Healing from addiction with Alice Williams

0:02 A listener production. Before we get into today's episode, justa heads up that this one does discuss eating disorders in some detail, so if this could be triggering for you, you might want to give this one a miss. It also contains some adult language, so if you have little ears around, you might want to listen to this one with headphones. And if you or someone you know struggles with disordered eating, body image or related issues, you can call the Butterfly National Helpline on one eight hundred ed hope. That's one eight hundred three three four six seven three. This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas Done. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher and of course, author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Today, I am delighted to introduce you to someone I've had the pleasure of getting to know over the past couple of years. Ever since I picked up her memoir Bad Yogi in an airport read it, loved it, told everybody that I know to read it immediately got online to stalk the author on the internet.

1:25 Her name is Alice Williams, and in the book, she documents the two years she spent undertaking her yoga teacher training while also working through a twelve step eating disorder recovery program. The blurb on the back of the book describes Bad Yogi as the healing memoir for people who hate healing memoirs, and I think that is very accurate. It is everything that Alice is which is warm, honest, relatable, and honest to God utterly hilarious. It is laugh out loud funny. In our conversation today, Alice shares what she really thought when she attended her first twelve step meeting, how her yoga teacher training complimented the work she was doing in recovery meetings, but also some of the problems that she sees with the spiritual bypassing that can occur in the wellness industry, and how she ultimately overcame her binge eating disorder. I'm going to leave the rest of it to Alice to talk about in the way only Alice can, and I think that by the end of the episode you will appreciate Alice Williams just as much as I do. Here is my conversation with Alice.

2:36 Alice, Welcome to Crappy to Happy. Thank you. I first got to know you when you wrote your book, a self help memoir called Bad Yogi a couple of years ago. Absolutely loved it, have told everybody about it, lent it to my mum. She loved it as well, and she's not even the self help type, but she bloody loved it because it is laugh out loud funny while also being very personal and sharing your experience of working through and eating disorder. So you went through a yoga teacher training program at the same time as you were in formal sort of twelve step recovery programs for this eating disorder, and you talk about all of those experiences and share very openly and vulnerably but also hilariously in this book, Bad Yogi. Can you tell me just a little bit about what led you to write this book?

3:28 Sure, I you know, you summed it up so well. I'd been working in a job in television and had a kind of quarter life crisis. It was a pretty toxic environment and that led me to well, well, basically fall apart. I was pretty suicidal. I realized I had to change direction. I did what most middle class white girls do, maybe to start a yoga teacher training course, and through doing, you know, we did our hours of yoga every day, and then through that really intense experience, it became pretty clear to me that I had a raging eating disorder, I should say. And so then I thought, christ, I'm going to have to get treatment for that as well.

4:12 So the book was really the juxtaposition of doing that twelve step kind of hot house treatment while doing the teacher training, and the two really fed in to each other. They're very different approaches to recovery, healing, wellness. And I've always been a prolific diary keeper, and as part of our teacher training is we had to keep a journal about what the practice was, doing, the philosophy, all that kind of stuff. And part of twelve step is that you journal your feelings and blah blah blah. And I got to I guess the end of the process, I mean, you never fully recover it to a place where I'd felt like a bit more stable and healthy. And I thought, you know what, there's so much stuff in here that I would have needed to read. I was really starting out, because when I started out in recovery, all the books were very serious, and I think in self help particularly, it feels like you've got to do it the right way and you're not doing it the right way and these three steps and blah blah, and I thought, I just need I need a companion on the journey. I need someone to laugh with, someone who's made the mistakes same mistakes that I have. And so I kind of really I tell people I wrote the book that I needed to have. I wrote the book that I needed to read while I was doing that recovery. And another thing I noticed when I was doing I guess the twelve step recovery work and the teacher training was a lot of memoirs were very oh, I was so crap,

5:43 and now I'm really perfect now, And that wasn't my experience. It was very much two steps forward, one step back. And also this idea that one day we're perfectly healed. And I mean, I'm still a crazy nut bag, but I don't express that through food anymore, thank god. But for me, healing was really about embracing the crazy nut bagnets rather than becoming this vanilla perfect white bikini wearing wellness warrior. So yeah, I kind of wrote the book I needed. And did a stellar job of that. And I think that there is so much to talk about. This is why I wanted to talk to you, but it's hard to know where to start. You know, you talk about this, They're very much about healing, and I was really curious to know from your experience, like where did you find a similarity I guess or complementary aspects of something pretty hardcore and confronting, like twelve steps and something much more I'm not going to say light but sort of light on like yoga teacher training, and where were they different?

6:49 Like where what was your experience of doing those two things at the same time and sort of having that real time comparison of these two different approaches to healing something that really needed to be healed, like something that was a real problem for you. That's such a great question and it, I mean, there's so many parts to it. I should mention that the teacher training that I did, there are so many six week courses on the internet or thirty days or you go away for a weekend retreat and you come out of yoga teacher. This was the most immersive course I could find. It was two years full time. Wow. The first year we were told we would just be working on ourselves, we would just be applying the yoke to ourselves, and the second year was about learning to teach other people. So there was very much this philosophy that you couldn't teach until you knew exactly what all the practices did to ourselves. So not just us in our but obviously meditation, the philosophy prodiama, so you kind of had to go through those fires of initiation and it was very much I mean, I don't know how much people know about yoga, but there's this concept of tapis, which is the fire that burns away the impurities, and it's this idea of baptism by fire that you really have to dive in and lose yourself in order to come out ready to help others. And I think that was a huge point of crossover and twelve step. You know that it was very much about stripping away all your illusions, all the things that you used to prop yourself up, all the denial and far outcasts. It is

