Meet Amy Schere, LCSW. She and I are members of the WSNSWG, Weight Stigma, Neuroplastic Symptom Working Group, presenters at the 2025 ATNS Conference and co-authors of the upcoming chapter about the intersection of weight stigma and neuroplastic symptoms. This episode is an introduction to Amy, her personal recovery story from chronic back pain and how that overlapped with eating disorder recovery. She's one of the most thoughtful and compassionate humans I know doing this work. I hope that you discover some powerful nuggets for your own chronic pain + symptom recovery journey from out conversation.
Meet Amy Schere, LCSW. She and I are members of the WSNSWG, Weight Stigma, Neuroplastic Symptom Working Group, presenters at the 2025 ATNS Conference and co-authors of the upcoming chapter about the intersection of weight stigma and neuroplastic symptoms.
This episode is an introduction to Amy, her personal recovery story from chronic back pain and how that overlapped with eating disorder recovery. She's one of the most thoughtful and compassionate humans I know doing this work. I hope that you discover some powerful nuggets for your own chronic pain + symptom recovery journey from out conversation.
Amy is a clinical social worker/psychotherapist based in Raleigh, North Carolina. She works primarily with clients who experience neuroplastic symptoms, as well as anxiety, depression, trauma, and eating disorders/body image concerns. She uses Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Internal Family Systems as primary approaches, and integrating some somatic, mindfulness and cognitive-behavioral approaches (CBT, ACT) as well.
Additionally, Amy uses a Health at Every Size/body liberation approach when working with all clients and am passionate about providing size-inclusive care. Prior to being a psychotherapist, she practiced for 10 years as a physical therapist, specializing in working with patients with neurological conditions. After finding her own relief from chronic back pain through the mind-body approach, she began offering this work to patients as a PT. Amy eventually went back to school for clinical social work to be able to turn her focus to providing psychotherapy for clients with neuroplastic symptoms. She loves working through a holistic lens and bringing her clients thorough knowledge of both the mind and body!
Her website:
https://3rdwavetherapy.com/provider/amy-schere-lcsw/
TCC EP63
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Curiosity Cure podcast. I'm your host, Deb Malkin, master certified life coach, body worker hypnotist, trained in pain reprocessing by the pain psychology center, queer elder. Fat human on planet Earth. Here to help you evoke the power of simple neuroplasticity techniques rooted in shame free curiosity, so you can feel more, better, more of the time in the body you have today, and build the rich full life that you want to live.
[00:00:39] A quick disclaimer, this podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can compliment your healthcare journey. But always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:57] Amy, I am so glad that you're here on my podcast.
[00:01:01] Let's start with you telling us a little bit about yourself. Certainly your whole name and where you live and what you do, and how you help people.
[00:01:10] Yeah, I'm excited to be here. So I'm Amy Schere. I am here in North Carolina, in Raleigh, finally not snowing and sunny. A little bit personally, I live with my partner and our two sons. And the way I help folks is, well, in the past I was a physical therapist, so I did that for a long time. That was my first career. And then eventually I went back to social work school. So now I do psychotherapy, help folks recover from, of course, neuroplastic symptoms.
[00:01:44] I also have other things I work with, like eating disorders. I am working towards full licensure more than halfway there, so that's exciting.
[00:01:52] Okay, so cool. Oh my God, I have so many questions, we're on this podcast to talk about recovery from neuroplastic symptoms, right.
[00:02:02] The ultimate kind of mind body conundrum. And one of the things that you and I do together, we are in the newly formed neuroplastic symptom weight stigma working group. We talk about the intersection of kind of the physical body, the emotional body, and the social body.
[00:02:25] And one of the things that, 'cause you and I did this amazing presentation at the ATNS conference, which if people listen to my podcast that I did with Sean Hershey and probably have heard me talk about the conference, we presented you and I together on weight stigma and the impact on neuroplastic symptoms. And it was a rousing success.
[00:02:52] It was,
[00:02:52] So this is one of the things that's so interesting because you're not the only one in our working group, who both has like a body-based practice originally, turned into also psychology, right?
[00:03:05] Yeah. Where Lilia Graue is a medical doctor and then also became a psychotherapist and you and Rachel Gofman, who is also on this podcast before Doctors of physical therapy.
[00:03:18] Yeah.
