Podcast Transcript

Episode 48: Beating Bulimia: The Riveting Recovery Story of Stephanie Covington Armstrong

[Bouncy theme music plays.]

Sam: Hey, I’m Sam.

Ashley: Hi, I’m Ashley. And you’re listening to All Bodies. All Foods. presented by The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders. We want to create a space for all bodies to come together authentically and purposefully to discuss various areas that impact us on a cultural and relational level.

Sam: We believe that all bodies and all foods are welcome. We would love for you to join us on this journey. Let’s learn together.

Sam: Welcome back to another episode of All Bodies. All Foods. Eating disorders can happen to anyone of any race or ethnicity, yet the media continues to perpetuate the damaging myth that only young, then affluent white teenage girls are affected. These biases hurt everyone, but especially minorities and marginalized populations that don’t fit this longstanding stereotype. Many people who don’t look the part of someone with an eating disorder are not getting screened and diagnosed and ultimately not receiving or even accessing the treatment they need and deserve. In this episode, we hope to spread awareness that eating disorders don’t have a look and emphasize the importance of listening to stories from people like Stephanie Covington Armstrong. Stephanie Covington Armstrong, a Brooklyn native, is an author, playwright, screenwriter, ghostwriter, speaker, and eating disorders advocate. Stephanie’s groundbreaking memoir, Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat: A Story of Bulimia, is the first book by an African American that addresses the link between eating disorders and sexual abuse. She contributed to the anthology, The Black Body, and various books, including Restoring Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Lives by Amy Lou and Almost Anorexic by Jenny Schaeffer. Stephanie was a keynote speaker and spokesperson for NEDA, serving on various committees formed to create a more inclusive demographic and is currently on the board of the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. Stephanie was a member of the steering committee that created World Eating Disorders Action Day. She has published numerous articles to name a few, Essence, Mademoiselle, Venice, NPR, The New York Times, ABC News, and The Huffington Post. She has been featured on ABC News, NBC News, and in essence.com, she knows.com, Boston Globe, Washington Post, AOL Black Voices, Ms. Magazine, Psychology Today, among many others. We’re so grateful to have Stephanie on the show today. Stephanie, welcome.

Stephanie: Thank you for having me.

Sam: Thank you for being here. I thought maybe we could start with the topic of shame because you mentioned in your book that it wasn’t easy writing the book and that it almost didn’t even happen. And I thought to myself, how did you overcome the shame to tell this story?

