MODULE 1PLAYSHEET

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BECAUSE SELF-WORTHDOESN’T HAVE A SIZE.

MODULE 2TRANSCRIPT

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Hello Untameable!!!

Welcome to Module 2!

I am so excited for you to dig in to this module because it is probably one of the most important in your You, On Fire journey.

In this module, we’re going to be talking about:

- How to reclaim body language, so your emotions aren’t being manipulated by society’s stigmas.

- Why your doppelgänger—your inner critic—is NOT your voice and why this helps to neutralize it, so you can turn up the volume on your inner voice of compassion (otherwise known as the badass within)

- Daily rituals for making your doppelgänger your ally, so it isn’t dictating your self-worth anymore.

As always, I can’t wait to hear about your mission successes and chat with you on our coaching call.

Check it out…

Our beliefs shape our body image and that is why actively working on uncovering the beliefs that are feeding your self-hating prophesies and changing them is a huge part of the work we’re going to be doing together.

Our beliefs are developed over time based on the experiences we have, the messages we receive and our emotional connection to those events. Often, we have beliefs that aren’t serving us and therefore by actively changing our beliefs, we can write a new story that’s going to serve us better.

In this module, we’re going to begin to uncover some of the intentions behind our beliefs so we can be more loyal to our badass selves.

First, let’s talk about size discrimination, the language of body talk and how this influences our beliefs and body image.

Size Discrimination

Size discrimination is an unfortunate reality in our sizephobic culture—it is a fact that people are treated differently based on their weight. The consequences of size discrimination range from being denied adequate health care to increased likelihood of bullying and it’s the fourth most prevalent form of discrimination in the U.S., according to the National Association Of Fat Acceptance. We cannot improve our body image without looking at it from this broader social perspective because these issues are what feed our belief that thinner is better.

Module TWO: Conquering Self-Doubt

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In our society, weight and health have become a measure of worth and social status. People who are thin are privileged – for example, thin people get different treatment options for their health issues whereas weight loss is how our medical system often attempts to treat disease in fat people.

We are going to blow up the stereotypes around weight in the next module, but for now the bottom-line is this: Many of our limiting beliefs around body image are the result of weight discrimination. If all bodies were celebrated and treated equally, weight wouldn’t be a measure of worth or social power in our culture.

I think we can all agree that people of every size (and gender, race, sexual orientation, age and ability) deserve equality and respect and therefore, this is a social issue that impacts all of us.

This ties in to how we speak to ourselves and the language of body talk.

The Language Of Body Talk

Language is so important. Our language reinforces and dictates our thoughts, so the first thing we want to do when we talk about changing our beliefs is to change our language so that it’s supporting a positive body image. Anything that reinforces that some bodies are better than others needs to go.

How often have you said, “I feel fat” or “I’m feeling so huge?” We have learned to interpret and speak our feelings in the dialect of body size—which is the dialect of diet culture and only reinforces that our bodies are problems.

Diet culture teaches us to articulate our emotions and struggles of living in a culture that oppresses larger bodies and women through self-criticism of our body. The problem with this is that when we're speaking the language of diet culture, we're looking to dieting and weight loss to fix it, which is not the answer.

Using our appearance to describe our emotions limits our ability to tune into what we really need to heal our body image and reinforces fatphobic beliefs.

When we think about using the word fat in this context, how do you think this influences your relationship with your body? If you’ve correlated size with negative emotions, do you think you would be willing to accept your body size unconditionally? Likely not. Naturally, we want to do anything we can to prevent ourselves from emotional harm and therefore if we have a negative association with weight and size, we are going to desire thinness to protect ourselves.

Conversely, referring to bodies as “real” or “normal” also reinforces this belief that anything that doesn’t fit within this box is abnormal.

A core belief that will improve your body image is that all bodies are good bodies and that all bodies are worthy. And change our culture! In order to truly believe that, we have to stop using words like “fat” and other words that describe size in a negative way. It doesn’t mean we stop using these words, rather we just stop using them in a negative way.

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Fat means to have adipose tissue and according to dictionary.com it also means “the richest or best part of anything,” so there’s that too.

“Fat” and “thin” are descriptors, much like “short” and “tall” and “brunette” are, and we need to start treating them as such. We would never wake up in the morning and think, “I feel so brunette today.”

As Jes Baker says in her book Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls, “The only negativity that this word carries is that which has been socially constructed around it; our aversion is completely learned.”

