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MODULE 7
ADVANCED PRACTITIONER SKILLS
Section 5
General distinctions around understanding how to work with teens around eating challenges.
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Once again, my friends, Mark David here, founder
of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating.
Let's have a conversation about
working with young people now,
some initial musings
and setting the plate for this conversation.
I wanna remind you that this training has been about working
with adults approximately 21 and over.
Now, that doesn't mean that things
that you've learned in this training cannot be applied
to younger people.
So in this conversation,
when I'm talking about younger people,
I'm talking about us understanding the young ones
who are approximately 14 to 21.
So that's the age group that I am thinking
of in this conversation when I'm talking to you 14 to 21.
And I'm gonna just be sharing some distinctions about
working with this group.
I am absolutely not talking about kids below this age group,
as that is highly specialized to work with such a population
and beyond our scope.
Of course, it's not beyond your scope if you already have
prior training in this realm,
but a super specialized group.
Um, and with that said, working with teenagers is also
rather specialized.
And I want to say to you, it is not at all advisable to work
with them in a professional way
or an intensive way without prior training
or further specialized training.
So this is a conversation for me of just sharing
with you some insights and distinctions.
It's not me teaching you, here's how you can go out
and coach 14 to 21 years old, old age group
and make a living out of it and be a professional.
Um, no, that's not what this is.
But yet, if you're a person, if you're a human,
if you're a parent, if you're a friend, if you're an aunt,
if you're an uncle, if you're any kind
of helping practitioner, it's good to know some
of the useful distinctions for this age group
because it's likely going to come up
for you in various ways.
So that's the spirit of this conversation, not, here's
how you can now become a professional working with the 14
to 21-year-old age group.
This is not that at all. Not even close.
Uh, again, it's me sharing some highlights
to help you understand some of the things
that I know about working with this age group,
which is interesting, my friends.
Okay, first
and foremost, when it comes to working with the 14
to 20 year, 14 to 21 year olds, I want you to assume
that useful and important work can get done with them.
I really mean that useful and important work can happen.
But here's the paradox.
You have to assume that you cannot,
cannot, cannot fix them.
You cannot take away a young person's pain.
You cannot take away overnight
or over the course of a month or even a year.
You can't take away their eating challenge.
It just doesn't happen. At least it's a rare experience. Why? Because young people are on a journey. They're really on a journey. They're beginning their journey. They're in a very vulnerable time in their journey. So your insistence on saving them, your insistence on fixing them, and your insistence on, okay, we're gonna make this all better. I wanna make their eating challenge go away because this is so terrible. Believe it or not, that's an ineffective approach. And that will actually leave the young person that you say you're so concerned about. It's gonna leave them feeling more broken and more confused because you're not going to be effective because you're trying to fix a problem in a way that it cannot be fixed. So of course, you and I want people out of their pain and suffering. Of course, we want young people out of their pain and suffering, and of course, we're going to do whatever we can to help them not be in their pain and suffering. Yes, yes, yes. And you must remember, you must hold in your mind, your heart, your soul, that like every other creature, like every other age group and especially their age group, they must go through their journey, whatever that journey may be for them.
The teenage years are definitionally rocky. They're a struggle. They are intense. Perhaps you were a teenager at one point in your life and you remember such things. You had to go through your journey. Could somebody have come in during the time of your intense journey as a teen and said one thing or two things and all of a sudden all your pain is away and you know who you are and you're fine with yourself and everything is perfect just because you spoke to one adult who had the secret to life or knew the exact supplement to take? No, of course not. So please remember that is a time of turmoil and challenge. Bottom line. And there's so much self definition that's wanting to happen at the same time. There is self definition wanting to happen. There's inner chaos. There are the struggles that young people are going through about fitting in with their friends and peers. Young people, by definition, have not found themselves yet. They haven't found their core, they haven't found their center, they haven't found their quiet place. They haven't found their sense of self authority and true confidence. That's just the way it is, my friends. It's not time for that yet. Therefore, you can't just take away their eating challenge. You can't just take away their excess weight. If you come in with that expectation, it's all about you. You're making it all about your performance and your ego, and you're not doing anybody any good. You, you know, because teenagers haven't found themselves because it's, this is the journey that they're on given our world, given the toxic programming of our world, you know what I'm talking about? Media, culture, music, images, art, movies, all of it. I wish I wasn't saying this, but food and body challenges are predictable. Uh, it annoys me. It bothers me. It angers me. It infuriates me on any, on any given day. I'm living somewhere there in relation to what I see young people going through when it comes to food and body. Young people have nothing wrong with them. There is nothing wrong. They are fine. It is the world that we bring them into that is attacking their soul, that is polluting their mind with toxic beliefs about the body, toxic beliefs about life that they absorb, that they see because we are telling them to worship a certain way of being and a certain way of looking, and a certain way of eating, and a certain way of relating to others.
It is very difficult to be a young person in this world, particularly a young girl in this world, and not come out with an eating challenge and some type of body image concern. It's almost impossible. It's not young people's fault. It's not the parent's fault. Can we help them? Yes. Can a good home environment help? Absolutely. But we have a challenge. That's all I'm saying. The cards are stacked against young people in a huge way. It's it, it blows my mind. Okay?
We have to remember, young people are learning to grow through their insecurities.
So in order to grow through an insecurity, you have to have an insecurity to begin with. They're learning to find security on the road to finding insecurity. There are times when you will surely not have security for this reason. A lot of young people often not always often need to experience a little bit of extremes to learn about life. Sometimes we don't know what enough is until we know what too much is. This is how humans learn. You must allow them their journey. You must allow them their rocky emotional world and you're here to support them, and you're here to make sure they don't drown. And you're here to really be a strong adult voice, a strong mentoring voice.
And at the same time, we have to understand that we can't truly rescue them.
You cannot necessarily save them and prevent them from having hurt and upset who has been able to grow up through this world without having heard an upset, particularly in their young years.
Psalm I'm saying is we have to be able to see the big picture of their journey. And yeah, there are times that you and I, and especially as parents, that we can take measures to make sure we protect our children, to make sure we set certain boundaries with them. Absolutely. And all I'm saying is at the same time, we have to respect the big picture of their journey. And we have to understand that this is the nature of it. We cannot ultimately 100% prevent the young people from having some type of pain and hurt and upset and suffering. I wish it was different. So some ways that you and I can be of help, I want you to think of this from the standpoint of a professional. If you're already qualified to work in this realm and you're working in this realm, or to understand as a parent, or to understand if you're being a mentor or a guide or a positive adult, influence in the life of a young person, because chances are you might have that opportunity. Young people in this age group, big time need positive regard. They need adults who truly see them and get them. They need people on their team. They need allies. They need to have the sense you're their ally. They need mentors. They need people who can guide them. Say, you know something? I don't know if you want to go down that road. I think this road looks a lot better. Here's why I think that road can get you into a lot of trouble. Here's why. They need a lot of approval,
a lot of approval. They need to feel loved. They need you to see them. They need you to pierce through their veil and connect with them on their terms, not yours.
Meaning they have a way that they can hear you. They have a way that they can understand you. They have a language that helps them. You have to understand them on their terms. They are who they are. They're not necessarily you. They're not an adult, they're not a parent, they're not a professional.
They also need boundaries. They need very clear guidelines. They need to know what the danger zones are,
and they need to hear that in a way that's just very clear. And without intense judgment, hear the boundaries. Here's the places where you can get into a lot of trouble. Here's the substances, here's the drugs that if you do these, you can be in a lot of trouble.
Here's what, here's what can support you. Here's what can pull you down really quick. It's fine to be strong in that way.
Can you do that while speaking to them, while speaking to their intelligence, while speaking to their soul, without saying it in a way that has them wanting to go behind your back
without saying it in a way that has them even doubting what you're saying.
The more you're in your center, in your power as a person with them, the more they can hear you.
So some things to consider with teens in early twenties, you know, they're way better actors than you and I are. They won't necessarily tell you everything. My friends, they could be feeling a lot of shame and you don't see it now, even though they need help and guidance, they won't necessarily know how to receive it or let it in. So our wish to help them though noble is inherently difficult, oftentimes to put into action. You gotta get very present with them. Gotta get extremely present with them. You have to be very directive in a strong way, but not an overpowering way, in a loving way, but not a judging way, in a way where you are really grounded in yourself, but at the same time, you're seeing them and noticing them and embracing them.
So you have to be able to see, ah, here's where this person needs help. Here's where I need to jump in. Here's where I need to deliver information. Here's where I need to deliver wisdom. Here's where I need to deliver a teaching. Sometimes you just have to watch them and listen and watch and listen and capitalize on a moment of opening.
There's not a science to this. This is all about relationship.
It's all about being in relationship with a young person whose thoughts and emotions are all over the place, who's living in a rocky world who might have a challenge with food and body or weight, and you're here to help them.
Oftentimes, the best things that you say they get through because they're well timed
and they're spoken from an embodied place.
So you're communicating to them so they can hear it and get it. Kind of like how I'm talking to you right now. There's a thoughtfulness, there's a pace,
there's a presence. If you're not in your body, if you're not present when you're saying stuff, oh, you shouldn't do that. That's, that's bad for you. They won't hear that.
You know something. Here's what happens to you when you drink that much alcohol. Lemme tell you, do I like to drink alcohol? Sure. But it's a powerful substance
and it's good to respect power because if you don't respect it, you can drink too much. You can get in a car, you can kill someone, you can end up in prison for the rest of your life. That's how powerful that substance is.
That's very different from saying, don't drink and drive. You follow me. You're connecting with someone you know. One of the great ways I wanna remind you, uh, the great ways to help young people is to have young people who are close in age group to them be their mentors, especially when it comes to whatever challenge they might be facing. It is just a fact of life that young people will more easily relate with someone nearer to them in age. This is the big win, especially when it comes to coaching young people around food and body. They're gonna eagerly listen to someone young who has gone through the journey they are going through right now, who is one, two, or three steps ahead of them. This can be a huge, huge, huge win for them.
So if you have the influence in someone's life in any way, shape or form, who's a young person, it's a great idea to keep your eyes and ears open to, to see who are such kids.
Are there nonprofit groups in my area that work with body image, that work with eating disorders, that work with substance abuse,
that have a body positive approach?
Who is it that my young person, whether it's your client, your student, your child, who is it that can be a mentor for them? Is there such a resource or an opportunity in my area that can be oh so powerful? And I'm saying, I'm not saying that you as an adult can help this group of humans. I am saying this is one of the most powerful ways you can help them by identifying somebody you know. And if they're 14, it could be somebody in their late twenties. They'll sooner hear somebody. A 14-year-old will sooner hear a 27-year-old than they're gonna hear a 47 or a 57-year-old any day of the week is just the way they are.
And for understandable reasons, they want someone they can relate with. They want someone who they look at and say, oh, that could be me.
