BITE BY BITE | Honest Conversations About Eating Disorder Recovery

Unpacking Perfectionism, Control, and Anxious Attachments in Relation To Eating Disorders with Morgan Hannaleck

• Kaitlyn Moresi • Season 1 • Episode 9

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Welcome back to the Bite by Bite Podcast.

There are a few reasons why perfectionism and the need for control show so often in all types of eating disorders.

In this episode, join Kait and episode guest, Morgan Hannaleck, as they explore the deep links between perfectionism, control, anxious attachment, and eating disorder recovery from their lived experience. 

In this episode, Kait and Morgan discuss:

  • The roles of perfectionism and control in eating disorders (3:12)
  • How perfectionism and control become coping mechanisms (6:07)
  • How control gives the illusion of safety and the impact this has on an eating disorder (9:21)
  • The challenge of perfectionism in eating disorder recovery (12:50)
  • How to overcome all-or-nothing thinking and embrace discomfort (16:09)
  • How one’s eating disorder develops from it’s own roots (18:42)
  • The  connection of an anxious attachment in relationships and eating disorders (22:47)
  • The impact of external validation and social media impact on eating disorders (28:03)
  • The importance of eating disorder education in recovery (31:53)
  • How self-compassion is the key to sustaining recovery (35:26)
  • The importance of replacing control with trust (39:41)
  • Learning to listen to the physical cues from your body (42:12)
  • How to unmute yourself and feel all of your emotions (44:27)
  • How to transform your patterns with communication and trust while in recovery (47:30)
  • How to challenge a high-functioning eating disorder (52:22)
  • How to find your purpose in eating disorder recovery (58:10)
  • Practical advice for letting go of your need to control (1:03:25)

Content Warning: This episode contains brief mentions of eating disorder behaviors that Kait and Morgan have previously engaged in. Please listen in a way that feels safe for you and your recovery.

Episode guest: Morgan Hannaleck is a licensed therapist, mental health speaker, and author who specializes in eating disorders, relationships, and self-worth. After surviving a life-threatening eating disorder in her teens, Morgan began a decade-long journey of healing that transformed her pain into purpose. She now uses both her personal and clinical experience to help others reconnect with themselves, challenge shame, and build lives rooted in authenticity and joy. Through speaking, writing, and therapy, Morgan empowers people—especially young women—to know they’re never too far gone to come home to themselves.

Morgan's Resource Library 

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UNEXPECTED LESSONS: Lessons My Eating Disorder Taught Me About Healing & Self-Worth

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UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Bite by Bite, the podcast that takes you step by step through the messy, beautiful, and real journey of my struggle with an eating disorder. and my recovery. I'm Kate, and I'm here to share my experiences, lessons, and the wisdom that I've gathered along the way. Here, I share it all. The raw, the real, and the uncensored, so those who can relate know they're not alone in the tough moments. And for those of you who haven't battled an eating disorder, your attention is just as important in helping to educate and break the societal stigma. Before we dive in, please remember that while I hope my story and reflections can be helpful this podcast is not a substitute for professional treatment if you are struggling or need extra support please reach out to a qualified mental health professional In today's episode, I'm here with Morgan Hanelec to unpack the deep connections between eating disorders, control, and perfectionism. This conversation will also explore how eating disorders contribute to the development of anxious attachment and relationships. Together, we will explore how these patterns only contributed to our eating disorder. Through honest conversations and personal insight, we reflect on what it means to let go of control, moving through fear of rejection, and building trust, but Thank you so much for joining us. Hi, Morgan. I'm so happy that you're here and on the podcast. I've known you for many years, but you recently, well, not recently, a couple of years ago, moved to California. So I haven't seen you in a long time, but I know kind of a lot about you and we have similar stories. So do you want to just briefly tell everyone why you're here, why you want to be here, all about you, things like that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, my name is Morgan. I am a therapist and mental health speaker and also am in eating disorder recovery. And I want to be on this podcast because I really believe in your mission and the authenticity that you show your audience of what it truly is to live with an eating disorder and make it on the other side. So I'm hoping that I can also add some insight to some of the things that you're already talking about.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So when we sat a couple weeks So now when we talked about things and what we kind of wanted to talk about, a lot of our discussion was talking about perfectionism and control and anxious attachments in relation to eating disorders. What is perfectionism control for you? Like, when you say that, like, I know there's definitions, but I think for everyone it kind of manifests differently when it comes to

SPEAKER_02:

eating disorders. Right. And

SPEAKER_01:

it's funny you say ironically, because perfectionism, we're chasing to be perfect in every way possibly to be described, right? But nothing is perfect. No one is perfect. That doesn't even exist. So it's like we're chasing something that doesn't exist. But like you said, we achieve one goal or we reach one objective, but it never happens. Right. And the irony is

SPEAKER_02:

that people don't actually want to be perfect. They want what they think being perfect is going to get them.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Yeah. So where does control come in there for you?