She goes on to say that we don’t need to stop using the word fat, rather we need to stop the hatred that we’ve connected to it. WORD Jes!!

What’s happening when we say things like “I feel fat” is that we are intertwining our emotions with “fat” and “thin,” neither of which are actual feelings. Saying “I feel fat” is never about being fat—what we’re really saying is that we feel a certain way or feel there is something wrong with us. As it says in the book When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies by Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter, “We turn our bodies into metaphors for all of our bad feelings—and we find confirmation for doing so everywhere we look.”

When we correlate our emotions with our body shape, we immediately become invested in seeing a body type as “good” and anything else as “bad.” We see “thinness” as being superior and our ticket to a multitude of positive emotions; thus, we see anything else as inferior and to be avoided at all costs. In order to change that mentality, we have to challenge our own beliefs and stereotypes about what it means to be “fat” or “thin.” We have to stop correlating our feelings with body sizes. We have to stop speaking the language of diet culture!

Fat is a descriptor. End. Of. Story. You get to take the power back with the words that you’ve used as weapons against yourself and the more you do, the faster you will emerge as your Untamed self. So, I encourage you to neutralize and reclaim the word fat—if you feel like you identify as a fat person, then break the rules and start using it to describe yourself. This can be an incredibly empowering experience.

This brings us to your mission…

Mission: Speak Your Feelings & Neutralize Fat

This mission is about changing your language.

Step #1: Stop using words like fat, huge, big, gross etc. etc. to describe your feelings or behaviors. If you want to state that you are unhappy with your body, then say how you really feel.

For example, “I’m feeling really ashamed today.”

I also want you to drop words like “obesity” and “overweight” from your vocabulary—they are based on the flawed BMI system and have false pretenses to disease, which we’ll discuss in the next module.

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Step #2: Start to neutralize or reclaim the word fat. The more you start to get comfortable using this word and perhaps even identify with it (if you feel you do), the less shameful it will be.

I find it helpful to say, “Fat is just fat. Thin is just thin. We are all humans.”

Note: This is going to be SUPER counter-culture to most people so I wouldn’t suggest using it to describe someone else unless they are DWFA (down with fat acceptance) and already identify this way.

Once you start to actively change your language, you will be on your way towards reinforcing the belief that all bodies are good and worthy. And you’ll take that shameful feeling away from the word fat.

Pause the audio here and make any notes on this mission in the playsheet before moving on…

Now we’re going to talk about how to respond to self-doubt…

Taming Your Doppelgänger – a.k.a your Inner Critic

Before we dig in to this, I want to say that this part of the course ranks at about a 15 out of 10 on the woo woo scale. So grab your favorite jam-band t-shirt, wrap your hair in a tie-dyed scarf and spark up some incense because you’re about to embrace your inner woo.

You are all brilliant women and there is one thing us bold, brilliant women have in common – self-doubt – that negative voice that says “you’re not good enough” or “no one will ever find you attractive” etc. etc.

I like to call that negative voice your doppelgänger or DG for short (in the coaching world, it’s called your inner critic or other names). You can call it whatever you’d like.

We’re going to talk about why it shows up as body shame and how you can turn it from your worst enemy into your greatest ally.

There are a few critical pieces to understand about your doppelgänger:

I’ll note here that I learned this from Tara Mohr, author of Playing Big—so big props to her!

We all have a doppelgänger—that negative voice in our head. It never goes away completely because it’s a part of our psyche that everyone has. That’s not to say that we need to listen to this voice, but it’s important to realize that it’s there for a reason and that everyone has it—so you’re not defective for having this voice.

It shows up in different ways and places in our life—as it relates to body image, it shows up as body perfectionism or hate—but all people have it in some way shape or form. For example, it might show up at work telling you that you don’t deserve that promotion or that you shouldn’t speak up in the meeting because your ideas aren’t valuable.

Your doppelgänger is the voice of all of your “shoulds.” The list of “shoulds” you created in Module 1 are all driven from this part of yourself.

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Your doppelgänger is an expression of the safety instinct within you. It wants to protect you from emotional discomfort and risk. It wants to keep you safe. Even though the words that it hurls are cruel and hateful, the reason why this is happening is to protect you from emotional harm and risk.

This changes the way we look at it because it’s not something we can tell to shut up. We have to understand what it’s trying to protect us from so we can respond to it accordingly.

