Claudia W: What you're about to hear are the key parts of an unscripted one time session with a real person. Names have been changed for confidentiality.
Bea: I walked in and I was a size 10. For me I was incredibly tiny and she was delighted. That was the most unwell I've ever been in my life.
Jesus christ. 
Tanya B: Why would you say Jesus Christ? 
Bea: It's so completely obvious now that you say it and at the same time-. Yeah, it's like a revelation.
Claudia W: Bea, thank you so much contacting us and taking part. It is called How Did We Get Here, and I'd love to ask you why you're here? 
Bea: I really want to unpick my relationship with food and my image of myself and how I feel about my level of achievement, I suppose. And also I'm in perimenopause, which means that I kind of just, I'm facing all of those challenges as well, so there's. I have become increasingly aware of the last six months I would say that, I feel a little bit like I'm in a sort of snowball of panic. It's not somewhere that I want to be. I don't want to have this constant thought process of you know, what do I look like? What am I eating? What am I trying this week?
Claudia W: I don't like a snowball of panic. 
Bea: No, I don't either. 
Claudia W: Just for anybody listening, you're really beautiful. You are. And I need you to accept that Bea. 
Bea: You can't say that to me-[cries]. 
Claudia W: I'm so sorry. Why did that make you sad? 
Bea: I don't know that I, I believe you. I suppose I don't hear it a lot, I mean, my husband's amazing, and he, he, he does, he is that voice for me. You know, there are days when I look at myself and I think, yeah, you got to go and go and hey, this is nice. And then literally the next day I'll be, oh my god, such a fat bitch, like I can't sort of bear it. But my body is for me the element, which lets me down, and so because of that, I can't ever accept this, if that makes sense, because I'm not literally the weight I wish to be like the number. I can't then see the whole picture. 
Claudia W: I'm so pleased you're here because it's not fair that you've been living with this. Tell me your relationship with food when you were young. 
Bea: I remember doing lots of cooking, lots of baking with my mum, and she was lovely sort of traditional woman that way, and we would, we would make fruit cakes and we would make flapjacks and we would do these things, but then when it came to the eating of them, there would be this kind of limitation and shame attached to that. I remember feeling or being made to feel like I was a greedy child from quite early on and that I was a big girl and that was often a phrase that was used around me. 
Claudia W: So was food, or is food now, is it a reward? 
Bea: Yeah, there's a good and a bad, and again, I really, really dislike that about my relationship with food that I label everything that, oh, that's, I've been really good today because I haven't had that second biscuit or, you know, being honest that 10th biscuit. And I see that, how that is kind of bouncing onto my relationship with my two children and kind of how-. 
Claudia W: You've got two boys who are 8 and 10. When you bake Flap Jacks or something. 
Bea: I don't, I don't.
Claudia W: You don't. 
Bea: No. If I bake, they'll enjoy the process of cooking with me, but then they won't eat it. And then that'll be me eating an entire tray of flapjack, even if it makes me feel unwell.
Claudia W: Have you tried? Because I think they're also sort of awful, lots of different diets. 
Bea: Every single thing going. I'll wake up in the morning and it will literally be right, okay, right, I'm going to go back to Weight Watchers and that worked, I lost four pounds duh duh duh. Two days or even a day, I'll do it for 24 hours and then be like, oh, okay, no, this isn't really working. So then, you know, oh, I'm going to do fasting. And, that approach to my weight has escalated. And so I'm constantly darting around looking for, you know-. 
Claudia W: The answer. The holy grail that somebody goes, this is what you follow and you go, oh, I'll be fine. 
Bea: Yes. Yeah, because dieting is ingrained and calorie counting has been in my head since, since my mother introduced it to me in my teens. I feel like I know how to lose weight. I don't understand why I can't achieve that when I've acheived so many other things in my life that I've set out to do. And with this one thing, I'm like stumped. I feel people will always look at me and go, oh, she'd be great if she was just a bit thinner. 
Claudia W: [Gasps] 
Bea: I know. And it makes me really sad that I feel that way, but that is how I feel. 
Claudia W: Baby. All right. I'm going to disappear because you need to talk to Tan, and honestly we can't thank you enough again. Thank you. 
Bea: Thank you for having me.
Claudia W: I'll see you at the end darling 
Bea: Yeah.
Tanya B: I agree with Claudia completely, that what I see is not what you describe. So it's clear, isn't it? That your body image is really distorted. Would you agree with that or not? 
