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What I've Learnt - Mia Findlay · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Mia Finlay is deeply passionate about helping others reach the same freedom she now enjoys without her eating disorder.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: She's worked in the eating disorder advocacy field for nine years and has been working with clients as a coach since launching Beyond Body in December 2017.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: Mia is based in Sydney and has worked closely with the Butterfly Foundation, Australia's leading eating disorder body, as their ambassador since February 2018.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: She takes a direct, compassionate and evidence-seeking approach to recovery.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: She runs a YouTube channel and Instagram page dedicated to spreading recovery, hope, and awareness for eating disorders.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: And make no mistake, there's a lot of bizarre advice on TikTok, clocking up billions of views, like the baby food diet, the cabbage soup diet.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: The list is endless.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: So Mia's about getting down to what's really going to help those suffering, and there are many.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I used to hate holidays, dreaded bikinis, photos, new food.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'd plan to lose X amount of weight by the time the holiday began.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'd believe in my soul that I'd be happier then, that I could really enjoy myself.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: And here's the worst part.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the worst part we will discuss because it's quite an extensive journey that Mia has been on.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: And there are so many girls who are on this journey.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm really thrilled to have Mia join me on the What I've Learned podcast.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure to be here and kick off my week with you.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and I would agree with that because you're really at the coal face of really what I would call an echo, it's like an epidemic.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's affecting so many girls and their family, and their just everybody around them seems to be impacted.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: But most importantly, it's about them and trying to get them out of the darkness in the mire.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me a little bit about your story.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So my story starts uh just a little over a decade ago.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so this August will be my 11-year recovery anniversary.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and thank you so much.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a very, very uh interesting journey, a lot of happy accidents.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd always had a pretty tumultuous relationship with my body and with food.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I really felt very alien in my body.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like my body was the enemy.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't do what I wanted it to do.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: It brought really negative attention.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was bigger than I wanted it to be.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: It invited a lot of comments from when I was very, very young.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was six foot by the time I was 11.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I was a lot bigger than my peers, uh, and especially the other girls uh who were my friends and in my peer group.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so any attention that my body body brought was that I was different and that it was bad and it was wrong.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I felt inherently bad and different and wrong.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And even as adults, we all want to belong, but particularly as children, all we want is to be safe and to belong.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And all the messages were telling me I didn't and I wasn't.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the only way to access those two key things was to change my body.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd already been on a long journey from my uh childhood to try to change my body into what I thought it should be.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then there were a few events that were happening around the age of 18, 19.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: My uh parents got divorced.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was incredibly acrimonious and incredibly disruptive.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was in my first year of uni, a whole lot of things happened in that year that were quite traumatic.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it all kind of came together.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this eating disorder blossomed out of this very fertile ground that had been there from when I was very young.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time, it was really a coping mechanism.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: There was too much dark, sad, scary stuff to look at in my life.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And here was this way that I could avoid all of those very scary feelings.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that continued for six years.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And just as all eating disorders do, just became worse and worse and worse.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Eating disorders do not stay stagnant, they only get worse.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the worst part was not the physical aspect, it was my mental deterioration.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the depression, the anxiety, and with time, suicide ideation, which I was struggling with for about a year before I went into recovery.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really the reason I went into recovery, is because I deteriorated to the point where I made an attempt on my life and luckily was not, uh, did not lose my life.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the suicide ideation.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a sense of hopelessness and and and it doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be an attempt, but it can be, it's sort of a symptom of depression that we we know incredibly dangerous.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it it resulted at the end of that year, I made an attempt on my life, and that was when I went into recovery.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um it was uh incredibly lucky that I had the GP I had because we know that as an entry point, that can be not a great uh response that people receive from GPs in terms of their ability to recognize an eating disorder, let alone all the other complex mental health concerns that come along with that.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had an excellent GP who got me in front of a psychologist who I was able to see very quickly.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know at that time how privileged I was to have that response.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: That is not the normal response.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: That is not the normal journey into recovery for people.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Accessing treatment is still incredibly difficult.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I started recording my recovery just for my own records.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't really have anybody with a shared lived experience to discuss it with.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I had these videos that I wanted to watch back to feel connected to the process when I would have these light bulb moments or feel motivated.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And as I ran out of space on my iPad, I put them on the internet on a YouTube channel that I thought no one would ever say.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And now, 10 years later, that YouTube channel has resulted in a decade of advocacy working with the Butterfly Foundation as their ambassador for about seven years.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And around the same time, I launched my eating disorder recovery coaching business after becoming certified.