Ever felt like you're standing on the battleground every mealtime, with your picky eater child on the opposing side? You might be surprised to uncover that the roots of picky eating can be traced back to our own childhood experiences and narratives. This episode uncovers the deeper issues that influence our reactions to picky eating, urging us to look at our own food traumas and how they affect our attitudes towards our child's eating habits. It's a riveting journey into understanding why picky eating can be so triggering for us as parents, how it impacts our family dynamics, and the significance of acknowledging our own food narratives.
Trigger alert! Dealing with our unresolved food trauma can lead to heightened reactions to our child's picky eating. This episode emphasizes the importance of recognizing our triggers and how understanding our own food story can help us in maneuvering through the maze of selective eating. In addition, we also examine how childhood experiences, neurodivergence, and unmet needs shape our relationship with food and our approach to our children's eating habits. We've also touched upon how our own neurodivergence, or that of our children, can affect our relationship with food, and how our needs as parents can often be overlooked.
This isn’t your regular advice episode. We're looking beyond short-term fixes and focusing more on raising intuitive eaters who can confidently trust their bodies. We're offering some valuable tips on how to create an environment of acceptance and understanding around food. But remember, it's not just about resolving picky eating, but also about understanding our triggers, practicing acceptance, decreasing our alarm responses, attending to our own needs, and giving ourselves grace.
Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.
Ever felt like you're standing on the battleground every mealtime, with your picky eater child on the opposing side? You might be surprised to uncover that the roots of picky eating can be traced back to our own childhood experiences and narratives. This episode uncovers the deeper issues that influence our reactions to picky eating, urging us to look at our own food traumas and how they affect our attitudes towards our child's eating habits. It's a riveting journey into understanding why picky eating can be so triggering for us as parents, how it impacts our family dynamics, and the significance of acknowledging our own food narratives.
Trigger alert! Dealing with our unresolved food trauma can lead to heightened reactions to our child's picky eating. This episode emphasizes the importance of recognizing our triggers and how understanding our own food story can help us in maneuvering through the maze of selective eating. In addition, we also examine how childhood experiences, neurodivergence, and unmet needs shape our relationship with food and our approach to our children's eating habits. We've also touched upon how our own neurodivergence, or that of our children, can affect our relationship with food, and how our needs as parents can often be overlooked.
This isn’t your regular advice episode. We're looking beyond short-term fixes and focusing more on raising intuitive eaters who can confidently trust their bodies. We're offering some valuable tips on how to create an environment of acceptance and understanding around food. But remember, it's not just about resolving picky eating, but also about understanding our triggers, practicing acceptance, decreasing our alarm responses, attending to our own needs, and giving ourselves grace.
Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.
Hey there, mama, you're listening to the Lift the Shame podcast. I'm your host, crystal, mama of Five and your family's intuitive eating dietitian, here to help you cut through the diet culture clutter so you can enjoy freedom with food as a family. I'm on a mission to help you end the generational legacy of diet culture in your home so you can experience motherhood free from food guilt and body shame. Listen in weekly for guidance on how you can ditch diet culture, heal your relationship with food in your body and confidently raise intuitive eaters. Let's dive in and lift the shame together. Hey, mama, welcome back to the show. I so appreciate you taking time to tune in to these episodes, so just want to say thank you so much for being here with me today.
Speaker 1:Over the past few weeks, we have been taking a deeper dive into different topics around picky eating. Picky eating can be a huge source of stress and discomfort for parents for many reasons, and if you are doing this hard work of helping and supporting your kids to have a more positive experience and relationship with food, you will likely come across picky eating in some form or another, and today I wanted to take a look at some of the deeper issues that influence how we feel about picky eating as parents, and why is this important? I feel like this is where a lot of conventional picky eating advice or recommendations typically falls short. Oftentimes, as parents, if you are navigating picky eating or dealing with a child who is a selective eater, we are looking for the quick fixes what can I do to get my child to eat more variety, or to eat different foods, or just to eat more in general? And while these questions may be helpful on a superficial level, I think we are missing the deeper things that are more important in actually helping our kids develop a more positive relationship with food, and that has to do with us, and this is not the quick fix. This is not the easy answer, but it's just as important, if not more important, to the longevity of how our kids feel about food and their bodies. So often, when we're looking to frameworks or feeding guidance like what do I do in this situation? How do I navigate this In order to achieve a specific outcome we are missing the deeper, more important things that are actually necessary for us to hold space for our kids and to help them internalize a deep message of trust. That trust is so key in them being able to learn how to listen to and honor their bodies and being able to trust themselves as the best experts of what they need.