Stephanie: Shame is just such a big part of addiction and such a big part of self-esteem and lack of self-esteem. And it just does not happen overnight. And also recognizing shame, recognizing your shame buttons, like lots of therapy, I had a lot of help, but I also wound up in a situation where someone intentionally kept shaming me. And it was just like when someone’s pushing your buttons and pushing your buttons, then you realize like, oh, it’s there’s something in me that they’re that they’re just bringing out. It’s kind of like when Wayne Dyer said, if you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice. Right. So, if you squeeze someone with shame, you’re just going to get like a shame-based reaction. And I did I did a lot of work. I did a lot of work around shame. I did a lot of therapy. I learned to meditate. And I started to understand that a lot of my shame was attached to my humanness and my perfectionism. And as soon as I went, wait, I’m just like not super special in the way that I’m not supposed to have all these human emotions. And then when I realized that so many things that had occurred to me were not actually my fault but the fault of unsafe adults, of like, just people not knowing better, of me not knowing better. I started to like separate from my shame and realize that it wasn’t actually a part of me. It was just something that I embodied almost as a safety mechanism, right? Because you can always go back to, well, I’m this horrible person. And then that like, who can fight with that, right? But when you start to go, I’m this human person, who has had these very unsafe or uncomfortable or awful experiences that may have led to my relationship with food. And then I do this awful thing with food and that just added another layer of shame. And I’m like not normal. And I’m also not the strong black woman archetype because they don’t do these things with food. And, you know, like something as simple as not knowing how to eat like a normal person, not having a relationship with food like a normal person is, you know, was one of the things at the basis of my shame. And the more I got into recovery and the more I learned about self-acceptance and that like, I’m just on my journey. (inaudible) I’m never going to be perfect. You know, so when I started breaking up with perfectionism, that really helped me. to start to release shame. And it’s crazy now, because when people try and shame me, I’m always like, huh, fascinating. It doesn’t ever feel like it’s about me. But it took me a while to first identify it. Like I could be on the phone with someone and suddenly I’m like my stomach’s hurting. I’m like anxious, I’m like reaching for food. Like I took me a lot of realize that there was a before that happened before I stepped into the food behavior. A lot of that was shame. And then I started realizing, like I just started journaling and being like before this binge or before this thing, when I spoke to that person and they were like, oh, I remember when you and I was like, or Oh, my God, like life is so easy and amazing and I’m having this, and I’d be like, well, that’s not my experience. And I would feel like something was wrong with me. And the more I was like, girl, you know, just accept your journey, just be on your, then I started to break up with shame. And I, like, I’ve, you know, I have a friend who said to me recently, I feel shame about being needy. And I learned so, I had a friend once say to me, oh, I’m needy and my girlfriends needy. And like we just found each other. Now we’re very happy. And I was like, whereas I was like, I’m just never going to be needy. Oh, my God. That’s like, no. And now I’m like, oh, my God. Like when I cry, I’m just so proud of myself. I’m like, you go girl for having all those emotions. Whereas, you know, in my eating disorder, I was not allowed any grace. It was like black or white. It was like life was amazing. Or I just wanted it all to be over and never wake up again. Like, I just didn’t know how to just be in this like gray area. And now my life is 99 percent the gray area. Like it just is. And then you talked about the book. So the first time I attempted to write my book, I was newer in program. And I had it was like Disney dust was on my book. I had written it in this way that was very like separate from me. It was like there was a pink cloud over it. Like I had an eating disorder and then I just like, I didn’t really, I didn’t dive deep. I wasn’t able to access the emotional life that I had. You know, I certainly wasn’t going back to all my journals and reading through and being like, oh my God, because I still had too much shame and too much, there were still too many things I hadn’t recovered from. And then I had a relapse. And when I had a relapse after 12 years, like a long time, and I was so overcome with shame in this relapse. And then like all these things, like the shame led me to the relapse. And then when I got to the other side of it, it ended, like I no longer had any shame. Like I really recovered for real. Like I wasn’t doing the food things, and I thought I was recovered, but recovery has different layers, with different levels. I mean, I was still, I had recovered, but then I had done orthorexia because I live in L.A., so that was easy. And I did a vegan, like I did all these things and not for the reasons people do them when they’re intentional. But I did them to kind of still play around with my food. I just wasn’t binging or purging or exercise. Like I wasn’t doing the behaviors. So, but I was still not completely healed of my eating disorder. I was still in disordered eating, you know, but because I wasn’t doing the things that made me suicidal and sad and depressed and, you know, and, you know, I wasn’t starving, I wasn’t binging. Then I was actually able to be like, okay, I’m going to be okay. And then, and then after, after that, that was like 17 years ago, it was a long time ago after that happened. It was like I had a new level of acceptance and a new level of recovery. And I realized like I could write honestly. And I had total recall for the first time in my life when I sold my book. And I also just thought if I could help one person who doesn’t necessarily fit the stereotype of the rich, white, privileged girl. You know, there’s so much fantasy about like eating disorders are all about wanting to be skinny. And I was like, I wish it was that. I wish it was just that easy.

Sam: Yeah, oh, you bring up so many important points, and I’m sure so much of this resonates with our audience, you know, that eating disorders are emotional disorders, and a big part of the work is being aware of those emotions that drive and fuel the cycle, that shame. I mean, I think at first it’s hard to even be aware of it, and it wasn’t until you started journaling and doing the work that you made those connections that wow, there are emotions here that want to be felt and processed and that’s really at the root of it. Do you think you’ve helped that one person, Stephanie?

