Parts Work, Self Energy & Healing in Difficult Environments: Q&A with Mike, Part Two

Me and Mike are back, and this one goes deep.

We received so many beautiful, brave questions from listeners after our first conversation about parts work and Internal Family Systems. So we sat down together and worked through four of them in real time, the way we always do, naturally, honestly and without a script. This is one of those conversations that kept surprising me as it unfolded.

This episode is for you if:

• You understand parts work intellectually but struggle to actually access self energy when you need it
• You find it easy to feel compassion for others but the moment you turn it inward, a critical or shaming part takes over
• You are trying to heal while still living in the environment where the wounds happened
• You experience compulsive movement and feel stuck between knowing what you need and being unable to act on it
• You want to understand how to use your own anger, determination and drive as fuel for healing, not just obstacles to overcome

In this episode, we cover:

✨ How to access the compassionate parent part when a critical protector keeps taking over

✨ Why the part that reminds you of your dad showing up in self-work makes complete and understandable sense

✨ The difference between being caught up in a part and being in self, and why it is often far more subtle than we expect

✨ Why the one asking the questions and noticing what is happening is already self

✨ Healing while living with emotionally unavailable parents: is it possible, and what does it actually look like

✨ Grief and acceptance as the real foundation of healing in a triggering environment

✨ How to use triggers as invitations to turn towards the parts that need you, rather than evidence that you are failing

✨ The question to ask every single part that wants to do something harmful: what are you afraid would happen if you didn't?

✨ Compulsive movement, the biological migration response and the parts work layer underneath

✨ Why self never tells a part what it should or should not do, and why the voice saying "stop this behaviour" is probably another part

✨ Using anger, resentment and the overachiever energy to fuel recovery, and why that is not anti-parts work at all

✨ Why parts never really want to do the harmful things they do, they just do not yet know there is another way

✨ What it looks like when a part finally trusts self enough to stop the behaviour it has been using to stay safe

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "The part that wants to compulsively move is not bad. It is exhausted. It just does not know there is another way yet."

💬 "The thing you are seeking, the love, connection and belonging, is where you are looking from. It is already you."

💬 "Self has no agenda. It is not trying to fix or stop anything. It is just there to listen. And paradoxically, that is when the healing happens."

💬 "I used the anger. I was a grown woman afraid of food and I was furious about it. That fury helped me face the terror and do it anyway."

💬 "You are the parent your parts have been waiting for. You can go back to where they are stuck and be the person they needed then."

We have so much more to come from me and Mike, including episodes on people pleasing, the personal development trap, seeking perfection versus acceptance, and Mike's word for this year: embody. Stay tuned.

Much love. 💛

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Q&A: Stop Chasing Outcomes: The Real Work of Recovery is What You're Avoiding

You sent in your questions, and I am answering them, honestly and without holding back.

This episode is a solo Q&A where I go deep on five listener questions that cover some of the most common, most stuck places in recovery. From comparison and fatphobia to leaving home, reintroducing exercise, gut health complications and the terrifying thought that maybe you actually don't want to get better. If any of these have been living rent-free in your head, this one is for you.

This episode is for you if:

• You consider yourself recovered but a friend's weight loss has sent you into a spiral and you don't understand why
• You suspect you might be fatphobic and feel ashamed to admit it
• You are living at home and wondering if you can recover in the same environment where you became ill
• You have gut infections or food intolerances that complicate eating unrestrictedly
• You want to reintroduce exercise but are scared of what will come up when you do

In this episode, we cover:

✨ Why seeing someone close to you lose weight can trigger even a recovered person, and what that is actually pointing to

✨ The difference between what we think we are chasing and the feeling we are really after

✨ Micro restrictions and why they will always backfire, even when they seem sensible

✨ Yes, you are probably fatphobic, and no, that does not say anything bad about you as a person

✨ Why you cannot simply drop a fear of fatness until your nervous system has evidence it is safe to do so