Speaker 1:So many of us, as parents, are carrying these ingrained messages that have been internalized from childhood that we can't trust our bodies, that our bodies are wrong, that our bodies are problems that need to be fixed, that there's something inherently negative about our food preferences or our appetites. These are the narratives that so many of us are carrying with us, and those narratives easily get projected into how we engage with our children around food or relate to them around their bodies. And, more than just frameworks or quick feeding fixes, we need to do the deeper work of how am I showing up in my feeding relationship with my kids? What are my attitudes and behaviors demonstrating to them? Because those are the things that are going to have a long term effect on how they feel about food and their bodies, and especially when it comes to picky eating. This is something that so many of us have been taught is a problem, whether from ourselves and our childhood experiences, or with our own children. We are approaching it from this lens that this is a problem and I need to fix it, and I have found from just my own experience of having picky eaters myself and also working with families who are navigating picky eating that when we approach it from that perspective, it can actually create more harm than good. We can create more power struggles between us and our kids and really deter us from being able to create positive associations around food, which are essential to helping our kids develop a healthier relationship with food overall.
Speaker 1:And something I really wanted to focus on today is why picky eating can be so triggering and when I'm talking about triggering, I'm talking about distressing feelings that are coming up for you around the way that your child may be eating or may not be eating and this can be so valuable to hold space for and take a deeper look at, because there really are clues behind our reactions and the feelings that come up for us around our child and how our child may be eating. And first I just want to share a couple things here. There are many layers to picky eating. There are so many different things that can be influencing the way that we're feeling about our children and the way that they eat, especially selective eating and there are different depths to those layers, so some things can be more surface level. Other things can be really deep and connected to deeper trauma or our own experiences growing up around food that are coming to the surface when our child is engaging in similar patterns or behaviors, and so I want to briefly touch on some of the things that are here at the surface before we jump into some of the deeper things that may be coming up, and I also would just like to give a trigger warning that I will be touching on or talking about trauma related to food and body, and so, if this is something that can be potentially heavy for you, I just want to encourage you to do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself, and if you need to skip today's episode, that's okay. You can always come back to it whenever you feel ready or just when you feel like you're in a place where you have more capacity to process some of these things. My hope is that, by creating more awareness around this, you can have some tools to effectively care for yourself and be able to show up for your child in a way that supports you to raise an intuitive eater for the long term. This is not just about the quick fix. This is not just about getting your child to eat more variety, but really helping you, being able to show up for them in the way that they need you, so that they can feel more confident in themselves and learn to effectively trust their bodies. This is something that so many of us didn't get growing up, and so I'm hopeful that by talking through some of these things today, you will have some tools to be able to support you in not just giving your child what they need, but also learning to give yourself the things that you may have needed but never received as a child as well.
Speaker 1:So first let's talk about picky eating and why this can be such a significant source of stress. There's a lot of different things. I'm just going to briefly talk through some of these things, and also I just want to reiterate that if you are experiencing stress around how your child eats, or them being more selective, or them being a picky eater, I just want to reassure you that you are not alone. There are a lot of different things and a lot of different reasons that can make picky eating a significant source of stress, and those reasons are valid. These concerns are valid. I never want you to feel like I'm a bad parent or I'm doing something wrong or something's wrong with me, because I feel these things. These are real reasons and the more we can understand what may be concerning us, the more we are able to work through those things to better hold space for our kids.
Speaker 1:So some of the things that can cause this stress around picky eating are just concerns around nutrition. This is a big one that I hear with a lot of families that I work with, where parents are worried that their picky eater is not getting the necessary nutrients for proper growth or development, and the concern around your child's health can be a constant source of stress. Another one here is just the meal planning and preparation that's involved with a child who's more selective around food. Picky eaters might require special meal planning and preparation, or you might feel the pressure to constantly come up with new or acceptable meal options, which can be time consuming and stressful all in itself, especially if you're navigating multiple preferences for multiple people in your family. I know for myself. We have five kids. We're a family of seven and two of our children are highly selective and that can make it super challenging because they both like different things and when we're taking into account everyone else's food preferences. That can make it really hard to figure out what the heck do I make for dinner tonight the perpetual million dollar question that comes up every single day Super stressful, right. So if you're feeling this and you're feeling that pressure involved, which is the planning and the preparation that comes with that, you're not alone.