[00:03:18] Then you've moved into the mind, but not really leaving the body behind. I kind of wanna start there. And maybe your recovery story fold into that. I'm not really sure, but like, how did that transition happen and why is that important for you? And like how does that help you help people?
[00:03:42] Those are such good questions. I love
[00:03:44] that all have good questions. Pick one.
[00:03:46] Yeah.
[00:03:47] Okay. I ask like eight questions in a row.
[00:03:49] Okay I was thinking about how I've always been interested in the mind and the body. Actually this is pre recovery story ever since adolescence, which is kind of interesting. So even in high school I remember taking psychology and being fascinated by like, oh, this part of the brain does this.
[00:04:07] And like it kind of started then. And through college I really didn't know if I wanted to go into psychology or medical stuff until the end. I eventually was like, I'll do PT and I can work with people with neurological disorders, which is what I did. But I was a psych major. I did peer counseling in college.
[00:04:25] I've always been interested in both pieces. So I'll say it started a long time ago.
[00:04:30] Oh, very cool. Yeah.
[00:04:32] Yeah, so
[00:04:33] It's kind of weird, it's like we end up having to pick,
[00:04:36] right.
[00:04:37] Is kind of the problem with the medical model, right? Traditional medical model is like you have to pick.
[00:04:43] It's hard to pick
[00:04:44] body problem. Is it a mind problem? Or maybe it's not really a problem, but what's the entry point? How are we going to address, um,
[00:04:52] what lens are we looking through?
[00:04:53] Yeah. What lens are we looking through? I love how you said that. Yeah.
[00:04:57] Yeah. So that's kinda where it started.
[00:04:59] And I would, I could go into this more, but I will say through my decade of being a pt, it was very, very apparent that it is, even before I knew all about chronic pain, it's very interconnected, even for folks who don't have chronic pain. When I was working with my stroke survivors, so many aspects of the mind are going to affect recovery from a stroke or a spinal cord injury.
[00:05:18] So very intertwined. But you'd asked about my story too. Yeah. So, let's see. I had intermittently had back pain since adolescence, also. Like so much of this goes all the way back. I think I had like an actual back strain or whatever it was as a dancer in high school. And I went to PT for that. It got better.
[00:05:39] It was kind of like your standard, took a few weeks kind of injury and then it popped back up every year or two between age maybe 16 and like 27 or something like that. Like every couple years now that I look back when something stressful was happening, I was moving or I had a breakup or something it would come up and then it would go away within a few weeks. But I always like wondered about it, what is this? Right? So then really big transition. I moved from New York where I, I grew up here in North Carolina, but I lived in New York for a long time for school and work, and my husband and I came back here.
[00:06:14] And of course my back went out again while I was moving. And then it didn't get better that time. So I was in my new city. My back was hurting on and off. It was sort of getting worse, but you know, a neuroplastic pain goes, would kind of get better and get worse. And it was just up and down for a while here.
[00:06:32] With my PT knowledge, I saw PT myself, I did my PT exercises and it, you know how it goes. It would like sort of be better and then. I would just get more and more frustrated. So it was like one of those things. I eventually got imaging and of course I had like a couple herniated discs and I got the very standard advice of like, well, maybe one day you'll have to have surgery, but probably you're fine right now.
[00:06:55] And there's not much you can do, but just do some PT or something. So it was like, I would say on the more mild end, I was never like a 10 out of 10 pain, but it was persistently bothersome. There
[00:07:08] is,
[00:07:09] yeah.
[00:07:09] I just wanna say there is something insidious about persistent pain.
[00:07:14] Yes.
[00:07:14] Like low level persistent pain.
[00:07:17] Yes.
[00:07:17] That kind of wears away like a little flow of water on a rock, right? Like that Yes. Creates this cavern and groove. Like I really wanna validate how hard it is.
[00:07:30] Oh, thank you.
[00:07:31] Have low. Level persistent pain so that you can do your life. But there's always, it's like you're carrying this extra weight with you. (no pun intended)
[00:07:44] Yeah.
[00:07:45] And then the threat of like future surgery. But it's a very nebulous, it's like, it's almost like a threat.
[00:07:52] It's a threat.
[00:07:53] Like you're okay now, but like, I don't know how you'll be in the future. The future it might be worse.
[00:07:59] That was the message I got where I was like, well, it probably won't get better, but I guess you're fine right now.
[00:08:05] Like, okay, thank you. That's helpful.