8:22 absolutely horrific. It's messy, it's so painful. And I think that's where the two crossover again, is that there's a really strong toistered community and being with the same teacher trainees for two years, there was that sense of they call it sunga, so it's a spiritual community. So there was a sense that you're going through this experience and you're being really held within a group. And I think I've also done a lot of therapy. I think that's where I found it really different to therapy because with therapy it's just you and you know, I mean, you're a therapist, you and the therapist. And while that's terrific because you do need to get that nuance of your own personal history, in your own personal story, there can still be that sense of isolation if I'm the only one going through this. So yeah, I guess that's where they were similar, but they're also very different. And one way that they complimented each other was that so much of addiction, and I've been in several different twelve step recovery groups still am and so much of addiction is physical in that the craving is physical, even if it's a process addiction. So process addiction might be things like sex shopping to some aspects. There's aspects around food addiction, which is process driven.

9:41 There's still physical triggers, and yoga had taught me to slow down and notice what was going on in my body when I was triggered, and also notice how I had trapped trauma within my body and how to release. That so that I wasn't used food in this case to numb it. So in that sense, I found that twelve step would bring up a lot of issues, a lot of trauma, a lot of pain, and the yoga really helped me be with that physically in my body and release it physically. So I think the two go absolutely hand in hand. I find that really interesting, and that what I find especially interesting. I am a therapist. I am also very well acquainted with how powerful meditation and yoga can be for healing. And I'm also doing yoga teacher training right now.

10:35 So mine is a six month program. It's a two hundred hour training, you know, so definitely not a two year as intense as what it sounds like. The experience was that you had. And I think the reason that I was interested to ask that question is because I was curious to know. I mean, I did a lot. I did life coaching. I was a life coach before I became a clinical psychologist, and I know that a lot of people came to me for coaching who in hindsight possibly could have used therapy, you know, but there was almost this avoidance of something that was perceived as you know, two confronting or too challenging, or not wanting to admit that the problem was as big as it was. And almost and this is no disrespect to anybody, we will go through our own process and our own journey, but you know, almost looking for an alternative to the hard work going down that sort of coachy wellness kind of path, as an alternative to really facing a bigger problem head on. So yeah, that's why I was interested to know how you found those two experiences, or if you came across that yourself, or if you see a bit of that yourself.

11:43 There is absolutely that aspect in the wellness community, and I found I still find that quite confronting in that one major difference I found with toll Step and wellness was, and I don't want to bag anyone, but the app sphere I find sometimes in different wellness groups like yoga groups, spiritual communities. That kind of stuff can be weirdly oppressive, and I find it because there's this pressure to be love and light and grateful and high vibes only that kind of stuff, and that can kind of when you've got a group. I mean, I'm not an expert in group dynamics, but it can kind of feed off the other people and depending on who's leading the group. I've definitely been in retreats where there's been a kind of sense that you're letting down the group or you're letting down the teacher if you bring in anything to yeah, if you're not constantly reinforcing that this is the best thing in the world. And I know that people come to spiritual communities who do have trauma, and you know, maybe that's not the place for them. And look, I think a lot of the practices in yoga and wellness are about feeling good. It's great, we all want to feel good, but they can be a little bit of a band aid as well. And this idea of the spiritual bypass, whereas if you've got a problem or something going on, you just meditate your way through, on your

13:14 way through yoga, your way through, and that will lift and release it, but in fact, a lot of our then this is only my experience. I'm not a therapist, but I find that a lot of our issues really do have deep roots and are relational, and unless we kind of dig them up and examine them, we're just going to repeat them. And the weird thing is that if you do. I found that if you do go to yoga groups or wellness groups to have that spiritual bypass to feel good, you get to a point where you can only actually relate to other people in the yoga community or the wellness community, and there's this sense that you can only breathe the same air as other people who are kind of high vibes, only that anyone else might pollute you. And I think if you are really ground in your own sense of self, with a deep understanding of your own issues, your own triggers, and an acceptance of those things, it shouldn't matter where you are.

14:12 You will be okay, You will be safe. You know, there's that saying. It's not about recovery, is not about stopping the waves. It's about learning to serve. And I think we do ourselves a disservice when we try and purify ourselves to the point where we can literally only live in an ashram because the rest of the world is too harsh. And it's not to say we should stay in toxic environments at all, but the aim is to be grounded enough that it doesn't affect us as deeply as if we're so pure, we can only kind of meditate the day away, otherwise we're shattered. I know that there will be people listening who, you know, as soon as we mention issues with food eating disorder that you recovered from an eating disorder, there are plenty of people who just want to know, Okay, so what did you do and what really worked for you? So I was wondering if you would mind. I know you've really shared this a lot in the book, but are you able to just kind of share for listeners who may also have issues with food and eating, like, what did your eating disorder kind of look like?

15:10 And what were the what was the key? I guess not that there's a magic one, but you know, like, what were the keys to you effectively overcoming that? Like you said, you don't numb with food anymore, So what was the process for you to heal from that? Well, I'll talk about I just I want to be very clear that I'm not an eating disorder coach or anything, so I'll talk about my experience and what worked for me. Of course, basically, when I noticed that I had the issue with food, I was my issue was I would binge and then under eat or purge. So I would have these things like, Okay, it's my period week. Everyone gets hurry on their period, and then well it's like a week before my period. I can eat for that week, and then what's Friday. I can eat on Friday, and then everyone binges on the weekend. So they're all these excuses, and I've noticed that the binges were becoming closer and closer together. And it really kicked off when I was in that job in TV and it was so awful and they had this chocolate draw so they routinely wondered who had been stealing all the shoulge It had been me, and then I'd you know, eat on the way home, and then I'd eat to get to work, and then they eat throughout the day, binge on the weekend, and then I would purge. I purged through and I don't want to trigger anyone through this. I purged through exercise and laxatives, because I actually tried to purge vomiting, but I couldn't work out the mechanics. Lash and I laughed because I'm so grateful that I could not work out

