Welcome Brave Lovers! Have you ever lacked confidence about your body in bed? In today’s episode, Laurie is joined by therapist Clare Stadlen, LCSW. Clare is the owner of CAS Counseling and an expert supporting individuals and families with eating disorders and body image concerns.
Clare and Laurie engage in a rich conversation on intimacy and body image. They discuss the many ways women are conditioned to judge their bodies from an early age and how this can zap desire and increase criticism.
Listen in for key tips on how to embrace your partner’s gaze to increase confidence, intervene in the shame cycle around negative body image and unleash your inner goddess!
For more information on Clare, visit www.CAScounseling.com
Transcript
Laurie Watson, PhD (00:00.046)
Clare, we are so glad to have you. Welcome.
Clare Stadlen
Thank you. It’s exciting to be here. Yeah.
Laurie Watson PhD
And Clare, she’s a psychotherapist. She has 30 years of experience. She’s the founder of CAS Counseling, C-A-S, Counseling in Durham, North Carolina. She specializes really in helping people with eating disorders and body image challenges, which include issues related to intimacy and relationships. And you can find her on cascounseling.com. We will post it on the website.
Outside of therapy, she also does this really cool intensive. It’s called Freedom Sessions. it’s basically a four-hour work that she uses to help people jumpstart relief and ease and freedom and eating, overcome body image issues and weight concerns. So for more information about that, you’ll also be able to find that at cascounseling.com/freedom and we are happy.
Laurie Watson, PhD (01:57.482)
Welcome, Clare. Thank you. So nice to be with you. Clare and I have been our old friends and we were just catching up this morning of eating over breakfast and talking about one of our favorite subjects, sex. Absolutely. We’ve talked about sex for many years. Yes. And I was sharing with Clare the reason I had invited her, in part is first of all, to share with you her wisdom.
And she has a really interesting take on how there’s a pursue withdrawal cycle related to food and what we do here and how to break it. But also just that so many people won’t have sex because they tell themselves, my body isn’t perfect enough. I don’t deserve desire. And they shut themselves down because of their anxiety over the way they look.
The way they feel in their body. And Clare, I gotta say, it really is irrespective of the actuality. Because I have some people who come in, they’re overweight and they have body confidence and they have great sex lives. I have some people who come in who are darn near perfect in my eyes. And they’re complaining about their jiggly thighs or their breasts are not as pert as they used to be or something.
And sometimes it really is internal because their partner is with them saying, I love their body, you know, but they can’t accept that. And so this is such a, such a shutdown. And, you know, I think much of it comes back to our relationship with food when we do have real concerns about our weight. and I, I’m just, I gotta pick your brain cause there’s so much I want to talk to you about. Great. Let’s do it. Okay. Good. Bring it on.
Laurie Watson, PhD (04:16.32)
Okay, Clare, so many of us don’t feel good enough in our bodies, right? And our culture, as you know, kind of defines us as very narrowly in terms of what is considered sexy. Can you tell us like why it feels so impossible to like feel sexy in this culture and then when we shut down with intimacy?
Clare Stadlen
Yeah, definitely. So. A lot of women grow up with the idea that they need to be small. They’re told that in a million ways. Obviously they’re told that through the media and through even when their bodies begin to develop and they naturally grow a belly and start to put on weight. Hips. Hips, breasts around eight years old.
And they’re told, better watch it, better watch what you eat. And they’re told it emotionally too. They’re told it when, and I shouldn’t say they, I should say we, we are told it when we express strong emotions and we’re told reel it in or you’re too sensitive. And we’re told it when we have huge successes sometimes too.
Laurie Watson
Don’t brag, don’t be proud. And I think it’s a very feminine message, a message from the culture about how to be feminine. You need to be small in stature. You need to be small emotionally. Don’t take pride or don’t express pride in your accomplishments. Don’t take up space.
Clare Stadlen
Don’t take up space that other people need or want. And that can be men. It can also be parental figures. It can be teachers. We can be silenced and made small in so many ways. But then that gets translated into desire as well. And desire is desire, whether it is desire for a relationship, whether it is a desire for sexual touch and stimulation, whether it is desire for the deliciousness of food. Desire is desire. And if we’re not allowed to expand into desire, then we shut down.