[00:08:09] Don't they know what they're saying. It probably won't get better.
[00:08:13] I know. So I continued like that for a while, I would say, but then something happened about nine years ago. At the time I thought I injured it again with a patient, lifting a patient or something.
[00:08:24] But now I think it was neuroplastic Flareup. It did get very intense and it was so bad. I like couldn't walk very well and all that kind of stuff with like severe back spasms, the way that gets, so I actually took a few months off of work
[00:08:36] mm-hmm.
[00:08:36] Off of being a PT 'cause I really couldn't do my job at all. I got short-term leave and it was in that time I had started getting into meditation and mindfulness and I was looking into taking an MBSR and mindfulness based stress reduction course. And somehow John Sarno was referenced and I think I ignored it. And then I came back a month later and I was like, maybe I should look into this. I found Healing Back Pain and that was my entry point into the mindbody world. So I read that and I wasn't an overnight book cure, but it wasn't a long drawn out journey. I would say. I read it, it was, you know, mind blowing like it is for so many of us, I have this memory of I hadn't done a lot of cooking.
[00:09:20] 'cause you know, you have to stand up and be at your counter for a while and you know it's hard on your back when you're having a spasm. But I was like, I think I'm just gonna make pancakes and it's okay if it hurts and that's fine. And that was like my first point where I was like, wow, I think I can function again.
[00:09:35] That's amazing. There's so much just in that little corrective experience. Like, maybe I'm gonna like put it aside for right now. 'cause I can, yeah, I could feel myself wanting to like, deconstruct that and, and like put, put it like,
[00:09:49] yeah.
[00:09:50] Explain why that's so powerful. Maybe it's just the pancakes, but, as a pt, you already predisposed and you already had a lot of experience like with, with patients, um,
[00:10:02] yeah.
[00:10:02] As a pt, like really understanding that there's a mind-body connection.
[00:10:06] Yeah.
[00:10:07] So you weren't skeptical, but was there a part of you that was hard to enter healing back pain, the book and read it?
[00:10:19] You know, people always talk about like having belief.
[00:10:22] Yeah.
[00:10:23] And so sometimes that's hard. I love skepticism.
[00:10:26] Yeah.
[00:10:27] I guess that's just my question, what was that like for you coming from that physical therapy lens?
[00:10:33] It was interesting because of my psych inclined background. It was a huge relief. I was like, oh my gosh, this is wild. Why did they never talk about this in PT school? So that was my first reaction it was a huge relief. And then I was like, okay, then the skepticism came. It was like, Deb you know I work in parts because I do a lot of IFS, so I had parts that felt so relieved, and then parts that were like, lemme make sure about this, you know, let's like fact check this.
[00:11:02] Okay. Wait, I'm gonna pause you there.
[00:11:04] Yeah.
[00:11:05] Tell me about the relief. Did the relief mean like, my body's not broken, I don't have to be afraid of future surgery. Tell me a little bit more 'cause relief is such a powerful shift.
[00:11:21] Yeah.
[00:11:21] It was, my body's not broken. This is a normal abnormality. This explains so much. There were so many things in the realm of like orthopedic pt that kind of never made sense to me. Like one person would theorize it was this way and one person that way, but like neither of them would really result in somebody's pain getting better.
[00:11:40] And there were so many conflicting, biomechanical explanations, but this was like, oh, this is like Occam's razor. This is a simple explanation that makes complete sense. So that was part of it too.
[00:11:51] That's great. And were you able to look back at your life and link those little things together?
[00:11:58] Yeah, happened for me. I was like, oh I felt really pinned to the board on my personality stuff like what they call personality traits
[00:12:06] right
[00:12:06] now. I think we would, might look through a more trauma informed lens or, yeah, I mean I imagine with IFS looking at it through parts has gotta be really powerful.
[00:12:18] It is really helpful. I often, when I train people or running a PRT group, now we talk in parts instead of your personality is perfectionist. It's like, no, we have perfectionist parts. But I, yeah, I think I did look back, I really identified with Sarno's description of like the type T personality.
[00:12:35] I remember even my dad read the book and he was like, oh yeah, that does sound like you, just driven, you know, perfectionist, some, you know, all the traits that kind of described that. I linked those things. I also linked other like aches and pains I'd had, like I was having some like neck pain and other little things.