Bea: Yeah. So when I'm out, you know, Oh, I'll ask my husband, whether I'm similar sizes to women that we're looking at, and, and often he'll just say, no, you know, no, she's, she's way bigger than you are. And I'm like, oh, okay. 
Tanya B: This makes you so sad? So very sad. Tell me about the sadness. 
Bea: I've just always, just always felt like I just kind of could look better. 
Tanya B: And how would that make you as a woman better? 
Bea: I think it would make me feel like I sort of fit in with the norm. 
Tanya B: And that's the kind of person you are. You're a person who wants to fit in. 
Bea: I bob around. There are days where I'm really quite belligerent about it. And I think, no, you know, it's fantastic for there to be a range of women out there and, and shapes and sizes. But there seems to be this part of me that wants to be loved by everybody. It, it, it's a massive mindfuck. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to use that word, but that's-. 
Tanya B: You are, absolutely. 
Bea: Kind of, yeah, that's kind of how it feels in my brain where it's like, why are you trying to fit in? When I was growing up, I was pretty much five foot, you know, 5, 6, 5 foot seven from about the age of about 11. And I had boobs and I'd started my periods and all of my peers bar one girl who was literally still my best friend were tiny. That's still me now. That's how I feel now. 
Tanya B: The messaging you got around your body and your weight from your mother and, and, and that also even to this day, how, do you see that as being key to this? Can you help me understand that? Cause your, your distorted beliefs are so profound and powerful. It feels to me like these have been there for a very, very, very long time.
Bea: I'm really aware of the fact that my mother has impacted in a negative way on my relationship with my sort of body image and kind of how I see myself whilst at the same time as loving my mother. So I find it very difficult to talk about this idea of blaming her. So my mum is very small. She and I are completely polar opposites when it comes to physicality. So she's eight and a half stone and she's got a tiny frame and her mum was smaller still. Having a daughter that is more like my dad, so my dad, is my dad's side of the family, are sort of just larger framed and sort of bigger. And my grandmother was very voluptuous and very curvy. And I'm very much like her. I think that I wasn't what she expected I suppose, if I'm being, trying to be as brutally honest as possible. But she, you know, did start talking to me quite early on about dieting and put me on a diet in my teens and talked to me about food. Um, she, she, at one point said that I would become as fat as a house and you know, these phrases, are things that I kind of still use to describe myself now. It's difficult for her to think that she, she has done this sort of damaging thing to me. I think also my mum's relationship with food and image sort of comes directly from her mum. So I think that there's a whole sort of legacy there of, this is what a woman looks like, and this is what a woman weighs.
Tanya B: So she said, this is how much I think you should weigh? 
Bea: I mean, I've always been quite aware of her weight. I'm not sure that she's ever said this is how much you should weigh, but certainly, I suppose that's the bar? 
Tanya B: Is there a number in your head that you're always thinking about? 
Bea: 10 stone in my mum's head was massive. I'm not 10 stone. And I haven't been 10 stone probably since, I don't know about 13. I would look absolutely ridiculous at 10 stone. I would look quite unwell and sometimes people talk and you go on forums and you talk to other women and there's this whole kind of don't step on the scales, just get rid of them. It's all about how you feel, it's about how your clothes fit. And I might do that for two months and go, I don't care, I'm not going to weigh myself. And then I'll get on the scales after two months and be so crushed, that my numbers haven't changed in any way. 
Tanya B: And do you weigh yourself often generally? 
Bea: It comes in waves, and that's how, that's how my eating goes as well. So, I'll, I sort of, I suppose, have a period where I'm being quite good. And then sometimes I weigh myself at the end of that period and there's no change, and then, then I, and then I just think, oh, well, screw it then. And that's when I might go into a really unhealthy cycle of eating, which could last for, you know, three or four days where I'll eat so much sugar that I feel really unwell. 
Tanya B: It's a pattern of disordered eating, which is sort of characterised by bingeing on sort of sugary, high fat, sort of processed foods. And it's this horrible cycle that you've got caught up in. But it's something about the fact that you've never felt good enough for your mum. 
Bea: Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying that she hasn't said I look lovely. Obviously she has. But I'm remember, I really remember this time where I was really unwell. Essentially, I had a mental health, health breakdown. I had like a psychotic break in my late twenties. I was having panic attacks at the time and I was afraid of choking. So I just literally couldn't consume anything that had anything vaguely you know, it had to be completely liquid basically. 