SPEAKER_02:

So for me, control is connected to safety. I think feeling like I'm in control is believing this faulty idea that if I can control everything, then I can prevent bad things from happening. But again, the irony of control is that it makes you feel like you're safe, but it's actually just keeping you completely trapped.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And I personally don't think, at least in my experience, that you can have the perfectionism tendency without the control. No. Yeah. They're like butter and jelly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you mentioned that you are in recovery, so you experienced life with an eating disorder, but you are now kind of gearing your professional journey towards eating disorder recovery and support and all that great stuff. So can you kind of share how that works out with perfectionism and what you see in your recovery, but also what you see with the clients that you do support?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, definitely. To clarify, do you mean just, you know, like the patterns of perfectionism that I

SPEAKER_01:

see in both myself and clients? Yeah, how it might come out differently for different people.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I mean, I see perfectionism and control all under the overarching theme of anxiety. And I think that anxiety is kind of like a shapeshifter and it can take on so many different forms. And when it comes to control, this can show up in eating disorders in terms of controlling food and numbers and exercise and weight but then it can also show up in other areas of your life as well so this can also show up in for example career or school or relationships and just every area of life I see people hold themselves to high standards and I think sometimes certain areas of life may weigh more than others and a lot of the time this does boil back to the ideas and maybe the internal messages that they have around what being perfect in that certain area is going to get them

SPEAKER_01:

yeah absolutely it's funny you say anxiety is like a shape shapeshifter and how the perfectionism is in different means different things at different phases in your life because I look back and I can my perfectionism has always been tied to my eating disorder but when I was more hyper focused on things that are more important like getting my grad school degree getting my funding in my career my during that time my eating disorder at times was on the back burner because my perfectionist focused on it was still disordered It was still fucked up, but it was geared towards something healthy or something that would measure my success. So it wasn't, I didn't look at it the same or even realize that it was there.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. And I think it's interesting how a lot of the times this perfectionism can, some ways that you go about it might be more socially acceptable than others. So, you know, when I was restricting my food and I was severely underweight, that wasn't praised by society. But when I was bodybuilding and measuring every single thing that I was eating to stand on a stage and be judged by strangers, society applauded me for that and said I was disciplined and I was motivated. But at the end of the day, they're both coming from this place of being hurt and not know Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So perfectionism and control, how do they, so we already kind of touched on how they show up in eating disorders with controlling food and having anxiety and all that. So how does it kind of, for you, how did it show up in your relationships, friendships, family relationships, romantic relationships, all of them?

SPEAKER_02:

That's the question. a barrier in relationships to feeling authentically connected to one another. Because at the end of the day, as long as you're showing up in your relationships, I think that's what most of your friends and family and partners really just want from you. But if you're not showing up at all out of fear that it's not going to be perfect, then that's going to cause a rupture in those relationships. And I think that's definitely happened for me in the past.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. Same for me too. And I've found a lot, in addition to everything you just mentioned, a lot of it too is avoiding conflict Even if it's just speaking your needs or just mentioning something that you don't appreciate or don't like, as small as it can be, it's refraining from mentioning that because you don't want to be a burden. You're scared they're going to get mad and leave and all of those things that are really irrational, like irrational thoughts.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Yeah. I think perfectionism is a form of shrinking. And I think that's like a way that we emotionally shrink in our relationships.

SPEAKER_01:

So for me, my eating disorder was a coping mechanism, like overall oversimplified. That is the purpose that it kind of served. So I've realized that perfectionism and control and all of that is a coping mechanism as well. So how did they for you or even just from your professional perspective, how does that turn into a coping mechanism for someone?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think people develop coping mechanisms because at some point in time, they learned that it worked. Yep. Whether that's adaptive, so helpful or maladaptive, not helpful. And I think something that can be really difficult for a lot of people in their healing journeys and was really difficult for me is realizing that something that may have worked for them in the past may not be currently working for them anymore. Or at some point in time with my eating disorder, restricting food felt like it worked for me. It felt like it kept me safe. And then it got to the point where I was really damaging my body and my mind and it wasn't working anymore. And at the end of the day, I think it's important that we all take a look at our coping mechanisms and every once in a while and just check in to see if they're still serving us. Because for me personally, like my coping mechanisms have drastically changed over time and I'm sure they're going to continue to change as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And it also depends on the context too and the intensity of the situation. Yeah. A coping mechanism is, they're evolving. They always should be too because you're evolving. Definitely. So how I look at the control in food from my perspective was if something fell out of control in my life, whether it was stress or something was happening and I wasn't sure what the outcome was going to be, anything just fell out of control. The eating disorder, the one thing I could control was that I either consumed or didn't consume. Did you find that that was kind of like your simplified thought most of the time? It was like, okay, I can't control life, but I can control if I'm going to restrict today.

SPEAKER_02:

Definitely. Definitely. I think it was control on that sense, and it was also a form of self-punishment for feeling a lot of shame,

SPEAKER_00:

for

SPEAKER_02:

feeling like I, again, wasn't being able to live up to these impossible standards that I thought other people had for me.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And it's funny because the impassable standards that people with eating disorders often hold themselves to aren't even standards that they would ever hold someone they care and love about in their life. Right.

SPEAKER_02:

And a lot of the time those standards are something, a pressure that we're putting on ourselves. Like a lot of the time I thought that my parents were holding me to impossible standards when at times they were harsh on me. Right. But at the end of the day, I know logically now looking back that they never wanted those things for me.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Yeah, there's like a fine line, but the eating disorder brain always takes it to the next level. Definitely.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So with eating disorders comes body image, food rules, recovery, relapse, all of those things that come with a lot of things in the world. Gearing from, well, excuse me, switching gears from kind of talking about in the thick of it, how did your body image and your food rules and your recovery be affected by your control and your perfectionism? Did you have a hard time with that?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. I feel like something that I took a little too seriously in my recovery was doing it right. And I almost became a perfectionist in recovery. Just because when I originally got treatment for my eating disorder, I was in a residential treatment center. So I was on a very strict meal plan and schedule. And then when I got out, I also had to be on a meal plan. And I think one of the biggest shifts for me was switching from being on this rigid meal plan to learning how to intuitively eat because intuitively eating means that you are are truly listening to your body and there's no set of rules anymore. And I think that control and rules love each other. Like they just go hand in hand. And when you don't have that structure, then it forces you to really connect with yourself and your body. And that was something that was so hard for me. And I felt like in order to recover perfectly, that meant I had to follow a plan perfectly, but that's not what recovery looks like.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. It's, I have, I was too, when I was in eating disorder treatment, I was on a meal plan for a long time and I was even on a meal plan I was years multiple times across the years even outside of formal treatment and I always had a love-hate relationship because in my mind it's I guess serve as a purpose at some point. There are a lot of people, including myself at some point, the meal plan was non-negotiable because the main goal was nutritional restoration because I was so underweight. So there was no questions asked. You have to eat this amount. But I feel like where the difficulty comes in is you're still providing the eating disorder brain with rules, with a routine, with rigid rules. eat this at this time kind of thing and right i always if i didn't follow my meal plan correctly or perfectly then i would i would tell myself like oh i can't recover recovery is not for me all those nasty things and so it's just interesting to me that part of treatment is like exchanging a set of rules for another set of rules just because they're kind of more acceptable