16:40 the mechanics, because if I had been able to, you know, God knows where I would have ended up. So yeah, I would exercise. I was exercise bolimic and laxatives. And I remember i'd left that job and I was applying for another job and I just couldn't get through the job application without cake. So I went and got cake, and then I went and got some more. And then when I got on some more and I was sitting there eating and it would it felt so mechanical. It was like those moments when you can see yourself outside your body. There was no pleasure. I just it felt compulsive and it was just saying, get it down, just get the food down, get the food down. And I just had this moment of looking at myself thinking something else is going on. And I should say I also had the other side, which was then I would have days where I would so called eat clean. And I hate that expression because I never use the word dieting because everyone knows that dieting doesn't work, but detoxing's okay.

17:40 So there was all this language around it that I could use to deny that I was really just restricting food and you know what that looks like. It's only fruits some days, it's not no flat you know, no this, no that, And that the rules would always change. And part of what I've realized in recovery is that in itself is huge part of what an eating disorder, the role it plays in someone's life is that it's very distracting. It takes a lot of mental energy to feed that no pun intended. And one of the things that I went through in recovery was a huge grief about the amount of time that I'd lost, like and it still almost brings me to tears, being so locked up inside of myself and the disorder that I wasn't progressing in other areas of my life. Anyway, after this cake binge, I was meant to go to a yoga class that night because part of the teacher training is you had to do a certain a number of hours. And I went to the yoga class and it was a really crappy class. The teacher was terrible you know, there were too many people. So I always think even the worst teacher, the worst yoga class, can bring about an epiphany. But I was in the class and I thought, I've just got to really feel what the food is doing to my body. If I can really connect to those sensations in my body, I won't I'll stop eating. And I tried everything to stop eating, and I thought that mindfulness, mindfulness will make me stop eating. Sorry, Cass, I know you love mine. I do, and it did later on,

19:12 but I had to go through some stuff first. But I was doing the class and I heard this voice in my head and it was my voice, but very different. I hadn't heard that voice for years, and it was very gentle, and it just said, you've got no control over this. You've just got no control. And I just thought, oh Jesus, and I kept doing the yoga and then the voice came back and it said, and you need help. And that's when I was really disgusted because I thought. I went home and I just thought, this is just terrible because my image of people with eating disorders was and look, I am sorry to everyone listening. I'm the worst person in the world. But my image of people with eating disorders was twelve year old ballerinas. It was footy wags, it was women who were really vain and skinny.

20:08 It was not it was not me. I was much better than that. I didn't have an eating disorder, but I couldn't deny that obviously I did. And I got online to look up sort of how to treat it. And there was a lot of stuff that I instinctively just reacted against, about body love, body acceptance, all that kind of stuff. And even though you know, I did have issues with my body, I always wanted to be skinnier, all that kind of stuff, it wasn't the huge driver of it. It was really much more mental. And that this is where the addiction side came in. That it was for me, the eating disorder was really about numbing.

20:48 And I wasn't aware of any of this until I'd got into recovery what function it served. But it would be a comfort, it would be it would help me when I was happy, it would help me when I was upset. It was really just about shutting down all feelings. And so I somehow knew that getting counseling around body image and mindfully eating food wouldn't help me, And somehow I stumbled onto some research that suggested that people who were in group support therapy along the lines of alcoholics anonymous, but for people with food issues, had a pretty good recovery rate. And I should just mention there's a few different twelve step groups for eating disorders, and some of quite strict, some are less strict, and it's really I found the one that worked for me. Some not going to kind of advocate any particular one, but I looked it up and there was a meeting in a few days.

21:46 This is when we still had in person meetings, a twelve step meeting, and I just thought, I'm going to go, and I binged until that meeting started, like literally the moment I got on the track to the meaning and I had to wear my I say in the book, I had to wear my fat fat pants because my normal fat pants fit anymore. And I got to the meeting and I hated it, Like I don't know if anyone has ever been in twelve step listening, but there were all these slogans on the wall and all these people smiling at me in this horrible patronizing way, and you know, the bad coffee and it felt like something from some sitcom. It was so humiliating and I just wanted to disappear. They started talking, they did the meeting format.

22:36 I thought, my god, this is a cult because it mentioned God. At one point, I thought, I just want to be here to learn how to deal with this. I could do this in three days and then I'm out of here, like you crazy people consider I'm talking, but I'm not coming back, say arr anyway. And then one by one people started talking and they told my story and it was it was and I had that feeling of when you've lost control in that I was hearing things that I needed to hear that I didn't want to hear. I didn't want to recognize myself in these stories. And what was interesting about the eating disorder the twelve step group I was in, is that it's overreaders, it's underreaters, it's bollimix, etc. Exix. It doesn't matter what you look like, what size you are, it's the fact that you use food, whether that's too much or not enough or purging. It's all the same kind of behavior, which I really liked because it wasn't because it meant that you could recognize yourself in people, even if their disorder looked a bit different to yours. And there was no sense of being better than someone because there one manifested in weight gain whereas someone else's was in weight loss.

23:53 You know, it was all treated as a disorder. And then it was my turn to share, and I just I just cried like and I think that was the first moment of surrender, of letting go, that radical dropping of your ego because you're out of answers, you've got nothing left. And I left there still I cannot describe the shame. I thought, no one is ever going to know that I was in this room. And then I wrote a book about and it was a slow process because I did go back the next week because I was still struggling, and just that sense of recognizing myself, you know, other people's stories was enough to get me back.