Tanya B: So no lumps, no texture.
Bea: Nothing at all, yeah. So I lost, I, the only time in my life I've experienced very radical weight loss. And I was living in London, um, uh, at the time, so I wasn't living at home and I hadn't seen my mum, and I remember we had this big family event and I walked in and I was a size 10, I was very, for me, I was incredibly tiny and she was delighted. That was the most unwell I've ever been in my life, you know, it was one of the scariest things I've ever been through is losing my mind. I didn't speak to any medical professional about it because I was too scared that they would put me away. I know she loves me, we're incredibly close, we're very good friends, we spend a lot of time together, we do lots of things together. But in the end I feel like she'd just prefer me just to be physically just a different girl, you know, a smaller, a smaller version of myself.
Tanya B: I would suggest, and this is not to blame or criticise your mum at all, because it feels to me like your mum has a major body image problem herself, so this is a transgenerational problem that passes from mother to daughter. You see this a lot in eating disorder families or disordered eating, which I would say you struggle with. The time in your life where you've literally hit rock bottom, I mean, it sounds like a very dark and very scary place you were in. 
Bea: Yeah it was. 
Tanya B: In terms of your mother's approval of you, that was when you got the greatest approval from her. 
Bea: Yeah. And we've, and we've spoken about it. I didn't share it with my parents at the, at the time that it was happening, I didn't really share it with anyone. 
Tanya B: When you walked in 10 stone, and your mother was delighted, I can't imagine that you looked particularly happy or well. So what's interesting to me is your mother's perception of you initially was the shape and size of your body. 
Bea: Yeah.
Tanya B: That initial perception is what you do to yourself. So you could be out there finding the cure for cancer, you would still feel inadequate because of the size and shape of your body. 
Bea: 100%. Yes. 
Tanya B: Right. You know, our perception of the world of ourselves and others is very much about the perspective we take, and the perspective we take comes from the beliefs we hold. You know, and you can think of beliefs like lenses in a pair of glasses. And it's really clear to me that the glasses that you wear when it comes to yourself as a woman, as a human, as an individual, you've got the same lenses in your glasses that your mother has in hers, that her mother had in hers. So it seems like, unless I can help you think about how to change the lenses, you're going to be unhappy at this level for the rest of your life. I would say that fat shaming, which I think is huge in our society is hate speech. I would say that you believe yourself to be a woman of inclusion and diversity. Non-discriminatory. That's my sense of you. 
Bea: Yeah. 
Tanya B: You are hugely criminal to yourself in terms of your fat shaming hate speech. 
Bea: But I don't know how to stop doing that.
Tanya B: Right. Well, that's our next challenge. The way we think about body image in terms of the work that I do is we think about it across four different domains. Perceptual. Effective, cognitive and behavioral. So I'm just going to go through each one. In terms of your body image perception, give me a phrase that best reflects how you see yourself.
Bea: Yeah, I would just use the phrase at big girl. 
Tanya B: In terms of the effective part of body image, how did, how do you feel about your body? 
Bea: Yeah, I feel a bit let down. 
Tanya B: What is the belief that you hold around your body? 
Bea: I believe that if I was thinner, I would just feel more successful. I would feel accomplished.
Tanya B: Those are the lenses. But then when you look through the glasses at your body, in the mirror and you don't see the thin, what are the thoughts that come of that? 
Bea: I'm a failure really? 
Tanya B: Oh my goodness. And the behavior then is what? 
Bea: I'm always kind of looking for the next solution. So trying fasting, then not doing that, then trying cut, low carb, then not doing that. 
Tanya B: Chaotic behavior related to food. 
Bea: Yeah. 
Claudia W: I'm just going to stop the tape and and ask Tan a question. Talk to me about the list of things that you gave Bea, is that what clinical psychologists will use when faced with somebody, with sort of disordered eating or distorted body image. 