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we now have coaches all over the world helping people along the same journey.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it was truly just a happy accident uh that those videos ended up on YouTube and was sort of the gateway to turning this very painful thing into something quite beautiful and purposeful.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's so many things to unpack there.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, if we can just go back to the GP entry point, because I think that's very, very critical.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I know from people who have sort of their first attempt to sort of put their hand up is to go to the GP.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: And because also there's a lot of fear and shame and anxiety around saying identifying it is actually a problem as opposed to a pre, you know, the the complex thing about disordered eating versus an eating disorder and people trying to work out is this a problem, is it not a problem, is it manageable?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: And as you say very, very correctly, you went to a GP who was responsive and equipped.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: But that's often not the case.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I know other people where that hasn't been the case and that's had catastrophic outcomes because there's no trajectory to the specialists and to the psychologists and to the all the various team that you need.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think that's something that in your journey as a coach, have you seen any improvement in that space or that connection or that awareness for GPs about this issue?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I one of the most heartening things was in my work alongside Butterfly, seeing, you know, the strides they've been able to make.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: When they received their first big uh bit of funding in 2019, the first thing they dedicated some of that funding towards was the retraining of GPs, which speaks to that issue as a gateway to treatment, right?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: That GPs are not adequately trained to be able to recognize eating disorders and the spectrum of eating disorders, which you just touched on, that people want to categorize these things by diagnosis or disordered eating.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's all just a spectrum of suffering with labels.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if we take the labels away and we actually look at people as individuals, I think we'd be in a much better position to actually get them help versus these very rudimentary understandings of eating disorders, even in the medical field, as far as you know, somebody presenting who isn't the stereotype, who doesn't have, say, that anorexia diagnosis.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And even people who present with the anorexia diagnosis are not all going to look like the stereotype.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And those people are told that they aren't unwell enough to access help just purely based on what they look like, forgetting that not only are people with anorexia not necessarily all going to fit the stereotype that we all know too well, but we have binge eating disorder, which is actually the largest percentage of the sufferer population.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have people with bulimia, which is 13% of the sufferer population.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have OSFED, which is otherwise specified feeding and eating disorders, which is a whole other spectrum of uh symptoms.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have people who even sit outside of those very stringent diagnostic criteria lists, who are being met with, oh no, this isn't a problem, or sometimes worse still, depending on their body size, being prescribed things like Ozempic, weight loss surgery, all of these incredibly ignorant responses, which are very, very shaming and as you say, are really deterring people from coming back and asking for help, which, you know, I say to people, you are you still must reach out, but I totally understand why you don't want to.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because there's already been such an uphill battle to get themselves to that point, to then be received in that way, is really uh proving a lot of those things they're telling themselves correct that they're not worthy of help, they're not sick enough, they have to get worse.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And people will take up that challenge and they will be put into a position which is incredibly dangerous and as you say, for many people catastrophic.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's interesting also that you reflect, which is quite logical.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's like if somebody has depression, there's not one sort of depression.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: If somebody has anxiety, it's not one form of anxiety, it's a spectrum.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that is a very important factor because if you treat everybody the same, or as you say, if there's sort of these expectations, oh, well, unless you're super, super thin, you're not suffering from something is ridiculous.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there are so many ways that this disease exemplifies itself and shows itself.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that once again comes back to making sure that there's access to the right professionals.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: So you basically, for yourself, on your journey personally, which obviously equipped you to help others and thank God for your YouTube channel and going out into social media, which was very brave, by the way, which must have taken a lot of courage because you know it really exposed your vulnerabilities.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: But then in some ways, that's part of the healing.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: So for you, what did you see as the turning point?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: You talk about the six years of the core disorder.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: What do you feel was a you know major transformatory?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: What transformed your journey?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure there were many factors, but is there, was there something that really I think getting into it was actually uh one of the big turning points was I was able to access sort of this anger for myself.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of my upbringing had been to instill in me, or my, you know, my my caregivers instilled in me this, you know, need to obey and to be good, to be obedient, to be invisible in some ways.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was very much raised uh with the perspective of you know, children should be seen and not heard.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Very like throwback to the Victorian era.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Very austere, yeah.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, very, very um uh, very much uh disciplinarian kind of attitude, borderline, sort of abusive kind of behaviors.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I had never really been able to advocate for myself or be my own advocate because it wasn't safe to be.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the real uh tragedy about uh abuse in your childhood is that you usually then at some point as you enter adulthood, take the baton from those people and start doing it to yourself.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I was able to access this anger for myself.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And especially as women, we're told that anger is a really unattractive quality.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that we should embody.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: It makes us shrill, it makes us unpleasant, it makes us emotional, it makes us unhinged, all these things.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason we're told that is because anger is an emotion with momentum.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can do something with it, you can move yourself forward with it, you can move movements forward with it.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was really able for the very first time in a long time to tap into this sense of uh anger and to use that to move myself into the process.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it carried me through a lot of the recovery process.