Stephanie: Yes. And so, this is something that happened recently. My goddaughter is at college in Northern California. An amazing college and one of her friends presented with an eating disorder and had the parents had to come up and they and they had to put her in a treatment like it was a whole thing. Right. It’s what happens when you when your body is like you’re not feeding me enough. And so this is one of my closest friends. She calls me up and she said and her daughter’s 20 and she said I just want you to know that you don’t know how indirectly you help people. She goes, suddenly, this child who I’ve known since she was just before birth, went online to help her friend, suddenly found all these articles about me, found all this, and then started deep diving on me. And she called her mother and she goes, “‘Mom, did you know that Auntie Stephanie…’ and then I was able to talk to the mother and give her some advice. And it was like, that was one of my proudest moments because like someone that I actually, It’s like my niece. Yeah. Because it’s not like I’m running around talking about it. People who need it, like there are forums and I speak, but it was so sweet that she was able to use information on me to help her friend.

Sam: I have no doubt you’ve helped so many people. Your story is so important.

Ashley: I think the value of sharing story is just, yeah. It just it helps us feel seen and known in a way that maybe we wouldn’t have before. I have a question for you, Stephanie. I kind of want to jump in, when you were giving your introduction, you mentioned that, like, there was a time before. And so in chapter two of your book titled A Hungry Childhood, you mentioned that you believe your childhood and the childhood of your own mother, what she experienced played a role in your relationship with food. You mentioned that you didn’t really have or don’t really have memories before age six, but you still believe these early experiences influenced and impacted your relationship with food. And I was curious if you could say more about that.

Stephanie: So, here’s something I know affected me that I have no real memory of. I have memories based on my sister’s memory. Which is my mother was a very young mother who was also incredibly smart. She could have gone to any college. She got into Columbia Nursing College. She was just smart. And she wound up having three kids by the age of 20. Right. At a point, you know, she couldn’t handle like what was on her plate. She was raised partially in a Catholic orphanage. So, she raised me as an atheist, this whole other thing, had to basically put us in foster care. So, from a very early age, the age where you bond with your mother, you need to connect and you need the nurturing, I didn’t have that. I have very faint memories of going to the park with my mother, but I think those are my sister’s memories because my sister has like, she remembers from two. She just remembers everything. So, I think like that was an unnatural experience for a child. So, by the time I remembered my life, I was living with my mom, and you know, and she would never have, you know, given us up. She was very like extremely protective of us. And so, I think that I also think growing up food insecure. Like one of the rules for my mother to get us back was, you know, she had to feed us three times a day. Like she had she had to maintain, you know, there were rules. And one of the rules was maintaining like a household where there was like stability and meals. And my mother could not cook.  Could not cook. Just this black woman could not cook. And my mother was very, very strong. Everyone was kind of scared of her. She had very strong opinions. She was incredible. Like I said, by the time she passed at 75, she had she had gone to two colleges, had like was applying for her Ph.D. and her 50s. She got her degrees, 50s and 60s. Like she was just incredible that was that. So, but in a lot of ways, emotionally, yes, very unavailable. And she really believed. based on where we were raised. I was raised in Brooklyn under the poverty line. And she believed that to be too soft would have made us too soft and made, you know. And so she was, I felt loved. It’s not that I didn’t feel loved. I felt loved, but I never, I was never actually told the words until some teenage boy was like, baby, I love you. And I was like, no, you don’t. No, no, you don’t. You know, so I think like those things, the hunger, the not being able to have a voice, you know, you know, in that generation. And it’s not just like if you’re black or like that generation, we were not allowed to have voices. Like I have a 24-year-old and help and help raise my 19-year-old nephew. Boy, do they have voices. You know, they can talk about their feelings. You know, my daughter just called me to discuss feelings and I was she was like, and I’m going to say this and I’m going to and what do you think I should say? And I’m just like, I would have never had that conversation with my mother. You know, I mean, I did have other conversations with her that after recovery and, you know, where I was able to have a lot of conversations. But emotionally, she was shut down and my mother was a two pack a day smoker. So, you know, that encouraged a little anorexia in terms of like she didn’t care if she ate. So, food was never really important to her. But I also think because she had a childhood that was very unstable, that her belief was that her giving us stability was like that was 10 steps up. You know, in my, in my household, which I always try and tell people, I know I grew up in the hood and then I grew up in a very, my mother was very, very political. And so, my household, instead, we would have an empty refrigerator. But we had bookshelves everywhere. Like, like everywhere you look for books. You know, like my sixth-grade book report was Inside the Third Reich, which was like a 400-page book, like I was just grew up reading like a crazy person. Like I just so I just don’t think that’s normal. Or like there is like, I don’t want to call anything normal, but my needs were not met. Like I needed like, I needed a good meal. I needed some hugs. I needed to hear the words, I love you. My father was again, Ivy league, disappeared, like came back on and off. So, I had a very unstable relationship with him. So, I do think like the combo platter of my parents did, they played a role because they did their very best. But I remember being in therapy and my therapist said, what if your parents did their best, but it wasn’t good enough for you? And I was like (inaudible) like that question, that response, because I was very protective, because you know, someone’s doing their best. It’s hard to just paint one picture. You know, I also had a mother who made all our clothes out of vogue patterns and had like great taste and then she became very political and was like a member of the Communist Party and like, dragged me on marches and made me very aware of the world and certain and had friends who are like, so wasn’t just one thing. I needed personally did not.