Most often, it’s a manifestation of an innocent piece of yourself: the little girl who was teased for her body by some jerkstore named Tommy, the girl who felt lost and alone at college so made pizza and reruns of Party Of Five her BFF, the woman whose heart was broken by her asshat boyfriend, etc. etc.

Our doppelgänger is born out of these events and tries to protect us from ever feeling that pain again. For example, if you were teased for your body as a child, then your doppelgänger is definitely going to show up as the voice of body perfectionism to try and protect you from ever feeling that pain again.

As one of my mentors, Tara Mohr says, “it has no interest in your joy, fulfillment or self-actualization.” It doesn’t want you to have that because that is vulnerability and it puts you at risk for emotional harm. It wants us to avoid conflict, avoid vulnerability, be afraid of shame, be people pleasers or perfectionists and hold ourselves back from living the lives we are destined to have. So if you want joy—and I’m assuming you do—then you have to learn to work with it and not follow its direction.

Anytime we step outside of our comfort zone it’s going to show up, which is important to realize when you do this work since living your life unapologetically requires you to step outside of your comfort zone quite a bit. It’s really important to know this because anytime that we are not playing safe, we will feel it—and let’s face it, overcoming body image issues and showing up as your true self in this Barbie-girl-Barbie-world means you’re going to step outside of your comfort zone.

The reality is that if we want to live fulfilling lives, we’re likely going to need to take up more space and put ourselves out there—as a result, we are going to feel self-doubt because our doppelgänger wants to keep us small and safe. Keep this in mind because anytime we are making big changes to find greater fulfillment in our lives—whether that’s in our career, our relationships or taking time to tend to our needs, it’s going to show up.

Lastly, we can never banish it completely—it will certainly diminish and especially as it relates to your body, but the most important thing to do is to learn how to not listen to it and to not let it define you in order to live the life you desire to have.

Now that you understand that we all have a doppelgänger and that it’s a reflection of our safety instinct, let’s dig in to how to manage and respond to it.

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Step #1: Recognizing when it shows up

The first thing you want to do is to become aware of it and label and notice when it shows up.

When you’ve let this voice dominate your thoughts for so many years, it can feel like it’s your own voice. I remember thinking, what do you mean, this isn’t my voice? It’s become so intertwined with our own voice, but once you become really mindful of it, you’ll start to see how often it plays a role in the decisions and thoughts that we have.

Our doppelgänger shows up in 3 ways. It shows up as a voice, in our actions and as a visceral reaction:

#1 - Voice:

The first obvious example is the mean girl voice—things that you would never say to someone else, like “ugh, you are so disgusting…what is wrong with you?!?”

The doppelgänger is mean. I think for many women this can feel like an evil broken record that’s been giving us a repetitive mental beatdown for most of our lives. We let the doppelgänger’s voice dictate our feelings about ourselves. The other place it shows up that we really need to watch out for (especially as you are doing this work!) is criticizing us for having these thoughts—so you’re standing at the mirror thinking, “oh lawdy, why do I feel so unattractive?” and the voice will say “what is wrong with you? Stop beating yourself up…get a grip!” I call this double downing on shame.

#2 - Actions:

The second place it shows up is in our actions. It points us to things we “should” and “shouldn’t” do—the voice that guides us to change our outfit 15 times, or put off going shopping or going to a party or putting your full-body photo on facebook or asking for help.

I didn’t realize how often my doppelgänger was driving the bus. It wasn’t until I was able to see what I really wanted to do and what I imagined my future Untamed self would do vs what I was actually doing, that I was able to see how much it was ruling my actions.

#3 - Visceral:

Lastly, it can be a visceral feeling. For example, when you look at yourself in the mirror or you see a picture of yourself and you get hit with that wave of shame or an intense feeling in your gut.

The many personalities of your Doppelgänger

Your doppelgänger is one multifaceted mofo. You may find you have several variations of it. Some common manifestations of the doppelgänger are the people pleaser, the perfectionist, the control-freak, the productivity demander, the conflict avoider, the victim, the voice of diet culture or your diet brain and the overarching asshole voice that tells us we’re not good enough and incompetent.

Later in the program, we’ll explore how these different manifestations prevent you from

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Mission: Identify Your Doppelgänger’s Behavior

In this mission you’re going to channel your inner Olivia Benson (my hero from Law & Order: SVU) and start to investigate your thoughts.