Speaker 1:There's also meal time battles. So if you have a child who's just more resistant to certain foods, that can lead to battles around meal times where now you find yourself in negotiations about try a bite of this, or at least try this, or take a no, thank you bite, or your child doesn't want to eat what you've prepared, even though you thought they would eat it, and now you're finding yourself trying to come up with something else that they would eat. So the mealtime battles that can ensue with picky eating can lead you to becoming frustrated or just lead to stressful family mealtimes altogether. You might also worry about the social stigma associated with picky eating. You might fear that the way your child eats can result in embarrassment in social circles or maybe them being judged from others, which can add to your stress. This is especially true around school-aged children. So if you have a picky eater who's going to school and you're worried about what they'll eat, what they won't eat, or going to social events where food is involved. This can contribute to a significant source of stress and we will be having some upcoming episodes talking about school-related issues connected to eating. So definitely stay tuned.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be doing an episode just on picky eating and school lunches and eating at school, so we'll have that coming down the pipeline here. But I just wanted to share this briefly that the social stigma around how your child may eat can be a huge source of stress. Another source of stress here is just impact on family dynamics, and we've kind of touched on this a little bit. But picky eating can sometimes lead to family conflict and tension during meals and this disruption in family dynamics can be emotionally taxing for parents. Especially if you and your partner are disagreeing on how to approach picky eating in your child, that can be a huge source of tension and conflict and stress.
Speaker 1:You might also feel societal pressure to have a child who eats a wide variety of foods. This is something that I think has definitely come on the scene with the rise in social media and just a lot of parents looking to social media for advice on parenting and feeding their child. If you are getting the message that your child needs to be an adventurous eater, that can cause a lot of pressure to raise a child who does eat a wide variety of food. And if you have a child who is more selective, that can make you feel like you're not meeting these expectations, which can lead to a lot of stress and self-doubt. And somewhat related to this is just getting messages from well-meaning family members and professionals who might be commenting on what your child eats or what your child doesn't eat.
Speaker 1:I will say we're gonna talk more about this, but picky eating is often misconstrued as bad behavior. So if a child is not eating something that you've prepared or that somebody else is prepared, that can be looked at as bad manners and unfortunately that can add to the stigma around picky eating. So all of this can create some added stress, especially if you're going somewhere and you know oh my gosh, I don't know if my kid's gonna eat what's being prepared. That can add to some of the stress that you're feeling. There also can be just fear of health issues. Overall, you might worry that your child's picky eating is a sign of an underlying health issue and the fear of this undiagnosed problem can be stressful all in itself.
Speaker 1:Another issue is just a desire to expand palate. So I often see this in parents who are adventurous eaters or who might consider themselves foodies or just really enjoy the experiences of trying new foods and having a wide palate and enjoying multiple different flavors and cultures. If you have a child who's a picky eater, this can feel like a dissonance. This can feel like a disconnect between you and your child and for so many parents who enjoy food, having a child who is more selective around food can feel like you're missing out in a way of connecting with your child that you really love or that you really appreciate. So when you have a child who's maybe resistant to trying new foods and this is something that you appreciate and enjoy you might feel disappointed or stressed or even a layer of grief or sadness that your child doesn't appreciate food in the same way that you do.
Speaker 1:Last point I wanna touch on on why picky eating can be potentially stressful is we may be comparing our child to other children. So if you're seeing other children who seemingly are eating a wide variety of foods and your child is not, that can make you feel inadequate or that you're failing your child somehow, which again is adding to the stress that you may be feeling about your child's eating habits. And this can be especially true if you have multiple children. So it can be really easy to compare your picky eater to, let's say, other children that you have who are more adventurous eaters or who willingly are trying different foods or who enjoy eating a variety of foods. It can be really hard to have those two start contrast and then again put more pressure on the child who is more selective and not eating.