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it was also a big turning point for me to realize that this, none of this was gonna happen unless I made it happen.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: That the equation of tolerating distress and uh uncomfortable feelings is the sort of investment that you make to get rewards long term, that there is this unknown quality of recovery.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's gonna happen to me.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's going to happen to my body, which is a very scary premise to somebody who's, you know, got an eating disorder, is that lack of control over their food and their body.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, you know, if this is gonna work, if it is gonna make me feel better, if it's all gonna be worth it.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm just going to kind of blindly throw myself into it in the hope that something good will be on the other side.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so being able to tap into that for the first time really was a great entry point into the process and was a great initial source of motivation.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then another really key turning point was the idea that no one was coming to save me, that this was really up to me, that there was this investment of distress tolerance and uncomfortable feelings and learning to sit with those with the hope of the reward that this was going to work, um, that this was going to be worth it, really.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that a lot of us are waiting for Monday to come and to feel differently or to feel motivated or to feel brave enough to do that scary thing, whether it's in business or relationships or social life or mental health healing journeys.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're waiting for the change to just show up and knock on the door versus we actually have to put the steps in place before we feel comfortable with it, before we feel like we can do it, before we feel like it's going to be worth it.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to be prepared to put that time and energy and effort in.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's benefited me in so many ways.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it was really the sense of this is my precious process, this is my life, and I have to take responsibility for it.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not responsible necessarily for how I got into this thing, but I surely am responsible for how I'm going to get out of it.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: That is so interesting to me because the notion of, you know, compliance and repressed anger and trying to be in a way in verticom as a good girl and hold on to the anger and not allow it to show is very cultural, very culturally what is encouraged in our society.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: As you talk about, you know, you grew up with that, but even just everywhere, there's this sort of um incredible expectation on women to do that anyway.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then you've got, as you say, the toxicity of whatever else has been you've been subject to or exposed to.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it's interesting to me that you also needed a safe space from what you're outlining for that anger to be released.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: So you needed somewhere where you could access it without fear of consequence for your emotionally, physically, whatever.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so was that safe space for you once you entered therapy with the psychologist?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: Did that facilitate a holding so that you could then unleash or release slowly, but you know, probably quite quite nerve-wracking to all of that pent-up anger.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: Is that where that journey began to turn?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was it was really transformational because it gave me so much context for how I ended up, where I ended up.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a very practical, logical person.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: When I was unwell as a child, like I used to get really bad cramps in my, you know, when you wake up in the arch of your foot, it feels like it's collapsing in on itself.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, I'm gonna die.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why is why are my feet trying to kill me?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is so painful.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, my dad would take me into the kitchen and give me, you know, salt water to, you know, obviously I didn't have enough sodium in my system.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd make him give me like a 30-minute lecture on what is my body doing?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: What is my foot doing?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: What are the muscles doing?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why are they doing that?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I really wanted a similar sort of roadmap and explanation for what was happening internally and what had happened historically to get me up to that point.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the therapist that I had, I was very, very lucky.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: It hasn't always been the case in terms of and isn't the case always for everyone.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you have to look around and really find the right combination for you in terms of practitioner and their approach and even the modality that they used.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: But my therapist at that time, it was a really, really perfect match just in terms of her uh her energy and her warmth, but also the approach that she took.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: She could see that I really needed an understanding of how I got to where I was.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: So the mechanisms, yeah.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like so you wanted because it's interesting listening to you.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: You remind me of it's like the hyperintelligence, actually, which you clearly have and which I see in others.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: No, but it's a sort of a it's an ability to try and understand the layering, which can be amazing, but it can also lead to turning on yourself with that incredible intelligence and not always helpful.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: So sometimes it's helpful because you can break it down as you're talking about, but other times it's like toxic and turns.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: So that's really interesting, listening to you, how you're thinking.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: You want to understand, but and then you've got to have something to do with it, right?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, that's uh I've had um a couple of therapists that I've seen since who say, Well, you're very self-aware.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Yes, I think that's part of the problem.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think I am too self-aware.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm too um conscious of what's happening in my head at all times.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then it's the practical element as well, which is the part of recovery that really made sense to me was okay, we can understand ourselves, but in order for our brain to change and for it to send up different messages, we have to give it something to pay attention to.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: We have to give it evidence that if it's if our brain says something is scary, in the case of an eating disorder, or I should say my eating disorder, that food was scary or certain kinds of food were scary, I had to keep exposing my brain to that food to show it these terrible catastrophic outcomes that I'm uh predicting are not going to happen.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And even the ones that do happen, like very elevated anxiety, my eating disorder was absolutely right about that prediction that I would be terrified, that my brain was underestimating my capacity to cope with it and deal with it and do something with it.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it was the understanding of the layers of myself as a human being and how I'd come to be who I was and in the situation I was.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then the practical elements of being able to show my brain that these things that I'd learned, these lessons that I'd been given were not necessarily true or helpful.