Tanya B: With Bea it, it would be very easy to go down a purely psychotherapeutic route and talk about her relationship with her mother and you know, that sense that she's never been good enough for her mother in terms of her weight. But for me as the clinician, when I broke it down, if you remember with the body image I said, perceptual, effective, cognitive and behavioral. As clinicians, we could, we tend to get quite sort of, we try and narrow the focus into different areas of psychological function, so you can help people make the link between beliefs and thoughts and thoughts and feelings and feelings and behaviors. And then you start to break it down in a more systematic way. Um, so that's what I was trying to do with her to sort of just pull her away from it's, because my mum never thought I looked thin enough, because I think that's part of the story, but it's not the whole story. Her mother's anxiety has been controlled by the fact that she can control her weight because she's built that way. She can be eight and a half stone. Bea isn't built that way. And physically she's never looked the way her mother wanted her to look for her mother to feel less anxious. So the whole thing is even more complicated for Bea. 
Claudia W: Okay. Let's get back to the chat. 
Tanya B: When did you first become aware that anxiety was something that you struggled with? How old were you? 
Bea: In my late twenties, I'd never, I'd-. 
Tanya B: Never previously, not in your teenage years? 
Bea: No, not really. 
Tanya B: Did you have difficulties with food then? Or were you experimenting with drugs or alcohol? 
Bea: Yes, absolutely, yeah. I mean, I started smoking, uh, I started smoking when I was quite young when I was about 12, uh, just, just cigarettes, but then that I started smoking weed when, uh, probably I was about 14, 15. That, that eventually led me to have my mental breakdown at 28, because, well, it was part of the problem. 
Tanya B: Let's talk about weed then. So from sort of 14 years old, up until you had your breakdown, you were smoking weed every day? Habitually? 
Bea: It was a daily thing for me from about the age of, I would say about 17? At university it very much became part and parcel of who I was. I definitely had points where I experienced anxiety and paranoia, where I thought my, my roommates were all kind of, you know, my housemates were all talking about me and I sort of isolated myself. And that was all tied in I think with smoking. 
Tanya B: You said you had a sort of psychotic break in your late twenties. 
Bea: Yeah. 
Tanya B: It was a sort of cannabis psychosis was it? Is that, is that what was the-. 
Bea: Well, so I was in a job where the expectation on me was to know exactly what I was doing. And I didn't know what I was doing at all, and I was completely out of my depth and I had no support network at all. 
Tanya B: So more stress, more pressure, and actually feeling like you didn't fit in which for you is a very core anxiety belief that you've held forever around your body. So that was one stress. So you're obviously smoking a lot of weed-. 
Bea: And I was smoking a lot on my own and I was smoking called a skunk weed, which is very, very strong, and it was almost like taking acid. 
Tanya B: I actually think anxiety has been around for you for quite a while. Probably since you know, puberty and those, those years. But I think what you did is you found weed and that helped you manage it. So that's why you're saying, I think I was fine. And of course, what weed will do is it will just take the edge off anxiety. The problem is if you're not really dealing with the root of the anxiety, smoking weed every other day or on the weekend with your mates becomes every day. And then the weed that you were smoking is'nt enough, so go for something more potent. And so what you've been doing is you've been self-medicating anxiety, I would say since the age of 14. A hundred percent. The problem with weed for anxiety is the THC, which is the major component of weed in the longterm increases anxiety. So weed smoking causes short term relief from anxiety, but longer term bounce back into more anxiety. 
Bea: Right. 
Tanya B: You then went for a super strength weed, skunk weed, which not only gives you greater bounce back anxiety, but skunk weed then causes paranoia. What you used to do with weed, you now do with the food.
Bea: Yeah. God. 
Tanya B: Can you see that. 
Bea: Yeah completely. 
Tanya B: Have you ever seen that before? 
Bea: No. 
Tanya B: Let's think about that then. What food are you bingeing on when you have your Bingy moments? 
Bea: It's always sugar. 
Tanya B: What does sugar do for our mood? 
Bea: Um, well it lifts it temporarily and then it makes it crash quite considerably, certainly from my personal experience. 
Tanya B: A hundred percent. Sugar is more addictive than cocaine. In studies, it is easier to help people come off cocaine than it is to help people come off sugar. Sugar is your drug. You are self-medicating, oh, your crying. 
Bea: [cries] 
Tanya B: It's not your fault. No one has ever helped you understand that the anxiety that you struggle with, which I think is inherited, not, just because your mum has always made you feel like you're not good enough physically, but I think probably genetically it's inherited, cause your mum feels quite anxious to me, because she's got this-. 
Bea: She's incredibly anxious. 
Tanya B: Right, so. 
Bea: She's an incredibly anxious person, and I think it's interesting, I don't think anyone who knew me listening to this would ever describe me as an anxious person. 