SPEAKER_02:

Right. And I think it makes it hard, especially in the beginning, if you're also restoring weight, like you were saying, because, you know, sometimes it actually really is essential in the beginning of recovery when you're, you know, in crisis stabilization mode is to eat a certain amount, even if you already feel full. And sometimes in the beginning phases, if you do have to weight restore, it does require you to ignore what you feel like you need. So that also adds a whole other set of mind games. And I think another thing regarding control and eating disorders is that so many people with eating disorders have this black and white thinking style. And the concept of nuance and living in a gray area is just very difficult.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a hard pill to swallow. Yeah. I still

SPEAKER_02:

struggle

SPEAKER_01:

with that for sure. Yeah. For me, it was always in recovery all or nothing. Yeah. I don't know if you experienced this. Like I would have a good day, great. Or if I just had like a minor slip up, it could be, it could have been a small slip up. Oh, that's it. I'm just going to wash it. Definitely. It was like 100% or 0%. Right. At least 99%.

SPEAKER_02:

To this day, even if something goes wrong with my mental health or recovery or just in general in life, I have to tell myself, you know, that was a hard moment, but that doesn't mean this has to be a hard day.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Yeah, that's my main focus right now, too, is like literally just... Bite, bite, bite, I guess. Yeah. So perfectionism and some level of control, they can be healthy to some degree in life. They are pretty strong qualities when you're attributing them to something

SPEAKER_00:

that's

SPEAKER_01:

helpful and good for you and things like that. But they're essentially double-edged swords because... when you are following perfectionism and control in the eating disorder it even though it feels awful it feels good in the moment it's like instantly reinforcing so it's a hamster wheel so how how do you see or how did you feel or experience like the long-term build built up distress from that

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I mean, I feel like for me, I had to learn all about trading instant gratification for more long-term reward. Where I think, you know, when you're engaging in these behaviors around control and perfectionism in the short term, yes, you do feel better. But in the long term, like we were saying earlier, it's never going to make you feel like fulfilled or good enough. And it's always, you're always going to be raising the bar and always chasing something that doesn't exist. And I think I had to learn so much about leaning into an appropriate amount of discomfort and expecting that discomfort and developing skills and tools to be able to manage that and leaning into it a little bit more. So I think adding 5% of discomfort every day and adjusting and then expanding the tolerance that I had for that discomfort in order to get to this other place where I don't have to go to these things instantly in order to feel okay. I can sit in some of that discomfort and I can build healthier ways to manage these emotions and I don't have to turn towards the quick fix.

UNKNOWN:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01:

So you mentioned a role of safety earlier in the episode. So for you, what was the role of safety or predictability with both food and body when it came to controlling your food, controlling your exercise?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, I think that with control and safety, ideally, anxiety wants things to feel as predictable as possible. It doesn't want any surprises. It doesn't want any uncertainty. But the problem with that is that life is uncertain. That is something that we can all go into life expecting that there's going to be some degree of uncertainty. And I think one of the big goals in recovery shouldn't be to avoid the uncertainty because that's what control and safety really want you to do but it's more so to expect certainty but build up your inner resources to confidently know that you can handle what comes your way because I think for me one of the hardest things was I truly did not believe I could handle uncertainty I didn't think that I could handle hard things so I went out of my way to try to prevent those things from happening to me but it only made it feel that much worse and only made me feel that much less confident with myself and it I mean so I couldn't trust myself and my ability to handle my own emotions.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. So back to your kind of your personal story. Looking back now, did you kind of like feel like you could see your eating disorder in your perfectionism and your control and all that slowly emerge and develop? Or do you feel like you just went from zero to 100 one day?

SPEAKER_02:

I can see it slowly develop. I was an anxious kid. It's very clear I was an anxious kid. I think it was most obvious when I learned about weather in elementary school. I started to have really intense weather anxiety if there was a thunderstorm. And one time we had a tornado warning and I was absolutely losing it. So I was very anxious as a kid over things that I could not control from the get-go. So I already think that my temperament in this unresolved anxiety was something that was already festering within me. But then when I got into my teenage years and I started to have relationships and more, yeah, just more relationships in my life, I think that's when my relationship to control started to take a different turn and the perfectionism and eating disorder behaviors did start to slowly develop. Kind of like what I was saying earlier with like the shapeshifter and anxiety. I think that anxiety was already there. It just started to take a whole different form.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it kind of evolves as you evolve throughout life. So being an anxious kid, I was an anxious kid too. There's always a little bit of OCD in there too. So I know there's a million and one reasons why someone may or may not develop an eating disorder in their life. But how much of it is those predispositions like personality, cognition, anxiety?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I mean, I like to think of eating disorders as the perfect storm. Because I mean, there's the biological component, there's environmental factors, you know, there's psychological factors. I think all of those things together create that perfect storm with an eating disorder. And I don't know if you've heard of Eight Keys to Recovery by Carolyn Koston.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that book is falling apart and highlighted. And

SPEAKER_02:

you know, it's a good one. Yeah. As she says, genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I can really relate to that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. It's like you're kind of like you already have the resources to do it kind of thing. And it ends up the thing you're doing ends up being or the thing that happens or the disorder is like not good for you. Right. Yeah. So when we talk about relationships, we've mentioned just eating disorders affect relationships, but And I just learned of this myself, for myself, that like eating disorders and anxious attachment, it's like they're very close together. I would argue that eating disorders kind of contribute to the anxious attachment. So there's a million definitions and books and articles and everything else about anxious attachment on the internet. In your own words, how would you describe an anxious attachment when it comes to relationships?