I could transform my challenge just like they did. It can be very, very, very, very, very inspirational for them. This is very underlooked. Some of the best programs
for helping young people be body positive
are run by young people. I mean, it's older people teaching young people how to be mentors and how to lead small groups. So with that in mind, my friends for professionals already in this room, if you're already in this realm before you likely know this, but I'm gonna remind you this, remind you of this anyway, because actually I've known a lot of professionals working with young people, and I'm often shocked. Um, before working with a young person, please consider that your initial work with them happens with their parents.
IE meet with the parents first. Without the young person, without the child,
you might need to work with the parents for several sessions if possible. If you can gather information from their teachers or friends or anyone else that knows them well, another professional that can be useful. So you want to information gather, but you must understand that to help a young person who is living at home with their parents who is suffering from or is facing any kind of eating challenge, your work with the parents is absolutely key. It's so key. It's very different from working with a young person, working with their parents. Many parents, not all, not all many parents want a professional to fix their child. They, they literally just want to dump off the kid. It's kind of like bringing in a broken card to a mechanic and saying, here, fix this. So I've seen this happen quite a bit. So there's a lot of parents, not all a lot, don't always realize that they may have a role to play in their child's unwanted challenges. They might even be close to this idea. It's not about you caused it. It's not about it's your fault. It's all about this is a shared experience. This is a shared challenge. This is a shared journey that we all have together.
It is not just about fixing something inside your kid's brain. This is about determining what can help them best move forward. What kind of support do they need? What kind of communication do they need? What kind of boundaries do they need? What kind of space do they need?
So your job is really understand the parents or the adults who that your client lives with. Who are the parents? What's their work life like? How's the parents' relationship? What's going on with that? Are they facing any problems? Are they together? Are they divorced? Are they separated? What's their vibe?
How do they view parenting and their child? Is it their first kid? What's going on with the other kids? What do the parents think the problem is? What do you guys think? What would you guesstimate?
The more you can learn about the parents, the more you can learn about their life, their challenges and their challenges with parenting. The schedule. How much time everybody is together,
what they think is going on. Gather information.
Always like to assume that half the work, 50% of the work that needs to be done when helping a young person is really about the parents and not the young person. Again, that's for a young one that's living with their parents. 50% of the work oftentimes needs to be with the parents,
helping them learn how to communicate with their young person better, helping them context what's going on with their young person better, helping them see that the home environment that they create, the psychic environment, the emotional environment, the environment of communication, the environment of safety, the environment of openness impacts the behavior and the personality of their child in a big way.
So I think it's helpful to assume that your client is the product of their family environment and they have their own journey at the same time, they have their own journey within it. So once again, it's not about blaming the family. Aha, I found the problem because the family is part of the world and the world is part of the culture and the media and everything. So it's not about blaming parents ever. And there are a lot of young people who have some very difficult challenges at home, and no doubt about that. Parents could be fighting, parents could be hating on each other, parents could be icing each other out. They could be living in a single parent home with a lot of stress and a lot of financial stress or emotional stress. So a lot of young people have difficult challenges at home. You can't fix that. You're not gonna just come in and fix a family system. At best. You can suggest tweaks,
doable tweaks for the parents. Now, if a parent expects you to fix their child, you're gonna need to do a very gentle and sweet intellectual intervention at some point, and sooner than later around this being something that the family needs to heal into, not just the young person, that it's a journey for everyone. And it's not like bringing a car into a mechanic and then getting a phone call and hearing, okay, the car is fixed, come pick it up.
Not how life works. So again, working with parents in an ongoing way is often as important as working with the child.
Now, once you're working with a young person, I really want you to be willing to be their confidant. So you have to promise them a certain level of confidentiality. Now you're gonna need to have an agreement with parents and the young person around what kind of information can flow back and forth. So you all need to decide that because your client, the young person, might tell you certain things they don't want the parent to know. Now the parent is footing the bill and they're paying you. And if you find out information that they need to know, they need to know it. So if it turns out their child is having a drug issue or their child has been a victim of some form of abuse, I will say it is your responsibility to, to let the parent know.
So on the one hand, you have to promise your, your client, the young person, confidentiality from at least everyone in the universe except perhaps their parents. And that there might be information that flows back and forth, um, around certain pieces that a parent would absolutely need to know about.
Now, if your client says, gosh, I really get p****d off at my mother. I get p****d off at my father. You have to let them know, I'm not gonna share with your parents all the little details that you talk about with me.
I am going to share big picture pieces.
But you have to have an agreement with the parents in terms of what information they're expecting to flow back and forth. You cannot share with them every single little detail. There has to be some degree of containment, and yet you're gonna have to judge when the parents need to know something that is important about their child. And that usually relates with drug use, and that usually relates with anything illegal that they're doing. And it usually relates with any kind of harm that they have suffered that they or are suffering that they're not letting their parents know about. So you gotta let your young person know that you're on their side, that you are loyal to them, and that you are their advocate at the end of the day. So even though your parents are paying me, I'm on your team. You are my guy, you are my gal. So this is very big for creating trust and doing some good work.
You know, it's important when you're working with young people to understand that you're not working with an adult. So you have to be willing to do things a little different. I'm gonna say most of the time when I've met with a younger client, it is generally not in an office environment. If it's winter time and we can't go outside, um, you know, I might meet more in the living room. We might go to a coffee shop, some cool place to hang out where we can create a little bit of, uh, privacy.
Wherever you take them, if you take them somewhere like a coffee shop, Alfred Tea, whatever it is, you pay for them. So you looking to find an environment where they would feel comfortable, I'll take 'em on a walk, I'll take 'em on a hike. I'll take, I've taken young men and we'll, we'll go to the batting cages and hit a few baseballs. Um, you wanna get into their world. Sitting in a professional environment and being a talking head with someone between 14 and 21 ah, is not always so effective. Can you do it? Absolutely. Do professionals do it every day? For sure. All I'm saying is it's okay to mix it up. It's okay to do something a little bit different. You're gonna create more connection. You're gonna create more openness. You're gonna create more interest. You're letting that young client know, Hey, I'm considering you.
They don't like the universe of sitting down, uh, with a talking head.
Get 'em out into the neighborhood, onto the trails, into a coffee shop, into a cool hangout place that just feels good.
You know, I think it's just a reality when it comes to the inner world of teens, that as teenagers, we often have very few, if any really good role models. Like, who are your role models? When you were a teenager, who did you look up to? I wanna be just like that. Who are your really good role models? Um, they might be lacking in authority figures. Forget about a role model authority figures that they could trust.
For this reason, a lot of teens feel very, very, very alone.
And while they're feeling alone, they wanna be accepted. And while they're feeling accepted or, or while they're feeling like they need to be accepted, they are feeling very susceptible to peer pressure. You know this, and if you don't remember this, let me remind you, young people are susceptible to peer pressure. And you and I as young people can often make a lot of dumb choices. We can make dumb choices if we think this is gonna help me be more acceptable. Win friends, win love, win approval, be more popular, have more people like me. Young people do stupid nonsense.
And for this reason, a lot of times they know they're doing stupid nonsense and they don't want you to know about it. You meaning the adult, you meaning the parent, you meaning the coach. I tell my young people that I'm working with, I let them know this. If I ask you a question in this relationship, your job is to tell me the truthful answer. If you do not wish to answer the question, that's totally your prerogative. In which case, I want you to say to me, I prefer not to answer that question rather than lie to me. If you say to me that you prefer not to answer a question, I won't bother you any further about it. I will respect that. I might poke and prod just a little bit to make sure, but I will always respect if you draw a line and say, Uhuh, I don't want to answer that question. I would much rather you say that than lie to me. And I would much rather you just tell me the truth in general, but you not willing to answer a question is a totally valid answer.
So I'm establishing the ground rules because I don't want my young person to lie to me. Don't waste my time. Really don't waste my time. Don't waste your time. One of the things that young people learn very early on in school with other young people is that it's good to have a criminal mind. That even though adults control the deal, adults control their world, adults control their house, adults have the money. I'm dependent on adults. The way young people can have the power is by the flow of information and what they tell you and what they don't tell you. They can have the power by fooling you. They can have the power by lying to you. They could have the power by half lying, by misdirecting you. In that way, young people can become very sharp. They can become very clever. They can become very good manipulators. They can think very well with a criminal mind. I say that affectionately, it's an archetype. It's the kind of mind that we use to maneuver, to manipulate, to say some truth, have truth, partial truth, partial lives misdirection, lying by omission or straight up lying, whatever it is in order to get what they want.
So, because I know that about young people, I wanna do my best to head that off at the past. So when I'm establishing my relationship with a young person, I am letting them know I cannot help you at all in any way, shape or form. If you lie to me. And again, I am willing for you to not share certain information with me that you don't wanna share, that's totally up to you. I will always respect that. I'm not gonna lie to you. You don't need to lie to me,
and you're letting your young person know at the same time, I wanna help you get where you want to go.
And oftentimes you need that young person's buy-in what you know. Your parents want you to see me.
Let's pretend for a moment that this was up to you. You could either see me or not see me.
If it was up to you, what would you like? What would be useful for you? What would serve you? I really mean that I don't have to do this. I could tell your parents I quit.
I don't wanna waste my time. I'm very competitive. I like winning. I like doing a good job. So if I work with you, I wanna do a good job. I wanna do goodbye you. I want to help you. But you have to tell me the kind of help you wish you would have. Forget, forget about what you think your parents want. What would you like?
You're asking them to step up a little bit more and choose that's gonna be uncomfortable for them. But I'm always establishing with my young person, honesty. I'm establishing directness.
I'm establishing getting to the point about what this relationship is.
Gotta remember my friends. Young people often have a lot of secrets. They got secrets they have drug use maybe. Maybe it's sex without parental approval. Maybe their secret is bulimia or binge eating or body hate or stealing. Maybe your young teenager is dealing with heartbreak. You don't even know it. Maybe they've experienced sexual abuse or simple sexual confusion. Definition, who am I? What's going on? What the hell is happening? What are all these hormones? What do I like? What don't I like? What am I supposed to do with all this sexual energy? So that sexual abuse or confusion can be centered in the home. It could be at school, it could be parties, friends, any combination of those. A lot of young people have suicidal thoughts just mentioning some of these. So you can have your eyes and ears open.
That's why you need prior training to work with young people, you have to be able to spot drug use without having to ask a lot of questions. You actually have to be able to discern through simple questioning if they might have bulimia.
You have to be able to notice them when you're asking questions about sex and sexuality and sexual activity. Be, take some training.
And if you're not doing this as a professional and you happen to be a human being who interacts with teenagers in any way, shape or form, these distinctions are still very important. We all should have some education and understanding our teens a lot better, because that's a big issue in this world.
You know, oftentimes, oftentimes, not always, oftentimes the way you and I relate with teenagers or any young person is the way you relate with your own inner teenager. So the, so the young person sitting in front of you, whatever their age is, the way you are relating with them and seeing them and understanding them is oftentimes
a reflection of where you are with someone in that age group where you were with yourself when you were in that age group. You're often gonna get transported a little bit back in time to where you felt unseen and unmet and how you believed the world saw you when you were that age.