[00:12:52] And even like I'd had knee pain since I was like 12 or something. And I realized I think this was also neuroplastic. So, yeah, it's always interesting to put it together later.
[00:13:04] So then it sounds like you were skeptical, you looked more into it.
[00:13:09] Yeah.
[00:13:09] And then what was the recovery experience for you like?
[00:13:14] I had a lot of time because I was off work for a little bit, so I had a lot of time to do the sort of like mindfulness pieces of it and the journaling 'cause there was no PRT yet, but I followed the pain recovery program on the TMS Wiki and that was really helpful.
[00:13:32] Yeah, the early days,
[00:13:34] it was the early days. I think this was 2016. So I followed all that and then I would like go for like a longer and longer walk and I incorporated some yoga back in. So it was sort of gradual. I'd say it took maybe like a month to really start feeling good, but immediately I'd had some, like what I would call like nerve symptoms, like tingling in my legs and things.
[00:13:53] Those went first, those went away and then the pain sort of like gradually faded out. I had some sort of extinction burst times where it maybe came back for a bit. But I remember before I went back to work, my husband and I went on this fun trip and I was so grateful that I could walk all around the place we were and not have a lot of symptoms and just a lot of gratitude.
[00:14:13] That's amazing. So in the work that we do, and we're also in the process of completing a chapter. Mm-hmm. In an upcoming book on neuroplastic symptoms that's about weight stigma. So was there any parts of that that were floating around for you? I don't know. Kind of like,
[00:14:33] yeah.
[00:14:34] What your relationship with weight stigma, anti-fat bias, your own body size, your thoughts and feelings about your body. So like were those sprinkled in or foundational even.
[00:14:46] Yeah, it's interesting because, I talk about this in the chapter that we're putting out and maybe a little bit in the presentation we did.
[00:14:54] It was really kind of a parallel process for me. It felt like I was having a lot of personal growth at that time. So I was in a bit of a smaller body at that time and I hadn't had a lot of practitioners say a lot about body size. Of course, there's always like, you could lose a little weight, but it wasn't like a huge emphasis, but I was somebody who had a lot of disordered eating for many years also since adolescence.
[00:15:17] So many things seem to start then and kind of in the middle of when I was having the persistent pain, I was starting to find body liberation and health at every size and that work just totally independent of the pain stuff. And was starting to change my relationship with my body and food and was working with a health at every size informed therapist and working on like intuitive eating and things like that. That was getting better. I still had some maybe thoughts like, oh, could it be like my belly fat or something that's contributing to my back pain? I don't know. But it wasn't like a dominant narrative for me, which I think was good.
[00:15:53] Mm-hmm. One of the things we talk about in the book based on the research is internalized weight stigma is a huge factor that drives symptoms.
[00:16:04] Yeah.
[00:16:05] And so in some ways it's like it doesn't really matter what your belly size is,
[00:16:10] right?
[00:16:11] It's your thoughts about your belly size. One of the things that perpetuates symptoms is what we attribute them to,
[00:16:19] right?
[00:16:19] So also if we attribute symptoms to body size and then that feels unchangeable, right?
[00:16:26] That symptom loop kind of continues. And so I love that you were able to be like, these symptoms are being driven by my brain and my nervous system, right? They're perceiving threat or stress or whatever. Right. Lots of people language this differently.
[00:16:45] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:46] So I'm curious like how you refer to symptoms, like
[00:16:50] mm-hmm.
[00:16:51] Are they part of your protection system? Are they just loops that get, you know, kind of stuck in our brain? I don't know. Yeah. I wanna hear a little bit about maybe like how you,
[00:17:03] how do I say it?
[00:17:04] Language that with yourself, like how that shifted for you.
[00:17:08] Right. Also, I think coming from pt, like I came from a manual therapy background and like, yeah. They taught us a pain was like a body thing, right?
[00:17:18] Not a brain thing. Yeah.
[00:17:19] Not a brain thing.
[00:17:20] Yeah.
[00:17:21] And I was just like, oh yeah, they really missed something here.
[00:17:24] They really did.
[00:17:25] And so I had to go through a huge paradigm shift and I sometimes find it hard to explain or express like what I know to be true. And it's like that way of like how to tell the story of pain.
[00:17:39] Yeah.
[00:17:39] Psychoeducation is one part of the healing process actually.
[00:17:43] Yeah.
[00:17:43] So for yourself, but also for your clients, like how do you get them to view pain differently?