SPEAKER_02:

specifically anxious attachment I would define that as a relational style where there's constant need for reassurance and fear of abandonment I think it creates a lot of clinginess and worry that that person is going to leave you for a lot of the time not being good enough and I think that's also where the perfectionism ties in as well

SPEAKER_01:

did you ever experience an anxious attachment oh my gosh yes I still do and I'm engaged yeah I mean a part of it's like if you have anxiety i feel like everyone has some level of some sort of interest attachment but the eating disorder with all the other variables definitely makes it unbearable like definitely my anxiety when i would be in a relationship when i was in relationships even though they were great relationships it was like my anxiety my anxiety was worse But when the relationship would end, even though I necessarily didn't want it to, it was like a weight was off your shoulders. It's like you almost don't have to perform anymore.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I used to always say when I was struggling, I didn't quite understand my attachment style or the way I showed up in relationships was that, you know, I stand so well on my own. Like I'm so well independently and when I'm not in a relationship, but as soon as I'm in a relationship, all of that goes out the window. And so much of that had to do with my anxious attachment style and codependency and the need to be needed and putting so much of myself into another person that I would lose pieces of myself.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I I felt that way many times too, but now that you say it, now that I hear someone else saying it out loud, it's so interesting to me that someone is an independent person. I'm very independent. I live alone. I love being alone. I love my alone time. But If I'm in a relationship that isn't on the forefront anymore. And it's so interesting to me that as someone with an anxious attachment wouldn't chase those things when they don't have, when they're not in a relationship. Why is that?

SPEAKER_02:

Why someone with anxious attachment doesn't chase a relationship when they're out of it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think that a lot of the time people with anxious attachment, they're only experiencing those symptoms when they're actually in a relationship. And a lot of the time, more often than not, people with anxious attachment will attract people with avoidant attachment. So it's kind of attracting someone that's unconsciously reinforcing the things that you already believe and the fears that you already have.

SPEAKER_01:

And then it becomes a game. It's like a challenge. Like, oh, I'm going to change this person or other kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. I think for a A lot of people seeing those red flags or avoidance in relationships almost feels like an opportunity to feel like, well, I'm special. Like I can be different. You know, they haven't shown up for any of their partners in the past, but I'm going to be the person they're going to show up differently for. And

SPEAKER_01:

that's from the perfectionism of control. Definitely. And the low self-esteem too. Yep. And then when you were experiencing the anxious attachment, and when I mentioned this, like I'm talking like the eating disorder days, like the unhealthy levels of the anxious attachment, did you, was your eating disorder symptoms, would you say they were like in their prime at that time? Like it was, you had the anxious attachment and then you had the eating disorder kind of like rock bottom?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Yeah, because I was also tying, you know, how I look to my worth in the relationship. And I got a lot of very distorted beliefs and ideas about what it meant to receive love in relationships. And I always thought love was conditional and it was something that I had to earn. And I thought I could earn it through looking perfect and acting perfect and just being perfect. And I think that really drove my eating disorder behaviors and also made the anxiety so much worse in my relationships. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Because you can't be perfect. and you don't even really know your definition of perfect is going to be different than the other person's definition of perfect. So then you add on the constant wonder of, oh my God, I'm even doing this right in the right way. Right.

SPEAKER_02:

And any relationship that's built off the foundation of conditional love isn't going to be fulfilling or likely last anyway. And if it does last, I can promise you both people are not going to be fully happy.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I can agree with that through personal experience, unfortunately. So we mentioned that all of these come together. There's a lot of intersections. There's a lot of patterns between all of this. So how, for you, how did external validation, even if it was external validation from yourself or from others, for body looks, approval, achievement, how did that tie into your perception of your self-worth of yourself?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, I feel like I didn't grow up with a sense of my own internal validation. And I also didn't grow up fully having a developed sense of self and knowing who I was and the positive things that I was able to bring to the table. So whenever I got praise or validation from anything outside of me, that feeling was like a drug, like one of the most incredible feelings that I had never felt before. And when I first started to feel that feeling, it happened. Mm-hmm. And that also bled into social media as well. Like at the time when I really started struggling is when Instagram started to pop off. So I think that also added a whole other layer to it all. And I really feel for also just this upcoming generation that's growing up in that digital world too.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, some of the stuff that is on there now, it's, I just shake my head. It's like there's a lot of harmful stuff on there, not even just eating disorder related, a lot of any category related with harmful stuff. So now that we're just on the topic, how do you think that social media kind of impacts, it can be eating disorders or even just mental health overall?

SPEAKER_02:

I love this question. I mean, I think that your feed is kind of like a reflection of what's going on in your head, especially with like the algorithm. And the algorithm is smart. It knows what you're engaging in. It's knowing how long you're looking at something.

