Podcast Transcript

Episode 57: From Recovery to Provider:A Story of Intergenerational Eating Disorders, Trauma and Resilience with Renfrew Alum, Kate Funk

[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.

Ashley: Hey y’all, Ashley here. In today’s episode of All Bodies All Foods, we have Kate Funk (she/her) joining us to discuss the interplay of her trauma story and eating disorder recovery journey and how she actually uses these experiences to guide and shape the work that she now does with her own clients. Trauma, as you may know, is any event or series of events, such as chronic life stressors that one may experience, which overwhelms the senses and shifts the perspective to be one that feels life threatening. Because of these experiences, trauma leaves a long-lasting impact upon the survivor. And in Kate’s case, her trauma and her eating disorder became intertwined and both used the other to thrive. Kate uses her story of survival to advocate within the eating disorder field and educate her incredible clients to help them find relief from the stronghold of their past. Kate is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a virtual private practice in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas. She earned her master’s degree in family therapy from Drexel University and has dedicated her professional career to the treatment and understanding of eating disorders with a special interest in trauma, specifically CPTSD, and how it impacts the development and maintenance of eating disorders. Kate has trained with multiple eating disorder entities nationwide and is a certified eating disorder specialist and consultant credentialed through the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals. Thanks for listening today, y’all. We are so glad that you are here and we hope you enjoy this latest story.

Kate, thank you so much for joining us today. We are so excited to have you here. And I was hoping we could just go ahead and jump in because we have several items to cover today and we want to hear from you. So I wanted to mention this, you are both a therapist and you have a recovery story of your own, and part of that includes some time that you spent with us at the Renfrew Center. And so this season, I think we’ve kind of shared this with you before, but we really wanted to spend some time talking to people on the show this season about their own stories and their own journeys through recovery and also as providers, because we just feel like, you know, I imagine that some of what you’re going to share with us today is going to land with someone listening to us, you know, if not a lot of people, so we are so excited to have you here. We’re so excited to hear pieces and parts of your story. And so with that being said, I’d love to just kick it over to you and see if you could share a few glimpses into your story. And so first, when did you notice your eating disorder?  You mentioned this to me. When did you notice that your mom had an eating disorder? Because you mentioned that was something that influenced you. And then when did you recognize it was time to seek support? So I know that’s three different questions, but feel free to take it away.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Well, it’s interesting to think about, like, I definitely developed eating disorder symptoms at a really young age. I remember being in a dance class and like comparing my bodies to others. I was like probably seven or eight years old, like really young. And my mom was someone who was in a larger body and was kind of chronically dieting throughout my childhood, so I kind of just like picked up on those behaviors and started going to the gym at a really young age and being restrictive with my eating at a young age. And it was kind of a way for her and I to bond, and so I remember being about probably like 13 and watching a PBS documentary about eating disorders, and I was like, “I think I have this. Like this is bringing some bells”. So I was really aware at a really young age that my relationship with food and body wasn’t normal. And my mom’s preoccupation with food and body wasn’t normal. She’s never received full treatment or even a diagnosis. But I definitely kind of watched that develop in her and her experience with that. And then for me in getting support, I was really fortunate, and one thing that I like to talk a lot about with families of adolescents is my parents kind of pushed me into actually the Renfrew Center when I was 17, and I really needed that. I needed their support and I needed them to kind of hold that, hold those reins for me because I was not in a place to do it for myself. And I think that that was like such an act of unconditional love for them saying, like, “hey, there’s something really going on here. We need, we don’t know how to help you. We need to get you to the professionals that do.” So I was kind of thrown in the Renfrew Center and hated it. And it was really resentful of it, but I think it was a huge turning point in my healing and care. And, and I do credit it with helping save my life from my eating disorder for sure.

Ashley: And I imagine you’re not the only one that has that experience as an adolescent. That can feel so challenging because it’s almost like, it’s not that your voice is being taken away. Like you said, it’s a complete act of unconditional love from your parents and also, man, that’s just really hard as an adolescent to go into a treatment center.

Kate: Yeah, yeah, it was a totally different world for sure. For sure. But I think for me, I wasn’t at the place to see how my health was being impacted or even how my life was impacted, so I’m still really grateful for them for being able to kind of show that to me because I wasn’t able to see it at the time. But yeah, it is a really tricky situation and not obviously right for everyone.