24:34 And now I recognize that's a huge part of the twelve step recovery model, is that recognition in fellow addicts of your story and without judgment, and that you're being seen without judgment. And there was also what kept me going back was no one was telling me what to do. You have to do this, this and this in order to recover. There was this idea that you take what you want and then leave the rest, so you come to it in your own time. And so actually, over the months, I kept going and I started to slowly work the program. And I am someone who hates being told what to do, you know, reacts against authority, really rebels against that stuff. But I was so desperate, like they call it the gift of desperation, and there was I guess there's about there's three different kind of ways that you work the program. So one way is that you use the tools of recovery, which is using the phone, talking to other members, journaling, reading the literature, talking to a sponsor. So when those food urges or any addictive craving comes up, you've got another tool to replace it.

25:40 You're not just sitting there, like they call it, white knuckling, gripping the chair. And so I started using the tools. And one of the tools was, and this is specific to eating disorders, was about identifying your trigger foods, So the foods that would trigger you to binge. And for me, there was no question that that was sugar. And I should just avert here to say because I think this might be quite common with people with eating disorders, and some people might get something out of it and other people won't. But I did go to a dietitian to get some kind of eating plan, like a basic you know, you need this much carbohydrate, you need this much whatever. And she was, you know, she was at a very reputable place, and she was a self styled you know, eating disorder teacher, I guess. And she looked at me with such pity when I told her my story, and a pity that I did not appreciate, I must say.

26:41 And she said to me, you know, we want to get you to a point where you can eat the cake, where you can eat the pizza, where you can eat all those foods that you are scared of and they won't buy you. And what I want you to do is I really want you to go home and when your partner brings home the pizza, like get in life, life and fork you know, your best cutlery, your best china, and really enjoy the pizza. And then and you know, and she'd say, you know, what's life without a slice birthday cake? You know, we want you to intuitively know what your body needs, and if you let there's no nothing off limit. And man, I was on a free for all after that. So the next time my partner bought home pizza, I was just like, yep, this is great, and I intuitively ate, you know, the blueberries and blueberry muffins, and then intuitively needed a packet of chips to kind of to top it off, and then intuitively needed a coke.

27:39 And I don't mean to like ridicule it, because I do think intuitive eating works for some people. But my intuition was off, Like my intuition was off like a heroin addicts, like, you know, I really could go it go something right now. So I recognized that I had to stop. I had to use another tool. So my twelve program had the idea that you would create a food plan that worked for you. They don't tell you what to eat, but they do say, identify your binge foods and that's it. You just don't have them. So I cut out sugar, and definitely there was withdrawals. Definitely there was you know, that was a rough road, but you use the tools of recovery to kind of get through. And I mean, I would like to say that I recovered straight away, but there there were slips along the way. I didn't get there overnight. And this was where having a sponsor really helped, because she would say in the past, if I'd binge or if I'd break a diet, I would just say, oh, well, screw it, I'm just going to go go all out and then tomorrow I will start again.

28:46 And she just kept saying. She used a metaphor of a boat. If you find yourself drifting out from shore, just start rolling back, like you don't have a tantrum, you don't jump in the water, You just start rolling back. So every time I would break and have a bin or have a bite of a trigger food, it was about cutting the drama, cutting the guilt, the shame cycle, which would just lead you further in. I'd make a phone call, let it go, and just come straight back to doing the next right thing, the next meal. And slowly, very very gently, I started to find what they call abstinence, which is abstinence in eating disorder recovery is abstaining from your particular compulsive food behaviors. And that's different for everyone.

29:33 And so I think traditional eating treatment and eating disorder treatment that might be where it would end. But with the twelve steps. That was just the first step. There are eleven other steps, and the other steps really dealt with the psychological, mental, and spiritual aspects of why we eat. And it's funny because twelve steps not a twelve step guru. But the first step is different in all the programs. It might be unpowerless over food, I'm powerless over sex, I'm powerless over drugs, But the rest of the steps are the same for everyone. And that is because I think addiction works in the same way for everyone. Really, And a huge principle in the twelve step program is that it is a spiritual disconnection, and so it mentions God, but it really can be anything. It doesn't have to be like a Christian God or something outside of yourself.

30:31 For me, often it's just my intuition, but that sense of something greater than just you. So it's really it's not a religious program. It's just about that sense of defining and connecting to something that you feel can help you along the way. Yeah, And then it gets in the different steps get it into different aspects of our lives and the way we relate to ourselves and to others. And I found it intense, profound and I just could not have done that without the support of the other people in the community. And one thing that I often thought early on was if I could not have this eating disorder and not come to this group, but I do it, And at first the answer is always absolutely, And now I can't believe I'm saying I'm actually really grateful for having had it because it led me somewhere which has completely changed every single aspect of my life.

31:30 It's made every aspect of my life so much richer, and I would not have got there without hitting that rock bottom. That was a very long answer to a very short question. I feel like we could wrap up this podcast now and that would be a great episode because you've just hit on every single thing that I know. That's like so many questions that people would ask you have just answered them all, and I just wanted to say so going back, I really appreciate you know. I don't think you need to apologize. I think it's really important that you are so honest about your own precons you know, your own personal biases and the preconceived ideas you have about people with eating disorders, you know, because I think everybody has those judgments, and like that's what gets in the way. And that's the whole point, isn't it. Like that's why you wrote the book. It's because you share every thought that you have, which other people don't want to admit that they have. And that's that's the past. Like, that's what is so helpful. You're so relatable.