[00:17:51] Yeah, it's a good question because it does change a bit depending on who I'm working with who is my audience? For myself I think when, we all have sort of like flare ups. This happens. I, my kids were home from school for two weeks and couldn't get anything done, and they were going stir crazy because of the snow and ice.
[00:18:10] I had a flare up of back pain, but it was like, oh, thank you for letting me know. It was like a signal. I conceptualize it as protective. For me it's a danger signal. Like we all say, oh, it's a part letting me know, you're stressed. This is a lot you need, I mean, I didn't have a lot of time to take, but it was telling me to slow down and that's often what it's telling me.
[00:18:30] Hmm.
[00:18:31] So for a lot of clients maybe after we go through the basic education of what is pain and like it is neural pathways in your brain. That's the sort of neuroscience, structural explanation of like, what is it? But then what function does it have psychologically, we talk about protection and protective parts, and that can be really helpful.
[00:18:52] Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's so interesting. I was telling this to a friend. This whole process of us having this working group, mmmm. Came out of me having a flare. Oh. Because I wanted to study the intersections of weight stigma and neuroplastic symptoms. And I tried to sign up for this like pain study, like to teach you how to do a study.
[00:19:17] And I was like doing this work on my own, and I completely internally collapsed.
[00:19:22] Mm. I don't think I knew that.
[00:19:25] I know. It's so vulnerable. Part of me feels embarrassed by it, but part of me is just like, yeah, it really taught me that I can't do this work alone.
[00:19:34] Yeah.
[00:19:35] Oh yeah. I think I had a year long flare, like it came and went and whatever, but like it was really intense.
[00:19:42] Yeah.
[00:19:42] And with that there's so much doubt and fear and also overwhelm.
[00:19:47] Yeah.
[00:19:48] This is overwhelming. Like the data around the impacts of weight stigma on people's physical and mental health is overwhelming. Like it's, we've just been going through all the research.
[00:20:01] Yeah.
[00:20:01] It's like a lot. And there's not even that much research,
[00:20:04] right? No.
[00:20:05] In general in terms of research land. But it's very clear. Like it's very clear and undeniable.
[00:20:11] Yeah.
[00:20:11] And we are trying to bridge this gap. And once I realized I can't do this alone, it was such an amazing experience to find people to partner with.
[00:20:22] And then really recognizing like that's a part of my own personal growth is finding allies and collaborating and doing work together. So this whole process feels like my next layer of my own mind body healing work.
[00:20:37] Mm-hmm.
[00:20:38] Um. Y'all didn't know you were in my own mind, body healing process work.
[00:20:43] It's all personal.
[00:20:44] Yeah. Yes. In some ways it is personal, right? Yeah. It's so interesting to notice, my body is a thing that speaks loudly. Like it tells me where my values are, but then it also tells me where this gap is.
[00:20:57] Yeah.
[00:20:57] Like where I'm not having enough support. Where I feel like, alone or overwhelmed or whatever it is. So when I can listen to my body versus looking at it as a antagonist.
[00:21:10] Right. Yeah. As something that I need to overcome when I look at my body, it tells me exactly what I need.
[00:21:16] Mm-hmm.
[00:21:17] Which is so fascinating. And then through this process, I haven't experienced a flare.
[00:21:24] Oh, wow.
[00:21:24] Yeah. Which is fantastic. I that love, I think I've definitely experienced like anxiety.
[00:21:30] Sure.
[00:21:30] Fear, overwhelm, distraction, procrastination. It's not just be like, I'm all done and everything's better and perfect. But also like we have made a lot of things happen.
[00:21:42] Yeah.
[00:21:42] Too. So it really also broke me out of that wanting to do something, into doing something, which that kind of self-efficacy and creative power has been deeply profound. Mm.
[00:21:57] And like, we just got up on that stage and gave a hell of a presentation. I'm really proud of us. Now I'm just gonna gush 'cause it's so delightful to work with you. Aw. You, and everybody else, but like, you know, we.
[00:22:12] Work through the presentation and we work really differently.
[00:22:15] Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:16] And that was so much fun to be so different and then to find these ways in which we actually, it had that kind of symphony experience where we're like, yeah, yeah, we're playing different instruments, but we're actually doing this thing together.