Step #1: Using the playsheet for this module, answer the prompts.

Step #2: Over the next week, take note of when it shows up for you. Notice how often it shows up as a voice, action or visceral reaction.

Notice whether you have different variations of it and label them. Some common ones are: the people pleaser, the perfectionist, the control-freak, the productivity demander, the conflict avoider, the victim, the voice of diet culture or your diet brain and the overarching judgy voice that tells us we’re not good enough.

Be mindful not to ruminate on these thoughts, rather be curious and log your findings in the playsheets to see if you notice any patterns in when and why it occurs.

Pause the audio here and make any notes on this mission in the playsheet before moving on…

Now we’re going to talk about the next step towards taming it.

Step #2: Separate yourself from your doppelgänger.

It’s critical to separate the “I” from that voice. For example, instead of saying “I’m gross”, say “My doppelgänger is telling me I’m gross”. That way we can separate it from our own voice and respond to it.

I’m going to give you a few things to play with here and you can choose the approach that resonates best with you.

Often it’s helpful to give that voice a name – for the purpose of this tutorial, I’m calling it your doppelgänger, but I encourage you to find a name that resonates with you. Inner critic is a common name that’s used.

As I said earlier, our doppelgänger is born out of experiences we’ve had through our life. It’s trying to protect us from feeling the emotional harm we’ve experienced, so it’s manifested as our negative voice.

Perhaps there is a time in your life where you felt particularly insecure about your body—for me, that would be when I was around age 11 to 14. One tactic that I’ve found really effective for some women is to keep an image of yourself at that age handy to remind you that it’s this innocent piece of you. This comes in handy when we get to the last step, which is around responding to it with compassion.

If this doesn’t resonate with you or is too painful, you can characterize it in a different way. Perhaps you visualize it as an 3-legged dog or personify it as a person. For some people it’s helpful to make it a ridiculous character or monster. For example, I sometimes visualize mine as the Cheshire Cat from Alice In Wonderland. Trippy!

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Your next mission is to create a personification of your doppelgänger or doppelgängers if you have multiples.

Mission: Explore Your Different Doppelgänger(s)

Step #1: Create a personification of your doppelgänger(s) that resonates with you. Perhaps it’s using the picture of your younger self or maybe it’s turning it into a ridiculous character.

Or perhaps you have multiple doppelgängers and you use both tactics. Play with all of them and see what works best for you! Most importantly, give it a name that resonates with you.

Step #2: Practice separating the “I” from that voice. To put this into practice, instead of saying, “Ugh, my hips are so ugly…”, you’ll say “my doppelgänger is telling me that my hips are unattractive.” Or “my inner perfectionist made me feel bad for not getting my to-do list done.” or “my diet brain made me feel bad for eating that cupcake today.”

You are separating the negative part of yourself from you, because it’s not you. It might really feel like you and it can sometimes take a while to really create that separation, so keep practicing it.

Pause the audio here and make any notes on this mission in the playsheet before moving on…

Now we’re going to talk about why it shows up.

Step #3: Understanding why it shows up. Understanding the fear.

As I mentioned before, it never goes away completely and it's important to understand why it's showing up so you can decide the best way to respond to it. Telling it to shut up, doesn’t work.

As I said earlier, it’s an expression of our safety instinct so the voice is a reaction to a fear we have.

Some of those fears might be: judgment, disconnection, vulnerability, rejection, failure, reality – better to stay stuck hating yourself than be vulnerable. It protect us from possibly feeling shame, getting hurt and feeling difficult emotions.

So your next mission is to pay attention to why it might be showing up for you.

Mission: Understand Your Doppelgänger’s Intentions

Step #1: When you’re hit with a wave of body shame, I want you to ask yourself, what am I afraid of here?

Most often its intentions are fear based. Remember, it wants to protect you from emotional discomfort.

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Step #2: Take note of any common themes or patterns in your fears.

To put this together, you’ll separate yourself from the voice and remove any negative connotations to bigness. Then see if you can identify what the fear might be. For example, you would say “My doppelgänger is telling me that I’m unattractive. What am I feeling afraid of?”

Pause the audio here and make any notes on this mission in the playsheet before moving on…

Now we’re going to talk about how to deal with it.

Step #4 & 5: Turning the volume down on your doppelgänger and tapping into your voice of compassion.