Speaker 1:I know I really experienced this with my kids and I've shared this before, but my first child is definitely a more adventurous eater and when we started out feeding solids she tried everything, she loved everything, and even now, as a 13 year old, she definitely is more adventurous, and I had no clue about the different temperaments that children have or how their personalities can affect their palates and just all the different things that go into how a child eats. When we first started having our kids, I just thought that kids were supposed to like eating a variety of different foods. How naive. And sure enough, our second child is one of my two selective eaters and she did not eat in the same way that my older daughter did, and that just made me feel so stressed. I just constantly was feeling like what did I do wrong? I'm trying to do all the same things I did with my first and yet I have a completely different outcome here. And the reality is that our children are all built differently. They're not going to all like the same foods, they're not going to eat in the same way, and for me to hold my children together in the same light and expect them to eat and have the same palette or same preferences with food was really harming my feeding relationship with my pickier eater.
Speaker 1:But this is something that's really common that can come up, especially among siblings, or just comparing your child to how other kids their age may be eating. This can add to the stress over your child's eating habits. So I wanted to just share that on the surface level, that if you're feeling stressed about the way your child eats or find yourself just worried around different aspects related to selective eating in your own child, there is likely good reason for that, and I wanted to share some of these things to help normalize some of the things that may be coming up for you Now. I also want to take this one step deeper, because for many of us who are navigating our own trauma around food and our body or our own childhood experiences around food, there can be things that happen with our children or how our children eat that can bring some of that deep seated pain or unresolved issues or trauma around food and our body right to the surface. And this is why I think it's really important again to pay attention to this, because triggers are clues. They're important leads to those wounded parts of us that still need healing and still are important to address in order to be able to engage with our child in a meaningful way around food and their bodies. And essentially, we cannot shift out of cycles of food guilt and body shame and distrust around food and our bodies if we are not addressing these pain points within ourselves. I wanted to read you this quote by Dr Bessel Vander Kolk, who is the author of the book the Body Keeps the Score and an expert on trauma, and he shares that trauma comes back as a reaction, not a memory, and I think this is so key for us to understand as parents.
Speaker 1:If you are finding yourself having intense reactions to your child around food, especially around picky eating. That's the focus of our topic today, although I will just say, if you are finding yourself having strong reactions to your child in various different things whether it's their behavior or other aspects of food or their body size these are important things to pay attention to and when I'm talking about a reaction, I'm talking about something that may be coming up in your body that can be disproportionate to the situation at hand. So if you find yourself reacting to your child's picky eating let's say your child is refusing to eat something that you've prepared for them or they're only eating one particular food item from the food that you've provided and that's stirring up something in you, you might find yourself angry, you might find yourself frustrated or you might find a lot of distress rising up in your body. These are important things to pay attention to because they can be indicative of deeper things that still need some TLC, that still need some care and attention, and when we can have more awareness around some of these things and why they're coming up for us again, it allows us to work through those things and to show up for our child in a healed manner when we're not projecting our woundedness on our kids, which can interfere with their feeding abilities and how they feel about food and how they feel about their bodies, and so many of us are carrying the wounds of caregivers before us who projected their discomfort or their anger, or things that they were dealing with, on us. We internalize those things and, unless we work through them, we run the risk of projecting those things to our children, and that is what cycles on and perpetuates the cycle of food, guilt and body shame, and so we have to be willing to do the hard work of looking at what's coming up for us. What is this a sign of Like? What is servicing for me, and how can I give myself what I need to help myself work through this?
Speaker 1:So many of us are used to just shoving down our own feelings, our own thoughts, our own needs and emotions in effort to protect ourselves, because that can be a coping mechanism too, where we felt like it's not safe for me to show my feelings, and I really just want to encourage you, as we're talking through some of these things, to just pay attention to what resonates with you, what is stirring something in yourself, and that can be a sign of something that may need some more love and care and attention because you are deserving of it, and being able to work through these things can be one of the most powerful gifts that you can give your children, especially if you have a kiddo who is a selective eater. Because, again, we want to break that stigma. We don't want our children to internalize a belief that how they eat is wrong. There are so many factors that are influencing the way that your child eats, and many children who are selective are dealing with sensory sensitivities or different temperaments or underlying anxiety, or maybe neurodivergent, and are approaching and navigating food in a way that feels safest for them. And we don't want our children to feel like the way they eat is a problem that needs to be fixed, because again, they can start to build this narrative that something's wrong with me or I can't trust myself or I can't trust my body. So, however, our child's eating, whatever discomfort that's bringing up for us, that is our work to do. Those are our responsibility to carry and work through, not our child's.