✨ The difference between wanting to recover and being willing to do what recovery requires

✨ Why identifying with your eating disorder makes the prospect of recovery feel like a death

✨ Can you recover in the same environment where you became ill? The honest answer

✨ Autonomy, rebellion and why your own recovery has to belong to you, not your parents

✨ Gut infections, food intolerances and SIBO: how to approach freedom when certain foods cause real physical consequences

✨ Reintroducing exercise after a long break: why the thoughts you are afraid of coming up are exactly the ones you need to face

✨ The difference between "I have to exercise" and "I choose to exercise" and why that distinction matters enormously

✨ What it actually means to bridge the gap between no exercise and a genuinely free relationship with movement

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "Trauma is also what didn't happen to you. The absence of the big stuff does not mean your emotional needs were met."

💬 "Of course you are fatphobic. We all are. We have been conditioned to be. That is not a character flaw. That is what recovery is here to dismantle."

💬 "Want and willing are two very different things. You can want recovery with everything you have and still not be willing to do what it takes. That is where the real work begins."

💬 "You cannot heal what you are not willing to face. The thoughts you are scared of coming up when you exercise are exactly the ones that need to come up so you can move through them."

💬 "True freedom is feeling at home with yourself wherever you are in the world, whatever is going on in your life. That is the goal. Not a location. Not a body size. Just you, at home in yourself."

If any of these questions sound like your own inner monologue, you are not alone and you are not broken. You are just someone doing the brave, messy, necessary work of recovery. Keep going.

Much love. 💛

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Beverly Atkins is the founder of pauseture, a mobile app that brings the Feldenkrais method, one of the most powerful and least known somatic practices in the world, to people who need it. She stumbled into it after putting her back out and not being able to walk upright for three weeks. What she found changed not just her back, but her relationship with her body, her food, her emotions, and her entire nervous system.

I have been using the app myself and I cannot recommend it enough. So we sat down to talk about all of it.

This episode is for you if:

• You feel disconnected from your body and live mostly in your head
• You have tried meditation or breath work and it made your anxiety worse, not better
• You are in recovery and need something gentle to replace compulsive exercise
• You carry tension, chronic pain or bracing in your body that nothing seems to shift
• You want to understand how stored trauma shows up physically and how movement can release it
• You are curious about somatic healing but don't know where to start

In this episode, we cover:

✨ Beverly's personal story of body hatred, extreme exercise, back injury and how she accidentally found the Feldenkrais method

✨ What the Feldenkrais method actually is, and why it is so different from yoga, pilates or conventional exercise

✨ Why the lessons ask you to close your eyes, go slowly and stop comparing yourself to anyone else

✨ How 24 days of gentle movement lessons changed Beverly's relationship with food at her calorie-abundant workplace

✨ Why Beverly stopped working out entirely for 18 months and what happened when she returned to movement

✨ Why traditional meditation and breath work made Beverly's anxiety worse, and why movement meditation worked instead

✨ How the method builds neuroplasticity and rewires habitual patterns in the brain

✨ Why the nervous system must feel safe before it can learn anything new

✨ The pelvis, trauma and bracing: what Beverly witnessed in her private practice with clients who had experienced sexual abuse

✨ Interoception and proprioception: noticing how you feel inside your body and how you fit in the world around you

✨ How this work can support body image and body dysmorphia by helping you sense your body accurately rather than just see it

✨ Why going smaller and slower in the lessons is where the most profound change happens

✨ How finding choice in movement quietly creates choice in every other area of life

✨ How to access the app, the free trial and how to find a Feldenkrais practitioner near you

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "The only thing permanent about our behaviour is our belief that it is."

💬 "Instead of judging yourself for falling back into an old pattern, just say: that's interesting. That's my old pattern. And now I have a choice."

💬 "I chose this food because of how it made me feel, not how it was going to make me look. That shift changed everything."

💬 "When we let go of judgment of ourselves, something profound happens. We start to meet other people, and life itself, with that same curiosity."