Sam: Right. I think that’s one of the hardest things in recovery is getting to a place where you can accept that multiple things can be true at once.

Stephanie: Absolutely. And you can hold multiple things. Like, I can be hopeful and scared, right? I can be sad and grateful. Like, I always am aware that I’m holding more than one thing. But before recovery, I was just holding one thing. Like with like fists, tight fists and just, you know, I don’t want anyone to know. Like, you know, when you when you’re a bulimic and an anorexic, like you just don’t want anyone and you. You got all this melanin; you don’t want anyone to know because it’s like you’re like you feel like a freak. But I but I do think that my childhood had all of these like stereotypes and then had all these other things that were the opposite of stereotypes. You know, and I think that that’s interesting, and so I’ll say this to like, I’ve done a lot of talking and when I speak at colleges, I speak a lot on child, the childhood trauma tests, the ACEs tests. And my mother had a score of nine. I had a score of eight growing up and my daughter has a ACEs score of one. Like her parents are divorced, but we raised her. We co-raised her very well. Like, like we both are slightly obsessed with her. You know, so like one of the things that happened in recovery is that I was able to then stop, you know, the child, the childhood trauma train. Like I got off, I’m like, we’re, we’re ending this, but it wasn’t necessarily like I was like, I’m going to get rid of my childhood trauma and then have a kid with the… I just was a healthier person by the time I had a kid because I had done so much work on myself. Right? And by the way, it continues.

Ashley: Yeah. And our work never stops.

Stephanie: Work never stops. But according to people in my life, my relationship with food is so wild to them because I’m like, I’m a foodie. I’m about to go to Europe and I’m like, I want all the croissants and I want all the… And you know, like those were foods that terrified me in my in my early recovery. You know, you can recover, which I love talking about recovery because it’s so important to me.

Ashley: Yeah, I think that’s incredible. I just want to highlight when you say mom’s ACES score was nine, yours was eight and daughters is one. That is such a massive shift, Stephanie. And like, I want people to hear from that. that like change is possible. In recovery and everything, I mean, you were a healthier person and because of that change is possible and light and growth and goodness can be exuded from you and found in your life. It feels so incredible to hear you say that.

Stephanie: And I’ve been in situations where I’ve had women say to me at these schools that my kid went to, oh, clearly you grew up in an environment where your father was a doctor, or you grew up in Connecticut. And I’m like, no, I grew up under the poverty line in Brooklyn. I’m myself. Like I don’t have two different personalities. But there’s this belief that if you can speak well and you can send your child to privileged private schools and you can work your butt off to like do these certain things, like, oh, you must be from this world. It’s like, no job as humans is that every generation should do a little better. That’s our job. Right. And sometimes, you know, your kid has an addiction and there’s little you can do, especially if it’s mixed with mental health issues. Like, there’s a lot of different, like I was a lucky one. Right. Like I didn’t have like a family that, I had a family that was like, oh, we don’t do that. We don’t go to therapy. We don’t talk to white people about our problems. We don’t like I had to break a lot of rules in order to recover because my disease was killing me. I would not be here today. You know.