Speaker 1:So, with that in mind, I wanted to talk through some common areas that can be beneath the reactions or the triggers that you may be experiencing when it comes to selective eating, so I've broken these up into a few different categories here, one being related to food trauma, one around neurodivergence and one just touching on the many unmet needs that we may be experiencing as parents overall, and so the biggest area that I have here circles around food trauma, and again, I feel like I never have enough time to go as deep as I want to on some of these topics. So if there is something I'm sharing that is resonating with you and that you would like more information about, please feel free to connect with me and let me know. I would love to know what's resonating with you so that I can bring you more content and resources around that. But one thing I want to talk about first is just trauma around food and our bodies and childhood and how that can surface with our own selective eaters.
Speaker 1:So there is a phenomenon called parallel processing, and that is something that I think can be really helpful to understand as a parent, where you may be simultaneously experiencing and reacting to a situation while also re-experiencing aspects of a past traumatic event or situation. So in the context of feeding a picky eater, you may find that, in response to your child's picky eating, that you are not only dealing with the present situation and all the different stressors that we mentioned involved with that, but that you're also reprocessing any unresolved past traumas related to food or your body. So this parallel processing can lead to a heightened emotional response, which is why you might be feeling like your reaction to the way your child's eating can feel a little bit disproportionate to the situation, and really what's happening is that there is a lot of emotional overlap here. So the emotions that you may associate with your own childhood food trauma can overlap with any current feelings that you may have about your child's picky eating and again this can lead to those intensified reactions such as anxiety or frustration, or you may even have flashbacks to any of your own traumatic experiences around food or your body or meal times in your own childhood, and this of course, has a huge impact on parenting and, again, how we show up in feeding our kids. So any parallel processing of your own childhood food trauma can influence how you're responding to your child's picky eating or just your child in any food related situation, which again may cause us sometimes to unintentionally project this emotional baggage on our kids, and especially for kids who are selective eaters, this can sometimes exacerbate the situation. This is something I've definitely experienced myself and have also heard from clients that I've worked with to who have just shared with me the intense anger or frustration that comes up when their child is rejecting a certain food or a meal that's been prepared and it can feel like such intense reaction to it and really it's kind of your brain trying to deal with two different things at the same time, and I want to give you some examples just to consider to reflect upon. And this is where it can be helpful to understand your own food story and I did a podcast episode last year about understanding your food story and I will link to that in the show notes for you. But this is where we want to kind of assess and look at what are the potential areas that could have been traumatic for me around food or my body, and this is why I think it can be so helpful to look with more awareness into our triggers and into the reactions that are surfacing for us.
Speaker 1:For example, I've had parents tell me the intense anger or frustration they feel around food waste, like if I've made all this food and my child literally only wants to eat a piece of bread and nothing else the fact that we're wasting all of this food is so maddening to me. I feel so angry. Or having a child reject something that you have made for them can also intensify those same type of feelings. So I want you to think about maybe having a tough time with food as a kid, and this can surface in many different ways. Food insecurity is food trauma, so maybe you worried about not having enough to eat as a kid, or this could look like different things too. Maybe you experienced verbal abuse around how you ate as a child, or were forced to eat everything on your plate and weren't allowed to leave the table unless you did, or maybe just meal times in general were really stressful and tense. Maybe there was a lot of conflict around meal times, around food as a family and as a child. It's really hard to navigate those types of situations, and so I just want you to think of some of the areas that can be influencing how you felt about food or how you experienced food as a child and what happens when we become parents ourselves.
