learning how to say no without guilt and shame (feat. Barb Nangle)

So taking back to the be- very beginning about what really kind of started this whole journey for you-

Mm-hmm

... and how it's led you to the person you are today.

So tell me a little bit about-

Sure.

Yeah

... what life growing up was like for you.

Yeah.

So, um, so life growing up, I, l- like, I think if you had asked me as a young adult, "Did you come from a dysfunctional family?" I probably would have said yes, but I never would have, like, said, "Oh, I come from a dysfunctional family." But, you know, I had a pretty decent childhood.

I lived on a dead-end street that had like 10 houses.

Seven of them had kids in my neighborhood.

We always had food.

Um, you know, we had a car, and then we had two cars.

My parents had jobs.

Um, but what I know now is that my, even though my physical needs were met, my emotional needs were not met.

And I've come to understand that unmet needs often result in trauma.

Most people think of trauma as blunt trauma, like something dramatic happened to you, like you were in a hurricane or you got beat up or, or something like that.

And the kind of trauma that I'm talking about is, I call it like the drip, drip, drip of emotional, um, invalidation, and, um, it, it has really lasting effects.

So I started, um...

Well, I've been numbing since I was a baby, so I sucked my thumb until I was 10.

I did it consciously until I was eight, and like the last couple years I was trying not to do it, but I'd wake up in the middle of the night.

And then I don't know what happened between 10 and 13, but I started smoking cigarettes at 13, weed at 14, drinking at 16, and then I think the switch sort of flipped for me to become a compulsive overeater when I was, like, about 22.

And, um, I drank abusively until I was in my early 40s.

Um, I was well into the food by then, so even though I still drank, it, it...

I didn't quit.