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: If they had been true in the past, they were no longer true or helpful.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have to be obedient to be safe.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have to keep yourself small to be safe.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: That was true when I was a child.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: That did keep me safe then.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was no longer doing that.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to show myself the evidence that there were new truths and new beliefs.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that bridge, especially when I looked at coming into the field, that made sense to me.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Being the person who could walk alongside someone and provide a safety net as they did all of that experimenting, as they did the practical stuff, as they built up these new beliefs about all of these fears that they had.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but therapy was absolutely integral and was such a was just pivotal.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it just changed my whole trajectory.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where I would have ended up without it.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's interesting too, because that the notion of someone holding your hand through the journey, even though it is your own, as you say, you need to own it.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think that is so critical because it's the people, the people that often I think fall through the cracks with this are people who don't, as we say, access, get access to a GP that understands, then get access to the right professionals.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: But separate to that, how do family and friends have a role in this?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because that can be complex, because they can be an enormous asset, but they can also be complex because of the history.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: How did how did you navigate that?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's so it's so much nuance here because we've got people at all different ages in all different stages of life with all different support systems.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I can definitely speak to my own and also what I've observed as uh sort of a practitioner as well, because that's a big part of what we do, especially at Beyond Body, is we kind of call ourselves interpreters.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: We can speak over both sides of the fence.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: I can speak the language of somebody who's been unwell, and I can help loved ones and carers to understand how their messages might be misinterpreted when they're received by the eating disorder versus the healthy part of their loved one and the reverse as well.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we can kind of be mediators, interpreters, peacemakers of this sort of thing.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: I love the analogy.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's very because it is a bit of a war zone.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: It is.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you you use mediation, mediators, and I think that's very powerful because I don't think people who have not been exposed to the extremes of what this illness can do, yeah, it is a bit like a war zone.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm very interested in that notion of peacemakers and all the things you're referring to.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's about bringing the conflict, if we want to call it that, the tension or the conflict back into the person.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we're really dealing with is there's an eating disorder self part of them, and there's a healthy self part of them.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you asked any unwell person who says, This is my coping mechanism, this is just what I do, this makes me feel better.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: So what's the harm?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Would they, if their little sister or their best friend or someone close to them came to them and said, I've had the worst six months of my life, I can't cope, what do I do?
• 21:59
  unknown: Would that
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, person give their loved one a list of eating disorder behaviors and thoughts to cope with that, whatever they're going through.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is always no.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a healthy person in there.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's who we've got to get engaging with each other.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the goal with us as coaches or any practitioner and even carers and loved ones is to equip them with a skill set to get that tension back into the person because that's you can't be a healthy self for somebody else.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can't tell them anything about because they already know.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Show me a person with an eating disorder who doesn't know.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know, I know that this is dangerous, or I know that this is bad, or I know that this is unhealthy, or I know they know they cognitively they know all of it.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's got to be the two parts of them that on one hand say, this is fine and okay, and I can keep doing this, but I also would absolutely not do this to someone else or recommend it to someone else.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the conversation that's got to be happening, not these external kinds of conflicts that are just fueling eating disorder to go, see, it's you and me against the world, we're against everybody else.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: That conflict has got to stay within the person.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's a key part of the stuff that we do, especially when we're speaking to carers and partners and parents who are just at the end of their tether and, you know, just exhausted and just feel like they're in this constant conflict with their loved one.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: But with my, I, you know, I was 25 when I went into recovery.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I was living outside of home.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, you know, that was a key part of my whole concept of, you know, this is this is me who has to do this because literally no one else was there.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had a housemate, he wasn't going to do anything, he wasn't gonna make me eat dinner.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he had no idea what was going on.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it really came down to me.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: But in terms of when I did interact with my loved ones, for whatever reason, instinctively, one of the first things that I said to them was unless these pre-agreed concerning things are happening behaviorally or with my body, or you know, there's clearly signs that I'm not doing well.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, I ended up with rosacea because of my eating disorder, because of the state of, you know, my gut health.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if I was flaring up, you knew that behaviors were back.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so unless these pre-agreed things were happening, don't comment on my food and don't comment on my body.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's a compliment or, you know, a neutral thing, just let me get on with it.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can't guarantee who's going to be hearing those messages.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: So you might say to somebody, you are looking so healthy.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking fantastic.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: If their eating disorder is the one who's dominant at that moment, what they're going to hear is, I've lost control.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I need to get back into my eating disorder routines and rigidities and behaviors.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people are commenting on my body, people are judging my body, they think that I look X, Y, Z.