32:33 Cas. It's so funny that you should say that because one of my best friends is the author Kate Holden, who wrote In My Skin, and Kate was on heroin for five years and worked as a prostitute sex worker, and she talks about that in her story. And Kate, I just have to say it. She is cool, Like she is fucking cool, Like she looks cool. She's got these cool stories about what she used to do on drugs, you know. And I'm over here like, oh, I can't handle my bars. And there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people in twelve Step who are what they call cross addicted. So you've got different addictions. And I have other things as well. And I found that once one addiction goes it goes into recovery. Often other things might pop up. So it might be shopping, it might be sex, it might be something else, which is where I guess the program helps because it helps you recognize when that's happening and kind of come back to yourself.

33:33 But yeah, so there's lots of cross addicted people in the meetings, and I just remember this one guy I was in a food meeting and it was his laborer, like he was wearing his fluo vest and he's like, oh, man, you know, I'm in NA, which is narcotics Anonymous for like smack. And I got to say, like, this is humiliating, Like I feel cool when I go to those meetings, but man, coming to this one, Oh, it's just the worst. And I remember reading an account of someone who was in rehab in with IT in England, the Priori, the one that Kate Moss went to anyway, and she said there's like a real hierarchy in rehab of like who's the coolest, and at the top is the drugs, and then there's sex, and then there's alcohol, and then way at the bottom is like the eating disorder patients and everyone's like, oh man, what do you even doing? So yeah, I feel deeply uncol having this is my issue cast but having said that, I'm very grateful.

34:36 It's not drugs, and I, you know, I just also wanted to highlight that you said that you went to this meeting and it was like oh my god, and the slogans and the people and like this is not for me. And it's like, I think that's what most people would think, like how most people would feel, and that's what stops people from showing up, right, And but for you to be able to share that you went and what you you got from it and you went back, you know, it's it's amazing, Like it really is amazing. There is so much that so many people can relate to. And I wanted to point out too, like the point that you make. And I still think I feel like this is obvious, but I feel like a lot of people still don't necessarily get this, that all addiction is the same.

35:21 It's like if it's food or. Alcohol or shopping or eggs or gambling, like it's all serving the same purpose. And I think there is that kind of I don't really have a problem because because I'm doing this, it's you know, it's like it's that hierarchy or if you're drinking too much, you've got a problem. You know, if you're addicted to alcohol, there's a problem. But if you're addicted to work, if you're addicted to marathon running, that's all fine, Like that's all really good, do you know. Like I think there's that as well, like these like socially acceptable addictions. But it's about that radical self honesty about why am I doing this?

36:03 And I think that's I mean, the first step is really about piercing that denial. And I had huge layers of denial because I looked normal on the outside. And I think the kind of eating disorder I had is incredibly common, where it's binging, sometimes under eating, sometimes not throwing up, because it's throwing up is often like such a huge obvious sign to yourself that something's wrong. But I was. I managed to keep a normal weight. I even looked probably healthy, because those behaviors were balancing themselves out. And I would go to meetings and see people who were obese or anorexic, and I'm not that sorry. Therefore I'm fine. And I think there's a lot of high functioning addicts out there, and that's in a way, you know, you're not lying in the gutter, so you think, oh, I'm fine, But only you can know how much it's affecting you, and how much it's affecting your relationships, and how persistent those thoughts are. And I think the mental aspect, how much it's intruding, is a huge thing. And look, no one wants to have an addiction, No one wants to have this stuff. But it's that sense of desperation that will you know, we respond to pain. That's that's what will often drive you there. And look, I often you often see people in their first meeting and you just I recognize myself so much that look of horror and shock and like, who are these crazy people? And you just want to give them a big hug, but

37:33 you don't want to like overwhelm them, like welcome to the club. And look, you just hope they come back, and often they do. And it's it's often the people who surprise you who really stick with the program and have the biggest transformations. And they they have an expression which is don't stop till the miracle happens, which is it gets it does get harder before it gets easy in it, but don't give it up, because you know recovery is just it is a miracle. I know, I sound way cap it is such a miracle as a gift. I hope that you're enjoying this conversation and realizing the benefits of positivity in your own life. If you are enjoying the show, please be sure to like and subscribe so that you get notified when you epps drop and head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review. So some of the questions I had for you, Alice, which you have probably already answered, I think the things that typically put people off something like a twelve step program, quite apart from the stigma of it, to be perfectly honest, like, oh God, I don't need that. Number one, the God is a big thing. Got to hand everything over to God.

38:55 And I think number two, or maybe if at number one, is that admitting that you are powerless over whatever. And I know that you're very honest about all of that, your experience of that. So are you able to just talk a little bit more about how you were able to reconcile that for yourself to be able to continue on that path? Absolutely well, I guess I'll address the powerlessness first and then the god stuff just briefly. It's only when you try and give something up that you realize how much it's got a hold on you. So that expression I can stop anytime, I like, well, why don't you just try and see how that goes. So when I came into recovery, I was really in denial that I was as bad as everyone else, and then when I tried to stop, I couldn't. And in terms of that moment of powerlessness, I remember, I've been resisting the second step, which is about God. And I do just want to clarify again the God one is just a word. It can be anything. It's not that you have to believe in God or anything. And I remember i'd just come home from the hospital my dad was really sick. I'd been in program, in the recovery program for months, I'd been in yoga teacher training for months, and I just had another bingch And I knew everything about dieting, in nutrition and mindfulness, and I'd use the tools and nothing could stop me from keeping going with eating and nothing could stop me from the plan to purge it all the next day, and I remember just lying on the

40:27 couch and looking up at the ceiling and just feeling defeated. And I just thought, I don't give a shit. I've got nothing. I can't solve this. There has got to be something else out there because I cannot do this on my own. And if there is something else out there, will fucking hurry up and identify yourself? Can I need help? And look, that's when I started looking at the second step, which was about came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. And sanity is just how, you know, not being crazy around food, eating sensibly all that stuff. And I had a sponsor, and I grew up the most atheist of atheists, Like atheism was our religion. My family thought that if you believed in God, it was because there was something deeply wrong with you. And now I realize that's true. There was something deeply wrong with me. Then you need a hand to hold and you know, you poor little thing. And so I sort of had a disgust about that idea, but I had that visceral memory of lying on the couch, and I just thought, I've got to try something because I'm going to die, like I'm going to commit suicide.