Sam: Yeah, and motivation is so up and down. It fluctuates so much, and you know, I’m wondering, Kata, was there a point where you were in treatment and something shifted? And what helped you? And if so, what helped you shift your perspective?

Kate: Yeah, well, it’s funny, I was excited to do this podcast and talk with you guys, because I think the community at Renfrew that I was lucky enough to be in treatment with was huge for me, the hearing other people talking groups of “I feel like I’m worthless” or “I feel like I’m not good enough” or “I’m terrified of eating X” or, you know, “I can’t not use behaviors with Y” or whatever. Like hearing other people’s experience really opened my eyes to, “oh, this isn’t about me being worthless and awful. This is this is something more than me. Like there’s something going on here.” And so hearing other women talk about their experiences really opened my eyes. I would be talking to someone and be like, “they’re so amazing. How could they think this about themselves? You know, where they’re so smart or they’re so talented. If I was half as smart as them, I would like,” and seeing that really helped me see it in myself. I was like, okay, maybe this isn’t about me being so awful or me being, you know, so useless or what I had a lot of depressive thoughts going on. Maybe this is more than that. Maybe this is the disorder that’s really telling me these things. So I think that that was a pivotal moment, just like sitting in groups and talking to people and hearing their stories and really relating with them.

Sam: Yeah. I was wondering, did you even know anyone with an eating disorder before treatment?

Kate: No, yeah.

Sam: Yeah. A lot of people say that. They’re like, “I thought I was the only one,” and then you go in and you meet all these people and it helps so much.

Kate: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely, definitely. And I think relating to them is just huge.

Ashley: There’s a researcher at UCLA, his name is Dr. Dan Siegel. He does a lot with youth and parents actually in helping parents understand the brain functioning of a child and an adolescent. I think he’s done some incredible work with that. But one of the things, like one of his concepts, he calls, he says, “name it to tame it.” And so when you don’t have a name for the eating disorder, when you don’t have a name, for everything that you’re experiencing, it kind of like lives in this ambiguous world inside your head and you’re like, “what’s up, what’s down, what’s left, what’s right? I don’t know who I am anymore. This doesn’t feel good.” But when you can get to treatment and you can be with those other folks that are experiencing things so similarly, and you can see that they’ve been able to name it in their own treatment, and then it makes it relatable, I think. Like, yeah, you understand that you don’t live on that island by yourself. And it can really help somebody. Group work can be so powerful in the realm of eating disorder, really any treatment, but I love that you have that experience.

Kate: Yeah, I agree with what you’re saying, too. I think, I think labels and diagnoses can be so taboo in our in our world and in the field, but I agree. I think having like a name or even like a, I don’t know, an umbrella term.

Ashley: Right, like an understanding of this. Yeah.

Kate: Yeah, it can really help us like master our own minds and master our own experience. And so I agree. Like I think knowing that I had a needing disorder and knowing like different parts of my mental health, like understanding those and relating those was really powerful in my healing.

Ashley: That’s awesome.

Sam: So the community was really helpful. Were there any groups that you remember that really helped? I’m always curious about this, you know, because I think there are audience members who wonder what treatment is like, and we can sometimes give them a peek behind the curtain.

Kate:  Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that for me, I was very young, so I was very like closed off and in my own little box and like very much so stereotypical teenage stuff of wanting to be liked and wanting to be appreciated and wanting to be approved of and being in groups or movement group or art group or things that were really outside of my comfort zone of, you know, I was just in my own mind, like I was a good girl and I was just going to go to school and do what I was supposed to do and just follow the rules, and so being in a group where I’m asked to move like a feeling or draw out an experience, it really pushed me outside of that rigidity. And I think that now it’s so interesting, like as a baby, as a child, I was always a creative person and my eating disorder really took that from me. And so it was something I could really connect back with of like being able to do things that were outside of my normal realm really helped open my mind up to like, wait, I am a creative person. I am someone that is a little quirky and a little weird sometimes, and this is a way I can express myself. And I think it really helped me see that there are other people like me out there, not just with the eating disorder, but also that are creative or do like to think outside of the box. And I had some really powerful therapists and dietitians that I worked with there that really helps me realize that I’m not the only one that’s kind of weird sometimes. So yeah, I think it was really powerful. Those creative arts things were really powerful for me.