SPEAKER_01:

Isn't your algorithm based on how long you spend looking at something before you keep scrolling and then more of that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So it's literally feeding you what it thinks you want to see. And if at some point in time you're looking at something that has, you know, a sprinkle of culture on it or has distorted behaviors in it, you're just going to see more and more of that. And I think for a lot of people who don't have proper education around what diet culture is or how that shows up on social media or how eating disorders might even show up in like fitness culture and fitness accounts and influencers in that sense, it can just create this feed that is so distorted without even knowing.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And then it's what you see. So you start to learn and you start to believe it and you yourself don't even you start to not even see anything wrong with it or maybe you just never do

SPEAKER_02:

right I mean a big part of my eating disorder was not being educated about diet culture and how that showed up because it was showing up in so many areas of my life and I had no idea oh

SPEAKER_01:

for sure I like growing up like I heard the word diet and I just thought oh we're just not going to have dessert tonight like that's as far as it went but now it's everywhere like literally everywhere like sugar free all of that and it's I get very upset about it like very passionate and it's social media is such, it's like the great place to go down a rabbit hole. And I've been down that rabbit hole throughout, not throughout, yeah, throughout the past 10 years because I remember Instagram started to get popular when I was in college. But even the past two, three years, I would be on Instagram for hours. My screen time, I don't even want to say what it was because I would just be on Instagram watching on loop those videos of what I eat in a day.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my gosh, don't get me started on than what I eat in a day

SPEAKER_01:

of videos. And I would watch them and literally be like, okay, so if I just eat this, this stuff, I'll be good. So,

SPEAKER_02:

fucked up. that prevented me from putting myself through so much torture and pain. Oh,

SPEAKER_01:

for sure. I owe a lot of my current, like, commitment and, like, strength and recovery right now just to the past year and a half of just reading books and reading peer-reviewed articles, which are so dry and so boring, but literally just educating myself because with my brain, I couldn't... You can't argue the facts. You can't argue the science. argue that. But you can argue your thoughts, you can argue what's on social media. And so learning about it and educating myself helped a lot. Yeah. And

SPEAKER_02:

I think a lot of people with eating disorders really find comfort in kind of intellectualizing things. And I know I've done that in the past because eating disorders are so intense and there's so much feelings behind it. So intellectualizing is seen as the defense mechanism that keeps you from feeling something. And I think that that is, although it's still a defense mechanism, it's definitely one of the more mature defense mechanisms that can help you go into the right direction until you feel safe enough to maybe feel some of those things as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Even though, like you said, they can be defense mechanisms, I think they can also serve as just, okay, this is happening or you feel this, but this is why. Like, for example, like when a big thing that I struggled with was like weight gain when you're back when you're in recovery and you're not engaging any behaviors. And I would just tell myself, like, literally, like, as objectively as possible, if you are eating more food than you usually have, you are going to gain weight because you are consuming more. That's just how the world works. That's how your body works. Right. And then there's always that fear of, oh my God, I'm not going to be able to stop eating. I'm never going to be able to stop gaining weight. But your body, I also have a new appreciation for my body because your body knows. And like, as long as you listen to it, you're going to be fine. Bodies are smart. Very smart. And it's like, I look back and what I've done to it the past 10 years, and I'm just like, Okay, you go. Yeah. Yeah. So for you, you've come a long way. What helped you? I know that there's probably a million things that did work and didn't work, but when you look back and were able to let go of that perfectionism and all of the things that come with eating disorder to be fully recovered, what were the things that you swear by that worked for you?

SPEAKER_02:

One of them is self-compassion. That's something to this day I swear by because the way that we talk to ourselves matters. I think it's so easy to look past that. And I think a lot of people think that they can bully themselves into change or hate themselves into change. But your motivation for change is going to determine how sustainable that change is. So if your motivation for changing yourself or your body is because you hate yourself or you hate the way that you look, then that's never going to be sustainable and it's never going to feel good enough. But if your motivation is coming from a place of genuinely caring for yourself and having empathy for yourself and wanting to be truly in tune and connected to your most authentic self beyond all of the masks. Get what I did there. That's going to be the most sustainable change possible. I think all of the habits that I have in place in my life now are really healthy habits. Like I'm really proud of the life that I built for myself because I feel like every single day I do so many things to take care of my body. And that's because I got so fed up with living a life where I was just destroying myself and just constantly, like you said, running on this hamster wheel. And, you know, being able to talk to myself like I actually matter has made such a huge difference because that has also taught me how to respect myself. And that also has attracted relationships in my life where others respect me too. Talk to me like that and treat me like that. Like that would never happen anymore. And I think that that's a true testament to the power of self-compassion and being able to develop that respect for yourself.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. The self-compassion is something that I had to literally learn. Yeah. I never gave it to myself. But I think that that just comes with part of my personality, but also because of the eating disorder. And it does go a long way, like talking to yourself the way that you would talk to someone else. Mm-hmm. Totally. Totally. Just realizing, like, what? For what? For what?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I think, honestly, telling yourself it's not that serious sometimes can be helpful, too, in recovery. I say

SPEAKER_01:

it all the time. That's how I got through recovery. I said, fuck it. Yeah. It's not that serious. You already know. I already know how shitty my eating disorder is. There's no way to tell that the other side is going to be any worse. Yeah. That's how I got myself here. Like that's not the only thing I did, but like that was kind of like the mindset I had to adapt because if I was too serious about it, the perfectionism came in.