41:33 I'm going to something's going to happen. And my sponsor just made really gentle suggestions. She said, write a job description of what you would want a higher power to be and do in your life, and then act as if that exists. And I thought, well, that's ridiculous, but I did what she suggested, and I wanted it to be loving. I wanted it to be, you know, working in my favor. I wanted it to be forgiving of when I was imperfect. And that's a huge part of my sense of a higher power now is that I'm not judged. I loved flaws and all even more for my flaws because I was judging myself so much for my flaws. And I just kind of started acting as if that existed. So when I wasn't sure, I would about what to do. I would think, okay, so if I had this higher power, what might that suggestion be?

42:26 And it would be something like go for a walk, you know, or just do the first five minutes. And one acronism acronym that people have for God in program is good orderly direction. So it's not God, it's just good orderly direction, the next right thing. So I did that and I kind of, you know, acted as if this thing existed, and cas like, I just don't know how to say this without sounding really strange. But my life just started to change and I couldn't explain it. Opportunities came out of nowhere. People were behaving differently. I was behaving differently. My thoughts started to be different, and I couldn't it wasn't coming from me, like I was doing what they call the footwork. The footwork is where you do your part, so you make the list, you act as if you make the phone calls. But then it was like something else was kind of stepping in to meet me halfway and doing the things for me that as they say that you can't do for yourself.

43:26 And look, I don't know if God exists. I don't know. I won't know till I die and I meet them or don't meet them. But I do know that when I'm willing to be open to that and I do my share far out, my life is a million times better, like indescribably better. And so I think because I had that evidence of working. Oh and I should say, my eating disorder started to clear up as if on its own, it wasn't It wasn't hard, like it wasn't like fighting it every day no, I'm not going to eat that. No, I'm not going to eat that. Like it was like the cravings started to be lifted. And it didn't happen overnight.

44:07 It happened very slowly. But I just noticed that I wasn't thinking about food. And it was like when you can breathe after being in a stuffy room for years and you can suddenly feel that fresh air. And yeah, I couldn't explain it. And it was really funny because then I started to think I was this really spiritual person who loved everyone and became such an insufferable wanka about the whole thing. And I've got to tell everybody the good news. And I've since calmed down a lot about that. It's a much more personal relationship. And I will add as well, like I think that if you have addiction, it never fully goes away. It certainly hasn't for me in the sense that I am in recovery from an eating disorder. But I still have thoughts that come up around certain things, and they say that, you know, our recovery is contingent on that daily spiritual connection, and so for me, it's a daily practice of connecting to my higher power through meditation, and you know, sometimes I don't believe in God, I disbelieve in my intuition, and other times I believe in you know, and it doesn't matter.

45:18 It really doesn't. No one's going to tell you what it should be. And I think that's actually really want to make this point. I think that that's one interesting correlation between twelve Step and yoga is I found in twelve Step one of the things that kept me going is that there's no hierarchy. There's no leader. There are the founders of AA who wrote the literature and I guess the program originated with but there's no head person. The meeting leaders change all the time, so there's not this cult of personality. And I find that really attractive because it's no one's going to get off on me doing the program. No one wants to take my power by me worship them. Whereas in yoga, I found culturally it lent itself very much to someone being the head of certain practices, someone saying this is how you do it.

46:12 And I found that very very off putting. And I'm always quite I certainly have teachers who I look up to, but I did see cases of abuse and experienced cases where people would try to I don't know how to put this, get me to hand something over to them about myself in the name of spiritual progress and far out. It just it's pretty pretty horrific that that can happen. And I think it's especially horrific because people do go to wellness communities when they're feeling vulnerable, and you really do I wanted someone to tell me what to do, and I would do it. You know. I was right for that kind of abuse. And there's a chapter in the book where I go to I don't name it, but it's the Satchananda Ashram, and I was writing an article for Yoga magazine about sexual sexual abuse within the yoga community. And I found out afterwards that the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in Institutions had had submissions from people who'd been abused by Satchernanda and by people who worked at the ashram. And while I was there, I didn't know that at the time, but I remember having this really uncomfortable feeling of oppression and worship that you had to suppress your aspects of yourself to give over to the leaders of the ashram. And there were even things like women weren't allowed to wear clothing. Police

47:46 were out in force that you weren't allowed to wear certain things lest you inspire lust and all that kind of thing. And so it wasn't about people should maybe just not try and have sex with someone if they don't want to. It was about you shouldn't provoke lust by wearing a pair of leggings. And then I read that the founders of the ashram had been cherry picking young girls anyway. So it was that sense of not owning, that sense that you had to surrender a part of yourself for spiritual advancement. And I did an interview with some people who'd left the Shiva Yoga Ashram, which is another ashram in Melbourne where the leader has been accused of sexual abuse and is still running it, I think.

