Anita Johnston, PhD: What Can Our Eating Tell Us About Ourselves? | The Healing Grove Podcast

The Healing Grove Podcast

This week I would like to introduce you to Anita Johnston, Ph.D., CEDS.
Anita is a psychologist, storyteller, certified eating disorders specialist, and author, and she has been working in the field of women’s issues, eating difficulties and body image distress for over 35 years. She is also the co-creator of the Light of the Moon Café, an online platform similar to The Healing Grove that offers an interactive women’s circle, a book club or “workbook” for Eating in the Light of the Moon, and access to a supportive community of other women.
In Dr. Johnston's view, there might be a hundred different paths to an eating disorder, but one thing that all the women and girls with whom she has worked have in common is a deep intuitive knowing that they sadly learn, at some point along the way, must be silenced in order for them to fit in or succeed in our society. So they shut off their feelings, redirect them elsewhere, and pick up behaviors that distract them from what's going on inside. Thus, it is a reckoning with their own emotions rather than on food, calories, exercise, or numbers on a scale that brings them back into balance, and starts the healing process.
To learn more about Dr. Anita Johnston and the work that she does, please visit: https://lightofthemooncafe.com
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Chapters

1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. Kristin introduces Anita Johnston (00:00:50)

3. Anita explains why she started working with those who struggle with disordered eating (00:03:00)

4. Anita shares how the girls and women that she works with are much like the child in a very familiar tale (00:05:43)

5. The difference between belonging and fitting in (00:08:19)

6. What it means to be a thin-skinned person (00:10:12)

7. The empowerment of assertive communication (00:11:32)

8. A helpful formula for learning assertive communication (00:14:50)

9. Another useful tool to use when communicating your feelings (00:18:45)

10. The importance of getting in touch with and owning your feelings (00:25:43)

11. How our food is speaking to us in metaphors (00:30:35)

12. The problem is not food, but the deep desires that are not being met (00:40:24)

13. How to work further with Anita Johnston (00:43:06)