💬 "Your nervous system is not in a learning mode if it does not feel safe. Safety comes first. Always."

If you have been searching for something gentle, something that meets your nervous system exactly where it is without forcing or fixing, this might be it. I found it genuinely life-changing and I think you might too.

You can find the app by searching pauseture in your app store. There is a seven day free trial so you can experience it for yourself before committing to anything.

Pelvic mobility and its connection to back, shoulder, neck, and jaw pain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYMqCwZrrc

Much love. 💛

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"But I Had a Happy Childhood": Why Your Eating Disorder Still Makes Complete Sense

This one comes up with almost every single person I work with.

But Victoria, I had a happy childhood. My parents loved me. I don't have any trauma. So why do I have an eating disorder?

This episode is my answer. Because trauma is not only what happened to you. Trauma is also what didn't happen to you. The absence of the big stuff does not mean your emotional needs were met. And unmet emotional needs in childhood are trauma, just not the kind that gets talked about enough.

This episode is for you if:

• You have always said "but I had a happy childhood" and wondered why that hasn't explained or healed things
• You feel like you have no right to struggle because nothing that bad happened to you
• You have done the therapy, the journaling, the work, and still feel it in your body
• You want to understand why your eating disorder was created in the first place
• You are ready to grieve what you didn't get, without blame, but with truth

In this episode, we cover:

✨ Why trauma is not only what happened to you, it is also what didn't happen to you

✨ How unmet emotional needs in childhood create the same nervous system wounds as more obvious trauma

✨ What a "happy childhood" can actually look like beneath the surface, and what it communicates to a developing nervous system

✨ Being sent to your room when upset, and what that taught you about big emotions

✨ How early body shame can begin long before magazines or social media

✨ Early sleep separation and why your nervous system may have been in low-level survival mode from the very beginning

✨ Enmeshment and codependency: what it looks like to grow up not knowing where you end and your parent begins

✨ Erika Commissar's research on the first three years of life and why it matters so much for eating disorder recovery

✨ Why the myth of quality over quantity time does not hold up for babies and toddlers

✨ Why talk therapy alone often cannot reach wounds that formed before you had words

✨ Four practical things you can begin with: permission to grieve, somatic work, writing to your younger self, and understanding the eating disorder as a messenger rather than an enemy

✨ Victoria answers a listener question from someone who is pregnant and exhausted by the fight

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "Trauma is not the event itself. It is the wound that the absence of what should have been there leaves inside of you."

💬 "Your eating disorder was not a malfunction. It was an incredibly intelligent adaptation."

💬 "A child doesn't think my parents are struggling. A child thinks there must be something wrong with me."

💬 "You can spend years understanding it intellectually and still feel it in your body like it is the most real thing in the world. Because the body keeps the score."

💬 "If you keep telling yourself you had a happy childhood and there is nothing to heal, you are leaving your inner child out in the cold. She is in there. She has always been in there."

If any of this is landing in your body rather than just your head, that is the work beginning. She has been waiting. And you can go back for her now.

Much love. 💛

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Healing Through Movement: Embodied Dance, Trauma & Reclaiming Your Body with Allison Pagano

This conversation goes somewhere unexpected and beautiful.

Allison Pagano is the creator of Embodied Dance, a body of work she accidentally built over 25 years that uses dance and movement as a healing art. She leads teacher trainings, works with clients one-to-one, and has spent decades helping people reconnect to their body's truth and reclaim their power from the inside out. She also has her own deeply personal story of recovery, which is where all of this began.

We talk about how the body stores what the mind cannot name, why being witnessed in raw vulnerability is one of the most profound forms of healing, and what it looks like to turn your emotions over to the body and let it lead.