[00:22:28] That's right. It kind of felt like our values and what we wanted to convey were the same or very similar, but our like process was different and that worked really well. That was like very complimentary. I found that with the group in general where we all want the same thing. We wanna get this information about weight stigma and how it contributes to neuroplastic symptoms and what to do about it out to the community.
[00:22:51] But we all have different things to bring and different expertise.
[00:22:54] I'm excited for what we're going to continue to create. I love that there's this kind of expansive long view, but like this book chapter was, you know, not a planned activity,
[00:23:09] no
[00:23:09] outgrowth of what we created. So I feel like it will lead us into the next series of what it is that we want to create.
[00:23:17] Mm-hmm.
[00:23:18] And I guess that's my next question, which is what do you want people to know, both clinicians and clients? What would you like people to understand?
[00:23:30] Yeah, I think both the presentation and the book chapter, there's a few goals. One is for folks who haven't been introduced to the world of body liberation, fat liberation, all that kind of stuff. Like introducing them to that world like this exists. Because certainly a lot of folks have, but a lot of people haven't. So just starting a new paradigm shift and we're already used to paradigm shifts being in the mind body community.
[00:23:55] Then of course, the message of let's decouple our body size and our neuroplastic symptoms. Like we keep saying in the presentation, in the chapter, you can heal with your body not changing at all. You can have symptom recovery and be at a high weight. You can be at any size. And then also learning a bit about how to work with people in larger bodies, what to be aware of. Some of the health at every size principles I think are helpful to combine with our work and kind of like getting that more into the mind body community. One of the reasons I wanted to work with you is we met at the first conference and talked a little about this briefly, was just like nobody's talking about weight stigma. Nobody's talking about taking weight outta the equation or health at every size. And it's such a natural fit.
[00:24:40] Yeah, it is a natural fit. And I also was like, oh, nobody else is gonna say anything. Yeah. Oh, they don't. They don't know. And I was like, oh, shit, that's gonna have to be me.
[00:24:55] Right.
[00:24:55] That's why I was like, okay, but it's not just me. Right. Yeah. And then I met Lilia when I was working at Lin Health.
[00:25:03] Mm-hmm.
[00:25:04] She is very familiar with health at every size, and Lucy Aphamor and lots of other people who do this work. And she's very passionate. You know when you're like zero in on somebody and you're like, I really wanna not be creepy, but I'm completely obsessed with you now because I feel like we are the only two people who've ever heard of any of these things.
[00:25:25] Right, right.
[00:25:26] We must like mind meld mm-hmm. And change the world. And so, you know, I, I was like, okay, I gotta calm down and be normal. But goal achieved, like we're all collaborating. I love everybody's strengths and we're building on a legacy of work that's often very diminished.
[00:25:48] Yeah.
[00:25:49] You know, it's like health at every size is like a Oh, that's cute.
[00:25:53] Right.
[00:25:53] Or that's a nice to have, but I think people don't really see it as science. Yeah. Or medicine or healthcare.
[00:26:03] Yeah.
[00:26:04] You know, so the paradigm shifts are ongoing. Yeah. But we got to experience corrective experiences. We got to experience direct curiosity from medical practitioners
[00:26:19] Yeah.
[00:26:20] At that conference and not a lot of pushback. Right, right. And we also got to hear Dr. Kennedy, say that she wishes that she had done differently.
[00:26:32] Yeah.
[00:26:33] in her practice,
[00:26:34] it was very powerful and what I didn't really expect was after the presentation, it was the last day.
[00:26:40] So we had our last night hangout or celebration with everyone and people were coming up to us and saying thank you and I think said something that a lot of people wanted to hear, but it just hadn't entered the space yet. The conversation hadn't entered the space.
[00:26:54] So I had a lot of good feedback and then a lot of people just with questions like you said, and not a lot of pushback per se, just people wanting to know more or having specific questions.
[00:27:05] Yeah.
[00:27:05] Yeah.
[00:27:06] I am excited to see where it goes. For me not being a physical therapist or a therapist or a medical practitioner, I'm happy to be an outsider, but I'm often the person in the kinda marginalized experience, generally outside of race in a lot of spaces.
[00:27:28] Right. When I was doing a biomechanics and movement practice, I was often the only person in a larger body.
[00:27:34] Hmm.
[00:27:34] Right. I am sometimes the only queer person or non-binary person. There's some kind of separateness. Yeah. And I enjoy some of that, being outside of a paradigm.