Sam: I hear this so much, which is why we actually have a whole episode on art therapy with Kyle Congdon. And, you know, he talked a lot about how it’s really sometimes just the act of like, getting practice with feeling uncomfortable. It’s sort of like, there’s something there’s no right or wrong way to do this, and to have the freedom to just kind of do wherever it takes you is part of the work, you know, getting more comfortable.

Kate: Absolutely. I remember this one session, it was a movement group and I just started crying because it was so uncomfortable. I needed that. I needed to look at that and process that and why is this so uncomfortable for me to move? And yeah, it’s really powerful for sure.

Ashley: That makes me curious. I know you mentioned that that was a while ago, right? But as a practicing therapist now, is there anything that you remember that you pull from that time that you implement in your work today?

Kate: I mean, in no way am I saying that training isn’t important, but I think I learned more about being a therapist as a patient than I did in school. Like, I think it really… And maybe because I was so young too, like it just really formed my experience, and I think it taught me how to be with people. It taught me how to be with the discomfort. It taught me how to like, sometimes we need to be in something that feels really uncomfortable or awkward or weird or stupid seemingly, you know, like you need to kind of sit with those things. So I think it’s, it really helps me not be afraid of like the awkwardness or the discomfort that might come up.

Sam: Yeah, I, it’s, it reminds me, I work with a lot of alums who tell the recovery story, whether it’s on the podcast or at other events, and one of the themes that always comes up is that so many of them said and continue to say that I, that “I kept an open mind in treatment and tried things that I thought might not work. I tried things I thought were going to be stupid and pointless,” right? These are the thoughts that come up. And it’s almost like that open mindedness, they start discovering things about themselves and figuring out what actually does work.

Kate:  Yeah, absolutely. And I think in my work, I’ve worked with clients from all kinds of backgrounds and in my own eating disorder training, I was taught like the clients are going to be smarter than you. You know, like you can’t outsmart an eating disorder. You would have already outsmarted it. They would have already outsmarted it. And so I think like totally sometimes we need to like think outside the box or get our hands dirty or be in the trenches a little bit to kind of grow and change and learn, and you can’t outthink the eating disorder. You have to really like do it.

Sam: Yeah. So, Kate, I know a lot of what we’re going to talk about today has to do with trauma, sort of a theme today, and specifically intergenerational trauma, which I think is a fascinating topic. We had a whole other episode on intergenerational trauma with Dr. Carolyn Coker-Ross. If folks are interested, they can go back and listen to that episode, as well. We also had Bruce Perry on, at the Renfrew Conference one year, and he wrote the book, What Happened to You. And I loved the idea of, you know, making that shift from what’s wrong with you to what happened to you, right? But then even taking it a step further, it’s like, it’s not only what happened to you, it’s what happened to you, your family, your ancestors, right? And so I really, it really helps me to think of things that way when I’m working with clients. It’s sort of like, this isn’t just about, you know, trauma necessarily. This is like trauma that you might not even know happened to your family members that might be impacting you. And you have your own story about intergenerational trauma and how it connects with your eating disorder.