Tanya B: This shit that goes on in your head, I'm so terrible, look at this, you're so fat, you're disgusting. What did you say to Claude fat cow? I'm as big as a house. You know, it's anxiety 1 0 1.
The kind of woman you are confused me initially, when I was listening to you talk to Claude, cause I was thinking this isn't really about what she really believes, cause I know you're a feminist in the sense that you are inclusivity, you know, gender fair, you know, culture, but I mean, your just live and let live. But the anxiety that you've been self-medicating with weeds since you were 14 kicks in like a big thick fog, and then you go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm rubbish, I'm different, and you become that 11 year old girl, who's thinking so I'm bleeding from my vagina, my boobs are big, I feel sweaty and smelly and I'm taller than everyone else, I'm disgusting, what is going on, I don't fit in. 
Bea: Whilst at the same time knowing that every boy in the classroom wanted to be with me because I had all those things, I mean, it was-. 
Tanya B: And you look like a woman. 
Yeah. 
Bea: Exactly. 
Tanya B: And that's when, when that little girl kicks in you then go and grab the sugar because it's the drug. It's not really that you're rubbish at knowing how to eat healthily. 
Bea: Basically I have brilliant three balanced meals a day, then I eat ton of shit on top of it. 
Tanya B: Exactly, because this is an addiction to the anxiety alleviating properties of sugar. 
Bea: Jesus Christ. 
Tanya B: What would you say Jesus Christ. 
Bea: It's so completely obvious now that you say it and at the same time. Yeah, it's like a revelation. 
Tanya B: Clinicly, what we have to do in the second part is we have to work out, okay, so how can you learn to manage and treat the anxiety without needing sugar? I think what you might want to do in the break is just try and plot all this out. 
Bea: Right, okay. 
Tanya B: You could do it through the framework that I used with you for body image. So you could start off, if you remember, if you've got a pen there? The four areas are perceptual, how do I see myself. Affective, how do I feel about myself. Cognitive, what are my beliefs? And then the thoughts that come out of those beliefs about myself, this is in terms of body image. And then the behavior is what do I then do in relation to the way that I look, I want you to do it twice. I want you to do it first of all, when the anxiety has kicked in. So it's all the I'm disgusting, fat cow, all this stuff. And then I want you to do it in terms of when you're calm and focused, which is generally when you're talking to a friend who's telling you that she's a fat cow and all of that. I want you then to use that bit of your brain. Do you see what I mean? I want us to see the two sets of lenses that you could possibly have in your glasses. If you then wish I would love you to write a letter to the child who began to hate her body, and tell her now, as the woman who has just begun to work out what this really means, tell her what you've just understood. Cause she is the one that stands there in your kitchen in a slightly dissociative, anxious state shoving biscuits in her mouth. 
Bea: Okay. 
Tanya B: Does that, does that sound all right? 
Bea: Yeah, that sounds really good. Thank you.
Claudia W: When you started talking about anxiety, I'll be honest, I was like, wait, wait, I didn't know it was going to go that route, and you talked about her self-medicating once with weed and now with sugar, can you expand on that? 
Tanya B: I mean, it does feel sometimes like our podcast is a detective podcast, doesn't it Claude? It feels like, we're Holmes and Watson and were looking and searching for clues, and I suppose the clues began to be revealed to me in your chat with Bea when I couldn't quite square away, how she sees herself against what she really believes as a woman in the world. That's why you go back and you check, you know, early life experiences, which of course with her mum and food, and so on that, that explained a lot, but it didn't feel quite enough. And then this weed smoking, which then went from occasional to habitual, to something stronger to psychotic episode, that then explained an awful lot to me. And then she said she stopped smoking and she stopped alcohol. So you can see, she's kind of just gone from one thing to another and now sugar. And of course the sugar one in some ways is the most toxic for her. Because it then also links into another level of anxiety that she holds, I think to be frank, all women hold, because of the world we live in, where we're constantly bombarded with images of body shape and size and so on. So she's now trapped in this awful spiral, but unless we identify the underlying reason for the use of the sugar, which is anxiety, it's impossible for her to really know how to manage it so she can go on diets, but she'll always relapse, cause you'll always have to go back to her drug, if you like in those moments, when she just feels overwhelmed by anxiety. 
Claudia W: When you said that sugar is more addictive than cocaine, that was extraordinary to hear. 