Laurie Watson
Exactly. And, you know, just as you say that, I remember being on dates and not being able to eat and also not wanting to be seen wanting to eat. I mean, at the time I had a fine appetite and, you know, outside of the dating, but there was something sort of weird about showing to my dating partners that I wanted to eat.
Clare Stadlen
Eating in front of men was always like the hardest thing for me. And I hear that a lot with my clients that they will go on a coffee date, they will go on an alcohol date.
But to go out with somebody where there’s going to be food is much scarier.
Laurie Watson
It’s complicated. It’s complicated. I think one of the things, obviously, as a sexual pursuer, and Clare probably identifies as such as well. Indeed I do. And I think having a sexual appetite is similar, right? It’s not something that, I mean, it’s fantasized about by men.
But in my experience, and the research kind of shows that a woman with a sexual appetite in the dating world is dismissed because there’s this kind of primitive part that men feel like, OK, if she wants me even, if it’s strictly about him, that somehow or another she won’t be faithful.
That’s what the research says, which is really, really scary. George hates it when I talk about that, but that is the research. But George is maybe more involved in thinks that women with sexual appetites are a good thing, but yeah.
Clare Stadlen
Okay. So I’m wondering if there’s something evolutionary about that, like the reason I asked that is because-
Laurie Watson, PhD (09:45.416)
It is evolutionary. No, that’s the research. Yeah. But okay, we digress because we want to stay with food and how… So you’re saying that developmentally, when we… We all know that children kind of bulk up and then sprout up, right? There’s stages where they gain weight, then they gain height. And when we’re developing as little girls, we’re putting on weight in places that we lose kind of the boyish straight figure.
And suddenly bloom into a woman. And it can be very scary because hips and breasts, you know, that’s fat and our culture is fat phobic. And even though, I mean, I just think there’s a message that says to little girls, you you’re putting on weight.
Clare Stadlen
Absolutely. There’s, there’s so much to what you just said. So I think that one of the things that happens is that when girls start to develop, that can be threatening to both moms and dads. Sure. And so for dads, their androgynous little girl who may have been their bestie is now becoming a sexual woman, and that can be scary and threatening. And they may withdraw from the relationship.
Laurie Watson, PhD
Yeah, and sometimes doing the best they can, right? You are now mom’s territory, you’re a woman, you’re not my little buddy. You now are, you know, and I keep myself from you because, you know, you’re going on to sort of sexual things and it’s uncomfortable to think about that for many good reasons. I think sometimes parents are protective, you know, and so they withdraw.
Clare Stadlen
Absolutely, it’s done I’m sure 99 % of the time out of love and care, but the message that it can send to girls, along with all the body image messages that they’re getting about their changing body not being acceptable, basically says, you’re not acceptable as a curvy, desiring, luscious woman.
You’re not acceptable with an appetite. You’re not acceptable if you have weight on you. And there’s also lots of other relational messages that it sends, and it can be traumatic for girls.
Laurie Watson, PhD
I will tell you just a vulnerable piece from my own history. I remember when I was 11-ish, probably just on the verge of developing…
My father no longer wanted me to sit on his lap. You I think he just thought it’s inappropriate for a child who’s developing to sit on her father’s lap. It was… I don’t think he intended it to be rejecting, but it was. And I didn’t know what it had to do with, other than, I’m growing up and something is wrong. And it was just weird. I remember the moment he said, you know, you’re too big now to sit on my lap or something. He also didn’t want me to laugh loud.
You know, every time I laugh loud, he’d say, you know, that’s not really ladylike. And so there was an effort from him to kind of, as I developed a person, you know, appetite, joy, even all of that. Absolutely. You know, it was don’t laugh too loud.
Clare Stadlen
Absolutely. And, you know, I was thinking about the bigness when I was thinking about coming and talking with you and the way women are silenced and body shamed. And the bigness of pleasure, the bigness of laughter is a common one that I hear. I have also heard women talk about shame about the size of their labia. Have you heard that one?
Laurie Watson, PhD
Huge, huge. It is like a very present issue. The last 10 years, women are getting surgically changed labia because they are looking at porn and they’re saying, and porn is standardized in terms of a pretty small clitoris and a small clamshell labia. And labia is, you know, widely unique. I mean, it’s like a flower. Every flower is a little different and it’s all beautiful, but we are basically being shown through pornography that only one vulva is pretty. And that’s a small, and so women have surgery to correct this. And they feel, I mean, I have women who come in all the time who talk about shame over, well, my labia is droopy now after children or I’m aging and a labia now hangs down outside the, you know, the inner lips hang outside the outer lips. Y’all that’s normal. All beautiful, all good.