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: What your eating disorder can do with a compliment or well wishes or encourage things that you would think are absolutely benign and neutral, they can use as the most powerful weapon against that person.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's some of those things that we can really, you know, equip carers and loved ones with, just landmines to avoid, and then things that they can do that are, you know, maybe not obvious to everyone.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because as we talked about, people think of eating disorders, disordered eating, dieting, they think it's all different.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's always it's all living in the same universe.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: So not speaking about your body or other bodies in a negative way or even at all, just leaving body talk off the table.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Food, same thing, leaving any kind of diety food talk off the table, just don't talk about it.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, being able to provide compliments or feedback, which are about that person's character, their sense of humor, their intelligence, their creativity, which I think we should all be doing anyway.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're all of the things we don't really care.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the thing we value about it.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's so weird.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's yeah, it is very strange.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think the other thing that's really important, and you mentioned this.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: So what's confusing, I think, is you've got this other nuance, which I've observed, which is alongside these complexities, you've also got issues related to those gluten-free, fructose-free, all of the nuances that, you know, have become endemic and part of almost every dinner conversation.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you go out for dinner and every single person has something they can't tolerate, right?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just part of when I was growing up, that wasn't so much a thing unless they were celiac or, but that was unusual.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's become very much part of the fabric of how we all live.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's where it becomes complex because the often they're valid, you know, intolerances to dairy or whatever, but it becomes layered and confusing for those that, you know, it can you can cross a bridge very quickly where suddenly there's seven things that are being eliminated.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now you might not have an eating disorder, but you can, do you know what I'm saying?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel there's also a very big cultural shift in that.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's our, we have a, I mean, intolerances are, you know, incredibly uh specific to the individual, and it can definitely be part of someone's health profile legitimately, absolutely.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like a broader world of diet culture, right?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Where we have such, we have such focus on food and body.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you, as somebody who has been like a canary in a coal mine, where like we with eating disorders go into this extreme version of this stuff that we're all breathing, right?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: We might be more vulnerable to it because of our predisposition, but we're all breathing it.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're all finding somebody who hasn't tried a diet, not for health reasons, but for uh, you know, the pursuit of maybe a different body size, which is the other issue, the fact that we equate body size or how a body appears to health.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: When people talk about my health goals, and I'm like, are you talking about health goals or are you talking about body goals?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because those are two different things.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it's this wider world of diet culture, which has totally normalized a lot of very, very disordered practices, a lot of very, very disordered thinking.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: We just touched on one.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that when we see each other, the first thing we are all programmed to comment on is each other's appearance.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even though if you I ask people all the time, I want you to go and ask three of your loved ones for the top five things that they value about you or think of when they think of you.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Their appearance never makes the list.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: When my friends come over, I don't want a set of scales.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't make sure they can take the perfect selfie.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, none of us care about it.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the first thing we're all affirming in each other.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't learn that from nowhere.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's something that is ingrained in us, and that's that is the influence of diet culture.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: All of a lot of body talk, a lot of food talk, a lot of, you know, what document are you on?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bonding exercise.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my yes, the women in my life growing up weren't actually a lot of them weren't that interested in changing their bodies, but they would go on diets because their girlfriends were on diets.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was a bonding exercise.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was how they belonged.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: Very interesting.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I agree with you, and I see it in every age group.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's really important too.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: But the thing is, the social media impact has, if you like, put a microscope, has actually exact magnifying glass on what was already, I mean, I think that's very true.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Some sort of bonding, like, you know, are you eating this or are you off carbs or are you doing this?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Are you doing?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's it's now it's just everywhere.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's almost, you know, but the magnifying glass of social media for if you're a young 20-year-old or 18-year-old, God help you.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just very, very toxic culture and very accessible and very unmonitored and very unregulated.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: So you're up against this monolith of very powerful, potent, endless stream of that culture.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, even just more broadly, you know, uh we know we know that dieting is uh an enormous gateway to people developing eating disorders, that you don't need necessarily need to have uh, you know, all these comorbidities of anxiety, depression, et cetera.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone is going to have their own complex kind of perfect storm of how it developed.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: But for a lot of people, the Kickstarter can be just that they are on a restrictive diet.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we know this clinically that under-eating can be enough, especially if there's a genetic predisposition, which we're finding out more and more, how much genetics do influence someone's, you know, the likelihood that someone's going to develop an eating disorder.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: But then there are all these other elements which contribute as well.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And with social media, it is so understandable that people internalize this idea that, you know, body, a certain body type is going to give you access to success, to love, to belonging, to safety, all these things that we want.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what the message is.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: The message is not just be fit like me or have a body like me.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's this glamorization of the life around it as well, and this incredibly edited look into somebody's life.