Tanya B: It is quite basic in a lot of ways, it fundamentally comes down to how we look after ourselves, how we look after our bodies and diet is really linked to mood. You know, it is no surprise that in a time in history when we are eating more, and there is more availability of highly processed foods, you know, fats and sugars processed that there are more people presenting with mental health difficulties. So because a lot of processed are very addictive because of the ingredients in them, that in and of themselves are addictive, particularly sugar, we get caught in the, if you look in the sort of eating disorders or the disordered eating area of my job, you see people getting caught in this unbreakable cycle of self-medicating with the drug that they then feel completely self-loathing and anxious about because it makes them gain weight. So it's just an impossible cycle to break. 
Claudia W: But also an addiction to something that is so readily available. It's not like you're meeting on a street corner to meet somebody. 
Tanya B: Your dealer.
Claudia W: Yeah. I mean, I feel bad about saying it. You're going to a street corner to your corner shop and buying a big bag of biscuits and crisps we all do it. 
Tanya B: But even things like ready meals and stuff like that, they've all got processed, you know, the ingredients and preservatives and all of that. I mean, this is all part of the problem. And then if you think about it in terms of the sort of social norms around you know, thinness, I always think feminism released women from the kitchen, but it trapped women within their own bodies, you know, in the sense, you know, from the fifties where women were probably more conventionally the housewives at home and had less career opportunities, but could be curvy and female. And that was celebrated. We're now in a different era where we can all educate ourselves and get jobs and things, but we're all now trapped in this horrible, ideal of thinness, which is impossible. If like, Bea genetically, that's not how your body is built. 
Claudia W: Ok, I'm going to disappear and we'll get, be back in. 
Tanya B: All right. See you later.
I guess. I'm curious to hear from you what you've been thinking about and hear some of what you've been writing in your break. 
Bea: I'll start with the anxiety voice. I think for perceptual, I've written, you are always going to be big. You will continue to get bigger. You are a disgusting fat cow. That's why I've written for perception in my, in my sort of deepest and darkest moments, that's, that's where. And, and I'll, and I'll vocalise that also to my husband. In effective, I've written just two words. I've just written disappointed and disgusted. Um, then in cognitive, so belief and thoughts, um, I've written, I will be more successful if I'm thin. And then in behaviors, I've written chaotic, eating patterns, fad, dieting, and bingeing on sugar and high fat food. 
Tanya B: What do you notice about your breathing while you've been reading that to me? 
Bea: Am I holding my breath? 
Tanya B: Yeah your breath. Yeah, did you not hear it? And you just, you did a gasp in, you're not breathing regularly. Reading that made you feel anxious. 
Bea: I mean, these are just things that I, that sort of go on all the time for me, and I'd never really thought about them and I've never, ever thought of them in terms of anxiety, I don't see myself as an anxious person. So relating those two things has been like a huge, massive revelation for me. 
Tanya B: And generally in a lot of areas of your life, you don't, but in this area of your life, you really do. 
Bea: Yes. 
Tanya B: When you said disgust and disappointment, I mean, I could just see your face look sad. 
Bea: Yeah. I convinced myself that actually I feel proud of who I am a proud of what I look like and that, you know, hey, I should be rocking this look, you know? And I, I, I tell myself that narrative but I don't feel it. And so writing it down was hard to, to accept it, to accept that that is how I feel. 
Tanya B: But acceptance isn't about saying it's okay, it's about saying, this is how low I can go, I accept that. And now I accept that perhaps I can begin to change that. So you then imagined responding as if you were responding to a friend. So we've just looked at what the anxious part of your brain feels. Now let's look at the rational brain. 
Bea: Okay. Um, so perceptual, I wrote a women like me should be more represented. Um, and you are a beautiful, sexy, curvy woman. And then with effective, I've just written proud. 
Tanya B: Proud to be in the body that you have?
Bea: Proud of who I am. Actually. I don't know if that is to do with my body. 
Tanya B: But that's good. You're saying this is body image is about me, so I'm proud of me because of who I am and what I've achieved in my two gorgeous boys and Lalala, and so it suddenly, your body is part of you and you're proud of you. So therefore by default, you're proud of the package.
Bea: Um, then, uh, then I've gone into cognitive. Um, so I'm so proud of what I've achieved, and in terms of beliefs that I believe in diversity and inclusion and they are everything, and that my body reflects my physical journey. I've had two children, I'm 47, I've lived a life, and that curvy women are amazing. My behavior I've just written, calm, mindful, eating, and measured treats. 