Sam: That reminds me of another question that I have for you, Stephanie, you know, you talk about mental health, that it just wasn’t something openly talked about in your family, it wasn’t accessible to you. I think there’s so many people in this country that can relate to that, whether they live in an area with no treatment or they just simply can’t afford it. And your story is so important because I just think it probably resonates with so many people and gives so much hope and inspiration. But I was hoping you could share a little bit about your experience with the mental health system and the medical system growing up and even into adulthood. I know at one point, I think you were… you had volunteered to even maybe do an eating disorder research study as a way to hopefully get some treatment. And you kind of looked around and realized you were one of very few black women seeking treatment.

Stephanie: I was the only one and I felt like a purple giraffe. You know, I’d go in and people would crowd around the door. And it was just like, like I say this jokingly, but like, there’s always going to be like a tinge of hostility, which is I wanted to say to these people because I was, I knew I was dying. I was. The number of times that I threw up a day, the number like if like I know, I’m surprised I had any nutrients or minerals in my body. I was like I was desperate enough to try this. And I just remember one day looking at them and being like, if I said I just threw up fried chicken and watermelon, would that like help y’all? Like how would, like what could I say to help? Like what could I say so you could see like that I’m struggling as much as the girl in the other room. Like I’m, like I’m not an anomaly and it took a long time, but in my twenties, I had a lot of friends who looked like me who were like, yeah, I was bulimic. Yeah, I went through that. Yeah, in college I went through that. Like it’s not uncommon. What’s uncommon is the lack of trust in the mental health arena from black families, you know, because you think of like the Henrietta Locks and the Tuskegee Airmen experiment and all of these different things. And it’s like, and how like mental health has been used to take away people’s children who are poor. So, there’s such lack of trust that that’s why we don’t have numbers. That’s why when people come to me and they’re like, can you recommend like 10 black people who’ll do this study? I’m like, no. No, we don’t do that. We don’t. It’s like there’s a lack of safety and there’s a lack of taking us seriously, like there are people in the eating disorder feel who I just love, but because they don’t look like me, they’re they, they are super successful and they monetize this business and they are like, you know, and, you know, at the end of the day, that’s still who people like want. That’s still the stereotype that we lean into. I worked with NEDA and we, like, on their campaigns so that you’ll see that people, they have men and people of color in all their campaigns. And we did this in like 2010 or 11, like way back when. And just to change the face. And so on the board of ANAD, I have another doctor that I work with a lot, like we’ve done, we were trying to develop a program for women of color so that we could take this program, and almost like Jean Kilbourne’s program where there’s like a documentary and then a workbook, and then you can go into schools and hospitals and just like educate people on what, just some subtle differences and some subtle conversations and what we need and her name is Dr. Tiffany Rush Wilson. And she’s a therapist, she works with the Cleveland Browns, she’s an eating disorder specialist, she’s a teacher. She does a lot. And I brought her onto the board at ANAD because I thought it was really important for rappers. And they were like, yes, thank you. Because there’s something about the only one that does not sit well with me. I don’t ever want to be the only one. Like to me, that’s like in this day and age, that’s a little ridiculous. Like, you know, she’s someone who had an eating disorder. She’s an eating disorder therapist. And we work together a lot and we’re trying to build programs together to help more people. And what’s interesting is when I wrote my book, I thought, oh, this is going to be for like black women. And it was very much like when I am LaVann Zant wrote her books, and everybody like them. Like if you have an eating disorder, in a lot of ways, you feel othered. Just that you feel othered. And so, most of the people who have reached out to me in the past and most colleges that I speak at and keynotes, they look like you guys. Because were humans. We’re humans. And I think it’s all about relatability. I just think if you’re, the more honest you are, the more you get past like, do you have privilege? None of that actually matters. The more you get into this is what happened, this is what happened with my food, this is how I sought recovery, and this is where I am now, right? Like that’s the story. And that’s the story that I find my book, I didn’t love the title. I wanted to buy it back and change the title. My publisher said no. But anyway, I like I think my book is wholly relatable because I go through a really strong trauma that for the longest time before the ACES came along, I really believe that was the trauma. Yeah. And then the ACES came, and I was like. I have a lot of traumas. Like I’m just a combo platter of traumas. And, you know, I got to work through, and I had already worked through a lot of them, but there was a, you know, there, you know, there was there was like a metric, which there hadn’t been before. And the description. And you know, I just like I wish everyone was in therapy and I wish everyone could do like anytime I’m doing the keynote, whether it’s for 100 people or 1000 people, I make them all do the ACES test. Because we’re so hard on ourselves. Like we’re so tough on ourselves that when you do the trauma tests, and I also built another in my newest recovery book, which I hope we have so, I talk about the micro traumas, because there are many. If you’re an infant, if you grew up in a house where there was another kid who had special needs or kid who had addiction, like there’s, if you grew up with a stepfather, like there’s so many, you know, if English wasn’t your first language. Like there’s so many micro traumas that I think have to be identified because a lot of times, like people will feel like, I don’t know why I have this eating disorder because I don’t have any of these traumas. And then you get to them, and you talk to them and you’re like, yeah, but you have these micro traumas. Like, and there’s no accounting for, oh, I need to have been essayed like justify that I have a need. It’s like, no, babe, like perfectionism. If you grew up with parents who expect you to be perfect, if you have to get straight A’s, that’s a microtrauma. So, if you feel, you know, so, you know, if you have a competitive relationship with a sibling, if you have a sibling who, you know, is always held up as the one, that’s a microtrauma. It may be macro to you. And that’s one of the things I really, you know, think it’s important to really talk about.