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of these fitness influencers and a lot of these people who are creating these products and marketing these products without any qualifications to do so, mind you, no dietetic qualifications, barely a fitness certification.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: But all of these, you know, meal plans they're putting together, these blanket meal plans, as if you know, they can apply to everyone's health is the same, and therefore everyone's eating should be the same to reach these outcomes.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: But when they're putting their bodies there as the marketing tool, as the, you know, what you'll get for what you're, you know, buying, it isn't just the body.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the bigger message as well.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: That if you want access to all these things that we also understandably want, or many people understandably want, uh, this is this is how you access it.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: So social media has certainly deepened the layers of what that body represents.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's it's really, I mean, you know, I'm I'm surrounded by mature women who have grown and had children, etc.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm worried, but even then that it's still you know prevalent in in our age group.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: But but when I look at the younger generation, I worry so much because at the end of the day, if if these girls, if this becomes, there's sort of a badge of honor that I've observed, you know.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, many of the behavioral, I've watched some of the behaviors and and a lot of this badge of honor that somehow the disorder is something to almost be, you know, it's like, look, I've sort of got this.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: But the truth is, when you come to have children and you come to actually bear children, if your body's not equipped, that's a whole other thing that they have to that is a challenge.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: So how do we change other than obviously what you're doing, which is really effective?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think the one-on-one is very effective, because the safe space and the relationship they would develop with you or whoever you that you appoint, what else can we do to somehow transform this culture that you're referring to?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it is it is the horse bolted?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Are we look, eating disorders have been around for 50 years?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, it's not like that new for longer than that.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Hispanic.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, 100 years, like forever, right?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Documented for you know, for everyone to say this is a modern thing, or this is about vanity, or this is about I might no, this is this has been documented in behavior like from the 1200s, like like right back to you know, ancient Egypt.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of documentation of people engaging in these kinds of behaviors.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is not new, which you know, when we look at that genetic element, it makes it like so much of this is biological, and yes, it's cultural and all those sorts, but again, it's perfect storm sort of stuff.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's no one multitude of things.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I actually have a more optimistic view of how diet culture and and and people's awareness of it and how it's you know progressing.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we know that eating disorders are worsening in terms of statistics, right?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: They are getting worse and worse and worse.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've got over a million Australians suffering, it's probably much higher.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: But we also have people who are coming forward because they now identify that they do have an issue.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that can sort of account for what looks like this drastically worsening uh set of statistics.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Part of it is because culturally, you know, some of these things are contributing.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also because people, particularly, you know, men, men did very rarely would put their hand up and say they have an eating disorder.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's still something we're working towards is, you know, um diversifying the message and diversifying that representation to make it safe for everyone to come forward.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: But we know, for instance, you know, one in five men, uh one in one in five anorexia sufferers are male.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot, isn't it?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, just dealing with and that shows though.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: So what you're just so I understand, you're saying that it's always been prevalent, but as more people speak out, it looks like it's become more prevalent.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: But in fact, then speaking out allows us to have the discussion, put it on the table and to address the issues.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: On that note, do you think that that the government bodies, and obviously there's bodies like the butterfly foundation, do you think they're funding models?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think we're getting enough input into the infrastructure that we need to manage what is happening out there?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: A million people, you said something.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um so just to go back to sort of you know how that how that is changing and evolving.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: So for instance, things like, you know, uh we saw on, you know, like a sitcom like Friends that we had Monica in the fat suit.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that that's something that would be tolerated these days.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or when, you know, Kim Kardashian was flagrantly sort of advertising this incredibly dangerous diet that she went on prior to the Met Gala one year, the headlines 10 years ago would have been here is the diet in you know, full detail.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to achieve the same results, here you go.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas the media response was actually that they were quite critical of the fact that she'd been so, she'd been so blatant about the details and the timeline because it was literally just giving an instruction manual to people.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that our the media's awareness has definitely shifted.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the fact that we have, you know, people who understand terms like fat phobia, diet culture, you know, intuitive eating, that they have a more nuanced understanding of these things uh and less tolerance of those kinds of poor behaviors just being put out there, like fat shaming and body shaming from media outlets is something that certainly isn't tolerated so much anymore.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a bit more of an optimistic view of where it's heading.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of sort of like the structural changes or the infra the change to the infrastructure, the funding, we have a long way to go.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's the truth.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've been around for 10 years.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: It has improved drastically in terms of, like I said, um, some of the messaging.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very proud of Butterfly, particularly in the last few years, the strides that they've made towards a much more inclusive message, a much more diverse message from a representation standpoint.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that they are really uh championing of yes, inpatient facilities and residential facilities.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: We only have one up in Queensland.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it only has 12 beds.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: It costs a fortune.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh fortune.