SPEAKER_02:

right you get yourself all wound up and tightened up I mean at some point in my recovery I started to get these chronic migraines and what I couldn't see was I was tightening up like my shoulders were to my ears because I was just so stressed out and wound up and just taking things too seriously and I remember there was one point when my acupuncturist felt my neck and she was like she was taken aback she was like there are rocks in your neck and I I looked at her and I was like I am too young for that and she just started cracking up and she was like you're right you are are and moments like that i think were really important for my recovery and realizing like truly i am too young and i mean regardless of how old i am like a big part of life is being able to enjoy it and i think eating disorders make your life so stale they make it so rigid they make it so serious and they just rob you of all joy oh

SPEAKER_00:

yeah so i

SPEAKER_02:

think being able to like laugh a little bit and like you said the the fuck it mentality definitely goes a long way yeah

SPEAKER_01:

So we're placing control with trust. What was that like for you? I can just tell you it was hard and god-awful for me, but how is it for you? Also hard and

SPEAKER_02:

god-awful. I mean, I think when I think about like developing trust with myself, that directly correlated to exposing myself to situations where I was going to have to force myself into trusting not only myself, but other people. So, you know, maybe that was, you know, waiting to hear back from a friend when they told me they were going to get back to me. Maybe that is eating, in the beginning it was eating foods without checking the labels for once. So just leaning into discomfort to the point where I, like I said earlier, I know I could expect that discomfort, but I also knew this was enough discomfort that I could tolerate it. So growing my tolerance for those things too.

SPEAKER_01:

So switching gears to your kind of professional life, career now um when you work with your clients what what do you how do you help them loosen that grip of the control the perfectionism all of that

SPEAKER_02:

I think similar to what I did with myself is kind of how I approach it with them in terms of understanding, you know, their window of tolerance. So essentially our window of tolerance is how much stress we're able to handle in any given day. And if we go out of that window, we're either going to land in two states, which is either hyper arousal or hypo arousal. So hyper arousal is anxiety. It's stress. It's kind of that, that fight flight mode where, you know, you hear, you feel your heart pounding or you're having so many racing thoughts or you feel really hot and sweaty whereas hypo is what I would describe as more like depressive symptoms so maybe like moving really slow or feeling unmotivated having a hard time starting things so I think with my clients I teach them about that and I also teach them how to bring themselves back into their window of tolerance where they're in a place where they're calm they're grounded they can think clearly because our bodies give us so many clues when we're dysregulated and I think working with that window has been really important for not just the work with myself But also, I think, foundationally with all of my clients,

SPEAKER_01:

too. Literally life-changing.

SPEAKER_02:

Unfortunately, I didn't start listening to my body until it started to speak so loud that I couldn't ignore it. And I really wish that I was able to tune in sooner, but unfortunately I didn't, being fully transparent. But I do think that the ways that my body spoke to me forced me to appreciate my body and take care of it in ways that I probably never would have been able to get to if I didn't experience my eating disorder. I think one of the things was through the migraines. That was one of the most annoying things that I could not ignore or avoid like I had to take off time from work if I had a migraine like this like they were chronic they were persistent so things like that um also like hunger cues when I don't eat enough I get so lethargic and zombie like and tired like my body has such big reactions now to when I don't take care of it so it lets me know so I think it started by just not being able to ignore these really loud cues But then I think it turned into just regular check-ins with my body. So doing things like body scans. I also will rate my hunger sometimes, which I noticed was really helpful, especially in the beginning phases is knowing that, you know, if we're rating one being so hungry that I could pass out and a 10 being so full that I could pass out, you know, like how can I consistently eat until I'm around a seven and also make space for the in-between where maybe sometimes I do let myself get a I overeat, but recognizing that's also a normal part of normal eating too and intuitive eating.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. It's funny that you say that your body kind of speaks louder to you now because I, I experienced that too. Like during the work week, my work day can be so busy. So I, even to this day, like they're still set up on my phone. Like I have alarms for breakfast, lunch and snack and both of my snacks. Just not because I forget or not because I'll choose not to have them, but I'll be, so focused on something important that I won't even know what time it is. Whereas before that would have been perfect, right? But I'm in such a good place where I won't even take that chance now. But the point is, is that if I'm like, I'm always hungry for lunch during the week around between 12 and 1. And if it's like 1.15 or sometimes it might be 12.45, I'm like, why do I want to punch someone in the face right now? I'm hungry. Like my emotions and my, I get very irritable the second I'm too hungry. Like it's like a switch flips. So like when I'm, I know that I'm hungry when I'm about to snap at someone for saying good morning. Right. Like that. And then another one too is like tired. Like if I'm focusing on something or trying to do something and I like can't even think straight, I'm like, okay, I need to. And I might just, it doesn't mean I need to have a meal. I might just need like a snack or something, but I feel it like almost instantly and like intensely. Yeah. I think it's because partly I never let myself feel it before. And also my body is like, we're not doing this again. Like, hello, I'm here. Yeah. And the same thing happened to me with emotions. Did you experience that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. You know, I was actually just thinking about this, how there, I remember in my early 20s, like bragging to people saying, you know, I just don't feel anger. I don't get angry. I look back now and I'm like, that is not the flex I thought that was. Because that just meant that I was suppressing anger, like anger, everyone feels anger. I think that anger is such a complicated emotion for a lot of women, because I think a lot of women are really conditioned to not be angry, where a lot of men like are given that full permission to, you know, punch walls and scream. So I think that, um, I, I really suppressed a lot of my emotions, but anger was one of the biggest ones. And part of my recovery process was letting myself fully be angry and also being able to find different ways to manage that. Um, cause I, in general, I think I'm a really big feeler. Like I know I'm, I'm a sensitive girl. I'm a big sensi girl. So, um, I think that when, you know, when you're restricting your food, you're, I think you're kind of muting yourself, if that makes sense. Like, almost numbing yourself in a lot of ways similar to like you know how when someone has like an alcohol addiction um i think it's the same thing you know you're really trying to numb yourself of all those feelings so in recovery when you're actually honoring your body i think that and listening to your body i think that also involves you listening to your emotions and feeling them more intensely

SPEAKER_01:

yeah and once you get used to it it's like it's a good thing too even because it's like a signal that like okay something's not right or you didn't like something or Whatever the case may be. I love being sensitive. Yeah, me too. Most of the time. Yeah. So... You mentioned that before, well, we both mentioned before that when in the eating disorder, we didn't have the best relationships. So as you like looking back then, and as compared to now, I know you're engaged, so it's a very big difference and congrats by the way, but over time, how did you, how do you see, how did you see, and then how did you experience your relationships changing?