Sam: Yeah. Oh my gosh. In treatment, we talk all the time about the big T’s and the little T’s and how you don’t have to have full-blown PTSD to still have traumatic experiences that put you at elevated risk for an eating disorder.

Stephanie: Totally. I feel that to my core. We’re just such sensitive souls. And that like just being able to come to terms with that has can have so much healing. Hmm. Like I am like I used to I’m from Brooklyn, so, you know, you’re supposed to be tough. I’m so not tough. I mean, I have some strong boundaries. I can say no. I can set a boundary like nobody’s business. Yeah. When I raised my daughter and my nephew, they have strong boundaries. They’re like, no, yes, no, like this is not, this no. Like I remember, and I tell people this all the time because it’s one of my best parenting stories. When my daughter was seven, we were going away. I was taking her away. She graduated, not graduated, she’d finished school, and I was like, let’s just go on a mommy daughter trip. And we were going away for the weekend. And we were in the car and she goes, well, you know, my friend, and this was like one of her good, she was an only child. So this was her friend who was also an only child and also very available. You have an only child, you’ll understand what that means. And she said, yeah, when I go back to school in third grade, I’m not going to be friends with her anymore. But I was like, wait, what? Like I needed this kid. I was like, why? She goes, mom, she does not make me feel good about myself. (inaudible) As a parent, I was like, she goes, yeah, she says things that should be a compliment, but they’re not. Like she’s like, Zoe, for someone who’s like spoiled, you don’t act spoiled. I was like, I couldn’t fight with this child. I was like, she was always that child who was like, yeah, that’s not. And then in ninth grade, we’re driving, eighth grade, we’re driving home from Santa Monica from her private school, and she goes, you know, it was like the first day of school or whatever. She goes, I realized like, I’m not going to be popular this year. And I was like, hmm, why would you say that? And she said, I don’t want to do the things I need to do and say the things I need to say to hang out with the popular group. I just I would rather be by myself. And I was like, okay, because who cared about popular like, I’m like, you don’t want to peak in high school. So, this is all good. But like, I don’t think that would have happened had I not recovered. Had I not been a role model in some way that I didn’t even notice.

Ashley: That makes me think of, we had Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross on a few years ago and just talking about like historical and intergenerational trauma within the family system and just again, because of your own healing, kind of just like breaking that, that behavioral pathway immediately, even when you didn’t know, you know, that you were necessarily breaking something. But the fact that she could be so young and know who she is at her core and like know what makes her feel good. I mean, that’s remarkable.

Stephanie: When you give them tools that you didn’t have. And that’s something you learn about being in recovery. That, like I have a friend who always says, if you polish over here, it’s going to shine over here. If you work on recovering from your eating disorder, then like work might be better. Your relationships at work are going to improve. Your relationships with your family are going to… you know, improve or not, you know, like everything gets a little bit, it gets better in another area you didn’t expect. Just are willing to do the work on yourself. I love that I’ve not allowed you guys to ask.

Sam: I could sit and listen to all of that. And I love that concept, if you if you polish over here, it might shine in places you wouldn’t even expect. I love that.