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: I know that one.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I know that one.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I know someone who went through that one for six months and it was transformative, but it was complex and it was very expensive.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Very expensive.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it is, it is wonderful.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is that people don't recover in those environments fully.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: They don't get to the end of their journey.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: You have to recover in your life, you have to recover in community.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can't recover in a bubble.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have to recover with all your daily stressors and your relationships and your work.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: Challenges, yeah.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, sadly, you know, things will happen.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: People will pass away, relationships will end.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: We have to have all of those challenges uh to be able to build up the resilience and the confidence in the fact that, oh no, I don't have to turn to my eating disorder to cope with those things.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: I now do have this toolbox that I can use.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need to go back to those old patterns.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Where I think a lot more of the focus needs to be, and it's it's really a huge uh goal of ours at Beyond Body is to really transform and fill up sort of the outpatient space options.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: A to be able to help people to um transition, yeah.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Transition out of environments like that.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we're a big part of that.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: We unfortunately have uh a long wait list that we can't be an immediate go-to for people, but we hear from people coming out of Wanda Eriada, that residential a lot, yeah to set up a outpatient team.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: But on the other side, to set up an outpatient approach and a messaging that prevents people from getting into those spaces.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: This whole, which goes back to what we were talking about at the top of the chat, this this attitude from GPs of you need to get more unwell to be able to access help.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: And those people sometimes become so unwell, they then can't get into places like Wanda Narada.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: They can't get into hospital settings because they're so at risk.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: They have to go through these incredibly traumatic uh sort of emergency hospital admissions.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: So being able to get the messaging to the point where we're saying to people, when you can see these things developing, that is the time to take action.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think that is such an important point.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: Because one person I know in particular who the emergency system, which she ended up in, as you refer to, was just diabolical because it had it literally was literally ill-equipped.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: Then, of course, right hand doesn't know what the left hand's doing.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: Everything just turned into this mire, as often happens, where you actually have complex issues not being managed by the right people.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the emergence, the emergency system in a hospital is completely ill-equipped to deal with a drastic eating disorder crisis, a suicide attempt, or whatever it leads to.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that goes to exactly what you're talking about.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: Get it earlier and get it, get them into support systems before it gets to that point.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: But unfortunately, as you say, there's such a waiting list you have.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: There's also one major residential 12-bed facility.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I know there are other facilities within hospitals, but honestly, often they don't have the outcomes as we know, as your facial expression delineates.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's and it can be worse because you end up in this, and the amount of people I know that go through that system and just get churned out and then find themselves, as you say, without a transitional support system is and their approach, their approach as well is not collaborative.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's the difference with what we do.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, so much so much of it comes from Carolyn Coston, who trained me.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Carolyn also uh had a huge amount of input into the setup of Wanda Narrator and kind of their approaches.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: She founded Montenedo, which was one of the first residentials in the world in America, of which there are now many across the US.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of Australians, uh, if they had the access to the funds, was going over there to be able to access treatment via Montened, because it was very effective for a lot of people.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of uh Carolyn's core tenets is collaboration.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have collaboration with someone going through this process, you have nothing.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because collaboration with family or collaboration with the person going through the process.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't tell my clients this is what you're doing this week or else we have a conversation about what we can do this week.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then let's make it flexible.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're gonna work with a snack this week, okay, let's add X to your morning snacks three to five mornings this week.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: And let me know how it's going.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: What's tricky about it?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: The days you can do it, why can you do it?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: The days you can't do it, what feels difficult about those days?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: What's the contrast?
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's the data?
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: What can we do with that?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: As opposed to you're doing well, you're doing poorly, you're good, you're bad, all this moralistic stuff that uses, and then they're finding it in treatment.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why they feel aligned with their eating disorder.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's me and my It's very interesting.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because because I my my understanding from some of those treatment programs is they can be quite isolationist, almost punitive, which I understand requires discipline to some degree.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: But from some of the stories that I've heard, you know, it's very isolationist.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_02: It does, it I mean, the I suppose anachronistic way of dealing with it, like it's been around for years, this sort of approach of, and none of us fully know some things work for some people, but I suppose I'm hoping that part of what you're talking about, which I'm seeing, is a changing in the approach, as you say, a collaborative approach, because it's the only thing that works.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: It worked for you, you're seeing it work for others.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: Are you hopeful that government and funding will help?
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: Just expanding the services requires extra funding from either private government.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you see the next phase of resources so that we have more people doing what you're doing?