Tanya B: Intuitive eating, healthy, eating, feeding your body, healthily, eating till you're full. If you want to, if you want to enjoy something, enjoy, knock yourself out. 
Bea: But have the ability to stop. 
Tanya B: Yeah, just don't be so anxious about it. We, you know, we only keep going, cause we're really anxious. If I, if I want to have a glass of wine, I'll have a glass of wine. But if I'm drinking because I'm stressed and anxious, I'll do the bottle. I don't need to do a lot of education with you, I don't need to send you off to read lots of feminist literature and lots of sort of really excellent essays around body shaming and the toxicity of the social, sort of social norms around thinness and success because you know it, what we then need to do is think about how you can use these two bits of yourself, how the voice of reason, we then need to use that voice to speak to the anxious little girl inside you. So, you then wrote yourself a letter. You wrote to that 11 year old. 
Bea: So I wrote this. Dear me, there has never been a time in your life that you have felt accepted, and now at your age, it's all you ever wanted and you have done and will continue to do lots of things to feel like you belong. You will say things and do things that you don't believe in. You will have sex because you think you should. You will feel cumbersome and lumbering whilst finding that men desire you, and it will mess with your head. But just remember that this body is yours, it's yours to celebrate, and there is no one in this world that holds that right but you. 
Tanya B: Tell me what you're thinking now? 
Bea: That I wasn't expecting to refer in any way to my journey with sex and my body. I'm curious as to why that came out. 
Tanya B: You were a child when your body began to become womanly. Did that put you in positions where you felt you were sexually exploited in any way when you were too young to really understand what was going on. 
Bea: I'm not saying that I've been raped or sexually abused, but I think there were just times where I just didn't feel empowered enough to say actually, can we stop there? Yeah. And that, I suppose, led to some confusing encounters. 
Tanya B: That could have made you feel quite anxious afterwards. 
Bea: Yeah. And sort of bit dirty. Why did I let that happen? And-. 
Tanya B: So more shame. 
Bea: Yeah.
Tanya B: So we've got all these different layers haven't we? We've got, first of all, anxiety you obsessively ruminate about, wait, where does the anxiety come from? Number one, and underlying predisposition that you've inherited from a mother who herself struggles with anxiety. Secondly, you've also got the layer of a mother who over the years, the message from her is an overriding message of love, and you clearly love each other and she's a very close and important person in your life, however, there's always been that bit of you that has been a disappointment to her. So you then inherit a disappointment with yourself. Then we look at other aspects of the anxiety and you tell me that you were pubertly precocious, so you started puberty earlier than anyone else. So you had that very difficult, very real challenge for young girls who are still a child, but they become a woman. And then that sexual journey where your body took you into sexually intimate situations, which you felt you agreed to because you were too young to know that you didn't have to agree to it, but also because it was attention for your body, which you actually didn't like very much, so it was kind of in the moment, probably quite validating. But after the fact it left you feeling shame, and disgust and guilt. So we've just got shame, layered upon shame, layered upon shame, layered upon shame. I see you, are you alright? Take a breath. Yeah. Do you want, do you want to just speak what you're feeling now? 
Bea: Yeah, I've never heard it laid out like that. 
Tanya B: What comes next, do you think for you? 
Bea: Part of me wants to say that I want to talk to my mum. 
Tanya B: Yeah. 
Bea: But I just. 
Tanya B: Can I tell you what I think about your mum? I think your mum has also been a victim of the anxiety, like you have. She, and you have a shared experience here. 
Bea: I have spoken to her about it, but maybe I just haven't approached it from that, it's always been, this is what you, what you did to me.
Tanya B: Which is true. That is true. But, but that, now that you've got a different conversation, which is, but I think I know why, because I know you love me, mum, and I think we both struggle with the same thing.
Bea: Yeah, there's a thing that my mum does where she sort of flagellates herself with anything that she feels she's done wrong and she's very vulnerable at the moment for lots and lots of different reasons. 