This episode is for you if:

• You feel disconnected from your body and live mostly in your head
• You have emotions that feel too big, too scary or completely inaccessible
• You've done mindset work but sense there is something deeper that hasn't shifted yet
• You struggle with rage, grief or fear and have no idea how to express them safely
• You want to understand how trauma is stored in the body and how movement can release it
• You have never danced in your life and wonder if any of this could possibly be for you

In this episode, we cover:

✨ How Allison accidentally created Embodied Dance while in the middle of her own eating disorder recovery

✨ The moment of being witnessed in raw vulnerability that changed everything for her

✨ How lineage pain, trauma passed down through generations, shows up in our own bodies

✨ The process of following emotion as a thread through the body, from activation to full expression

✨ Why you do not need to know where something came from to begin healing it

✨ Pre-verbal trauma and how the body holds memories the mind cannot access

✨ How to begin if you are completely disconnected and cannot feel anything at all

✨ Rage as a power reclamation: why owning your anger gives you access to more of everything

✨ What to do when you cannot physically express an emotion in the moment

✨ Why the cup that holds your grief also holds your joy: feeling more of one opens you to more of everything

✨ Victoria's mirror work story: what started as rage led to a memory that had nothing to do with her body at all

✨ How creating new movement qualities rewires the brain through neuroplasticity

✨ Why you need absolutely no dance experience to benefit from this work

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "The body never lies. No matter what a person is saying, their body is always telling the truth."

💬 "On the other side of doing this work is everything you ever wanted: safety, peace, and feeling at home in yourself."

💬 "When you deepen into the rage or the grief, you get back ten times your aliveness, ten times your joy, ten times your pleasure."

💬 "Your body holds all your tender secrets. It is your greatest guide. We just have to learn how to access it."

💬 "There is a way out. It is not a life sentence. On the other side is a really wonderful way of being in the world, being in your body."

If you have ever felt at war with your body, cut off from your emotions, or like there is something stuck that words and thinking cannot reach, this episode is for you. The body has been holding it all, waiting for you to come back to it. And it is never too late to start.

Much love. 💛

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This one is a big one, my love. Stay with me.

I start this episode by answering a question from the wonderful Heather, who asks what to do when thinness feels like the only thing that makes her feel powerful, and why she still isn't surrendering yet. It's such an honest, courageous question, and I wanted to give it the real answer it deserves before diving into today's main topic: the control paradox.

Because here's the thing your eating disorder brain is not going to want to hear. The goal of recovery is not to be in control around food. The goal is to let go of control entirely. Control and freedom are not the same thing. They are opposites. And you cannot control your way to the freedom you are desperately seeking.

This episode is for you if:

• You feel like control is the only thing keeping you safe
• You know the eating disorder is making you miserable but cannot imagine letting go
• You believe that if you let go, you will never stop eating or will gain weight forever
• You have tried to find a middle ground, a way to control just a little bit less
• You feel powerful when you're thin and terrified of what you'll lose if you recover
• You are stuck in quasi recovery and deep down you know it
• You want to understand what true food freedom actually looks and feels like from the inside

In this episode, we cover:

✨ Heather's question: what to do when thinness feels like your only source of power, and why the answer is always the deeper work

✨ The difference between real power and external validation dressed up as power

✨ Why you developed the eating disorder in the first place, and why it was never your fault

✨ The crucial difference between control and choice, and why you cannot have genuine choice while you are still controlling

✨ Why every form of disordered eating is an attempt at control, and why no amount of it will ever be enough

✨ What actually happens in your nervous system when you are controlling food versus when you let go

✨ Foods on a pedestal: why forbidden foods have power over you, and how unconditional permission removes that power

✨ The four phases of letting go: the fear and extreme hunger, habituation, body trust, and freedom

✨ Why your body has a natural set point and what happens when you finally get out of its way

✨ Soul self versus suppressed self: which one is running the show around food right now

✨ Practical steps to start letting go of control, even when it feels absolutely terrifying

✨ What life genuinely looks like when you are living in food freedom

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "The control that felt empowering became exhausting. The rules that felt safe became suffocating. You were trying to control your way to freedom, but control and freedom are literally opposites."