[00:27:46] Yeah. Like being outside of a certain kind of work experience, but also I think, where am I going with this? I love that conference. I feel very welcomed there. I feel very like valued there. Both my knowledge and my expertise and also just as a person.
[00:28:04] So I love that. And also I'm just like, there's not a lot of fat people here.
[00:28:09] Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's just I think the demographics of, I guess a lot of white folks, a lot of people with higher education. Not like there aren't a lot of us in larger bodies, but it's just not the majority. And I wonder why that is too. I don't know.
[00:28:28] Yeah,
[00:28:29] yeah the wellness space.
[00:28:31] Mm-hmm.
[00:28:31] And fatness, they're like magnets set where they like, kind of get close, but then they repel each other and like
[00:28:38] Right.
[00:28:38] Good reason because so much of wellness culture is really diet culture.
[00:28:43] Yeah. I do wonder how many folks in larger bodies are out there who like wanted to go to school for something medical, but felt they couldn't, or there's something in their internalized fat phobia, internalized weight stigma. Maybe it was more whether they're conscious of it or not, who knows?
[00:28:59] But I think it's probably a factor for a lot of people.
[00:29:02] It was a total factor for me. There was a decision point when I was young. I was doing theater and also I was working in an HIV clinic and I wanted to go to school for nursing.
[00:29:13] Hmm.
[00:29:14] And I was afraid of fatphobia, so I went and got my master's in arts administration instead.
[00:29:21] And that really says something about
[00:29:23] where I was just like, yep. I was like this. Feels more safe.
[00:29:27] Yeah.
[00:29:29] Nursing did not feel, I was just like, my body will feel constantly rejected. Yeah. And I didn't have any of these skills. Like now I would probably, you know, whatever. Sure. I know I would make a different decision.
[00:29:42] Yeah.
[00:29:43] But that journey led me to find fat community and fat activism. Yeah. It led me to a lot of body liberation stuff and then create within that realm. And, haha, funny, I'm back here,
[00:29:56] right,
[00:29:58] doing like wellness and physical health and dealing with bodies. That's so strange.
[00:30:05] It's funny, you talking about that made me think back on my experience at physical therapy school, that grad program and like at that time I was like 22. I was in a smaller body. I was sort of not plus size yet, and I was still one of the largest people in that program. It's very, it was very white. A lot of thin folks, just a lot of privilege I think. And yeah, who knows how many people were deterred from going to school because of weight stigma.
[00:30:31] I think a lot of people who would be doing a lot of good work. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure they're doing good things in whatever they're doing, but like I think that there's a heartbreak piece me in that, which feels really hard.
[00:30:47] Yeah.
[00:30:48] And I wanna bring it back one of our goals as a working group is to do the other side, right? Yeah. We started with what we thought was, and rightfully so. I think it's easier to talk about weight stigma in the neuroplastic community, right. In the neuroplastic symptom recovery world.
[00:31:06] Mm-hmm.
[00:31:07] Because, we don't have to explain neuroplastic symptoms.
[00:31:12] Yeah.
[00:31:13] We don't have to explain how to heal without, fixing the body.
[00:31:19] Right.
[00:31:20] But our next invitation, we'll figure out how that happens, is to start talking about this to maybe more the body positive, weight stigma, community, people, maybe a good place for us to start is like, people who actually understand research on weight stigma.
[00:31:39] Yeah.
[00:31:39] And then, we could like just start going where it's easy and then bring in the neuroplastic symptoms and neuroplastic pain piece to that world and start helping unpack that together. Yeah. I know this started out like a question, but you actually live in this intersection.
[00:32:00] Yeah.
[00:32:00] Because you work with people as a therapist. So you kind of have to do both sides.
[00:32:08] I do, yeah. I'd say the majority are probably recovering from neuroplastic symptoms. I also do get folks though, sometimes I get people with both people in larger bodies who maybe have like weight stigma stuff going on, or some disordered eating and some symptoms.
[00:32:24] And I find that it is a little bit of a harder leap for people because of the medical trauma of being in a larger body to accept the neuroplastic symptom concept. So the people who come to me for neuroplastic symptoms, that's, you know, it's a given. They're ready to explore that. But the people who are just going through other forms of healing, it can be hard to sell it, I would say because of the trauma of being in the medical system and not being believed about symptoms for so long.
[00:32:55] Oh, that's like a whole other podcast, right?