48:28 And one of the survivors said something to me really interesting. She said, and I just if anyone takes one thing from this podcast, I hope they take this. I will never ever trust someone who claims to be closer to God than I am. And it's not just God, it's someone claiming to have the truth and they can show you. And sure there are going to be teachers who can teach you meditation. There are going to be people who can give you tools to advance you. But if someone has got is a bit tighter than God, then you are with God than you are. That is fucking walkshit and run a mile, because you can't get closer than you already are. We just can't already always see it. Yeah, good advice, And you're so right. You raise a really good point about wellness communities. And this is not like I'm all for wellness communities. I'm all for well I guess I'm all for people wanting to better themselves and look at themselves and be you know self compassion and mindfulness and meditation and be the best version of yourself.

49:28 But you're quite right. It does attract sometimes people who are vulnerable and who are looking for a guru. And it attracts people who want to be a guru and who aren't always the most open hearted, who are dangerous potentially characters. I listened to a podcast I don't know if you've ever heard of it called Guru. I'm pretty sure it's a wondering podcast, and it was about a self styled personal development leader running seminars and attracted a big following. You know, we know many of them. They're all out there who ended up having somebody die in a makeshift sort of sweat lodge, basically boiled alive in a sweat lodge because they were pushing themselves, you know that go into the fire, you know, and burn off all of your impurities and all of the rest of it quite literally and actually died. And he is still He's still out there preaching and practicing and taking people on on you know, retreats, and it's.

50:27 Amazing when you see that they're allowed to. But you know, there's that saying like he who is without sin Carcifer's stone stone, and I even though like the abuses are the extreme obvious end, the thing that I really got from twelve Step and yoga is that you have to confront those aspects of ourselves that might be abusive or that might want to hold onto power that we all have aspects of that egotism. And part of yoga teaching I find is I have to be really aware of when I am wanting to be the guru on the stage, when I am feeding off my student's energy, when I'm starting to feel pretty good about myself, as if the yogurt is coming from me as if they're my teachings rather than I'm just they're coming through me and I'm adding my own flavor, and that can be really hard.

51:27 I mean, depending on what's motivating someone to teach. There's definitely been times when I felt not so good about myself and then I would teach a class and feel like I had a lot of wisdom to impart. People could really learn from me. Hey, maybe I really need to start a business where I am like an influence sarasling. And not to be down on that, because I think, you know, that's perfectly legitimate, but just that you have to have that continual checking in process about letting go and not not hanging on to that ego aspect of teaching, and I guess it's the same for I mean, I guess is it the same for therapists where people can put you on a pedestal and you've got a.

52:09 Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent And you know, I remember that really struck me when I was again I was Tara Bark, who is a clinical psychologist but also a Buddhist practitioner and teacher. She's well known around the world. But I was reading her book, and she said that in Buddhism, like there is no special person, and you know, everybody's equal. We're all we all are equal. That's what equanimity, right is as well, we're all equal, and that's humility, and there's nobody better than the other, and there's no hierarchy, and that she sometimes has to check in with herself when she starts finding herself going, you know, like somebody's late for her, I'm Tara Bark and. I do you not know who I am? Kind of thing.

52:50 She's very honest about. That as her position as she became more well known, you know, somebody not having the meditation Matt set up ride, or somebody running late for you know, some session that she's running as she's live streaming around the world, you know, and that she has to check herself with that special person. And it always stayed with me and I do I check it with myself too, because you know, you have of a podcast, and I have written books now and people look up to me and learn from my work, and I'm constantly having to check in like I'm not a special person. I'm only I'm learning and share it. But I consider must have a conduit, you know, but you've. Got a teenage daughter, and I'm guessing any time that you need to be taken down a pig, you've got a daughter who can yeah, do that. But no, you make a good point, and I think I think those aspects are in all of us. And I guess, well, you know, one of the steps in twelve step is about learning to recognize you know, they call them defects, but those parts of your character that are a bit crappy, and instead of trying to pray them away or spiritual bypass them, you just have to laugh. You just have to accept them and when they come up, just be like, oh, yeah, there you go. You know, I want to be the best one in the room. I want to be better than everyone and kind of forgive it and let it go.

54:05 And that means that when you recognize it in other people, you won't hate them so much because you can kind of laugh at it in yourself. You can forgive it in other people. I mean, and I guess that's what the shadow work is. It's recognizing those shadow parts and just loving them, you know, not condemning them, loving them, and then they kind of they're not so powerful. Anymore. Yeah, I think that you've really just hit on, Alice. The key to all of this and the key to and I guess where we're all trying to get to is that complete self acceptance, flaws and all, not trying to self improve ourselves away, you know, out of our brokenness, but almost and again it's probably sounds a bit waky, but like embracing it, like it's okay because the quote that I love too and I always butcher it, but it is something like, beware the subtle aggression of self improvement.

55:00 Wow, he said that. That's amazing. Bob Style I think is his name, but I say it all the time to people, beware the subtle aggression of self improvement. Isn't that just because you never fixed? Are you? You never fixed? There's always more, and it's just it can be an addiction in itself. It's an aggression against the self. Right. There's a quote in the book, and it's my teacher Jorge, who is Andrew Morenis in real life, and he's quoting some really wise guru who says, you know, ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything, and that is how the light gets in. And I'm like, oh, who's that is that room and he's like, no, it's not a Cohen, but it's that idea that it's the cracks, the cracks in our armor, and that's where vulnerability comes in. That's where connection comes in. And I just want to quickly say I don't know if this time, but I was in a twelve step meeting the other day and they're all on zoom. I'm in Melbourne, so we're in lockdown meetings on zoom and I was listening to this guy.