Ashley: I wanted to ask, so. you’ve talked about doing the work. And you’ve talked about that it doesn’t go away or it doesn’t stop, right? But in your book, you mentioned when you started doing the work, you actually became more anxious, or you started experiencing more anxiety because some deep-rooted beliefs about yourself were coming up. And I was curious, maybe if you could expand on those beliefs or if you could expand on what it was like to feel that surge of anxiety and yet know that you’re still going through the healing journey.

Stephanie: Okay, so you have a dog, you understand, I’m not acquainting my life to a dog, but you know how they like are digging things up? It’s a mess. Like when you get things up, it’s a mess. It’s like suddenly you’re like, oh, I didn’t know that about myself. I didn’t know I did that. So, I had a belief system. Like I was wholly unlovable. Now, it wasn’t based on reality, just so you know, but this was my deep-rooted belief because of my childhood and because of my father and because of my uncle and because of my mother. I mean, because of like, you know, going to 12 schools before I graduated high school, like all of this upheaval, I took it personally. And I was like, there’s something. Now, I didn’t say that in person. In person, you would have thought I was fabulous, overshot my mark, you know what I mean? Like I worked extra hard to convince you. So, everyone kind of knew I was full of shit, but I didn’t know this. I knew this later. So, one of the things that happened is I started to see that like, there were so many holes in my story, right? Like, like, like I remember eventually in recovery, like running into ex-boyfriends who I was like, oh, they’ve just never loved me. It’s like my father all over again. I mean, you know, I was dramatic in my end. And he and one after another, they were like, God, you were the love of my life. I wanted to marry you. And I was like, this does not fit with my story. Yeah. This does not fit with my poor me. You know, I just, you know, and people would start to say, oh, yeah, you would push us away. And I’d be like, like not just boyfriends, but like, you know, like someone would try and give me a promotion at work and I would quit. I had a hard time learning how to sit through the discomfort. And so. I remember my therapist being like, oh, you’re trying to quit. And she would just laugh at me like, oh, wait, you want to quit therapy? And I was I was so uncomfortable with these emotions. Right? And also, the truth, like, but you know, because in order for me and my eating disorder to feel special, I had to believe that my eating disorder was part of what made me special. Right? Like this is part of my, it was like a part of my personality. Right? And so, when you get rid of the eating disorder, it was like, well, who am I? Like, who am I without this this this crutch. And I didn’t like it at all. So one of the things that really changed was just having to look at that, look and to look at like how imperfect I was and how, you know, full of shit I was sometimes. Mm hmm. Like I was like, you know, my therapist used to always laugh about it because I was so I was so intentionally charming. So that I could and I and I had this amazing therapist who could see when I would kind of like switch up. She’d ask me a question and I would just start to like tap dance over here and she’d be like, oh yeah, that’s interesting. But you didn’t answer the question. But you didn’t go there. And it made me so anxious to have to confront things that I had shoved down for so long with food. Like, cause that’s what the food did. The food shoved down anything that made me uncomfortable. And then it protected me from things that were painful. When I stopped using food, that’s why one of the things I always say to people, if you don’t know if you have an eating disorder, stop doing the things with food for a month and then see what happens. As soon as I had an uncomfortable feeling, as soon as I had shame, as soon as I had pain, because that was my, I didn’t use drugs, I didn’t use drinking, I didn’t use other things. I used food. And as soon as you took the food away, As soon as I had someone going, what are you eating three times a day? Calling your food, like the idea that I would call someone every day and be like, I’m going to have this for breakfast, this for lunch, this for dinner. Okay, talk to you later. And the fact that I had a, you know, a two or three buddies, we would call each other, we’d be like, okay, we’re not going to do this thing with food. And I had like a support team of other people who were just like me. Um, didn’t look like me, but they were, we were all like in our own little crisis together, trying, you know, trying a day at a time not to use food. But that’s it wasn’t just the food. It was like there was until I had something healthy to replace it with. Until I had new tools. Until I learned like journal, go for walks, call someone on the phone, you know, get out of your house. You know, if you do that, like, the concept you eat it, you own it, right? Like I was like, oh, okay, I’m not going to throw up. I’m not going to starve myself tomorrow to make up for this thing I ate today. Like, okay and one of the things that I’ve tried to teach people along the way is when you’re in an eating disorder, when this is your life, and you go into recovery, your body is going to change for a while because your body, is going to be like, wait, you ate a carrot? Well, we’re going to hold on to that. And it doesn’t matter what, because your body starved for nutrition and it has zero trust that you’re going to feed it again. Like zero trust that you’re not about to take it on that hamster whale again. And it took me a lot to be in acceptance that I was going to have a human body. Like I was going to have a supernatural body, right? I was just going to be human. And that’s one of the hardest things is to give up the ego and the body dysmorphia and all of that stuff in recovery. And this is why a good therapist helps so that you don’t swing from one end all the way to the other. Like, but you might have to in order to get back to the middle. And it may take, you know, it took me a couple of years to like suddenly normalize. Right. Sure. And, and, cause my body was like, we don’t trust you. We don’t trust that you’re going to feed us again. So we, so let’s just hold onto this. Yeah. Did I say I was a foodie?