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: We have more facilities, not just one or two.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you see that coming from?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of government, we're or like anything like this is always on a knife's edge of, you know, who's in power and what's the area level of interest.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I have a lot of faith in Butterfly to be able to continue to foster those kinds of relationships and conversations and to keep it, you know, top of the agenda, especially post-COVID.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: We saw a real surge in interest uh and care around these issues around COVID because we saw such a spike in eating disorders.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was undeniable.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: So there is still, you know, a good plug-in there as far as uh people having a level of understanding about how serious this is.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a couple of MPs, particularly Zoe Daniels.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: She is she has a real interest in this area and is a real, really great advocate as far as one of those teal MPs.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a lot of hope that, you know, those relationships will continue and that level of interest will continue.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of where I can sort of see the space going, I think it's it is that bookend approach.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there needs to be, and there is, you know, momentum around getting more of those residential facilities up.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And running.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Mondenerator has really been used as an example and a case study almost to be able to take it to the government and say, look at these exactly, look at these outcomes we can achieve.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: We now need you to fund and you know much more adequately fund more of these residentials to be able to continue with these outcomes.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we look at the impact on the economy, it's enormous.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is absolutely enormous.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: So they really should be incentivized to put more funding here because it, you know, uh has such an impact down the line.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I am seeing more from the professional space in terms of people like me, a greater understanding of what we need to be doing from an outpatient perspective.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing that I would love to see coaching is fairly new to the field.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Coaching, the eating disorder recovery coach title, becoming a protective title, just like a dietitian or a psychologist, so that our clients can access things like Medicare.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: That is currently not possible.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: They can't use insurance, they can't use Medicare.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Butterfly, again, are doing some great work in the space around research and around championing the idea of helping lived experienced workers to become a more established role in the professional space so that people can benefit by accessing uh Medicare rebates, et cetera.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that's going to be a huge game changer.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and to get that Medicare rebate, it's interesting, you know, and well, I'm totally respectful.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: So you're an ambassador for Butterfly, and obviously there's a strong and effective alignment.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: There are people who have real have had issues where they haven't been getting what they need from organizations like that.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: You must be aware of that.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: And there is a lot of people that I speak to saying, well, you know, I just felt like I was just went through one door and came out another.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think there are, there is still a lot of work to do.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously, all organizations have their limitations.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I accept that too.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: You can't be everything to all people.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: But I do think there is still a lot of work to be done on that in that space because there are people who have not found that offering them what they need.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, even in terms of programs, you know, the the the operating on sort of a shoestring and saying, well, where do we put the money?
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've got people in Sydney who desperately need an intensive outpatient program.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that just wasn't necessarily feasible in terms of where that funding was going to go when there's such a push for needing what our one and only residential.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's moving pieces around on the board all the time.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: But that's where I think that we, not just in the professional space, but in the lived experience space, can see that, you know, on the ground, boots on the ground, that's where we need to be filling the gap and coming together to be able to find ways to put things uh in place that are going to fill that gap and backfill and come from that outpatient perspective, for instance.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're always thinking of how to uh, you know, add more services, et cetera.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my passion projects is potentially an intensive outpatient somewhere uh between Wollongong on and the South Coast, because there is nothing in the Illawarra sort of Shoalhaven area whatsoever.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing from uh Sydney down to the Melbourne border.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing at the Victorian border, I should say.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Actually crazy.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that is really, isn't that crazy?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, regional's a whole other level, let alone the urban.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: So so do you think there's room for private philanthropy or for, you know, is there anything moving in that space?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously, there's a lot of philanthropists involved in the arts and involved in health, St.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: Vincent's or the Royal Melbourne Hospital, or you know, there's so many places that people give.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: How do you compete with that dollar?
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: And how do you get them to pay attention?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's you've got to fight through a whole wall of stigma very often to be able to get people to understand what this is and why it's so serious and why it's so worthy of people's time and attention and resourcing.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you've and once you've got a few stories in front of people, and which is why the lived experience piece is so crucial, not just in the one-to-one work that we do, but the advocacy piece continues to be such a passion of mine, because the more of us uh that we have as an example of not only what these eating disorders really look like, but what's possible when we get people out the other side.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, when we have meetings with major donors or potential donors through Butterfly or just stuff that I'm doing on my own, what I often leave them with is, you know, in terms of your return on investment and the feeding back into the space that you see with people who you help out of this, so many people are incredibly motivated to come back into the space once recovered as dietitians, as doctors, as uh psychiatric nurses, as coaches, there is such a strong representation in the professional space with people with lived experience.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: If we can get more of those people out of their eating disorder, they will come back into the space and it will continue to, there will be this rate of attrition where it's like we can get the sufferer population number uh down if we can get more people into the space who are so impassioned and so motivated to, you know, there's a wonderful coach, uh Kirsty, she set up a treatment center, a residential in New Zealand.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you think Australia is bad, New Zealand is probably one of the worst in the world as far as access to eating disorder treatment or any options even being available.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: People with lived experience will come back into this field in this space and they will revolutionize it, which is where I think in the next, you know, 10, 20 years, that's where we're gonna see the most change and the most momentum is what's gonna come out of the professional space, particularly of people with lived experience, because we have the passion to do the work, yes, but we also have the passion to either give back what we were privileged and lucky enough to have been given or to fill the gap where we were let down or traumatized by the system or where things should have been better.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: You see a lot of people who don't just want to do the one-to-one work, they want to radically change the system as well.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, all I can say, Mia, is thank goodness that you're one of those people that have come back into the system.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm I'm really impressed with what you're doing, and you're very articulate about the a very complex space with many nuances, as you and I have discussed.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and I also like your optimism, and I feel there is hope for those that are listening because there are many, many people impacted by this.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: And once again, thank you so much for joining me on the What I've Learned podcast.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's been an absolute pleasure and really interesting, a lot of things to learn.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: Learned heaps.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a total honor.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for listening.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind, and curious.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: Love Dev.