Speaker 1:There's this intense desire to want to do things differently with our children, and I hear this, and this is, I know, why you're listening to this episode today. You want to make sure that your child has a good relationship with food and that they don't experience the same things that you did, and this is where the parallel processing can come in. So let's say you have a child who is selective with food. It can bring up those old memories and worries from when you were a kid. So, again, not only are you dealing with your child's picky eating, but your brain is also bringing back all these old feelings and memories and experiences from your own childhood around food. And this is where things can become more complicated and emotional for you as a parent, because you're handling both your child's eating habits and your past experiences with food at the same time. It's really like trying to juggle two different things, which can be really challenging.
Speaker 1:So, really, any experience that you've had around food or your body, especially in your childhood years, that proved to be unsafe for you, can resurface in similar situations, and what that does is it sets off the alarms in your head or in your body where you are starting to feel unsafe in that similar situation, even though it's a completely different circumstance. So, even though it's like you're with your family, you're in your home, you're with your children, you're not in that traumatic situation as a child anymore, it can still feel unsafe, that same feeling of I'm not safe, I'm not in a safe situation. Again, even though you're under different circumstances, it's like our brain, being triggered, is now mixing up the past and the present and, even though presently we are in different situations, it's like we're seeing it through the lens of our past experiences and, again, anything that created any feelings of unsafety in your body or around food. And I do want to reiterate that everybody's experience of trauma is different. This is something I've heard from a lot of parents that I've worked with and spoke to about this.
Speaker 1:It's easy to undermine your own traumatic experiences in comparison to what other people have been through, where you might say, oh, it's not that bad compared to what somebody else has gone through, it really was nothing. However, it's important to remember that what you have been through and any event that felt significant to you plays a role in your upbringing and your relationship with food and your body, and anything that put you in a situation where you felt helpless or out of control can be traumatic, and you don't want to undermine your own experiences by dismissing anything that you've been through and having awareness or looking back at any past trauma is not to victimize yourself but just to see the bigger picture of what you've been through and the role that it can be playing in your present life Again, because any unresolved trauma our bodies do not forget, our bodies hold onto it and it resurfaces in those similar situations via parallel processing. So, as an example, let me give you some practical examples, especially when it comes to picky eating. So if you were ever shamed for leaving food behind or refusing to eat because something that you were served felt unsafe to you or not palatable for whatever reason, and you were shamed for that experience, or you were made to feel guilty or told that you were acting out or had bad behavior because you weren't complying with what was expected of you around food, that can cause those internalized feelings that listening to my body is bad or I can't trust my body or I'm doing something wrong around food or eating. So if you're now navigating the situation with your own child and your child is leaving food behind or your child is refusing to eat and you've had that experience, that can set off the alarms that something is wrong, something is bad here, there's something that's not right and it needs to be fixed, but that's a very likely tied to your experience in that similar situation in your own upbringing.
Speaker 1:Another example that I wanted to talk about that I know many of you might be able to relate to is having an eating disorder history and what that may have looked like, especially if this happened or began in your childhood years. So for many individuals who have struggled with an eating disorder, this is registered as trauma in your body. If you're not getting enough food, whether it's unintentional or intentional, your body doesn't know the difference. It's just your body knows that it's not getting enough of what it needs and that restriction component and piece that's connected to eating disorders can often be very triggering if we see any component of it being displayed in our children, even if our children are not necessarily engaging in an eating disorder behavior. But let's say that your child is refusing to eat and that can bring up feelings of maybe you intentionally restricting at some point in your childhood, maybe that was connected to your eating disorder, and that can bring up a lot of intensity of anxiety, scarcity around food or just a feeling that food is unsafe or that your body is an unsafe place. So, as you can see and these are just brief examples.
Speaker 1:We can definitely go deeper into all of these, but there's a lot of connections into our experiences around food, especially in our childhood upbringing, and how these can be triggered and brought to the surface in various ways that our child engages around food. So something to consider, especially if you find yourself having strong reactions to how your child is eating, especially in the picky eating slash, selective eating realm. So there's two other areas that I want to talk about briefly. I will likely do separate episodes on these altogether because there's a lot to say about these, but these are just other areas that can also bring up some unresolved trauma that may be resurfacing in the way that you're engaging around food with your child or how your child is eating.