56:03 There were people in a various levels of recovery in the meeting, and there were some who were like really happy and inspiring and some people who are really struggling and inspiring. And there was this guy who came in and he was just desperate. He was just so flat, and he was talking about being cross addicted and he's relapsed in this area, and these other things come in and blah blah blah, and you know, I identify as cross addiction. I've cross addicted. I've got a few things going on. And he just was the most inspiring person that I connected to all meeting because he was there. He was there. He was showing up, he was being honest about his experience, he was being honest about how he felt. And something about that courage and that honesty to show up as you are and just say this is what's going on for me just really touched me in that meeting, And I think, I guess that's the thing about we want to self improve to the point where we no one can relate to us, like I can't relate to that perfect person. And I think this is the thing about the wellness trend, particularly on Instagram, you know, I just I cannot relate to the people with the perfect body, the airbrushed images, the so called inspirational quotes. And it's so weird because one of my former teachers, who is like an ex gymnast, so she can do all those poses where you put your feet on your head backwards on a handstand, you know, that would that I sort

57:36 of cringe my back aches every time I look at them. And it was a picture of her doing this impossible pose on the edge of the cliff, like if I was like, if you moved to an inch, you would be in the newspaper. And the quote was something about just try your best you know, no one's watching, and I'm like, are you so real? Are you kidding me right now? Like that is not that is not you know. So yeah, I think there's this real hardline that particularly maybe influencers, I don't know, you feel that you want to be inspiring and aspirational, but at the same time, if people can't relate to you, it's really just feeding your own ego. It's not actually helping anyone. So that's yeah, I guess that's something that that wellness community kind of has to look at.

58:26 Yeah, And I think that's a good point too for anybody listening. Like, I think it's always good advice that no matter how positive somebody's message is, if it gets to the point that it's making you feel bad, then it's okay to unfollow and no disrespect because somebody else will be getting what they need from that person or or you know, at a different point. But you know, I learned that early on. You know, years ago, I directed a client of mine to a particular website or a person who was a parenting expert, you know, and she had a lot of great tools and great advice, and I I found myself often referring people to her work, and they often learned a lot and they gained a lot. But at one point a client came back to me and said, I had to unsubscribe from the emails because it was making me feel worse about all of my own like because I wasn't able to you know, and that's something we have to sort of look at in ourselves too. Like, I just found it was too positive all the time.

59:21 There was no allowance for the fact that sometimes you're not going to get it right. And that's okay. You know, you're not always going to be the most present, calm, peaceful parent. I mean that no teacher, whether you're the student or the teacher, you're never going to get that balance right for every single person. Some people will find you too positive, some people will find you too whatever. So as long as you're true to yourself, you kind of can't go wrong. Yeah, And it comes back I think to that saying take what you like and leave the rest. There are definitely teachers who I find have wonderful things to say. Particularly the American teachers do this a lot. They're a lot glossier than the Australian. I don't know if you find that Cass but I find that that glass and that perennial upbeatness can kind of get to me after a while.

1:00:07 And then I just remind myself they any bad, They're not wrong. Just take the lessons that they've got that I like, and then just leave all the other stuff. I don't have to take that onto. Yeah, I think that you'd make a great influencer, Alice. I think that you really like you should. You should start a bad Yoga Instagram account and just share your relatable, humorous, hilarious life advice because you have so much to share. I assume. I just want to ask you too. There are a lot of people in lockdown who have been in lockdown for about seventy gazillion bloody months and really struggling. Everybody's over it, and this is a time when people's issues can come to the surface. You know, we know that alcoholism is on the rise. You know, we know that people are stuck at home. If you've got some sort of crutch, it's probably you know, out of control for a lot of people at the moments.

1:01:00 So if somebody is listening to this and they're going, maybe this is what I need to jump into one of these communities where I can get some support. I mean, you know, it might be food, it might be alcohol, it might be I don't know. Maybe you can't answer the question, but how do people go about finding those services when they're stuck at home in lockdown? Yeah? Look, I think I can only speak from my own experience and my experiences with twelve Step. That's where I go for all my addiction needs. And I think it's just identify what the issue is. You know, is it spending too much, is it whatever it is? Is it obsession with a person? Is it codependence? And you know, just google codependence, anonymous, alcoholics, anonymous, overreader's anonymous. They've got.

1:01:44 So that's the one blessing of lockdown is there are so many meetings online all the time, all day long, and just jump into a zoom meeting. You can have your camera off and just listen and see if it's a few. And I would say, they say, try six meetings. I heard six meetings and I was like, there's no way. But different meetings have a really different vibe. So if you go to one and it just doesn't feel quite right, stick it out, go to a few different meetings, give it a little while before you decide if it's right for you and just show up. All you have to do is show up. Alice, you are a gem. I'm so happy that we had the opportunity. We've been trying to do this since June. You're a gym. I'm so glad that we finally.

1:02:24 Made it happen and had an earthquake knockout. We've had no no end of challenges, but we're here and I am so grateful to you for everything that you have shared today. Thank you so much, and please everybody go out and buy Bad Yogi. It's a couple of years old now, so it's probably not at the top of the best seller list anymore, so let's revive it get some more sales going because it is so worth a read. Thanks Alice Cat, You're a Gym. Thank you. Alice's memoir, of course, is called Bad Yogi, and I hope that by now you've already added it to your next online shopping order. Give it to everybody you know for a Christmas present. You will love it. I know you won't regret it.

1:03:05 If this episode has raised any issues for you, remember you can call the Butterfly Foundation National helpline on one eight hundred ed hope that's one eight hundred double three four six seven three, or as Alice said, there is an online recovery meeting for just about anything, just a quick Google search away. It's safe, anonymous, and accessible, of course, from the comfort and privacy of your own home. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Crappy to Happy. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts by pressing the little plus button on the top right, or by hitting the follow button if you're listening on Spotify, and of course, please also leave us a rating and review, as that does help us to reach more listeners. I can't wait to chat with you on the next episode of Crappy to Happy.

1:03:58 Listener