💬 "You cannot control your way backwards. You can only heal your way forwards."

💬 "When you are controlling, the question is: am I allowed to have this? When you are free, the question is: do I want this? One comes from fear. The other comes from trust."

💬 "The opposite of control is not out of control. The opposite of control is freedom."

💬 "You have spent long enough trying to control your way to freedom. It is time to take the actual path. Surrender. Trust. Let go."

Freedom is waiting for you on the other side of control. Much love. 💛

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This conversation is one I've been wanting to have for a long time.

I invited Robyn Kievit onto the podcast because she is doing something genuinely rare. She is the first dietician to become a nurse practitioner, she specialises in eating disorders, disordered eating and body image, and over the past several years she has become deeply educated in hormone therapy and perimenopause. She is one of very few clinicians in the world looking at all of this together, as one whole picture. And that matters enormously for the women I work with.

We talk about what perimenopause actually feels like, why the hormonal shifts of this life phase can cause eating disorder symptoms to surge, what hormone therapy is and who it might help, and why so many women are being dismissed by their doctors when they deserve so much better. We also talk about body image, aging, grief, and what it means to enter this next season of life with compassion rather than resistance.

This episode is for you if:

• You're in perimenopause or approaching it and want to understand what's actually happening in your body
• Your anxiety, depression or eating disorder symptoms have surged and you don't know why
• You've been dismissed by a doctor and told it's too early to seek support
• You have a history of an eating disorder and want to understand how that intersects with hormonal changes
• You're struggling with body image as your body changes with age
• You want to know your options, natural, hormonal, and otherwise, for supporting yourself through this transition
• You believe, like I do, that you don't have to just white-knuckle your way through this

In this episode, we cover:

✨ The signs of perimenopause that often get missed or dismissed, and why they matter

✨ How hormonal changes affect mood, sleep, cognition and anxiety in ways that are genuinely physiological, not just in your head

✨ Why anxiety and depression can surge during perimenopause, especially if you have a history of either

✨ The HPA and HPO axes explained in plain English, and why they're so central to how you feel during this transition

✨ What hormone therapy actually is, who it can help, and what the current guidance really says

✨ Why birth control pills and IUDs are considered hormone therapy, and what that means for you

✨ The enormous gap in clinical education around eating disorders and menopause, and why Robyn created her course to address it

✨ How to advocate for yourself if you're being dismissed by a doctor

✨ Why bone health and cardiovascular health make hormonal support even more important for women with eating disorder histories

✨ The body image and grief piece of aging, and why our bodies changing is not something to be corrected

✨ What it means to enter the archetype of the crone, the wise woman, with self-compassion rather than fear

✨ Why you are allowed to ask not to be weighed at a medical appointment

✨ Robyn's course for clinicians and why it exists

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "I just wasn't feeling like myself. That is the number one thing women say when perimenopause begins, and it deserves to be taken seriously, not dismissed."

💬 "We are at the mercy of our hormones in some ways, and that is not a weakness. It's physiology. The question is what tools do we have to support ourselves through it."

💬 "Growing old is a gift. Every line on your face is a line of a life lived, smiled in, cried in. A body well lived in."

💬 "Our bodies change purposefully. The goal isn't to fight that. It's to find solutions that help us feel well within it."

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This episode is for you if:

• You're doing all the recovery things but still feel flat, joyless or like you're just surviving
• You feel guilty resting, playing or doing anything that isn't productive
• You've never really thought about pleasure beyond food — or you're scared of it
• Your inner critic tells you pleasure is indulgent, earned or something you don't deserve
• You're a high achiever who has tied your worth to productivity for as long as you can remember
• You feel disconnected from your body and can't imagine actually enjoying being in it
• You want to understand why recovery without pleasure keeps you stuck in quasi-recovery

In this episode, we cover:

✨ Why pleasure is not a luxury in eating disorder recovery — it's the recovery

✨ The nervous system piece: why your body literally cannot heal without experiencing pleasure

✨ How trauma damages your relationship with pleasure — and teaches you that enjoying yourself isn't safe

✨ The soul self versus the suppressed self and how they each relate to pleasure completely differently

✨ Why reclaiming food pleasure is essential — and what savouring food actually looks like after restriction

✨ Why food obsession comes from deprivation of pleasure, not just deprivation of food

✨ What to do when food is your only source of pleasure and why that's completely valid for a season

✨ Pleasure beyond food — sensory, creative, relational, rest and movement pleasure explained

✨ Why high achieving women struggle most with pleasure — and how the eating disorder is an achievement disorder in disguise

✨ The body image piece: why you cannot wait until you love your body before letting it feel good

✨ How to know what genuine pleasure actually feels like — especially if you've been in survival mode for years

✨ The pain and discomfort inventory: what you're tolerating that's blocking pleasure from landing

✨ Fun, playfulness and your inner children — why this is legitimate trauma healing work, not just a nice idea

✨ What actually happens in your nervous system when you play, laugh and do things just because they're fun

✨ Practical steps to start microdosing pleasure into your life right now

✨ Why a life without pleasure keeps the eating disorder relevant — and what to build instead

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "You cannot heal from trauma and from an eating disorder through discipline and willpower alone. Your nervous system actually requires pleasure in order to heal."

💬 "The eating disorder convinces you that denying yourself pleasure is virtuous — that suffering is noble and deprivation is discipline. That is a lie."

💬 "Pleasure is not something you earn. It's not a reward for recovering enough. Pleasure is the recovery."

💬 "You can't wait until you love your body before you let it feel good. You have to let pleasure in first. That's how the body image shifts — through embodied experience, not willpower."

💬 "The eating disorder is deadly serious. It doesn't play, it doesn't laugh, it doesn't do things just for fun. Playfulness is one of the most powerful ways to choose your soul self over it."

💬 "You didn't survive your eating disorder just to live a beige, pleasureless, serious existence. You survived so you could live fully — with joy, aliveness, silliness and pleasure."

💙 Join my FREE support group: https://victoriakleinsman.com/free-support-group/

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Georgia's back — and this time, things are even deeper.

When Georgia first came on the podcast, she was in what she thought was full recovery. And in many ways she was. But what followed taught her something nobody really talks about: recovering from an eating disorder doesn't automatically fill the void it leaves behind. In this episode, we get into what happens after recovery, why so many women find themselves slipping back into old patterns not out of relapse but out of boredom and emptiness, and what it actually looks like to build a life so full there's simply no room for the eating disorder anymore.

In this episode, we cover:

✨ Why Georgia doesn't call what happened a relapse — and the crucial distinction that matters

✨ What "complacency in recovery" actually looks like and how quickly it can creep in

✨ Why the identity of being "in recovery" can keep you stuck — and what to shift to instead

✨ The void that recovery leaves behind and why filling it is non-negotiable

✨ How boredom, not desire, can pull you back into eating disorder behaviours

✨ Why recovering from an eating disorder doesn't fix life — and why that's actually good news

✨ The honeymoon phase of recovery and what comes after it

✨ Fear of taking up space in the world as the next evolution of the fear of physical growth

✨ How diet culture and self-suppression are the same oppression — just in different forms

✨ Why your recovered mind is one of the most powerful tools you'll ever have

✨ Feeling and moving through emotions — what actually works and what doesn't

✨ Why emotions, when suppressed, will always find a way to come out

✨ Hypothalamic amenorrhea — what it is, why it matters even if you don't want children, and Georgia's personal journey with it

✨ Why you can be mentally free and still dealing with the physical long-term effects of restriction

✨ Georgia's coaching practice — who she works with and how to reach her

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "Recovery from an eating disorder doesn't fix life. Life is still a bit shit sometimes — and unless you put energy into filling it up, the eating disorder will fill the space instead."