Kate: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think it’s really interesting. My training is in family systems. I’m a family therapist by trade, and so one thing that I like to do is kind of get like a family tree going when I meet a client because you’re absolutely right. What’s happened throughout the generations definitely will come down and influence the person that’s in the room with me, and we might never have met those people. Like they might never have been even on the planet when we were, but they still can definitely kind of pass down that generational trauma for sure. For me, it’s really interesting. I’m a millennial and I think that as millennials, I’ve been really curious about how a lot of our grandparents were brought up during the Great Depression and World War II, and thinking about a world in that time, those people were often, obviously I can’t speak for everyone, but often were raised in a very like, “pull yourself up by the bootstraps and you got to just keep going and they have it harder. And people are starving in Africa” and all these things. And I think that that’s very much how my intergenerational trauma started of World War II, Great Depression, not having enough of anything and not having emotional availability for anything. So I was raised by parents that were really emotionally unavailable. My dad’s dad died at a really young age, so he was raised by a single parent who struggled with their own mental health issues and wasn’t really capable of being there for them, maybe in the way that they would have wanted to be if they didn’t have that single parenthood-ness. And then my mom was raised by really stoic, hardworking, Polish-American people. And I think that was kind of passed down to me. And their emotional unavailability that they experienced and their own trauma histories, both my parents have their own trauma experiences outside of even their own parents passing those things down, was passed to me, like they were unable to be there for me in the way that I needed them to be. And I think that’s an important distinction of I’m a therapist. So obviously I’m a very emotional sensitive being and I needed more, I needed more emotional attunement and I wasn’t able to get that because of their own upbringing, their own traumas, their own inability to even express their own feelings. So I think that was a huge part of my eating disorder and developing an eating disorder was instead of being aware of my own experience, I was always taking care of them. I was always trying to like figure out who’s upset and the only emotion that was safe in my family was anger. And so I was always trying to like prevent an angry outburst or prevent getting in trouble or prevent my mom from crying or my dad from screaming or like just constantly trying to keep the peace. And that works for a bit, but the reality of it is that a child can’t keep parents happy, you know, no one can keep anyone happy. It’s really our own jobs internally. And so I think that my own depressive thoughts and things came as a result of that. I can’t help them. I can’t fix them. There must be something wrong with me. And that’s really where my eating disorder kind of tuck in, and also like not having any awareness of my own needs. It was all about everyone else. So of course, how am I going to take care of myself?

Sam: Right, right. This probably lands with so many listeners. The people pleasing or, you know…

Ashley: the fawning.

Sam: Yeah, “I’m the peacemaker in my family. It was my job to make sure everyone was OK. So I held back because I didn’t want to upset anyone.”  Did these strategies, I’m curious, like, how did these survival strategies that you developed as a kid? Because that’s really what they are. It’s like it works in your family, but how did that play out for you when you like landed in treatment?

Ashley: Oh, yeah.

Kate: So interesting. I think that kind of going back of like how meeting other people was really powerful. It was also distracting to like focusing on myself like “no, no, no, I don’t have to worry about so and so’s thing or I don’t have to check in with so and so about X or Y like I need to check in with myself.” That was definitely something I was really aware of. And I remember talking to my therapist. I have a really clear memory of my time at Renfrew. It’s really weird. I have a horrible memory otherwise, but I remember that time. And yeah, like I think that was a huge part of like, no, no, no, we got to bring it back to me. Like, yes, I still love everyone. Like I could still be caring of other people, but it really needs to be about my treatment and my healing. And that’s, I think something that I see in my own clients a lot too.

Sam: Yeah, exactly.

Ashley: This concept of intergenerational trauma is so, I think it’s so big and something that I just, I want all of our listeners everywhere, all over the place to hear that like, so this concept that likely your grandparents and parents were, you know, they did, perhaps there was this level of suffering and this level of trauma that they did experience. And so this was, as Sam said, their survival strategy as well. But then when it gets passed down to you, Kate, it’s more like, it is your survival strategy, but it’s also like just the behavioral pattern that in your young child brain just works, right? Like it’s the thing that just kind of works. And so I even think, you know, even outside of treatment, like what did that look like for you when you started seeing yourself kind of using these patterns with other relationships that weren’t your family? Do you know what I’m saying?

Kate:  It was a disaster, and it’s so interesting. Like I’m talking like, I really didn’t even know I struggled with my own PTSD until much later. And I want to talk about like that process, but it was huge. Like every romantic relationship I chose to be in was like a caring, like caretaker role. You know, like I was always in relationships with people that were emotionally unavailable, that were struggling with their own mental health, that were, you know, disasters pretty much in their own right, and they would probably admit that too. And it was a way for me to deflect from my own, you know, that’s I’m really comfortable and caring for other people, and so I just latched into that over and over and over again. And I think with friendships, it was very similar too,  like I was always the kid that would like give my homework to my friends, you know, where I would go above and beyond for everyone else. One thing my therapist would say to me is like, well, “why are you doing these things for everyone?” I was the one that was baking the cupcakes and going to the events and staying up late on the phone with everyone. And they were like, “well, why are you doing this?” And I was like, “I have to, this is just what I do.” So I think,  that fawn response, just constantly being of service to everyone else was absolutely how my own PTSD manifested, and came directly from that intergenerational trauma.