If your parents were absent when you were a teenager, then there's gonna be a certain place in you that doesn't quite understand teenagers,
simply because the adult world didn't focus on you the way you needed it when you were a teen.
So we're often learning, relearning how to understand an age group that we didn't understand ourselves when we were going through that age. So what I'm saying is working with teens is as healing for you potentially as it is for them. It's as enlightening for you as it is for them.
You have to notice the places where you have discomfort. You have to notice the places where you get uncertain and confused. You have to notice the places where you get irritated. You have to notice you. You just gotta notice and notice and notice and notice.
You have to see where you have to go home and do your own homework about your own inner teenager, your own inner young person, or your relationship with young people in general. You have to see what it brings up for you.
Now, you know this, but I'm gonna remind you when you're talking to your younger client, please do not talk down to them. Whoof. I've watched coaches and counselors and therapists do this. Um, you don't talk down to them, hi, I am an older person and you're here because I'm going to help you with your eating disorder. Don't do that. Never, ever, ever underestimate their intelligence. In fact, I want you to assume that your younger client is as smart as you in many ways, perhaps even more so. They're simply younger than you. So I want you to see them not necessarily equal to you as an intellect, not necessarily equal to you in wisdom, but equal to you as a soul.
Assume that they're intelligent. You must assume that they're intelligent. Assume that the truth spoken with love will always be heard. On some level, the truth spoken with love and consciousness will always be heard on some level. So when I'm speaking to a young person, I'm actually speaking to two people. I'm speaking to the adult in them for sure, and I'm speaking to the young person in them who's hungry to be seen. So I'm assuming, yeah, you're an adult in training. You have a, you will someday be an adult. So everything I say to you on some level is being heard through your adult voice and you're a young person.
A little bit of a paradox, but I'm respecting them. I'm not putting them into the a box and I'm understanding that they're on a continuum and they're not gonna be young for long.
You know, again, I think the world needs to heal its relationship with youth. I think in general, just as I, I watch what shows up in the media and I'm talking about all the popular shows and the cartoons and the, you know, we don't always trust our teenagers. We kind of throw them to the wolves, meaning we send them off to school, we send them off to wherever we send them off to. And the world isn't protective of our young princes and princesses. We don't always track them Well, okay, go to school and come back home. Like, are you tracking them? Are you noticing them? Are you noticing their pain? Are you noticing their suffering? Are you noticing their body? Are you noticing their skin color? Are you noticing their level of energy, their level of health? Are you, are you noticing their subtle emotional cues? You know, a lot of times adults are afraid of the energy of teenagers. A lot of times we think teenage ener energy is dangerous, especially for boys. Like, we have this thing where we are just, we just want to take teenage boys and throw them in a u are dangerous box.
We forget that we were once them, I, I, I don't know how we do that, but we do, we forget that we were once their exact age.
You have to remember what it was like to be them. It's not easy. I wanna spend a little bit of time working with girls. I'm not gonna be talking about working with boys.
Uh, just because a majority of us who are working in this realm, your clients are gonna be girls. It's not that boys are not important. Um, for now, I just wanna stick with this and stick with the probability of what you're going to see given the parameters of the conversation, uh, working with girls. Once again, the reason why you're gonna likely see more girls in a practice when it comes to body image or eating challenges is because the feminine is profoundly susceptible to viral beliefs about food and body. The princesses of the world are in an tremendously psychically vulnerable time in life when it comes to their relationship with food. And body. Boys have their own challenges at this age. Their challenges are going to come around body, but it's going to come around their sexuality. It's going to come around their personal power in the world.
Yeah, it can come around their body image for sure. A lot of it comes around their sexuality. So we often fail to protect our young girls and young boys, especially our young girls. And it's difficult to protect them. So if we fail to protect them, a lot of times if you're a parent, it, it, it ain't your fault. Like I really mean that the cards are often stacked against you. Young girls are ridiculously easily overpowered by the collective momentum of dieting and disordered eating and perfectionism. Can that happen to young boys? Sure.
Certain communities of young boys that that really happens to it. It can happen to young boys who are gay or bi. It can happen to young boys who are in a sport like wrestling. I've seen a tremendous amount of disordered eating and perfectionism and bulimia and young boys who are wrestlers in junior high school and high school. It's all around getting down to your right weight. So you and I have to remember that disordered eating is not their fault. It's not their problem. The problem belongs to the world. Yes, the problem is landing. It's personalizing in that young person, in that young girl or boy. But the problem, I just want you to know in the back of your mind, you're dealing with a collective issue. It belongs to family. It belongs to culture, it belongs to religion, it belongs to humanity. And it personalizes in individuals. The young people catch the nasty, toxic, viral beliefs that we pump out through the media, that we pump out through the music and the movies and the images, which I strongly believe is social engineering and social conditioning. It is not accidental.
So remember, in this life stage, princesses especially need, especially, especially especially need outside words of praise and approval.
Your prince needs to be critiqued and given feedback and given goals.
Princesses need a lot of praise. They need a lot of approval. Who you are as you are, just like this. Love it. Perfect. Great. Nothing needs to change. Nothing. Zero.
You know, young women are so often expressing the pain and challenge of the feminine as it currently stands on this planet. So you wanna understand our relationship with the feminine on planet Earth. Look at young girls. Why? Because they're absorbing what we're teaching them. They're absorbing everything they see
in all forms of media, social media, movie, media, tv, media, every possible image that comes their way. They're just, they're just modeling after what we're telling them. So you wanna understand the challenges that the feminine faces. Look at the young girls. They'll tell you 'cause they're absorbing dieting below the age of six. They're absorbing perfectionism below the age of six. They're absorbing specifics. I wanna change this part of my body, that part of my body when they're four years old.
That is unacceptable. Now, here's the other strange thing for girls. Girls tend to mature faster than their male peers. I think it's true. It's been said for ages. This can oftentimes, not always, oftentimes cause them to play down their needs and their maturity and their inner knowing. 'cause a lot of times they're in a social situation, particularly around younger boys, and they're just more mature. They're just more aware.
There is a little smarter and discerning. And that could lead them to play down their needs and their maturity and their inner knowing in order so they can be acceptable and liked.
Just saying for parents, parents, it's very simple. Very simple. You wanna know how to counteract the world as best you can counteract the nonsense of the world that your young princess is dealing with. They need to hear constant praise every day from day one about their beauty and their lovability every single day. I mean that, not three days a week, not five days a week. Just shoot for every single day. A little comment. You're so beautiful. I love you so much. Every time I look at you, I just smile. You don't need to change anything about you. Big hug. Okay? Onto the next thing. Just a throwaway line like that doesn't have to be like this serious sit down conversation. It's just a throwaway line that looks so good on you.
Wow. I bet you feel so good about yourself for how you look. So you're doing your best to balance out the overpowering negative memes and messages and images of the world that would easily overwhelm and distort and dis-ease and pull our young women and men into poor self-image and self-loathing for You wanna celebrate their successes. You wanna let them know when something is a job well done. Good for you. You did that. Congratulations. I'm so proud of you. Thanks for making that extra effort for boys. You want to reward them for a behavior, for an activity, for a way that they show up that is truly worthy of reward and is truly worthy of that kind of praise and that kind of celebration of a victory.
Even if they learned a hard lesson in some particular way, I'm gonna celebrate that with them.
You know, a lot of young women are very open and interested to learn about nutrition. You'd be surprised a lot of young women are en enlivened by healthy eating and healthy cooking. They love hands-on stuff. They really do. So a great way to work with your young woman client or your young woman coachee, is to just do hands-on learning with cooking. Like get them, get them learning embodiment through cooking. Cooking is a form of embodiment, believe it or not. You're in connection with food. You're in connection with the process of cooking. It's a very earthy body-based experience.
And it's not just, and you're supposed to eat kale and you're supposed to do this. No, you're, you're, you're teaching them in an inspiring way, just like you would teach anything that you love about.
I notice boys are into that too. Boys love. A lot of boys love to learn about healthy cooking. We don't think that, um, oftentimes because of, I don't know, the little sex differences that we have in our head. Um, goodness. You know, look at the world of famous chefs. You know, there's famous women chefs, there's famous men, chefs. It's cool. Cooking is cool these days. So to teach about cooking really is to teach about health. It's to teach about embodiment. It is to teach about self-care. It is to teach about self-responsibility. It is to teach about self-empowerment around food.
Teach a young person to cook something that they enjoy cooking. Something that they're inspired about cooking. Ooh, you're giving them a big gift.
So when it comes to girls in their eating challenges for boys too, play a long game, my friends, because it could take years. You gotta, you gotta pack your bag and understand that this is not gonna be something that's gonna just take you a day and you just need a few snacks on your journey. No, this is a long game. So you have to love your client through their challenges. You have to let go of fixing and believing that they're broken. 'cause they're not broken. It's gonna take a lot of talk. It's gonna take a lot of just, just talking and out mentoring. How you doing? What happened? Always the attitude that this too shall pass. You are going to get through this. There's always well-timed intellectual interventions. Well-timed, you're always looking to encourage any kind of good peer support and conscious community. So you have to see what are the resources in your community for your child or the person that you're working with. I'm letting my, my young client know, I know this sounds crazy to you, but this challenge that you're going through, it's actually here to help you grow. It's actually here to help you be a better person. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can start to put that into action, the sooner you're gonna get where you wanna go.
And you're always looking to identify their areas in life where they have pain and concern other than food and body. And that's what you want to be talking about.
You know, for girls, the areas of pain and concern, it's fitting in with peers. It's boys, it's toxic belief about appearance. It's the problems at home. Um, depending on if they're in their later teens, early twenties, they're starting to individuate from parents. They're starting to find their own center. They're starting to find their sexual identity. They might be dealing with some type of direct or indirect sexual abuse, emotional abuse and hurt.
And for a lot of girls, there's just a lack of love and not feeling seen. This is not feeling seen as such a big one for boys and for girls, for humans as young people, when we don't feel seen, we feel deeply alone. We feel isolated.
It takes adults in our worlds who are very present,
who can relax with us, who can breathe, who are really listening deeply, who are really seeing into us. Have you ever had that experience, particularly when you were young or even at any age group, when you're with somebody and you just feel seen like they're really getting you? That is what I'm talking about. That is a, that's a quality that we, you're either born with that or you cultivate it. You learn it. How to have that sense of presence. So you're actually seeing somebody and they feel that they're seen.
You know, an important strategy, an important tool, an important gift when it comes to working with girls, therefore, is letting your female client know with your eyes, your words, your energy, your emotion, your whole being. That you see them, you feel them, you know, it's hard for them. Let them know you get them and you get their world and that they are not alone.
Yes. Saying goes for your male client. And it especially goes for your female client.
They have to feel that from you. It's a feeling.
Okay? Some direct strategies in general,
and this is for boys and girls. I'm saying girls, but it's really for all of us, help them create a good peer support system. They have to really have a little bit of insight and thought to managing their social world when it comes to friends who encourage disordered eating. 'cause oftentimes there's a lot of kids who are leading the charge for, but here's what we do. Here's how we diet, here's how we vomit.