Please don’t hurt this with surgery. Please don’t. Let’s not take away any sensation that we’ve got. Yeah. Yeah, but no, you’re right. And so our body image now, it’s our very genitals that are now also being scrutinized. And women are scrutinizing their own look, saying this is bad. This doesn’t look good. So OK, let’s just say we’re going into the bedroom.
The woman feels, I got 30 pounds on me. I don’t like my labia. I mean, what in the world? How are they gonna be naked and feel okay about that?
Clare Stadlen
Yeah, that’s a wonderful question. I think feeling safe with a partner is really, it really begins with that. I think there’s a mixture of being able, to have your partner know what you struggle with. We know that the way to combat shame is to expose it because the urge that goes along with shame is to hide. And so if we do the opposite of that, we expose it and we have the opportunity to feel safer.
Laurie Watson, PhD
Which is just what we talk about all the time here. Is vulnerability. And when we get to later stages of our connection with our partner, we get to ask, right? I don’t feel as sexy. Would you reassure me? Would you tell me you find me sexy? Yes. And many partners do.
Clare Stadlen
So that’s one side of it. The other side is an internal process where I get to say to myself, I may not see how beautiful my body is at this moment, but my partner does. And I’m gonna let myself feel into that. And I’m gonna let myself experience from an inside place what my sexy is, not from a mirror image. And this is something that I’ve actually, came up with this idea when I was a young woman struggling with my own body image and my weight and struggling big time and… walking down the street of New York City where there’s all the buildings are mirrored. I always had a crooked neck because I was always looking to the side to make sure I looked okay. And I remember one time saying, what if you just looked at the inner mirror right now instead?
And I’ve used that image for many, many years since then in my work to help us shift from what we see outside to what we experience inside. And so when you are coming out of the shower and you may think that you’re all jiggly and dimply or saggy or whatever it is that you tell yourself about your body and your partner is on the bed waiting for you.
And your mind is saying, I’m all these things to instead go inside to this person who I love being connected to physically is longing for me and longing for my body. And how can I feel into that longing? And so not always to articulate the discomfort, feel be safe enough in the relationship to, to share it, but also sometimes to go to a place where I can say, I’m worthy of this and I’m gonna connect with it.
Laurie Watson, PhD
So we look inside to the part of us that can experience desire, can feel pleasure, and we also use the mirror of our partner’s eyes. Yes. Right, the mirror of our partner’s eyes that say, I think you’re sexy. Rather than looking in the mirror, we see on their face their delight, their excitement about being with us sexually. And on their body, we feel and on their body, right? Yeah, the touch, right? And let ourselves do that rather than the judgment of this really critical part of all of us who says, I don’t look the way I think I should look, want to look, all of that.
So it’s, I okay, we need to stop for just a minute and come back and talk some more about this. Okay. Sounds great.
Laurie Watson
OK, Clare, you have given us a great nugget of in the moment coming out of the shower that we need to turn to the part of ourselves that likes pleasure, that can desire, because I often find you’re absolutely right. There’s an internal erotic part.
And we have to use the eyes of our partner as our mirror, rather than looking in the mirror and then going through that whole cycle of criticism. But a lot of women tell me, but I really do struggle with weight, Laurie, and food. And this is just such a complicated issue. And I have an eating disorder specialist sitting with me. So I got to ask you some questions about this. You’ve told me that there is kind of a cycle of pursue-withdraw in eating and shame.
And I’m just wondering if you can describe to me sort of what happens there. I think my Brave Love, Great Sex family, is going to resonate with the fact that there’s attachment issues here, even with food. So help me understand how pursue, withdraw, attachment, all that works.
Clare Stadlen
OK, cool. So both the relational pursuit withdrawal cycle and the overeating shame cycle originate in early attachment experiences. So when early attachment needs are unmet, people often carry a core sense of emotional emptiness, insecurity, unworthiness into adulthood. That unresolved pain creates a drive to soothe and fill that internal void. Okay.
So two coping strategies emerge; pursuit and filling. So in relationships, pursuing intimacy primarily to fill emotional emptiness rather than to create genuine connection. Okay. With food, it shows up as overeating to fill the emotional void rather than eating for nourishment and enjoyment.