Sam: So, Kate, there’s probably people in the audience who are thinking, well, what does this have to do with having an eating disorder?

Kate:  Yeah, it’s an interesting question, but I think it goes perfectly with having an eating disorder in that, when you’re always worrying about everyone else, you don’t realize like, “oh, I’m tired” or “oh, I haven’t had any fun lately,” or “no one’s asked me about my day” or, you know, no, whatever, like you don’t realize these things about yourself. And so I think that that went really hand in hand with my eating disorder of like, I wasn’t even acknowledging my own hunger, or my own fullness, or my own body’s needs. Yeah, I think that was like, step one. And then the other part of it is constantly doing for everyone else and never getting that back. Like when you’re constantly people pleasing, you’re never going to get that same energy back from people. It’s not healthy. It’s not normal. It’s not possible. It’s not a good situation to be into, so I was never getting that back. I was never getting my needs met and it made me hate myself. It made me think there’s something wrong with me that no one’s caring for me the way I care for me. There’s something wrong with me that I have so many issues and like I’m struggling and I hate myself. And so it really, I think, fueled depression, which fueled my eating disorder. So it was a sense of like, “why me? No one loves me, I’m not enough, there’s something wrong with me.” And losing weight became my way to feel better about myself. Like, okay, well, if I can be thinner, maybe, well, one, I think it was subconsciously too.  Attention is such a hot topic, but like I think it was a way to get attention from my family. Like why is Kate losing weight? Like get them to pay attention to me a little bit. And subconsciously. And then also, yeah, to get some praise from other people from the outside world. If you lose weight, you get praise. And that was my way to get some positive feedback. Yeah.

Sam: That makes perfect sense. And I’m sure it’s so validating to so many people out there listening that are thinking that sounds just like my story too. We hear these themes all the time. With intergenerational trauma now that you’re a clinician, how do you help clients who maybe don’t even realize that there’s intergenerational trauma at play here?

Kate: Yeah. So I think that when we think about trauma, we often think about like one event or like maybe a series of horrible events, but I try to teach my clients that it can also be about things that should have happened that didn’t and things that didn’t happen that should have. So  kind of like that, that emotional attunement aspect, like not having anyone to ask me about my day or not having anyone notice that I’ve been really quiet and reserved or not having someone to, I don’t know, like pump me up and make me feel good. Like that stuff can also be a form of trauma, and over time, maybe not in one instance, but over time that lack of attunement for a kid is really challenging to go through.

Ashley:  Yeah. I literally was just having that conversation with somebody before I popped on, but just like when for this particular person, a parent wasn’t in the picture, and so we were talking about how there wasn’t then that kind of like mirror in front of them as a child to like work out this process. So what should have been there but wasn’t. that’s a that’s a big concept there.

Kate: Yeah. And I think it’s interesting, like I so many of my clients won’t be aware that there’s trauma and so explaining that process. And then also just kind of poking holes in the narrative a little bit of like, “well, why wasn’t anyone there to give you a hug? Or why didn’t anyone notice about X or Y?” And sometimes people can get defensive of that and protective of their parents or their caregivers or what have you, like, well, “they tried” or “they’re busy” or and that’s all valid. You know, I think that the point of this, too, is that it’s not intentional. My parents had every intention of caring for me and loving me, and they did everything they could under the sun to care for me. But it wasn’t enough for what I needed. And it wasn’t enough because they hadn’t done their own healing, you know? And like, I think that that’s the reality. The important part is like, I want people to understand that we can say that I have trauma and I have intergenerational trauma. And that doesn’t mean that my parents intentionally tried to harm me. You know, I think really breaking that stigma is a big part of helping clients understand this stuff, too.

Ashley: Hey, I feel like you just dropped like 100 mics with that right now.

Kate: Oh, I appreciate it.

