube and maybe check her out. Yeah. Yeah. I think she could maybe help you if even remotely, but check it out and explore, explore that too,

Because I do think that there are ways, and I've seen many, many people with chronic inflammatory or other diseases get well. Even my interview I did with Gabor Mate, I don't know if you listened to that, but listen to that as well. He talks about the emotional, inflammatory, chronic disease connection as well. So once again, this is not to say that this is your fault or being happy is going to make you suddenly perfectly healthy, but it plays a huge, huge role in the sparking of symptoms, you know, and the breakthrough symptoms and in the management of the health. I agree with that. Yeah.

Stress can really, just any self-deprecation and stress can make you worse. Yeah. And that's, you've been in a hoedown of that with your body lately. I have for like a good year now. have been there. Well, so this conversation is the end of that, right? Yeah. You're going to start shifting out of that and shift out of disdain to appreciation. Even if you can't love and admire how it looks, you can love and admire what it's done and see the way it looks as a symbol and a symptom of your strength and what you've been through and what you've created.

yeah okay i like will you try that and keep us posted i will try that and keep you posted yes all right wonderful thank you for joining us well thank you so much for having me i went to the doctor said i'm crazy for your love I wrote me a prescription But there's no cure for crying