Ashley: You did.

Stephanie: Like there, there is no thing I do. Like I eat whatever I want, but not, but I have, but I also not, I don’t use food in place of things. Like I love to eat, like I love food, but it’s not replacing relationships, connection, community. It’s not making me feel one way or the other. Like I’m not using it to shift from feeling, right? I’m just enjoying it. Like I’m enjoying it. Like I like to enjoy it. And that’s mind blowing for me. But like, it’s like, it’s like, food’s good. It’s actually good. I don’t have any like, you know, I went through the, I don’t have any no wheat, no gluten, no this, no that. I don’t have any of that. You know, I did that though. I did go through that doorway. But, but it got me here. So just like be where you are, understand it’s part of the process. Like recovery does not happen in a day, does not happen in a vacuum, and it does not happen in a straight line. Right, there’s nothing more than like the person in their first month of recovery who’s got it, and you’re like, okay, that’s a good place to be, but just to understand, you’re going to have more, the more emotions that come in, the more triggered you might be, and then, you know, so.

Sam: Right, the more that you dig up, the more that there is to process.

Stephanie: Yes. Lots of discomfort.

Sam: Absolutely. And such a big part of the work is being able to lean in to emotional discomfort and being able to tolerate it without using food, without using eating disorder symptoms. We talk about that all the time on this podcast. So your story really fits so well into everything that we believe about eating disorder recovery.

Ashley: Stephanie, I have, okay, we only have a couple minutes left, but I do, I would like to ask you one more question. So your book is titled, Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat. For any black girls that are out there listening to this podcast right now, who might be suffering with an eating disorder, what do you want them to take away?

Stephanie: There’s nothing wrong with them. Of course, black women have eating disorders. We have stress, you know, stress, like, you know, lots of black women are single mothers. Lots of black women are like first in their family to do these big things. Lots of black women, you know, struggle with perfectionism. Lots of black women have a hard time, you know, expressing their feelings or wanting to appear weak or, you know, needy. And I’ve been all of those, right? Like, or get help because it’s not, you know, other than going to church, right? So I want them to know, like, you don’t have to do it any way that your family did it. You only have to do it the way you need to do it. And that’s, and it will be a series of trial and error. And this is for anyone LGBTQIA. This is for anyone who’s a minority. This is for anyone who grew up under the poverty line. This is for anyone who grew up with a lot of trauma in their house that nobody knows about. This is for anyone who feels othered. It’s like, you can recover. I swear to you, if me, and I tried everything not to recover. When I got busted by my sister, I immediately deflected it by telling her the most horrible thing that had ever happened to me just so I could keep my eating disorder so I understand what this means so I would just say like allow yourself to recover because you have a whole life. And it can be amazing but you have you can’t do both you can’t have eating disorder and a healthy, happy, full life yeah, and if you can Just allow yourself the grace to recover, the life that you have is going to be better than any of your dreams, like way better.

Ashley: Thank you so much, Stephanie. And thank you, everybody, for listening to this episode. We so appreciate you all being here.

Ashley: Thank you for listening with us today on All Bodies, All Foods, presented by the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders.

Sam: We’re looking forward to you joining us next time as we continue these conversations.

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