Ashley: Hey, so I have another question about a concept that kind of comes up with this. You mentioned to me that part of your story was, or you dealt with the concept of the whack-a-mole. And so for those that are hearing this for the first time, it’s essentially as one symptom gets better, another symptom kind of pops up. It kind of like takes over, right? And so it can really be an unintentional way that we manage the yuck that we might be experiencing, you know, kind of that’s around us. So one of the whack-a-mole experiences that you had was as your eating disorder symptoms got better, you noticed that you were, I guess, developing an addiction.

Kate: Yeah, definitely.

Ashley: Yeah, could you speak more to that and tell us a little bit about that kind of process?

Kate: Yeah. I think my eating disorder recovery kind of gave me the tools to be insightful about my experience. So it kind of saved me. And what I mean by that is, so I was, I was getting better with my eating disorder. I was doing all the things and I started hanging out with one of those disaster relationships and they were abusing substances and I kind of just fell into it. A similar way of like my eating disorder kind of numbed all the bad things and the good things too, it kind of numbs you out and like keeps you distracted from everything. Substances did the same thing for me. And so it was kind of it was like the perfect storm of it. Just like, “oh, I can do this and I can still eat like this is great.” So I just kind of hopped into to the next struggle that I had with that. However, I think my eating disorder recovery and the stuff that I learned at Renfrew, and also one another thing that Renfrew taught me, was that cross addictions and comorbid issues are common. And so I had that awareness to like look out for these things. And so I was able to actually get support and get help, and I told my family about what was going on with the substances, it was multiple substances. So I was able to really like get a hold of that pretty quickly. So I think the awareness from my recovery really helps me with that. But yeah, it’s really challenging, as you guys know, it’s incredibly challenging to go from one thing to the next or to kind of work on one thing and then maybe urges for another substance or another issue might come up. It’s incredibly challenging. And I think the most important piece is like that awareness and being honest with ourselves. And if there’s anyone else in your life that you can be honest with or a clinician or whoever about what’s really going on, because I think there’s so much shame entangled in all this. Like for me, even thinking about it like, I was eating this morning, I got this addiction, like it’s exhausting. So being able to be honest with myself about that was really important.

Ashley:  Yeah. So that is a common process then that that kind of whack a mole thing. How do you share that with your clients? You know, or if you do you see that come up I would guess in your practice?

Kate: Yeah, yeah, definitely comes up. I am very open with people and I preface this with, I think I have a very good balance of self-disclosure and working with the clients. But I often use myself as an example of like, “hey, this is something that’s happened to me. Like, what are your thoughts? Or like, do you see that? Or how might that be similar? Or is that not similar?” So sometimes I’ll just give a little story time about my own experience to help people see similarities or not similarities. But I’ll also say like, hey, it sounds like you’ve been going out a lot, you know, what’s going on with the drinking or how’s that feeling? I think it helps me be a little more curious about those situations. And yeah, I’m pretty open about my own addiction issues.

Ashley: And so then that seems like it speaks to the work there is about the thing that’s like underlying both the both the eating disorder symptoms and the addiction symptoms, like what is going on at the bottom of this.

Sam: What’s the common denominator?

Ashley: Yeah, what’s the common denominator?

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s really where like the trauma was for me. And I think for a lot of people. I mentioned earlier, like, I didn’t know that I had PTSD until many years after I started my eating disorder recovery. And how that kind of hand out was, I think the concept of CPTSD, complex PTSD, occurs when there’s like a disconnection in like relationships or repeated pattern over a long period of time of not getting your needs met or being in constant fear. So once I realized that was a concept, because I wasn’t taught that in my own training, and I always thought about PTSD as like flashbacks and nightmares, and I wasn’t having flashbacks or nightmares, but what I didn’t realize was that I was re-experiencing things, you know, when and how I figured it out was, my husband can be kind of moody, but I always thought he was mad at me. And I was always thinking like, “oh my God, what did I do? You know, I got to do this.” And I was, oh, I was like hyper vigilant around him. And then I realized he’s just moody. It has nothing to do with me. This has nothing to do with me. And started seeking out my own therapy and realized that I, had CPTSD and it really stemmed from my childhood of constantly trying to take care of everyone and being really hypervigilant. So it didn’t look like flashbacks. It looked like me reliving that hypervigilance. And so I think when I realized that it was even a deeper healing. So I think my eating disorder recovery was really about me getting a voice, was about me challenging the depressive thoughts about me having some self-esteem, and that helped me for a while. And then once I was like safe enough to delve into the deeper work of my childhood and my trauma and I’m not living at home anymore. And I could do even more work. So I think the underlying thing was trauma related and probably genetics and things like that, too. I definitely have this in my family. But yeah, I think that that was the underlying cause for sure.