Laurie Watson, PhD
So true. So true.
Clare Stadlen
So in withdrawal, the withdrawal and avoidance side looks in relationships like withdrawing or avoiding intimacy to protect against the pain of rejection or unmet needs. Early rejection and unmet needs. Early rejection, primal.
Laurie Watson, PhD
Right, they become independent.
Clare Stadlen
And then with food, it shows up in restricting or avoiding as a way to avoid emotional pain or control vulnerability or numb feelings. Right.
So, and one thing that I didn’t mention but I thought about as so core to this is our first experience of attachment is through nourishment. Right. The breast. The breast. And even those who are, right, too, but even those who are bottle fed, that first experience is being held and suckling. And so it’s no surprise that intimacy and hunger and food are both absolutely natural and core needs, but also at risk for early attachment deficits.
Laurie Watson, PhD
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So our, this is so rich. So the pursuing part sometimes, and I know that sometimes pursuers who are you know, not getting the intimacy, their intimacy needs met, kind of re-triggers that sense of emptiness from childhood, which gets filled with food. And then often the shame cycle comes in and it says, even though I want my partner, I want to be intimate with them, I don’t deserve that because I’m fat. Or their partner starts to reject them and it’s like, okay, I’m too heavy, which creates this self-rejection.
Guess how they soothe that? More food. I mean, this is a really vicious cycle. Shame plays in, sex plays into it, the triangle between weight, sex, intimacy, hunger, attachment. Ok circle, not triangle, right? There’s just so much that goes on. Interlocking circles. Yeah. Yeah. How do we break this?
Clare Stadlen
How do we break it? That’s exactly where I was going, right? So, I think that when I envision this cycle, I envision it beginning, of course, as we’ve said, with this early attachment stuff. So we can intervene in so many different places of the cycle. Anywhere that we intervene is going to stop it. It’s a cog in the wheel. And so whether we intervene at the early attachment trauma through the deep therapeutic work that you and I have done for a million years healing those wounds. We can intervene in the…
Laurie Watson, PhD
So first, let me say this for the listeners. The first place might be… There’s a number of places that we can put a cog in the shame cycle of eating. But one is just the healing of the basis for the emptiness, the early attachment wound. Okay. Then what?
Clare Stadlen
So the next place that I would see it is where the cycle has moved from the early woundedness to the pattern of filling or avoiding.
Laurie Watson, PhD (29:16.138)
Yeah and I love that you’re saying this because we have wounds but then we have coping styles, just like the protective style in a relationship, it takes on a life of its own, right? Absolutely. Our eating and our patterns of eating can be over determined, right? Yes, it’s an attachment issue, but now it becomes something that we use for lots of emotional issues. Exactly.
Clare Stadlen
So we can intervene there by learning other coping strategies. And there’s as many ways. So one way is to discover what fills me. If what I am doing is trying to fill, and now I’ve become aware of that, then I can go a little deeper and find out what truly fills me. What fills me, going to my woodworking class fills me. Sanding wood fills me.
Maybe reading fills you, maybe taking walks in the woods fills you. Definitely fills me. Maybe playing with your dog, maybe laughing with your grandson. Yeah. I know that fills you. So beginning to say, well, if my pattern is to try to fill, what truly fills?
If my pattern is avoidance and I’m trying to distract and run away, then I need to sort of titrate that work that I’m trying to distract from, which is at the beginning of the cycle, but also have ways of distracting that are not harmful to myself and my loved ones. So, and even whether that means taking, saying, I can’t deal with this right now, I’m gonna go play my guitar in the other room and come back later.
Laurie Watson, PhD
Which we would love a withdrawer to actually say, I’m struggling here, I need a break, I wanna go play my guitar, but you’re saying sometimes the distraction is food, but if they’re really struggling in this food cycle, then you’re saying they need to find the thing that soothes and comforts with a similar sort of power that food used to.
Clare Stadlen
Yes. And I think just to say that, you know, when I’m speaking about eating disorders, I’m speaking about all ends of an eating disorder spectrum and in avoidance, what we often find is restricting food. And that can be a very effective way to shut down emotion and to shut down pain. And so for somebody who’s trying to begin to refeed and renourish themselves, they may need to find ways to titrate the taking in of emotion that will happen when they begin to take in more food.