💬 "I was so bored. All I knew was eating disorder behaviours. I didn't know what else to do — and that was the honest truth."

💬 "The fear of taking up space in the world is the same oppression as diet culture keeping women physically small. I refused to stay small in either way."

💬 "Recovery is the hardest thing I've ever done. So now I look at life and think — bring it on. I've already overcome my biggest fears."

💬 "I am no longer willing to contribute to my own oppression. That quote on my mirror changed everything."

💬 "Any feeling that wants to arise within you, you have the capacity to feel it. Otherwise it wouldn't be rising. Trust that."

Much love. 💛

💙 Join my FREE support group: https://victoriakleinsman.com/free-support-group/

💙 Free trial group coaching: https://victoriakleinsman.com/coaching/

💙 Work with me 1:1: https://victoriakleinsman.com/1-1-coaching/

💙 Follow me on Instagram @victoriakleinsmanofficial

💙 Become a coach: https://victoriakleinsman.com/become-a-coach/

Connect with Georgia

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georgiagracerecovers?igsh=MWZ5NHZudmJ6Znk0dA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr-

HealingwthG podcast on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/healingwithg/id1880094360-

HealingwithG podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/00WnCL5bcbX3wX7hMQNyrC

And my coaching email address is: [email protected]

Your Questions Answered: Meal Plans, Bloating, Hunger, OCD, Movement & More

Right then, let's get into it.

I put a question box on Instagram and you all delivered. This episode is a juicy Q&A where I'm answering some of the most common — and some of the most vulnerable — questions that came in. From meal plans and bloating to OCD with binge eating, compulsive exercise trauma, self-care as avoidance, and ARFID being misdiagnosed in hospitals. We cover a lot of ground and I am not holding back.

This episode is for you if:

• You're unsure whether to stick with your meal plan or eat intuitively
• You're bloated, uncomfortable, and wondering when it will ever end
• Your hunger signals have disappeared and you don't know how to eat without them
• You have OCD rituals around food and wonder if full recovery is even possible for you
• The thought of exercise sends you into panic and freeze mode
• You're doing all the self-care things but still feel like you're avoiding something
• You or someone you love has ARFID and is being treated like they have anorexia

In this episode, we cover:

✨ Meal plans versus intuitive eating — the real questions you need to ask yourself first

✨ How long bloating actually lasts in recovery and why it's a sign your body is healing

✨ Why your digestive system needs time and what's really happening inside your body

✨ How to eat when you have zero hunger — and why waiting for hunger is still restriction

✨ Mechanical eating explained — what it is, why it works, and why it's worth it

✨ OCD with binge eating disorder — yes, full recovery is absolutely possible

✨ Why your OCD latches onto food specifically and what your nervous system is really asking for

✨ Practical steps for OCD rituals around food — including tiny acts of rebellion

✨ The freeze response around movement — why it's not a problem to fix, it's a body screaming for safety

✨ Why you do not have a movement problem — you have a nervous system problem

✨ Why forcing yourself back to exercise right now would be re-traumatising

✨ What somatic healing practices actually look like when you're not ready for the gym

✨ The difference between self-care as support versus self-care as avoidance

✨ What true surrender actually looks like — and why it's uncomfortable on purpose

✨ ARFID versus anorexia — why treating them the same way is harmful and what ARFID actually needs

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "You don't convince yourself to eat. You just decide to. There is no negotiating with an eating disorder — there is only a decision."

💬 "The bloating is temporary. The eating disorder is not temporary unless you heal. It will steal your entire life if you let it."

💬 "Your hunger signals have been suppressed for so long your body stopped sending them. You cannot restore hunger without eating consistently first."

💬 "You don't have a movement problem. You have a nervous system problem. Your body spent years being punished — and now it's finally safe enough to feel it."

💬 "Self-care can support surrender, but it can also become a subtle way of avoiding it. The real work is learning to just be with yourself, without doing anything about it."