Sam: Yeah. Thank you for bringing awareness to not only PTSD, but complex PTSD, and that the reminder that trauma doesn’t look the same on everyone.

Ashley: Yeah.

Kate: Yeah.

Sam: And you can even have sub threshold PTSD. Like you might not even meet criteria and that can still be a risk factor for an eating disorder.

Kate: Absolutely.

Sam: You know, or can impact your relationships or your self-esteem or whatever it may be. So trauma is just so important to talk about, because I do think there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what it looks like to have trauma. And it might not look the way it’s portrayed in the media.

Kate: Yeah, it’s huge. And I think one thing that I really struggled with and lots of my clients struggle with is like, it wasn’t that bad, you know, as I’m passing by.

Sam: The minimizing.

Kate: Yeah, like, you know, I wasn’t in a war to our country. Thank God, I wasn’t held at gunpoint, you know, like I didn’t have any of these like big, we call them like big T’s, but like, I don’t even like that, that language anymore. Like it wasn’t one event. It was this constant pattern of being afraid and being scared and being anxious and taking care of everyone else, and like that can be traumatizing. And it’s, it’s so interesting, like in, in my own work and,  talking to my own family and I actually had this conversation with my mom over the summer of like, “Hey, you have trauma, like you really need to see a trauma therapist.” And she was like, “what are you talking about trauma?” And I went through a laundry list of things. She was like, “oh yeah, is that trauma?” Like, yeah. I get it. People don’t see it. They really don’t see it. I didn’t see it.

Sam: Yeah, I think it can be hard to see, especially when the symptoms of trauma can simply be just the avoidance of trauma reminders. It’s like not even what you’re doing, it’s what you’re not doing or what you’re avoiding can be a symptom, and that can be hard to even realize.

Kate: Yeah, that’s a huge one. I have a lot of clients, I’m sure you guys can relate, that avoid relationships, you know, that haven’t dated or been in a romantic relationship in many years, decades, or don’t trust friends. And I think like that can definitely be an avoidant behavior that can stem from trauma for sure.

Sam: Absolutely, absolutely. So you’ve done so much work in the eating disorder field. At one point you even started a support group in New Jersey. You’ve been trained by different eating disorder organizations and facilities. And in your work, you’ve come to the realization that there’s really a gap in the treatment of trauma and eating disorders. Could you say more about that gap?

Kate: Yeah, I think the lack of understanding is a huge part, like we’ve been discussing, like people not understanding really what trauma can be is one part of it. And then also another part is it often, working in the treatment world, often there can be this idea that we have to get the eating disorder better before we can do the trauma work, and there’s some truth to that. I mean, you can’t, if you’re someone that is deathly ill, yeah, like we shouldn’t be adding more onto your plate, but I think it’s really important to look at both at the same time of what is, they’re working together, you know, and I think really exploring like the function of both and how they work together is really important. And that might not be you doing, like in my experience, like I did parts of my trauma work throughout my life, we  have we don’t do it all right now, but we definitely need to be talking about it. And we definitely need to be addressing it and assessing for it and exploring it for sure. And I think like obviously safety is the most important thing, have to assess for safety first, but I think we need to address both at the same time. And the idea that we can only do trauma in a higher level of care, we can only do trauma after the eating disorder is resolved, I think is really selling people short and not helping them get the support that they need.

Sam: To work on it at the same time, one doesn’t have to come first.

Kate:  Yeah.

Sam: You know, I think sometimes there is this belief that, for some people, I need to really work on my trauma before I even work on my eating disorder. And then you have on the other side, maybe some providers who say, no, we need to work on the eating disorder first before we even touch the trauma work. And what does it look like for you as a clinician doing both at the same time? Would you be able to give just some examples of that?