So I wanna understand my client or my child's social world around who they're hanging out with and their relationship with food and body and their relationship with drugs, with food, with eating disorders, with such behaviors.
Who can you hang around with that's better for you?
One of the biggest things you could do with any young person facing any kind of unwanted food or body challenge is to find out what else in life, what creative outlet inspires them. What do they wanna do? What excites them? Is it sports? Is it art? Is it dance? Is it music? Is it travel?
What is it? Where do they wanna put their passion into? If they could wave their magic wand, what would they be doing right now? What, what, what has them inspired?
A lot of times when you help a young person tap into their creativity and just put their energy into something that they want to put their energy into, that's what heals because they're finding themselves. That's what an eating challenge is all about. It's a, it's a, it's a blip on the screen as a human being is finding themselves. And as you don't have yourself, yeah, easier to adopt an eating challenge, an unwanted body challenge. 'cause you don't know yourself. You're not grounded in yourself, you're not embodied, you're not embodied in your soul and your beliefs. You're not clear about the rules and the guidelines that you live by. So it's easy to have an eating disorder. It's easy to have an unwanted challenge with food and body. It's easy to binge eat and overeat and gain weight and turn to food to regulate our emotions. And as we learn how to be the person that we're meant to be, Hey, okay, you could put your energy here. Oh, you, you wanna do this? Great. Let's figure out how you can do that. Get them active. I don't just mean exercise at all. I mean, get them active in their life in a way that they're gonna be lit up. So you have to find what that is. Oftentimes, they don't know what that is either, but that's what you're gonna explore with them in the practical ways. You can work with a young person. So when it comes to weight loss, you can work with their eating rhythm. You could work with their macronutrient balance. You could work with slow eating. You can have them ritualize a binge. You have to do intellectual interventions around everything, especially if they're calorie restricting.
You give them all the simple scientific mind cookies about how these things are so helpful, how they can work, how their long-term strategies and how these things can help them reach their natural sustainable weight and help them have a healthy relationship with food in the long run. And that it's gonna take a little time and it's gonna take a little practice. So you're being honest, you're communicating authentically.
You are asking them to communicate authentically. Authenticity heals your young person when they have the opportunity to speak the truth. When they can get up that courage that is healing, that is empowering, that helps them find their center.
Oftentimes it is all the little things with your younger client that helps them along the way. Guess what? Same for your older clients. Oh my friends. You know, if you're a woman working with a young woman client, I want you, I want you to use their challenge as an inspiration for you to get where you need to be with food and body just a little faster. You gotta remember the best thing, especially if you're a parent of a girl or a parent of a boy, they need you to heal. The sooner you heal, the sooner they heal. It is my belief system that our young people, our kids will often work on the unfinished business. They're gonna have to do the unfinished business that one or both of their parents couldn't do. So when their parents have unfinished business in their own personal process, in their own life, in a weird way that get passed on to the young ones, and they're going to complete that unfinished business somehow within their own journey. So if you're able as an adult to have a better and better, you don't have to be perfect. I didn't say that. But as you have a more and more healthy relationship with food and body, with yourself, with your inner world, as you start, stop the nonsense, consistent day in, day out, self attack, self rejection, self-blame, self-hate. As you stop that more and more, as you learn to honor yourself and stand by yourself and not abandon yourself and not disembody, guess what? Your kid's gonna have it easier. They're gonna model after you silently. And I might not look like it now, but they will.
That's the beauty of the ecosystems that we live in. Something happens in one part of the ecosystem affects various parts of the ecosystem. So in the ecosystem, even though it's your child who has the challenge with food and body, as you improve yourself, they have a greater opportunity to improve. It's very fascinating, my friends. It works.
Young people in weight loss, some musings. So if a young person is truly overweight, it's likely that they eat from the junk food universe. That's, that's generally speaking, a good bet. You're dealing with an overweight teenager who truly has weight to lose. Chances are they are, they are eating from the junk food universe. So yeah, at some point you have to help them with quality food. You have to help the parents with quality food. A lot of young people, not all a lot, but not all are rebelling by gaining weight. It's their way to rebel. Young people are designed to rebel. They need to rebel. I'm not going to take away rebellion from my young person, but am my young person smart enough? If I notice, wow, this is a rebellious eater. Their weight is a rebellion, I'm gonna notice that and I'm gonna look for my moment. I want them to be rebels. I just don't want them to be rebels in a way that harms them. So I might have a conversation with them at one point. I might call them out on this and say, you know something, you're just like me. I was a rebel when I was your age. I was going against the grain. I didn't like what I saw as a young person. So I rebelled in a lot of interesting ways. You know something. But I've noticed about you, one of the ways that you rebel is by eating whenever you want, whenever you want, and getting fat. And it's kind of like a screw you to the adult world, which is, hey, I love being a rebel. I'm still a rebel as an adult, but I learned how to do it in a way that actually works for me.
Right now. The way you are rebelling, it actually doesn't work for you.
Actually, it doesn't work.
We gotta figure this out. I still want you to be a rebel, but what are some of the ways we can rebel? You can rebel, but that actually doesn't harm you. That doesn't leave you dealing with extra weight. And you might not wanna do that. And honestly, some kids don't wanna do that. They're not ready. And if they're not ready, that's their choice. I mean that. So that's one group. There's another group who gained weight and they're not rebelling at all. They're crying out for help. The weight gain is, is just crying. Literally. It's crying. I'm outta control. I don't know how to regulate this. This is messed up. I don't get this world, I don't like it. I can't manage any of this. I, I'm just eating and I'm gaining weight help.
For a lot of young people, their extra weight may simply be the total combined stress of being a young person in this world. So being a young person, trying to find out where you fit in, trying to be like, trying to be acceptable, trying to figure out girls and boys and relationship and dating and sex and sports and this and that. On top of that, you're exposed to foods that aren't so healthy and you have your stress at home and you have your stress of going through puberty and all that sort of thing, and you mix it all together. Yeah. Weight gain is predictable
for some young people. Some young people. The extra weight can be related to sexual fear or sexual wounding,
meaning extra weight can just be protection. Like, whoa. I wanna mention to you that a young person, their physiology is likely far more responsive and sensitive to sugar and poor quality foods. Just saying the good news is their body can respond to healthy foods faster than yours and I, uh, as well. So they're extremely sensitive to the toxicity of food, especially sugar. And they're extremely sensitive to healthy foods. They have a very responsive physiology.
Even if a person is rebelling with their weight, no matter what their extra weight is caused by overweight. Young people generally, generally are living in a version of social health in some way, shape, or form. They are experiencing weight hate far more than the average adult because young people can be nasty towards each other. Absolutely nasty. It's just the way it is when it comes to weight.
So you should know that restrictive and punishing strategies are quite futile and not sustainable. Okay, you ate this, you ate that, you're being punished. Uh, I haven't seen it work. Blaming them for a bad habit. Also unproductive. Remember their product of their world and a product of their environment. Blame is the last thing you want to do. In fact, you want to make their challenge, right? You wanna show them why There's a brilliant reason rooted somewhere in biology or psychology as to why they have this extra weight. Oh, it's stress. It's stress of being a young person. And you couple that with sugar, which young bodies are really sensitive to, and it's gonna signal your body to store weight and store fat. Because when you introduce a lot of sugar into the system, your body thinks it's summertime, which is when sugar fruits are popping up all around and winter's right around the corner. So if you're like a bear, you're gonna fatten up
your body sees sugar that just wants more sugar, and it's gonna put on weight thinking that it needs to hibernate in the winter time and put on lots of weight. When the Pickens are low and there's not enough food in the environment,
Oh, you're under a lot of stress. Yep, I get it. That causes more insulin and more cortisol, and that can signal the body to store weight and store fat.
So you're gonna use so many of the same strategies, but you're talking to a young person. So again, all the same key nutrition strategies for weight that apply to adults can apply to teens. Food quality, macronutrient, balance, meal timing, use of caffeine and sugar. Slow eating.
Kids who are clearly eating too much food, and they do that. There's a lot of kids, they're eating a lot of food and they're eating a lot of junk food. It's very simple. My friends, they're using it to regulate their emotional metabolism. Their emotional metabolism is all over the place.
They're just trying to regulate themselves. They're trying to make it so that their, their, Their Energy is moving so fast
and using a large amount of food to regulate our emotional metabolism just kind of slows us down a bit in a weird way. It calms down the system. Feel bad, eat food, feel better. Every young person knows that.
It's always gonna make your young person right, don't be a hater. They often have extra weight for good reasons, not take away that word often. They always have extra weight for good reasons. And those reasons are generally linked to their personal world, their home environment, what they've been taught to eat, how they've been taught to regulate themselves.
So you have to find out the brilliant reasons as to why they've gained weight from a nutritional standpoint, a personal standpoint, an emotional standpoint, a standpoint of stress and relaxation, physiology, a standpoint of mind body nutrition.
Once you start to see that, then you could let them know about it and make connections for them.
And some part of them will hear it. You're not correcting them, you're not telling them you're wrong. Here's how you do it, right? You're just being a mentor. You're being a guide, you're being a coach. You're being positive, you're being uplifting. You're affirming that, yeah, you've created a reasonable strategy by gaining weight. Here's, here's the good reasons to have weight gain. It brings you protection. You eat this kind of food, your body responds specifically to that kind of food. You eat a lot of sugar. Your your brain is gonna say, store this sugar as fat. It's what the brain does, especially to a young sensitive physiology. You always gotta remember my friends. You can only help a young person if they wish to be helped. If they don't wish to be helped, they're gonna run you around in circles. And if you're getting ran around in circles, you gotta raise your hand and you gotta call them on it. Otherwise, everybody's time is being wasted. And for a lot of young people, it's just not their time yet.
Or maybe they're totally ready, but they're afraid or maybe it is their time. So that's, that's for you to intuit, that's for you to sniff out.
Now, if you're working with kids, you're already working with kids in this age group, 14 to 21, again, you gotta be positive, you gotta be a light, you gotta be upbeat, you gotta be approachable. Your seriousness will not work. So well pull it out when necessary. But it's not your main archetypal voice. Young people are not interested in your archetypal clinical voice. They're not interested in your archetypal nutrition voice. They're not interested in your archetypal therapist voice where you're removed from them in an ivory tower. They're broken. You're the know, know-It-all. They're not interested in that. You gotta be real. You gotta be authentic. You gotta be casually hopeful and optimistic. You have to be someone who knows how to assist them if they want help. Be a person. Be a human being.
Also gotta remember, young people are like adults. They like simple, easy to understand scientific and nutritional mind cookies that pertain to them and that empower them. They love it. Simple scientific mind cookies. They love it whenever you're trying to help them lose weight dramatically. Limiting food amount and caloric intake is generally a recipe for disaster.
Kids have to feel like they're eating enough food. That's where macronutrient balance comes in. That's where slowing them down comes in.