Laurie Watson, PhD
So they’ve used the restricting to block emotion kind of as protective strategy that it feels too intense. And you’re saying now as they begin to eat, they might need to take it slow in terms of feeling into a relationship, relationship intimacy, you know, even I imagine sexual pleasure sometimes, all of that.
Clare, this is so complicated. There’s so much to it. You are such an expert, though. I’m so glad. OK, where else can we intervene in the cycle?
Clare Stadlen
OK, so then, of course, as the cycle goes into deep struggle with behaviors, we can ask specialists. I often work with dieticians who understand this cycle to help people. Many overeaters will start their day not eating in the morning because they don’t want to just, once they start it, they get the ball rolling. So learning how to nourish yourself in a more satisfying way so that the pattern actually doesn’t create a cycle right within the food pattern of starvation and then being overful.
And then the shame cycle where it goes next to beating oneself up, the judgment, the…
Laurie Watson, PhD
Yeah, I ate those brownies. I loved that whole pan of brownies until the last bite. And then I’m like, my God, why did I do that to myself?
Clare Stadlen
And I call that self, I call that… I call that struggle, that part of the cycle a double whammy because there was pain already that caused me to do that. And now I’m going to beat myself up for the pain, for the way I manage the pain. And so now I’m in a double whammy cycle. And that intensity of judgment and shame sends me right back into the core woundedness of unworthy.
And so if we want to intervene in that place, it’s really helpful to find an inner loving voice and it can often begin by finding outer loving voices that remind us that we’re loving and worthy and worthy of love and worthy of connection. It can begin with vulnerability and reaching out to somebody and saying, I’m in a shame cycle and beginning to hear that voice that says, you have a pattern in place that served you really well when you needed it.
And you’re learning things that are different and it’s not gonna happen overnight and you’re not gonna be perfect. And you are still a beautiful, worthy, wonderful human being. And we’re not gonna beat you up right now. We’re gonna love you and let you live the full life that you’re meant to live.
And so whether that voice initially comes outside of you, but then beginning to hear it inside, beginning to find the part of self that can say that to you is a way to interfere in the perpetuation of the cycle.
Laurie Watson, PhD
Clare, that is so good. That is so good. And very much like what we do in EFT with the couple who comes in and says, know, were doing great, but we had a big fight. And it’s like, okay, it’s okay. Right? You know, these are body patterns that we’re relearning to protect yourself in old ways. That makes so much sense.
But we can try something different. Let’s do it again. Let’s do it right here again with vulnerability and talking about what you’re feeling, right? Really helping people get past that shame because if they’re ashamed that they had a fight, then they don’t come to therapy or, you know, it just goes on and on and on.
And they feel worse. I blew it. I criticized my partner. I blew it. I ran away again. So, yeah, it’s a very, this is so important, Clare. I just, I think you should write a book because on weight, sex, and marriage, and food, and eating, and attachment problems. I mean, it’s complicated, but it’s so necessary because I think this is a place that many, many, many people get hung up on.
Laurie Watson, PhD (37:50.65)
You know, and it’s all so entwined.
Clare Stadlen
Yeah. And I really relate to what you just said about the relational cycle too. It’s so connected. It’s so similar. I feel shame when I go back to a pattern with my daughter where I’m trying to communicate in more effective ways and not yell. And then I yell again. And then I’m mad at myself because I’m trying to learn new ways.
And so to interrupt that shame wherever it shows up because all that shame does is it makes us want to withdraw.
Laurie Watson, PhD
Exactly. Exactly. And then we feel bad about ourselves, the frustration builds and we yell again. Ok, where to find Clare? I want you guys to find Clare. She does these intensives. They are not therapy, so she does them online.
If you want to come and sort of, as I said, jumpstart working on food and feelings and dealing with attachment issues, come to her at cascounseling.com. That’s cascounseling.com/freedom. Use the code BRAVE for 20 % off. These freedom sessions, she can book you and help you sort of really think about it.
Clare is my go-to person in this community who I send my eating disorder people to. I highly recommend her.
And Clare, thank you so much for being with us today. I loved it. This was so much.
Clare Stadlen
I love your work. I love this stuff. And it’s so delicious. Yes.
Laurie Watson, PhD
Thank you. Thank you all. Be brave and have some great sex.