SPEAKER_02:

I feel like. My relational patterns were one of the hardest things to address in my recovery because I just would measure my worth by how I was being treated. And the relationships that I had, I think, were a direct reflection of my dysfunction and mental state. I saw this meme recently and it said, if you line up all your exes, you can see a flow chart of your mental illness. And I was like, that is unfortunately so relatable. For me, because I think that, you know, with my relationships, I was always attracting people that didn't respect me because I didn't respect myself.

UNKNOWN:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

And I think that throughout my healing, I learned so much about how to ask for what I want. And also learned so much about, you know, being able to identify and express my internal world and let people in. Because I think that was another thing in my relationships too, is I didn't know how to let people in. I didn't know what I was feeling or let alone how to communicate those things. So like with my fiance, when we first started dating, I mean, there were so many learning curves. Like I, I remember our first month in dating he went to a wedding and he didn't text me all weekend which is understandable he was at a wedding but I just remember like knowing that I it's time I do something different in this relationship and telling him hey totally cool you couldn't talk this weekend but in the future could you just let me know that you're going to be busy and we're not going to talk and I was like you know getting all tightened wound up expecting him to yell at me and he literally was like of course and ever since that day he's been an amazing isn't communicator in our relationship and I think you know little moments like that where I learned oh my gosh like this person's safe like all I have to do is tell him what I need and he actually cares and he wants to give me those things so I think little moments like that made such a big difference too and I think were so healing for my attachment

SPEAKER_01:

right and I think for me anyway like not communicating those things was like you were kind of like afraid and like ready for the big blown out reaction but I think We're not mind readers. We can't be mad at someone for not doing something or doing something we don't like if we don't tell them.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's huge in a lot of ways. And how they react is ultimately your answer, whether it's a relationship, family, it could be whatever kind of relationship. So... When you're, I know that it's been kind of like a long journey. It always is a long journey. But for someone who, if you were working with someone right now or having a conversation with someone right now and they were telling you, talking about all this, their feeling and experiencing and going through all of the things that we just talked about. What would be one small step that you could tell someone to break that cycle of perfectionism or stuckness and control?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think so. Healing for perfectionism is also healing your relationship to making mistakes and also giving yourself grace. I think for myself and a lot of people that I work with, like there's just absolutely no grace to be given, even in like recovery too. You know, when there is a relapse, there's a lot of beating themselves up, thinking that, you know, like you were saying earlier, maybe just recovery isn't for me. And I think that giving yourself that grace period and allowing yourself room to mess up and be a human being is so important in recovering from perfectionism.

SPEAKER_01:

I used to beat myself up a lot for having relapse and for a lot of ways, like I was ashamed. Like I didn't want to tell anyone because everyone thought I was okay and there's shame in that and having basically to do it all over again in a lot of ways. But I kind of reframed my thinking and If we stop thinking like, oh, a relapse is a failure or a relapse is bad, a relapse really just means that there's more work to do. Definitely. Like, if we just keep it as simple as that and just keep it kind of neutral, like, oh, well. Yeah. Like it's, I'm not downplaying that because a relapse is definitely, it sucks, but it just lets you know that, okay, like there's, there's a little more here.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I think relapse is like a messenger in the same way that all emotions are messengers. And at the end of the day, keeping secrets is what keeps people sick. You know, talking about it is like the antidote to shame. So.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

You're right there. Yeah. Um, For eating disorders in general, what is one, and I know there's not going to be one, but if you have to choose one, what is like the one societal misconception or stigma that society has about eating disorders that really just pisses you off?

SPEAKER_02:

That eating disorders are about glamour?

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

That one really makes me mad, really grinds my gears because so many people with eating disorders are struggling with trauma and severely low self-esteem and family problems, other relationship problems. You know, there's so much underneath the surface. So when people say that, it just gets me going.

SPEAKER_01:

How do you think, what is the fine line between disordered eating and eating disorders in your mind? I see that

SPEAKER_02:

fine line. Or even a

SPEAKER_00:

good one.

SPEAKER_02:

Or even what? Even is there one? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I would consider that fine line kind of what makes something a diagnosis is when it significantly impacts your daily life and functioning. So when you see it start to impact your friendships, your career, school, relationships, hobbies, when it's really impacting your everyday life, I think is when it becomes a full-blown eating disorder. But it's a slippery slope.

SPEAKER_01:

It is a very slippery slope. So here's a loaded question, and I will just be upfront and say that this was the case for me in a lot of different ways. So if a diagnosis of anything, no matter what it is, is pretty much what you just said, it has to interfere with your life in a lot of ways. What about someone who has an eating disorder but is very successful and the eating disorder kind of drives them or helped them be so successful?

SPEAKER_02:

I feel like these are the kinds of people that really fall through the cracks.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. The

SPEAKER_02:

high-functioning.