Speaker 1:So one is being neurodivergent either you or your child or both, and oftentimes, if there's a neurodivergent parent, there is often neurodivergence in children as well, because there is a strong genetic component, but this can play a role in how a child relates to food. So, for example, I have two ADHDers who have strong sensory sensitivities. The different way that their brains learn and process information also plays a role in how they eat and their eating behaviors and habits and their food preferences. There's a strong connection there and I know also from many of us growing up. There may have been those existing things there too that our caregivers or our parents had no idea about, and maybe we were forced to eat certain things where, sensory wise, we had a strong aversion to, or maybe there was some sensory overwhelm or overstimulation where certain eating environments were very triggering or difficult for us to handle and creating some negative association around food and our bodies. And this often surfaces in this realm where your child may be exhibiting some of those behaviors that maybe you had as a kid, that weren't paid attention to or that were dismissed or undermined or ignored or perhaps associated with bad behavior. Oh, they're just acting out or they're just doing this or that.
Speaker 1:There's something wrong and not really being understood for the person that you are and how your brain functions and how you move through and experience the world. This is often playing out in our relationship with food and again, we can definitely go into this topic in more depth and I will definitely be doing some more episodes around this, but just something I wanted you to consider too. If you are neurodivergent, you have a neurodivergent child and there are things coming up because of that. It can bring up some deep seated feelings around your own experience of moving through the world in similar ways as a kid, or seeing your child maybe struggle with things that you did that maybe you never had care or attention for.
Speaker 1:One last thing that I want to mention too is just dealing with unmet needs, especially as a parent and a mother. So often as mothers we ignore the needs that we have and it's easy to put the things that we need to the back burner. And this can also be a learned behavior of moving through your life, feeling like your needs were unimportant and so you kept them aside. Or maybe you learned to ignore your needs because it felt unsafe to share what you needed. Or there's fear of rejection, like if I share what I need and nobody responds to that in a responsive way, what's the point?
Speaker 1:So this can often surface with picky eating, and one strong way that I see it is with food rejection. So I often see a lot of mothers who are being very intentional about preparing food for their kids, and when you have a selective eater who is rejecting what you've prepared, it can feel like a personal rejection. It can feel like this is something that's a direct reflection of me and who I am Like. My child is not just rejecting my food, they are rejecting me, and that can cause a lot of unmet needs to surface to you, but things that have likely been there and have been sitting there and are now being triggered by an eating behavior that your child is engaging in, and so this is something that can surface to you, and oftentimes your child rejecting food and you feeling angry about that is not related to your child's picky eating, but likely related to deeper unmet needs that you have that are worthy of being met but then have likely been ignored for years or longer. So that's something I want you to think about too, and again, we will likely come back and revisit this topic, because this is something that we can often feel as moms and something that is important to look at and address.
Speaker 1:To wrap up this episode, I just want to give you a blueprint of things that you can do if you find yourself feeling triggered by how your child's eating, especially if you're dealing with picky eating or selective eating and finding it difficult to manage all the various reactions that are coming up in your body. So if you've been listening for any length of time. You know I have a love of alliterations and I'm giving you five steps here that I'll start with the letter A, just to make it easy for you to remember, and I just want you to keep in mind that this is a lifelong practice. This is not something that we have really necessarily learned how to do, and it's something that I think we will continue to need to practice over the course of our life, especially as parents. So please give yourself grace, as you're listening to this and just knowing that the information that you're taking in and marinating on the things that you're learning are all important in helping you shift out of these generational cycles. So if you're feeling triggered and don't know what to do with that emotion, here's some things to think about.
Speaker 1:Step number one awareness. Just having awareness of what you're feeling and how that feels in your body is so key. We are so used to just reacting to situations that we really don't even have time to understand what is coming up for us, what we're feeling, to name it, to experience it, to know what it feels like in our bodies, and so one of the really most powerful things you can do is just to lean in with curiosity and awareness. What is coming up for you in these situations where you notice yourself feeling triggered or having intense reactions to how your child is eating. Step number two is practice. Acceptance, or another way to look at this, is extending self-compassion to yourself, knowing that there are many different layered experiences that are playing a role into how you're feeling, and having compassion for yourself is so key. We cannot move through our feelings in a productive way if we are shaming ourself for how we're feeling, and I know it can feel like that as a parent. If you're feeling angry towards your child for how they're eating, that can feel really intense and really bring up feelings of failure, like I'm doing wrong by my child. But just to understand number one, I'm feeling this for a reason and number two, I'm okay to have this feeling can make it so much easier for you to move through it. So practicing that element of self-compassion.