But when it comes to slow eating, you have to explain the simple scientific mind cookies of how it's gonna help them. Otherwise, it just sounds like a dumb adult thing. So you really gotta give them the science of it a very casual way. Just like, Hey, here's the correct science of it. This is how it works. What goes up must come down. It's very simple.
Some final thoughts, my friends. You know this, working with young people is not so easy when it comes to unwanted eating challenges and excess weight. And I think that the professional universe has traditionally treated them just like we've treated adults. You're broken, we need to fix you. This makes things far worse for the young person. It sets them up for a lifetime of I'm broken. You're telling them that they're broken ouchies. When in doubt, just love. Love them through their journey. Support them, cheer, lead them through their journey. Do your best to always find a peer for them or peer support group
who can be the encouragers, who can offer advice and support from somebody closer to them in age group. Please remember that young people have a journey to go on, and sometimes really the best that you and I can do is be by their side and just watch for the little ways that we can help them as they search for their identity and find a place in the world if they know you're walking alongside with them on their journey. That counts for a lot. I really mean that.
Okay, my friends, I hope this was helpful for you in some way, in any way. And next, we will be talking about timeless wisdom in your professional practice. Thanks for hanging in there, and I'll see you on the other side.
It just doesn't happen. At least it's a rare experience. Why? Because young people are on a journey. They're really on a journey. They're beginning their journey. They're in a very vulnerable time in their journey. So your insistence on saving them, your insistence on fixing them, and your insistence on, okay, we're gonna make this all better. I wanna make their eating challenge go away because this is so terrible. Believe it or not, that's an ineffective approach. And that will actually leave the young person that you say you're so concerned about. It's gonna leave them feeling more broken and more confused because you're not going to be effective because you're trying to fix a problem in a way that it cannot be fixed. So of course, you and I want people out of their pain and suffering. Of course, we want young people out of their pain and suffering, and of course, we're going to do whatever we can to help them not be in their pain and suffering. Yes, yes, yes. And you must remember, you must hold in your mind, your heart, your soul, that like every other creature, like every other age group and especially their age group, they must go through their journey, whatever that journey may be for them.
The teenage years are definitionally rocky. They're a struggle. They are intense. Perhaps you were a teenager at one point in your life and you remember such things. You had to go through your journey. Could somebody have come in during the time of your intense journey as a teen and said one thing or two things and all of a sudden all your pain is away and you know who you are and you're fine with yourself and everything is perfect just because you spoke to one adult who had the secret to life or knew the exact supplement to take? No, of course not. So please remember that is a time of turmoil and challenge. Bottom line. And there's so much self definition that's wanting to happen at the same time. There is self definition wanting to happen. There's inner chaos. There are the struggles that young people are going through about fitting in with their friends and peers. Young people, by definition, have not found themselves yet. They haven't found their core, they haven't found their center, they haven't found their quiet place. They haven't found their sense of self authority and true confidence. That's just the way it is, my friends. It's not time for that yet. Therefore, you can't just take away their eating challenge. You can't just take away their excess weight. If you come in with that expectation, it's all about you. You're making it all about your performance and your ego, and you're not doing anybody any good. You, you know, because teenagers haven't found themselves because it's, this is the journey that they're on given our world, given the toxic programming of our world, you know what I'm talking about? Media, culture, music, images, art, movies, all of it. I wish I wasn't saying this, but food and body challenges are predictable. Uh, it annoys me. It bothers me. It angers me. It infuriates me on any, on any given day. I'm living somewhere there in relation to what I see young people going through when it comes to food and body. Young people have nothing wrong with them. There is nothing wrong. They are fine. It is the world that we bring them into that is attacking their soul, that is polluting their mind with toxic beliefs about the body, toxic beliefs about life that they absorb, that they see because we are telling them to worship a certain way of being and a certain way of looking, and a certain way of eating, and a certain way of relating to others.
It is very difficult to be a young person in this world, particularly a young girl in this world, and not come out with an eating challenge and some type of body image concern. It's almost impossible. It's not young people's fault. It's not the parent's fault. Can we help them? Yes. Can a good home environment help? Absolutely. But we have a challenge. That's all I'm saying. The cards are stacked against young people in a huge way. It's it, it blows my mind. Okay?
We have to remember, young people are learning to grow through their insecurities.
So in order to grow through an insecurity, you have to have an insecurity to begin with. They're learning to find security on the road to finding insecurity. There are times when you will surely not have security for this reason. A lot of young people often not always often need to experience a little bit of extremes to learn about life. Sometimes we don't know what enough is until we know what too much is. This is how humans learn. You must allow them their journey. You must allow them their rocky emotional world and you're here to support them, and you're here to make sure they don't drown. And you're here to really be a strong adult voice, a strong mentoring voice.
And at the same time, we have to understand that we can't truly rescue them.
You cannot necessarily save them and prevent them from having hurt and upset who has been able to grow up through this world without having heard an upset, particularly in their young years.
Psalm I'm saying is we have to be able to see the big picture of their journey. And yeah, there are times that you and I, and especially as parents, that we can take measures to make sure we protect our children, to make sure we set certain boundaries with them. Absolutely. And all I'm saying is at the same time, we have to respect the big picture of their journey. And we have to understand that this is the nature of it. We cannot ultimately 100% prevent the young people from having some type of pain and hurt and upset and suffering. I wish it was different. So some ways that you and I can be of help, I want you to think of this from the standpoint of a professional. If you're already qualified to work in this realm and you're working in this realm, or to understand as a parent, or to understand if you're being a mentor or a guide or a positive adult, influence in the life of a young person, because chances are you might have that opportunity. Young people in this age group, big time need positive regard. They need adults who truly see them and get them. They need people on their team. They need allies. They need to have the sense you're their ally. They need mentors. They need people who can guide them. Say, you know something? I don't know if you want to go down that road. I think this road looks a lot better. Here's why I think that road can get you into a lot of trouble. Here's why. They need a lot of approval,
a lot of approval. They need to feel loved. They need you to see them. They need you to pierce through their veil and connect with them on their terms, not yours.
Meaning they have a way that they can hear you. They have a way that they can understand you. They have a language that helps them. You have to understand them on their terms. They are who they are. They're not necessarily you. They're not an adult, they're not a parent, they're not a professional.
They also need boundaries. They need very clear guidelines. They need to know what the danger zones are,
and they need to hear that in a way that's just very clear. And without intense judgment, hear the boundaries. Here's the places where you can get into a lot of trouble. Here's the substances, here's the drugs that if you do these, you can be in a lot of trouble.
Here's what, here's what can support you. Here's what can pull you down really quick. It's fine to be strong in that way.
Can you do that while speaking to them, while speaking to their intelligence, while speaking to their soul, without saying it in a way that has them wanting to go behind your back
without saying it in a way that has them even doubting what you're saying.
The more you're in your center, in your power as a person with them, the more they can hear you.
So some things to consider with teens in early twenties, you know, they're way better actors than you and I are. They won't necessarily tell you everything. My friends, they could be feeling a lot of shame and you don't see it now, even though they need help and guidance, they won't necessarily know how to receive it or let it in. So our wish to help them though noble is inherently difficult, oftentimes to put into action. You gotta get very present with them. Gotta get extremely present with them. You have to be very directive in a strong way, but not an overpowering way, in a loving way, but not a judging way, in a way where you are really grounded in yourself, but at the same time, you're seeing them and noticing them and embracing them.
So you have to be able to see, ah, here's where this person needs help. Here's where I need to jump in. Here's where I need to deliver information. Here's where I need to deliver wisdom. Here's where I need to deliver a teaching. Sometimes you just have to watch them and listen and watch and listen and capitalize on a moment of opening.
There's not a science to this. This is all about relationship.
It's all about being in relationship with a young person whose thoughts and emotions are all over the place, who's living in a rocky world who might have a challenge with food and body or weight, and you're here to help them.
Oftentimes, the best things that you say they get through because they're well timed
and they're spoken from an embodied place.
So you're communicating to them so they can hear it and get it. Kind of like how I'm talking to you right now. There's a thoughtfulness, there's a pace,
there's a presence. If you're not in your body, if you're not present when you're saying stuff, oh, you shouldn't do that. That's, that's bad for you. They won't hear that.
You know something. Here's what happens to you when you drink that much alcohol. Lemme tell you, do I like to drink alcohol? Sure. But it's a powerful substance
and it's good to respect power because if you don't respect it, you can drink too much. You can get in a car, you can kill someone, you can end up in prison for the rest of your life. That's how powerful that substance is.
That's very different from saying, don't drink and drive. You follow me. You're connecting with someone you know. One of the great ways I wanna remind you, uh, the great ways to help young people is to have young people who are close in age group to them be their mentors, especially when it comes to whatever challenge they might be facing. It is just a fact of life that young people will more easily relate with someone nearer to them in age. This is the big win, especially when it comes to coaching young people around food and body. They're gonna eagerly listen to someone young who has gone through the journey they are going through right now, who is one, two, or three steps ahead of them. This can be a huge, huge, huge win for them.
So if you have the influence in someone's life in any way, shape or form, who's a young person, it's a great idea to keep your eyes and ears open to, to see who are such kids.
Are there nonprofit groups in my area that work with body image, that work with eating disorders, that work with substance abuse,
that have a body positive approach?
Who is it that my young person, whether it's your client, your student, your child, who is it that can be a mentor for them? Is there such a resource or an opportunity in my area that can be oh so powerful? And I'm saying, I'm not saying that you as an adult can help this group of humans. I am saying this is one of the most powerful ways you can help them by identifying somebody you know. And if they're 14, it could be somebody in their late twenties. They'll sooner hear somebody. A 14-year-old will sooner hear a 27-year-old than they're gonna hear a 47 or a 57-year-old any day of the week is just the way they are.
And for understandable reasons, they want someone they can relate with. They want someone who they look at and say, oh, that could be me.
I could transform my challenge just like they did. It can be very, very, very, very, very inspirational for them. This is very underlooked. Some of the best programs
for helping young people be body positive
are run by young people. I mean, it's older people teaching young people how to be mentors and how to lead small groups. So with that in mind, my friends for professionals already in this room, if you're already in this realm before you likely know this, but I'm gonna remind you this, remind you of this anyway, because actually I've known a lot of professionals working with young people, and I'm often shocked. Um, before working with a young person, please consider that your initial work with them happens with their parents.
IE meet with the parents first. Without the young person, without the child,
you might need to work with the parents for several sessions if possible. If you can gather information from their teachers or friends or anyone else that knows them well, another professional that can be useful. So you want to information gather, but you must understand that to help a young person who is living at home with their parents who is suffering from or is facing any kind of eating challenge, your work with the parents is absolutely key. It's so key. It's very different from working with a young person, working with their parents. Many parents, not all, not all many parents want a professional to fix their child. They, they literally just want to dump off the kid. It's kind of like bringing in a broken card to a mechanic and saying, here, fix this. So I've seen this happen quite a bit. So there's a lot of parents, not all a lot, don't always realize that they may have a role to play in their child's unwanted challenges. They might even be close to this idea. It's not about you caused it. It's not about it's your fault. It's all about this is a shared experience. This is a shared challenge. This is a shared journey that we all have together.