SPEAKER_01:

there's a high if high functioning depression is now recognized right

SPEAKER_02:

totally

SPEAKER_01:

yeah so i don't think like high functioning anorexia or high functioning bulimia is like technically a thing like in the dsm-5 or anything like that but it's real yeah i I graduated, met my bachelor's, I got my master's with a 4.0, I passed my board exam, first try, all while in the depth of anorexia, like knee deep. And I just, I look back and I'm just like, That can be what makes someone think, like, oh, nothing's wrong. I'm not sick. Like, I wouldn't be able to do X, Y, and Z if I was.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. I think that's the importance of really checking in on your friends and, you know, knowing that just because something looks good on the outside does not mean it feels that way for people on the inside. And just so many people deal with their pain differently. And I think I really feel for the high achievers and the high functioning people because, you know, society looks at them and they say, oh my gosh, they're so successful. They couldn't possibly be struggling. But that very well could be their way of managing pain. I think that's why it's so important to look a little closer and ask a little bit more questions and be a little bit more curious with those that are high functioning. I, uh, I wrote a poem in a book that I recently published. And one of the lines, it was a poem about like a relationship that ended. And one of the lines is pretty much saying, I went off the rails when you left and I don't think anyone even noticed. I function so well and succeed at the game of life, but that doesn't mean it's been easy to live. It's only been easy for the people around me. And the reason I can recite that right now from memory is just because I remember writing that and being like oh I I feel like I really was able to like finally articulate what it feels like to just do so well on paper but be suffering on the inside yep

SPEAKER_01:

it's again and also it's that perfectionism control shifting yeah something else yeah it just goes on fledge because it's going towards something that is applauded as a great being harmful. I mean, you're still being harmful, but there's no evidence of that. It's actually, it's not funny, but it's ironic. When I started planning for this podcast back in, oh my gosh, we're in August. So I started this bright idea back in like March. And I was like, I'm going to find my journal from 2016 from when I was in treatment. And so I flipped through it and there was like a magazine article like crumpled up and like folded and I just shoved it in there. And I don't remember, I must have found this, must have gotten it at treatment or in that time frame because it was in that journal. And it was a magazine page and it was like an actual article. And the title of the article was High-Functioning Anorexic. And when I was in treatment, I quit my job, I dropped out of grad school, like I was not high-functioning at all. But for some reason, I kept that article. Like it must have like said something to me at that time. And then when I found my journal back in March and I saw that article and I read it and I was like, holy fuck, that's me. Wow. It's, yeah. So then it just makes me wonder like, not how much more successful I would be if I didn't have an eating disorder because I'm very thankful for where I am, but it makes you wonder about how can someone be in such a bad state of mind, even a bad state of health, but still thriving in many other ways. Right.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I remember one time saying to my acupuncturist that I was scared if I wasn't anxious that I wouldn't be able to be so successful.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

And she told me, you'd be more powerful, Morgan. And I was so suspicious when she said that, but I think there's a lot of truth in that, and I just had to let myself...

SPEAKER_01:

I feel like I have thought that before because... The anxiety keeps you on edge. It keeps you prepared, organized. It keeps you just always ready, but in a very unhealthy way because you're always in a fight or flight mode 24-7.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Your body doesn't know the difference between you just being ready to try to control things and running away from a tiger. Right. Yeah. So that's a lot of stress to put on your body and mind.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yeah, for sure. And then add on, think about how long you've been in in that state for years, it's bad. So I know you have the two published books. They're gonna be linked in the show notes on Spotify and then all the other platforms and then also your resource page. And now those are, I know the books aren't free, but the resources on your website, those are free, correct? Yep. So what kind of, Aside from just living it and experience it, was there anything else that kind of drove you to dedicate your life and your career to working with people with eating disorders and helping them heal?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah I mean I think that I have been a very sensitive intuitive person my whole life and I think I really drowned out those natural what I see as gifts at a really young age and I think throughout my recovery I also saw the power of being vulnerable and also being able to be so in tune with the people around me and you know I think that I also learned just like outside of my eating disorder just and everyday friendships, how fulfilling and beautiful it was to be a safe person for others. Because I think I've spent so much of my life in relationships where I just didn't feel safe and I felt so much shame to be exactly who I am. So to know that I have the natural ability and the power to get an education that will help me be that safe person and let people know that in my presence, nothing they see say could ever scare me away could make me want to abandon them or judge them and that they have full permission to be exactly who they are and that's more than enough I think that's just very very powerful and I think that it would be a waste if I wasn't using that gift because I don't think I don't think I if I was you know working in a different profession one I don't think I would feel as fulfilled but two I almost feel like there would be a lot of like wastefulness Like I could be out there making someone feel really safe and helping them understand themselves better and build a better life for themselves. So I think part of that has to do with like that intuition. I

SPEAKER_01:

love that. Okay. I always like to end episodes with guests with just aside from the question of what is the one societal misconception that really makes you mad. What is like a recovery tip that you would give someone that that's easy enough for them to do, if they're not in the space to do it, or just anyone who's struggling, what would your immediate advice be? I

SPEAKER_02:

think it would be to pick a few places in your life that are small that you can practice letting go of control. Yep. That's huge because that will

SPEAKER_01:

bleed out into other, just naturally bleed out into other areas. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

There's so many opportunities to find safety.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I think you just have to be brave and

SPEAKER_01:

go out

SPEAKER_02:

and find them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Allow yourself to feel safe too. Yeah. All right. Thank you for your time. Of course. Thanks for having me. Of course. Maybe we'll have to do it again soon. Yes, definitely. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Bite by Bite. I'm so grateful to be able to share this space with you and I hope today's conversation brought you some insight, comfort, or maybe even a sense of community. Remember, no matter what you're healing from, healing isn't perfect and every step you take does matter. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with someone who might need it. Leaving a review or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. And if you want to connect more, you can find me on Instagram at BiteByBiteRecovery. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Your stories are just to say hi. Until next time, let's keep taking life by bite. See you later.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Kaitlyn Moresi

Host
Head Shot

Morgan Hannaleck

Guest