Ok, you might need to buy some magic crystals for this part because we’re going off the charts on the woo scale. Hell, you may even want to consider eating some Ayahuasca… kidding! In all seriousness, this piece is critical so let me be your shaman and guide you through it.

I want to give you a couple of different techniques to use to help you stop taking direction from your doppelgänger.

It’s not enough to just recognize it and know why it’s there – we need to stop taking direction from it and we need to crank up the volume on our voice of compassion.

Before we do that, I want to give you an analogy to work with. Think about your brain split into two parts. One side is your doppelgänger – the voice of self-doubt, fear and perfectionism. The other side is your voice of compassion – the one that knows you are lovable, worthy and valuable to this world.

Think about these two sides of your brain as jars. How often is the doppelgänger side being filled? In our size and beauty obsessed culture, your doppelgänger jar is probably getting filled up a lot. Between the messages we receive in our culture and the way we’ve internalized them into “shoulds,” expectations and self-deprecating thoughts, your doppelgänger jar might even be overflowing.

On the contrary, how often is your voice of compassion jar being fed? How often are you giving yourself words of comfort and love or accepting them from others?

If there is one thing I want you to take away from this module it’s that we need to actively be filling our compassionate jar: By giving ourselves credit and acknowledging the qualities we bring to this world, by offering ourselves words of love, compassion and forgiveness, accepting love from others and by taking actions that show that we matter.

This is what this visualization is designed to do.

You will be able to find this as a separate audio download in the module dashboard, so you can refer to it easily whenever you need it.

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If you are doing something, stop and take a couple minutes to sit down. If you are driving, then pause this and come back to it later.

I want you to think about a recent moment in time where you felt that negative voice. Now, I want you to close your eyes, relax and take a deep breath.

I want you to picture a stereo in front of you. That stereo controls the volume of your doppelgänger’s voice. I want you to reach out and try turning the volume up. Can you hear the voice getting louder? Now I want you to try turning the volume down. Can you hear the voice getting quieter? Now I want you to turn it all the way down. Can you hear the silence?

Now I want you to put your hand on your heart and I want you to ask your heart, “What advice do you have for me in this situation?” “What do you want me to know?”

Open your eyes and write down what she/heart said.

The voice that we just tapped in to is your voice of compassion.

Building up this voice is critical because this is the voice you want to start listening to. It’s like a muscle that you want to start flexing as often as possible. We want to fill up this jar!

A few notes before your mission:

First, this doesn’t mean you are going to eliminate struggle, feelings of sadness, fear, shame or anger. Those things are ever-present in our life. Rather, this will give you a way of comforting yourself and being able to move through it instead of suppressing it and letting it simmer over into a self-hate extravaganza.

Second, I often see women try to silence their doppelgänger by getting angry at it, telling it to “shut up” or trying to respond to it intellectually. This doesn’t usually work. Remember, our doppelgänger is the manifestation of an innocent piece of ourselves—for example, the child who was teased. What do you think that child needs? How do you think she is going to react if you tell her to shut up or try to intellectually convince her that everything is OK?

Telling her to shut up will only make her more upset and therefore fire up your doppelgänger’s voice even more. Intellectually trying to rationalize with her does nothing to comfort her to let her know that she is safe.

What this part of you really needs is love, kindness and comforting. This is why I find it helpful to acknowledge the fear, because it helps remind you that your doppelgänger is just this innocent part of you that will never go away. It helps you to tap into that compassionate response.

You need to reassure that part of you that everything will be OK and that you’ve got this covered.

Your next mission is to start flexing your compassion muscles.

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Mission: Fire Up Your Voice Of Compassion

Step #1: Building on the other steps in this module, I want you to practice using the visualization everyday to turn the volume down on your doppelgänger and respond to it using your voice of compassion. Refer to the playsheets for this module for a summary of all the steps together.

If this feels comfortable for you, keep a picture of your younger self handy—perhaps on your desk or on your bedroom mirror—to remind you that your negative voice is just innocently trying to protect you. This will help you to respond to it in a more comforting and compassionate way. Only do this if it resonates with you!

Step #2: Using the playsheet for this mission, write down a daily message from your voice of compassion. You’ll soon have a list of incredible messages to yourself!

There is a lot of stuff in this module and it certainly will take you a long time to master these things. The work in this module is probably the most important in this entire course, so I want you to practice this daily and come back to it often.

I can’t wait to hear about your mission experiences in the Facebook group and chat with you on our group call!

Rock on and I’ll see you in Module 3!