It is not just about fixing something inside your kid's brain. This is about determining what can help them best move forward. What kind of support do they need? What kind of communication do they need? What kind of boundaries do they need? What kind of space do they need?
So your job is really understand the parents or the adults who that your client lives with. Who are the parents? What's their work life like? How's the parents' relationship? What's going on with that? Are they facing any problems? Are they together? Are they divorced? Are they separated? What's their vibe?
How do they view parenting and their child? Is it their first kid? What's going on with the other kids? What do the parents think the problem is? What do you guys think? What would you guesstimate?
The more you can learn about the parents, the more you can learn about their life, their challenges and their challenges with parenting. The schedule. How much time everybody is together,
what they think is going on. Gather information.
Always like to assume that half the work, 50% of the work that needs to be done when helping a young person is really about the parents and not the young person. Again, that's for a young one that's living with their parents. 50% of the work oftentimes needs to be with the parents,
helping them learn how to communicate with their young person better, helping them context what's going on with their young person better, helping them see that the home environment that they create, the psychic environment, the emotional environment, the environment of communication, the environment of safety, the environment of openness impacts the behavior and the personality of their child in a big way.
So I think it's helpful to assume that your client is the product of their family environment and they have their own journey at the same time, they have their own journey within it. So once again, it's not about blaming the family. Aha, I found the problem because the family is part of the world and the world is part of the culture and the media and everything. So it's not about blaming parents ever. And there are a lot of young people who have some very difficult challenges at home, and no doubt about that. Parents could be fighting, parents could be hating on each other, parents could be icing each other out. They could be living in a single parent home with a lot of stress and a lot of financial stress or emotional stress. So a lot of young people have difficult challenges at home. You can't fix that. You're not gonna just come in and fix a family system. At best. You can suggest tweaks,
doable tweaks for the parents. Now, if a parent expects you to fix their child, you're gonna need to do a very gentle and sweet intellectual intervention at some point, and sooner than later around this being something that the family needs to heal into, not just the young person, that it's a journey for everyone. And it's not like bringing a car into a mechanic and then getting a phone call and hearing, okay, the car is fixed, come pick it up.
Not how life works. So again, working with parents in an ongoing way is often as important as working with the child.
Now, once you're working with a young person, I really want you to be willing to be their confidant. So you have to promise them a certain level of confidentiality. Now you're gonna need to have an agreement with parents and the young person around what kind of information can flow back and forth. So you all need to decide that because your client, the young person, might tell you certain things they don't want the parent to know. Now the parent is footing the bill and they're paying you. And if you find out information that they need to know, they need to know it. So if it turns out their child is having a drug issue or their child has been a victim of some form of abuse, I will say it is your responsibility to, to let the parent know.
So on the one hand, you have to promise your, your client, the young person, confidentiality from at least everyone in the universe except perhaps their parents. And that there might be information that flows back and forth, um, around certain pieces that a parent would absolutely need to know about.
Now, if your client says, gosh, I really get p****d off at my mother. I get p****d off at my father. You have to let them know, I'm not gonna share with your parents all the little details that you talk about with me.
I am going to share big picture pieces.
But you have to have an agreement with the parents in terms of what information they're expecting to flow back and forth. You cannot share with them every single little detail. There has to be some degree of containment, and yet you're gonna have to judge when the parents need to know something that is important about their child. And that usually relates with drug use, and that usually relates with anything illegal that they're doing. And it usually relates with any kind of harm that they have suffered that they or are suffering that they're not letting their parents know about. So you gotta let your young person know that you're on their side, that you are loyal to them, and that you are their advocate at the end of the day. So even though your parents are paying me, I'm on your team. You are my guy, you are my gal. So this is very big for creating trust and doing some good work.
You know, it's important when you're working with young people to understand that you're not working with an adult. So you have to be willing to do things a little different. I'm gonna say most of the time when I've met with a younger client, it is generally not in an office environment. If it's winter time and we can't go outside, um, you know, I might meet more in the living room. We might go to a coffee shop, some cool place to hang out where we can create a little bit of, uh, privacy.
Wherever you take them, if you take them somewhere like a coffee shop, Alfred Tea, whatever it is, you pay for them. So you looking to find an environment where they would feel comfortable, I'll take 'em on a walk, I'll take 'em on a hike. I'll take, I've taken young men and we'll, we'll go to the batting cages and hit a few baseballs. Um, you wanna get into their world. Sitting in a professional environment and being a talking head with someone between 14 and 21 ah, is not always so effective. Can you do it? Absolutely. Do professionals do it every day? For sure. All I'm saying is it's okay to mix it up. It's okay to do something a little bit different. You're gonna create more connection. You're gonna create more openness. You're gonna create more interest. You're letting that young client know, Hey, I'm considering you.
They don't like the universe of sitting down, uh, with a talking head.
Get 'em out into the neighborhood, onto the trails, into a coffee shop, into a cool hangout place that just feels good.
You know, I think it's just a reality when it comes to the inner world of teens, that as teenagers, we often have very few, if any really good role models. Like, who are your role models? When you were a teenager, who did you look up to? I wanna be just like that. Who are your really good role models? Um, they might be lacking in authority figures. Forget about a role model authority figures that they could trust.
For this reason, a lot of teens feel very, very, very alone.
And while they're feeling alone, they wanna be accepted. And while they're feeling accepted or, or while they're feeling like they need to be accepted, they are feeling very susceptible to peer pressure. You know this, and if you don't remember this, let me remind you, young people are susceptible to peer pressure. And you and I as young people can often make a lot of dumb choices. We can make dumb choices if we think this is gonna help me be more acceptable. Win friends, win love, win approval, be more popular, have more people like me. Young people do stupid nonsense.
And for this reason, a lot of times they know they're doing stupid nonsense and they don't want you to know about it. You meaning the adult, you meaning the parent, you meaning the coach. I tell my young people that I'm working with, I let them know this. If I ask you a question in this relationship, your job is to tell me the truthful answer. If you do not wish to answer the question, that's totally your prerogative. In which case, I want you to say to me, I prefer not to answer that question rather than lie to me. If you say to me that you prefer not to answer a question, I won't bother you any further about it. I will respect that. I might poke and prod just a little bit to make sure, but I will always respect if you draw a line and say, Uhuh, I don't want to answer that question. I would much rather you say that than lie to me. And I would much rather you just tell me the truth in general, but you not willing to answer a question is a totally valid answer.
So I'm establishing the ground rules because I don't want my young person to lie to me. Don't waste my time. Really don't waste my time. Don't waste your time. One of the things that young people learn very early on in school with other young people is that it's good to have a criminal mind. That even though adults control the deal, adults control their world, adults control their house, adults have the money. I'm dependent on adults. The way young people can have the power is by the flow of information and what they tell you and what they don't tell you. They can have the power by fooling you. They can have the power by lying to you. They could have the power by half lying, by misdirecting you. In that way, young people can become very sharp. They can become very clever. They can become very good manipulators. They can think very well with a criminal mind. I say that affectionately, it's an archetype. It's the kind of mind that we use to maneuver, to manipulate, to say some truth, have truth, partial truth, partial lives misdirection, lying by omission or straight up lying, whatever it is in order to get what they want.
So, because I know that about young people, I wanna do my best to head that off at the past. So when I'm establishing my relationship with a young person, I am letting them know I cannot help you at all in any way, shape or form. If you lie to me. And again, I am willing for you to not share certain information with me that you don't wanna share, that's totally up to you. I will always respect that. I'm not gonna lie to you. You don't need to lie to me,
and you're letting your young person know at the same time, I wanna help you get where you want to go.
And oftentimes you need that young person's buy-in what you know. Your parents want you to see me.
Let's pretend for a moment that this was up to you. You could either see me or not see me.
If it was up to you, what would you like? What would be useful for you? What would serve you? I really mean that I don't have to do this. I could tell your parents I quit.
I don't wanna waste my time. I'm very competitive. I like winning. I like doing a good job. So if I work with you, I wanna do a good job. I wanna do goodbye you. I want to help you. But you have to tell me the kind of help you wish you would have. Forget, forget about what you think your parents want. What would you like?
You're asking them to step up a little bit more and choose that's gonna be uncomfortable for them. But I'm always establishing with my young person, honesty. I'm establishing directness.
I'm establishing getting to the point about what this relationship is.
Gotta remember my friends. Young people often have a lot of secrets. They got secrets they have drug use maybe. Maybe it's sex without parental approval. Maybe their secret is bulimia or binge eating or body hate or stealing. Maybe your young teenager is dealing with heartbreak. You don't even know it. Maybe they've experienced sexual abuse or simple sexual confusion. Definition, who am I? What's going on? What the hell is happening? What are all these hormones? What do I like? What don't I like? What am I supposed to do with all this sexual energy? So that sexual abuse or confusion can be centered in the home. It could be at school, it could be parties, friends, any combination of those. A lot of young people have suicidal thoughts just mentioning some of these. So you can have your eyes and ears open.
That's why you need prior training to work with young people, you have to be able to spot drug use without having to ask a lot of questions. You actually have to be able to discern through simple questioning if they might have bulimia.
You have to be able to notice them when you're asking questions about sex and sexuality and sexual activity. Be, take some training.
And if you're not doing this as a professional and you happen to be a human being who interacts with teenagers in any way, shape or form, these distinctions are still very important. We all should have some education and understanding our teens a lot better, because that's a big issue in this world.
You know, oftentimes, oftentimes, not always, oftentimes the way you and I relate with teenagers or any young person is the way you relate with your own inner teenager. So the, so the young person sitting in front of you, whatever their age is, the way you are relating with them and seeing them and understanding them is oftentimes
a reflection of where you are with someone in that age group where you were with yourself when you were in that age group. You're often gonna get transported a little bit back in time to where you felt unseen and unmet and how you believed the world saw you when you were that age.
If your parents were absent when you were a teenager, then there's gonna be a certain place in you that doesn't quite understand teenagers,
simply because the adult world didn't focus on you the way you needed it when you were a teen.
So we're often learning, relearning how to understand an age group that we didn't understand ourselves when we were going through that age. So what I'm saying is working with teens is as healing for you potentially as it is for them. It's as enlightening for you as it is for them.
You have to notice the places where you have discomfort. You have to notice the places where you get uncertain and confused. You have to notice the places where you get irritated. You have to notice you. You just gotta notice and notice and notice and notice.
You have to see where you have to go home and do your own homework about your own inner teenager, your own inner young person, or your relationship with young people in general. You have to see what it brings up for you.
Now, you know this, but I'm gonna remind you when you're talking to your younger client, please do not talk down to them. Whoof. I've watched coaches and counselors and therapists do this. Um, you don't talk down to them, hi, I am an older person and you're here because I'm going to help you with your eating disorder. Don't do that. Never, ever, ever underestimate their intelligence. In fact, I want you to assume that your younger client is as smart as you in many ways, perhaps even more so. They're simply younger than you. So I want you to see them not necessarily equal to you as an intellect, not necessarily equal to you in wisdom, but equal to you as a soul.