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. So I think. It’s interesting to think about, like, I think the clients often will have, like you said, like, they’ll have things they want to work on, like, it’s often more comfortable to work on one or the other. But I think exploring like how they work together is really important, so kind of giving some psychoeducation about how they might be working together, how, how they might be similar and in certain ways is important. And then kind of looking from there, like if it’s depending on the the client’s abilities and severity and resources. Like we might do two sessions a week. Maybe we do like one trauma session a week, one eating disorder session a week. Typically with a client that I see weekly or doesn’t have the resources to do that twice a week, like I will do, we check in on the trauma, we do some eating disorder stuff, we do some trauma stuff. So I kind of like sandwich them together. I also think support groups can be really useful, and as we were talking, I love groups. And so really utilizing some outside resources of, “okay, we’re going to do really hardcore eating disorder work here, but I really want to make sure that you’re going to this trauma support group or vice versa.” I think utilizing additional resources for someone that has an eating disorder and trauma is really important. And also I really like to collaborate with the team. So sometimes like I might be handing more of the eating disorder stuff over to the dietitian and really focusing more on trauma. It might ebb and flow. And I think that’s important too, of looking at the season that that person’s in. So like, you know, if someone’s really dealing a lot with family stuff, like probably can go a little later on the trauma, let’s work on the food, you know, if their trauma is related to their family, or if the person has been really struggling with a transition and the eating disorders going rampant, like, okay, let’s focus on this. So, so I think it’s really individualized, but definitely both are on the table at all times.

Sam: Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that.

Ashley: I was curious. We talked a little bit about your story of like, so like you did your eating disorder recovery, or your eating disorder treatment, if you will. You got help for your substance use that you were experiencing. And then I think I remember you mentioning that like, part of your trauma was still kind of there and you, but you were finally able to work through the rest of it. Can you maybe speak to this process as your journey or the journey that a client might experience with that too? Does everything just go away in treatment? Is it a long process? You know, kind of like, what does that process look like?

Kate: Yeah, so daunting, so daunting, but I think, it’s actually important. It’s an important piece of I believe that I truly believe that I’m recovered. I don’t believe that I have an eating disorder anymore. But the things that created my eating disorder are still a part of me and will always be a part of me. And I think that the dire issues of an eating disorder and addiction, like I had to deal with those because those were life threatening issues, and as I got safer in those places, I was able to do more and more and more and work on myself in more ways. And also I think I’ve evolved as a human, as we all do, as I’ve gotten older and been able to understand things differently and my family relationships have evolved over time. I think there’s been just like so much more unfolding and natural healing and growth in that process. So I think it is a daunting thing to say that it’s taken me, oh my gosh, like probably like 20 years, to work through all this stuff. However, it’s not always looked the same. I haven’t been struggling with the symptoms of an eating disorder for 20 years, thankfully, but I think that the process has been long and slow. And I think that that’s one thing that I’m really passionate about. Like I was trying to get my mom into therapy again. Like I think that it’s never too late, and I think that there’s always work that can be done and there’s always little pieces of improvement that we can create for ourselves. And so I think that would be my biggest message of like, just don’t give up. And like, just because you’ve been in therapy or just because you’ve been in treatment or maybe you’ve been in a bunch of them, doesn’t mean that you can’t still have that progress and get to a place where you can feel better.

Ashley: Yeah. And wouldn’t you say that like, when you have those moments where like something shifts, right, like you have those light bulb moments or those things that shifts and you’re like, oh, I feel better. Like that almost feels a little bit more empowering to keep on going.

Kate: Yeah.

Ashley: And then you wake up one day and you’ve been in it for 10, 20 years doing your healing journey, which is absolutely incredible.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think a part of that too is that my healing hasn’t just impacted me, it’s impacted my whole life. It’s helped me find people that I really connect with and want to be in relationship with and kind of let go of some of the relationships that no longer serve me, so I think it’s not only been great for my healing, it’s also been great for the people around me as well.

Sam: Kate, thank you so much for being here today. This was wonderful. I know our audience is probably wondering how can they connect with you and learn more from you?

Kate: Yeah, so you can go to my website, which is Kate Funk, which is my last name, mft.com. You can also email me at [email protected].

Sam: Wonderful. Kate, this was a joy. Thank you so much for being here, and we hope to have you back one day.

Kate: Yeah, thank you so much, I appreciate the time.

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.

[Bouncy theme music plays.]