Tanya B: So maybe it's not right now, and, but I'm sure, but I also think you need time to process. So I think your next steps would be, it might be worth having a space to continue a conversation about these different themes with somebody like me, who can just help you keep plotting it out a bit, addressing the issue with sugar is, is addressing it probably in the way you did with weed and alcohol and cigarettes, which is you, you need to manage it as a, as a drug, really, but obviously you've, you've now come to the end of the list, you can't replace it with anything else because you've replaced everything with something else previously, and now this is it. So what do you replace it with? You replace it with ways to manage anxiety. You go on a mindfulness training course. You, you know, you start boosting your serotonin and your dopamine levels. The chemicals in your head that sugar will boost through finding something you can do active that you enjoy. It's about sleeping a lot, well, you know, getting at least seven hours a night, it's about drinking plenty of water. So find ways to manage the anxiety that doesn't require sugar. Find spaces to talk about the body image issues. Celebrate your body, it's yours. It's the only thing you've come into that we come into the world with, and it's the only thing we leave with. Everything else is just extra. And find ways to live free from this constant noise in the back of your head, telling you something that actually we both know when you're calm and focused and not anxious, you don't really believe.
Bea: Yes. 
Tanya B: It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. 
Bea: No, you're an absolute marvel. You really are.
Claudia W: If somebody, he came in now and said, you've just jumped time and actually you were introduced to Bea what, four or five years ago, does that, how it feels to you? 
Bea: Yeah, I mean, it's literally like, just that whole point where she just sort of laid it out as difficult as that was to hear about, trying to see myself in the role of someone who has anxiety, which is not something I've ever associated with myself. 
Claudia W: Even though I'm lucky enough to work with Tan, and she's explained anxiety to me before, but, image of somebody who's anxious is highly strung, nervous, fidgety, and, um, meeting Bea was calm, cool, and I said to Tan, how do you know? And I don't wanna make you cry again, so I'm going to say it briefly, just so everybody knows who's listening, you're an incredibly beautiful woman and it made you cry. She went, Claude, that's anxiety. 
Bea: But I have the tools which will-. 
Claudia W: You have knowledge. 
Bea: I have knowledge, which is, which is so much better than where I was, you know, just two hours ago before we all started talking and that, you know, that's, that's everything, um, is just to have got to that point where you're like, right, that understanding because, perfection is bullshit. 
Claudia W: Absolutely. And also who likes perfect people. I've met those people, perfect, is not interesting. Thank you so much Bea, it was so lovely to meet you. 
Bea: Thank you.
Claudia W: Well, what a woman Bea is. 
Tanya B: But she's every woman, don't you think? 
Claudia W: She's all of us. 
Tanya B: Her story, is so many women's story, that voice in the head that says, but you just don't look right. So therefore you're not good enough. 
Claudia W: Yeah. It feels like she's on her way. 
Tanya B: I mean, we're not a therapy podcast, are we. We're a therapeutic conversation. People leave us and go on and then they, they go on that journey. So this is about understanding. Understanding is power and I felt she went from being a self-loathing, disempowered woman to a woman who felt empowered. Well, I'm all for that really Claude. 
Claudia W: Me too. You are magic. That is the end of our series.
Tanya B: Are we done? 
Claudia W: Yeah. 
Tanya B: Oh, are we gonna do another one? 
Claudia W: We can do another one, if the people who are listening to this ask for one. Whatever happens, I'm going to make a Swiss roll. 
Tanya B: Why 
Claudia W: To celebrate. 
Tanya B: Okay, can you make two and stick one in a cab over to me? 
Claudia W: Done. 
Tanya B: Claude you are so good to work with. 
Claudia W: Stop it. 
Tanya B: You help me do my job.
Claudia W: Be quiet. 
Tanya B: Oh my God. I have got to do one with you, next series. If anybody can't take a compliment, literally, it's you. And it does my head in. 
Claudia W: I love you. 
Tanya B: I love you too. 
Claudia W: Expect the Swiss roll. One hour. 
Tanya B: Thank you.
Claudia W: So, you know, we always follow up with our guests providing useful contacts and information, some of which you will find in the program notes of this episode. Please do share this podcast, you can send links direct from the app, if you like, you can also follow to get new episodes as soon as they come out.
Also, we would love to know what you think. Do rate, comment and give us a five-star review. It all helps us to make more. This podcast was made by the team at Somethin' Else. The sound and mix engineer is Josh Gibbs. The assistant producer is Grace Laiker. The producer is Selina Ream, and the executive producers are Claire Solan and Chris Skinner, with additional production from Steve Ackerman.
Thank you so much for listening. .