Assume that they're intelligent. You must assume that they're intelligent. Assume that the truth spoken with love will always be heard. On some level, the truth spoken with love and consciousness will always be heard on some level. So when I'm speaking to a young person, I'm actually speaking to two people. I'm speaking to the adult in them for sure, and I'm speaking to the young person in them who's hungry to be seen. So I'm assuming, yeah, you're an adult in training. You have a, you will someday be an adult. So everything I say to you on some level is being heard through your adult voice and you're a young person.
A little bit of a paradox, but I'm respecting them. I'm not putting them into the a box and I'm understanding that they're on a continuum and they're not gonna be young for long.
You know, again, I think the world needs to heal its relationship with youth. I think in general, just as I, I watch what shows up in the media and I'm talking about all the popular shows and the cartoons and the, you know, we don't always trust our teenagers. We kind of throw them to the wolves, meaning we send them off to school, we send them off to wherever we send them off to. And the world isn't protective of our young princes and princesses. We don't always track them Well, okay, go to school and come back home. Like, are you tracking them? Are you noticing them? Are you noticing their pain? Are you noticing their suffering? Are you noticing their body? Are you noticing their skin color? Are you noticing their level of energy, their level of health? Are you, are you noticing their subtle emotional cues? You know, a lot of times adults are afraid of the energy of teenagers. A lot of times we think teenage ener energy is dangerous, especially for boys. Like, we have this thing where we are just, we just want to take teenage boys and throw them in a u are dangerous box.
We forget that we were once them, I, I, I don't know how we do that, but we do, we forget that we were once their exact age.
You have to remember what it was like to be them. It's not easy. I wanna spend a little bit of time working with girls. I'm not gonna be talking about working with boys.
Uh, just because a majority of us who are working in this realm, your clients are gonna be girls. It's not that boys are not important. Um, for now, I just wanna stick with this and stick with the probability of what you're going to see given the parameters of the conversation, uh, working with girls. Once again, the reason why you're gonna likely see more girls in a practice when it comes to body image or eating challenges is because the feminine is profoundly susceptible to viral beliefs about food and body. The princesses of the world are in an tremendously psychically vulnerable time in life when it comes to their relationship with food. And body. Boys have their own challenges at this age. Their challenges are going to come around body, but it's going to come around their sexuality. It's going to come around their personal power in the world.
Yeah, it can come around their body image for sure. A lot of it comes around their sexuality. So we often fail to protect our young girls and young boys, especially our young girls. And it's difficult to protect them. So if we fail to protect them, a lot of times if you're a parent, it, it, it ain't your fault. Like I really mean that the cards are often stacked against you. Young girls are ridiculously easily overpowered by the collective momentum of dieting and disordered eating and perfectionism. Can that happen to young boys? Sure.
Certain communities of young boys that that really happens to it. It can happen to young boys who are gay or bi. It can happen to young boys who are in a sport like wrestling. I've seen a tremendous amount of disordered eating and perfectionism and bulimia and young boys who are wrestlers in junior high school and high school. It's all around getting down to your right weight. So you and I have to remember that disordered eating is not their fault. It's not their problem. The problem belongs to the world. Yes, the problem is landing. It's personalizing in that young person, in that young girl or boy. But the problem, I just want you to know in the back of your mind, you're dealing with a collective issue. It belongs to family. It belongs to culture, it belongs to religion, it belongs to humanity. And it personalizes in individuals. The young people catch the nasty, toxic, viral beliefs that we pump out through the media, that we pump out through the music and the movies and the images, which I strongly believe is social engineering and social conditioning. It is not accidental.
So remember, in this life stage, princesses especially need, especially, especially especially need outside words of praise and approval.
Your prince needs to be critiqued and given feedback and given goals.
Princesses need a lot of praise. They need a lot of approval. Who you are as you are, just like this. Love it. Perfect. Great. Nothing needs to change. Nothing. Zero.
You know, young women are so often expressing the pain and challenge of the feminine as it currently stands on this planet. So you wanna understand our relationship with the feminine on planet Earth. Look at young girls. Why? Because they're absorbing what we're teaching them. They're absorbing everything they see
in all forms of media, social media, movie, media, tv, media, every possible image that comes their way. They're just, they're just modeling after what we're telling them. So you wanna understand the challenges that the feminine faces. Look at the young girls. They'll tell you 'cause they're absorbing dieting below the age of six. They're absorbing perfectionism below the age of six. They're absorbing specifics. I wanna change this part of my body, that part of my body when they're four years old.
That is unacceptable. Now, here's the other strange thing for girls. Girls tend to mature faster than their male peers. I think it's true. It's been said for ages. This can oftentimes, not always, oftentimes cause them to play down their needs and their maturity and their inner knowing. 'cause a lot of times they're in a social situation, particularly around younger boys, and they're just more mature. They're just more aware.
There is a little smarter and discerning. And that could lead them to play down their needs and their maturity and their inner knowing in order so they can be acceptable and liked.
Just saying for parents, parents, it's very simple. Very simple. You wanna know how to counteract the world as best you can counteract the nonsense of the world that your young princess is dealing with. They need to hear constant praise every day from day one about their beauty and their lovability every single day. I mean that, not three days a week, not five days a week. Just shoot for every single day. A little comment. You're so beautiful. I love you so much. Every time I look at you, I just smile. You don't need to change anything about you. Big hug. Okay? Onto the next thing. Just a throwaway line like that doesn't have to be like this serious sit down conversation. It's just a throwaway line that looks so good on you.
Wow. I bet you feel so good about yourself for how you look. So you're doing your best to balance out the overpowering negative memes and messages and images of the world that would easily overwhelm and distort and dis-ease and pull our young women and men into poor self-image and self-loathing for You wanna celebrate their successes. You wanna let them know when something is a job well done. Good for you. You did that. Congratulations. I'm so proud of you. Thanks for making that extra effort for boys. You want to reward them for a behavior, for an activity, for a way that they show up that is truly worthy of reward and is truly worthy of that kind of praise and that kind of celebration of a victory.
Even if they learned a hard lesson in some particular way, I'm gonna celebrate that with them.
You know, a lot of young women are very open and interested to learn about nutrition. You'd be surprised a lot of young women are en enlivened by healthy eating and healthy cooking. They love hands-on stuff. They really do. So a great way to work with your young woman client or your young woman coachee, is to just do hands-on learning with cooking. Like get them, get them learning embodiment through cooking. Cooking is a form of embodiment, believe it or not. You're in connection with food. You're in connection with the process of cooking. It's a very earthy body-based experience.
And it's not just, and you're supposed to eat kale and you're supposed to do this. No, you're, you're, you're teaching them in an inspiring way, just like you would teach anything that you love about.
I notice boys are into that too. Boys love. A lot of boys love to learn about healthy cooking. We don't think that, um, oftentimes because of, I don't know, the little sex differences that we have in our head. Um, goodness. You know, look at the world of famous chefs. You know, there's famous women chefs, there's famous men, chefs. It's cool. Cooking is cool these days. So to teach about cooking really is to teach about health. It's to teach about embodiment. It is to teach about self-care. It is to teach about self-responsibility. It is to teach about self-empowerment around food.
Teach a young person to cook something that they enjoy cooking. Something that they're inspired about cooking. Ooh, you're giving them a big gift.
So when it comes to girls in their eating challenges for boys too, play a long game, my friends, because it could take years. You gotta, you gotta pack your bag and understand that this is not gonna be something that's gonna just take you a day and you just need a few snacks on your journey. No, this is a long game. So you have to love your client through their challenges. You have to let go of fixing and believing that they're broken. 'cause they're not broken. It's gonna take a lot of talk. It's gonna take a lot of just, just talking and out mentoring. How you doing? What happened? Always the attitude that this too shall pass. You are going to get through this. There's always well-timed intellectual interventions. Well-timed, you're always looking to encourage any kind of good peer support and conscious community. So you have to see what are the resources in your community for your child or the person that you're working with. I'm letting my, my young client know, I know this sounds crazy to you, but this challenge that you're going through, it's actually here to help you grow. It's actually here to help you be a better person. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can start to put that into action, the sooner you're gonna get where you wanna go.
And you're always looking to identify their areas in life where they have pain and concern other than food and body. And that's what you want to be talking about.
You know, for girls, the areas of pain and concern, it's fitting in with peers. It's boys, it's toxic belief about appearance. It's the problems at home. Um, depending on if they're in their later teens, early twenties, they're starting to individuate from parents. They're starting to find their own center. They're starting to find their sexual identity. They might be dealing with some type of direct or indirect sexual abuse, emotional abuse and hurt.
And for a lot of girls, there's just a lack of love and not feeling seen. This is not feeling seen as such a big one for boys and for girls, for humans as young people, when we don't feel seen, we feel deeply alone. We feel isolated.
It takes adults in our worlds who are very present,
who can relax with us, who can breathe, who are really listening deeply, who are really seeing into us. Have you ever had that experience, particularly when you were young or even at any age group, when you're with somebody and you just feel seen like they're really getting you? That is what I'm talking about. That is a, that's a quality that we, you're either born with that or you cultivate it. You learn it. How to have that sense of presence. So you're actually seeing somebody and they feel that they're seen.
You know, an important strategy, an important tool, an important gift when it comes to working with girls, therefore, is letting your female client know with your eyes, your words, your energy, your emotion, your whole being. That you see them, you feel them, you know, it's hard for them. Let them know you get them and you get their world and that they are not alone.
Yes. Saying goes for your male client. And it especially goes for your female client.
They have to feel that from you. It's a feeling.
Okay? Some direct strategies in general,
and this is for boys and girls. I'm saying girls, but it's really for all of us, help them create a good peer support system. They have to really have a little bit of insight and thought to managing their social world when it comes to friends who encourage disordered eating. 'cause oftentimes there's a lot of kids who are leading the charge for, but here's what we do. Here's how we diet, here's how we vomit.
So I wanna understand my client or my child's social world around who they're hanging out with and their relationship with food and body and their relationship with drugs, with food, with eating disorders, with such behaviors.
Who can you hang around with that's better for you?
One of the biggest things you could do with any young person facing any kind of unwanted food or body challenge is to find out what else in life, what creative outlet inspires them. What do they wanna do? What excites them? Is it sports? Is it art? Is it dance? Is it music? Is it travel?
What is it? Where do they wanna put their passion into? If they could wave their magic wand, what would they be doing right now? What, what, what has them inspired?