Speaker 1:Number three is alarm, and what I mean by this is decreasing your alarm or being able to move through your stress response. So many of us react to our children and this is coming from a place of unresolved trauma or unmet needs and our reaction is causing us to feel dysregulated. It's causing our stress responses to come out in full force, and so what can be helpful is grounding yourself and reminding yourself that you're not in that same situation that may have been traumatic or triggering in your past, and finding ways to be grounded to allow yourself to move through it, without potentially resorting to maladaptive coping mechanisms. To get through that and oftentimes that's what's happening. When our nervous systems are flooded, we are responding in ways that can be maladaptive, but they're ways that we've learned to cope and learned to survive. But this can involve things like dissociating or shutting down or fleeing the situations, like you can't even be present because you're so overwhelmed by it. Whatever your default response is, again, give yourself grace, because that's how you learn to survive something that felt overwhelming. But just finding ways to ground yourself, to help yourself know that you're safe in your body, you're safe in your surroundings and that you will be okay, can help prevent you from engaging in behaviors that maybe aren't as helpful or from potentially projecting some of those emotions onto your children.
Speaker 1:Fourth step is learning to attend to yourself and to your needs, and again, this is a really big topic in itself and a really challenging one, especially if you've learned to ignore what you need over the course of your life. However, just asking the question, what do I need or what did I need? When you can start to make some of the connections between your triggers and past wounds or past traumas around food or your body, it can be really powerful to ask that question what did I need back then? What did I need? As that child sitting at the table feeling overwhelmed, not wanting to eat, not feeling safe around food or eating experiences, or being worried I wouldn't have enough to eat, what are some things that you may have needed during those times or during those moments? Because that can be a clue as to what you still need now and you can start to learn how to give those things to yourself now in different ways.
Speaker 1:And again, this is a bigger topic that we can definitely continue to explore together, but something that I wanted you to at least start thinking about, last but not least, is addressing, so learning to address, any deeper wounds or traumas that are surfacing for you, and this can look different for different people and this can happen in many different ways. There's no one right way for healing, but if you've identified that, yeah, you know what? I think there are some things there that I need to work through or that I want to work through so that I can show up in a healed way for my children. That is a beautiful realization and it can also be hard too, like where do I even start? And there's so many different ways to do this. But certainly working with a professional can be very helpful, just being able to talk through. There's also different modalities of therapy and healing that can promote trauma healing, and this is something that I'm hoping we can talk about more in upcoming episodes.
Speaker 1:But just know that there are many different resources out there and I think sometimes just taking that first step and asking for help is so brave and it can be so tough too. And if you're looking for more support but aren't sure where to start, you can always connect with me. I would love to see how I might be able to help you or at least connect you to resources that can support you along your way. And just to give a little plug to our free virtual support group and community Lift the Shame. We are a group of mothers in eating disorder recovery who come together monthly and it really is such a beautiful community and this can be a space to come and just find that nurturing space to talk about some of the unique challenges or stressors that are coming up for you, and knowing that you're not alone can truly be such a powerful step in alleviating the shame and the isolation that you might be carrying through some of these things. So I will link to that group in the show notes too.
Speaker 1:If you're looking for community or just more support around this, I hope this has been helpful for you, or just an invitation to look a little deeper Again. I think when it comes to picky eating, we're so used to just going into action mode and just trying to figure out frameworks or how do I fix this, without really looking at some of the deeper things that are happening for us and understanding why we are showing up, the way we are with our kids around food and how that might be playing a role in how our kids feel about food and their bodies. So, as always, I so appreciate you showing up and being here and listening and tuning in with curiosity and if there's any way that I can help support you or just further this conversation, please connect with me. I would love to hear from you. Hello, at crystalcargiscom, we will hopefully get to reconvene this conversation and have more topics around shifting the cycle of food guilt and body shame so that you can live and enjoy your family and freedom.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Lift the Shame podcast. For more tips and guidance on your motherhood journey, come connect with me on Instagram at crystalcargis. Until next week, mama, I'll be cheering you on. Bye for now.