💬 "You are not stuck and you are not failing. Your body is doing exactly what it's supposed to do after years of trauma."

If you've been sitting with any of these questions — or recognising yourself in someone else's — this episode will give you clarity, compassion, and some very practical places to start. You've got this, my love. I really mean that.

💙 Join my FREE support group: https://victoriakleinsman.com/free-support-group/

💙 Free trial group coaching: https://victoriakleinsman.com/coaching/

💙 Work with me 1:1: https://victoriakleinsman.com/1-1-coaching/

💙 Follow me on Instagram @victoriakleinsmanofficial

💙 Become a coach: https://victoriakleinsman.com/become-a-coach/

Parts Work, Inner Children & The Self: A Conversation with Mike

This one is a little different — and I think you're going to love it.

I invited my friend Mike onto the podcast because we've been having the most beautiful, deep conversations over voice messages for years now. It started when he reached out to me to help his friend Finja recover from anorexia, and somehow, three years later, we're still talking — about spirituality, parts work, fear, grief, and what it really means to heal. So we decided to have one of our conversations in real time, and this is it.

This episode is for you if:

• You've ever wondered who the "you" is when you talk about loving yourself
• You feel like you're at war with different parts of yourself and can't figure out why
• You keep doing things you don't want to do and can't seem to stop
• You've done the therapy, read the books, had the insights — and still feel stuck
• You want to understand what parts work and Internal Family Systems (IFS) actually look like in practice
• You're curious about the difference between fear and discomfort — and whether they're even different at all
• You're on a healing journey and want to go deeper than behaviour change

In this episode, we cover:

✨ Mike's Word of the Year — why he chose "discomfort" and what it actually taught him

✨ The difference between your panic zone and your stretch zone — and how to know which one you're in

✨ Why checking in with your parts before, during and after facing fear changes everything

✨ What Internal Family Systems (IFS) actually is — explained in the most beautiful, accessible way

✨ The "self" versus your parts — and why the self is not a part at all

✨ The eight C's of self-energy: clarity, compassion, curiosity, courage and more

✨ Why all parts — even the ones that scare you — are rooted in love

✨ The difference between exiles and protectors, and how protectors keep you from your pain

✨ Why your protectors think you're still the age you were when the wound happened

✨ What happens to a part once it's healed — and where it goes

✨ The reframe that stopped me in my tracks: it's not self-love, it's part love

✨ My story of sitting at a traffic light, looking in the mirror, and saying "I see you"

✨ Why connection — not fixing — is what parts actually need

✨ The fear of loss at the root of every fear (try this experiment for yourself this week)

✨ Why grief might be the hardest emotion to sit with — and why it's also the most necessary

✨ The paradox of loss: you've lost something AND you've always had everything you need

✨ Why healing is seeing through illusions — and what that actually means in practice

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "Discomfort and fear are the same thing. There's always a part that's afraid, and that fear is always connected to somewhere it once wasn't safe."

💬 "The self is love. That's literally what it is. So you can't love yourself — you can only love your parts. That's the real work."

💬 "I looked in the mirror at a red traffic light, looked into my own eyes, and just said: I see you. That was all she had ever needed."

💬 "Every single part of you — even the most destructive one — loves you so much it's trying to protect you from pain. There are no bad parts."

💬 "Healing is seeing through the illusions and coming to the ultimate truth that you are nothing and everything, all at the same time."

💬 "When a part finally feels seen and understood, that is the healing. Not fixing. Not reasoning. Just truly being with it."

💙 Join my FREE support group: https://victoriakleinsman.com/free-support-group/

💙 Free trial group coaching: https://victoriakleinsman.com/coaching/

💙 Work with me 1:1: https://victoriakleinsman.com/1-1-coaching/

💙 Follow me on Instagram @victoriakleinsmanofficial

💙 Become a coach: https://victoriakleinsman.com/become-a-coach/