A lot of times when you help a young person tap into their creativity and just put their energy into something that they want to put their energy into, that's what heals because they're finding themselves. That's what an eating challenge is all about. It's a, it's a, it's a blip on the screen as a human being is finding themselves. And as you don't have yourself, yeah, easier to adopt an eating challenge, an unwanted body challenge. 'cause you don't know yourself. You're not grounded in yourself, you're not embodied, you're not embodied in your soul and your beliefs. You're not clear about the rules and the guidelines that you live by. So it's easy to have an eating disorder. It's easy to have an unwanted challenge with food and body. It's easy to binge eat and overeat and gain weight and turn to food to regulate our emotions. And as we learn how to be the person that we're meant to be, Hey, okay, you could put your energy here. Oh, you, you wanna do this? Great. Let's figure out how you can do that. Get them active. I don't just mean exercise at all. I mean, get them active in their life in a way that they're gonna be lit up. So you have to find what that is. Oftentimes, they don't know what that is either, but that's what you're gonna explore with them in the practical ways. You can work with a young person. So when it comes to weight loss, you can work with their eating rhythm. You could work with their macronutrient balance. You could work with slow eating. You can have them ritualize a binge. You have to do intellectual interventions around everything, especially if they're calorie restricting.
You give them all the simple scientific mind cookies about how these things are so helpful, how they can work, how their long-term strategies and how these things can help them reach their natural sustainable weight and help them have a healthy relationship with food in the long run. And that it's gonna take a little time and it's gonna take a little practice. So you're being honest, you're communicating authentically.
You are asking them to communicate authentically. Authenticity heals your young person when they have the opportunity to speak the truth. When they can get up that courage that is healing, that is empowering, that helps them find their center.
Oftentimes it is all the little things with your younger client that helps them along the way. Guess what? Same for your older clients. Oh my friends. You know, if you're a woman working with a young woman client, I want you, I want you to use their challenge as an inspiration for you to get where you need to be with food and body just a little faster. You gotta remember the best thing, especially if you're a parent of a girl or a parent of a boy, they need you to heal. The sooner you heal, the sooner they heal. It is my belief system that our young people, our kids will often work on the unfinished business. They're gonna have to do the unfinished business that one or both of their parents couldn't do. So when their parents have unfinished business in their own personal process, in their own life, in a weird way that get passed on to the young ones, and they're going to complete that unfinished business somehow within their own journey. So if you're able as an adult to have a better and better, you don't have to be perfect. I didn't say that. But as you have a more and more healthy relationship with food and body, with yourself, with your inner world, as you start, stop the nonsense, consistent day in, day out, self attack, self rejection, self-blame, self-hate. As you stop that more and more, as you learn to honor yourself and stand by yourself and not abandon yourself and not disembody, guess what? Your kid's gonna have it easier. They're gonna model after you silently. And I might not look like it now, but they will.
That's the beauty of the ecosystems that we live in. Something happens in one part of the ecosystem affects various parts of the ecosystem. So in the ecosystem, even though it's your child who has the challenge with food and body, as you improve yourself, they have a greater opportunity to improve. It's very fascinating, my friends. It works.
Young people in weight loss, some musings. So if a young person is truly overweight, it's likely that they eat from the junk food universe. That's, that's generally speaking, a good bet. You're dealing with an overweight teenager who truly has weight to lose. Chances are they are, they are eating from the junk food universe. So yeah, at some point you have to help them with quality food. You have to help the parents with quality food. A lot of young people, not all a lot, but not all are rebelling by gaining weight. It's their way to rebel. Young people are designed to rebel. They need to rebel. I'm not going to take away rebellion from my young person, but am my young person smart enough? If I notice, wow, this is a rebellious eater. Their weight is a rebellion, I'm gonna notice that and I'm gonna look for my moment. I want them to be rebels. I just don't want them to be rebels in a way that harms them. So I might have a conversation with them at one point. I might call them out on this and say, you know something, you're just like me. I was a rebel when I was your age. I was going against the grain. I didn't like what I saw as a young person. So I rebelled in a lot of interesting ways. You know something. But I've noticed about you, one of the ways that you rebel is by eating whenever you want, whenever you want, and getting fat. And it's kind of like a screw you to the adult world, which is, hey, I love being a rebel. I'm still a rebel as an adult, but I learned how to do it in a way that actually works for me.
Right now. The way you are rebelling, it actually doesn't work for you.
Actually, it doesn't work.
We gotta figure this out. I still want you to be a rebel, but what are some of the ways we can rebel? You can rebel, but that actually doesn't harm you. That doesn't leave you dealing with extra weight. And you might not wanna do that. And honestly, some kids don't wanna do that. They're not ready. And if they're not ready, that's their choice. I mean that. So that's one group. There's another group who gained weight and they're not rebelling at all. They're crying out for help. The weight gain is, is just crying. Literally. It's crying. I'm outta control. I don't know how to regulate this. This is messed up. I don't get this world, I don't like it. I can't manage any of this. I, I'm just eating and I'm gaining weight help.
For a lot of young people, their extra weight may simply be the total combined stress of being a young person in this world. So being a young person, trying to find out where you fit in, trying to be like, trying to be acceptable, trying to figure out girls and boys and relationship and dating and sex and sports and this and that. On top of that, you're exposed to foods that aren't so healthy and you have your stress at home and you have your stress of going through puberty and all that sort of thing, and you mix it all together. Yeah. Weight gain is predictable
for some young people. Some young people. The extra weight can be related to sexual fear or sexual wounding,
meaning extra weight can just be protection. Like, whoa. I wanna mention to you that a young person, their physiology is likely far more responsive and sensitive to sugar and poor quality foods. Just saying the good news is their body can respond to healthy foods faster than yours and I, uh, as well. So they're extremely sensitive to the toxicity of food, especially sugar. And they're extremely sensitive to healthy foods. They have a very responsive physiology.
Even if a person is rebelling with their weight, no matter what their extra weight is caused by overweight. Young people generally, generally are living in a version of social health in some way, shape, or form. They are experiencing weight hate far more than the average adult because young people can be nasty towards each other. Absolutely nasty. It's just the way it is when it comes to weight.
So you should know that restrictive and punishing strategies are quite futile and not sustainable. Okay, you ate this, you ate that, you're being punished. Uh, I haven't seen it work. Blaming them for a bad habit. Also unproductive. Remember their product of their world and a product of their environment. Blame is the last thing you want to do. In fact, you want to make their challenge, right? You wanna show them why There's a brilliant reason rooted somewhere in biology or psychology as to why they have this extra weight. Oh, it's stress. It's stress of being a young person. And you couple that with sugar, which young bodies are really sensitive to, and it's gonna signal your body to store weight and store fat. Because when you introduce a lot of sugar into the system, your body thinks it's summertime, which is when sugar fruits are popping up all around and winter's right around the corner. So if you're like a bear, you're gonna fatten up
your body sees sugar that just wants more sugar, and it's gonna put on weight thinking that it needs to hibernate in the winter time and put on lots of weight. When the Pickens are low and there's not enough food in the environment,
Oh, you're under a lot of stress. Yep, I get it. That causes more insulin and more cortisol, and that can signal the body to store weight and store fat.
So you're gonna use so many of the same strategies, but you're talking to a young person. So again, all the same key nutrition strategies for weight that apply to adults can apply to teens. Food quality, macronutrient, balance, meal timing, use of caffeine and sugar. Slow eating.
Kids who are clearly eating too much food, and they do that. There's a lot of kids, they're eating a lot of food and they're eating a lot of junk food. It's very simple. My friends, they're using it to regulate their emotional metabolism. Their emotional metabolism is all over the place.
They're just trying to regulate themselves. They're trying to make it so that their, their, Their Energy is moving so fast
and using a large amount of food to regulate our emotional metabolism just kind of slows us down a bit in a weird way. It calms down the system. Feel bad, eat food, feel better. Every young person knows that.
It's always gonna make your young person right, don't be a hater. They often have extra weight for good reasons, not take away that word often. They always have extra weight for good reasons. And those reasons are generally linked to their personal world, their home environment, what they've been taught to eat, how they've been taught to regulate themselves.
So you have to find out the brilliant reasons as to why they've gained weight from a nutritional standpoint, a personal standpoint, an emotional standpoint, a standpoint of stress and relaxation, physiology, a standpoint of mind body nutrition.
Once you start to see that, then you could let them know about it and make connections for them.
And some part of them will hear it. You're not correcting them, you're not telling them you're wrong. Here's how you do it, right? You're just being a mentor. You're being a guide, you're being a coach. You're being positive, you're being uplifting. You're affirming that, yeah, you've created a reasonable strategy by gaining weight. Here's, here's the good reasons to have weight gain. It brings you protection. You eat this kind of food, your body responds specifically to that kind of food. You eat a lot of sugar. Your your brain is gonna say, store this sugar as fat. It's what the brain does, especially to a young sensitive physiology. You always gotta remember my friends. You can only help a young person if they wish to be helped. If they don't wish to be helped, they're gonna run you around in circles. And if you're getting ran around in circles, you gotta raise your hand and you gotta call them on it. Otherwise, everybody's time is being wasted. And for a lot of young people, it's just not their time yet.
Or maybe they're totally ready, but they're afraid or maybe it is their time. So that's, that's for you to intuit, that's for you to sniff out.
Now, if you're working with kids, you're already working with kids in this age group, 14 to 21, again, you gotta be positive, you gotta be a light, you gotta be upbeat, you gotta be approachable. Your seriousness will not work. So well pull it out when necessary. But it's not your main archetypal voice. Young people are not interested in your archetypal clinical voice. They're not interested in your archetypal nutrition voice. They're not interested in your archetypal therapist voice where you're removed from them in an ivory tower. They're broken. You're the know, know-It-all. They're not interested in that. You gotta be real. You gotta be authentic. You gotta be casually hopeful and optimistic. You have to be someone who knows how to assist them if they want help. Be a person. Be a human being.
Also gotta remember, young people are like adults. They like simple, easy to understand scientific and nutritional mind cookies that pertain to them and that empower them. They love it. Simple scientific mind cookies. They love it whenever you're trying to help them lose weight dramatically. Limiting food amount and caloric intake is generally a recipe for disaster.
Kids have to feel like they're eating enough food. That's where macronutrient balance comes in. That's where slowing them down comes in.
But when it comes to slow eating, you have to explain the simple scientific mind cookies of how it's gonna help them. Otherwise, it just sounds like a dumb adult thing. So you really gotta give them the science of it a very casual way. Just like, Hey, here's the correct science of it. This is how it works. What goes up must come down. It's very simple.
Some final thoughts, my friends. You know this, working with young people is not so easy when it comes to unwanted eating challenges and excess weight. And I think that the professional universe has traditionally treated them just like we've treated adults. You're broken, we need to fix you. This makes things far worse for the young person. It sets them up for a lifetime of I'm broken. You're telling them that they're broken ouchies. When in doubt, just love. Love them through their journey. Support them, cheer, lead them through their journey. Do your best to always find a peer for them or peer support group
who can be the encouragers, who can offer advice and support from somebody closer to them in age group. Please remember that young people have a journey to go on, and sometimes really the best that you and I can do is be by their side and just watch for the little ways that we can help them as they search for their identity and find a place in the world if they know you're walking alongside with them on their journey. That counts for a lot. I really mean that.
Okay, my friends, I hope this was helpful for you in some way, in any way. And next, we will be talking about timeless wisdom in your professional practice. Thanks for hanging in there, and I'll see you on the other side.
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