[00:32:58] It is, yeah. Yeah.
[00:33:00] Because I see this not being believed.
[00:33:03] Yeah.
[00:33:04] Truism, right? Like, I'm not diminishing that, but how that folds in with internet research
[00:33:10] mm-hmm.
[00:33:11] And invisible disability and community. Yes. Run symptom focused groups and just the power of feeling connection and belonging. That's a piece that we actually write about in our chapter.
[00:33:28] Right.
[00:33:29] And people find community and belonging in this narrative of like mm-hmm. Finding people to be believed about their symptoms.
[00:33:41] Right.
[00:33:41] Like how that goes into perpetuating symptoms and it's like, oh my God, it's such a intense, complicated bio-psychosocial experience.
[00:33:52] Yes.
[00:33:53] And it comes from the roots of sexism, anti-fat bias, it comes from these kind of rotten roots,
[00:34:01] right.
[00:34:02] In which some people's bodies are valued and some people's bodies are just looked at as diseases.
[00:34:09] That's right.
[00:34:09] Oh, can we talk about your mic drop moment at the conference?
[00:34:13] Oh, sure.
[00:34:15] Like I said, disease and that just brought me right back to that and I,
[00:34:19] what did I say? Body size isn't a disease or something.
[00:34:22] Yeah, you did. Yeah. That was one of those weird moments where I'm like, I think I remember what I said, but I like dissociated a little bit, so not completely sure.
[00:34:33] Of course, of course You disassociated. When you're doing a presentation only like part of your brain is online.
[00:34:38] Right?
[00:34:39] Right.
[00:34:40] But you said it in this way 'cause it was during a q and a session. Yeah. Somebody had talked about kind of like, well, we know...
[00:34:48] We know now
[00:34:49] we know. We know that obesity is a disease or something. And then you were like, yeah, we don't view body size as a disease.
[00:34:58] Yeah,
[00:34:59] and it was like that, just that statement alone. I could hear the whole room like shift uncomfortably in their chairs.
[00:35:07] Yes.
[00:35:07] Yeah, that was a really important statement to make.
[00:35:10] Thank you. Yeah, I think it feels important because we can see the harms of what viewing body size as a disease can, what that can lead to?
[00:35:21] Obviously I think this was a question in relation to GLP ones or something like that, but yeah, it felt like we hadn't said it explicitly in the presentation, and it might just be important to be like, no, this is where we stand on this.
[00:35:34] Yeah,
[00:35:34] yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:35:36] Yeah, I was like, don't fuck with Amy.
[00:35:43] It comes out sometimes my like, protective, protect what you believe part, you know, that like social, I don't know. So I don't wanna say social justice warrior, but like that kind of part of me that's has really strong beliefs and wants to uphold them and knows what's right.
[00:35:58] Yeah, I'm like fist in the air.
[00:36:00] I think it's just bad science.
[00:36:03] Yeah.
[00:36:03] Also, right? Like
[00:36:05] yeah,
[00:36:05] I think it's all of it wrapped up together, but it's just bad science. It's just the same way as saying the pain in your knees is because you're fat.
[00:36:16] Right? Oh yeah. It's not just, I think I was thinking of the emotional side of it, but like Right.
[00:36:21] The, on the sort of scientific, logical side, no, it doesn't actually make sense. Like there are lots of us in larger bodies that don't have any metabolic problems. That don't have, I don't know what this person said, like something metabolic or hormonal, but like for some people, their body size may in part be a result of metabolic changes.
[00:36:43] Who knows? I mean, that's pretty common, but that's not everyone's story. Right. And still that's not because of the body size. That's because of whatever's going on with their metabolism and their hormones. So yeah, there's a lot of conflating out there
[00:36:56] mm-hmm.
[00:36:57] Yes. I think I meant to be additive when I said it's bad science.
[00:37:01] Oh, yeah. Yeah.
[00:37:01] And it's bad science.
[00:37:02] And it's bad science.
[00:37:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:37:04] I think bad science leads to bad research, leads to bad outcomes, leads to bad communication.
[00:37:10] Mm-hmm.
[00:37:10] And what I know and believe is that people who go into helping professions, want their clients to feel better.
[00:37:18] Yeah.
[00:37:19] Right. You want people to feel better.
[00:37:24] Yeah.
[00:37:24] Not understanding neuroplastic pain and symptoms is like a big missing piece. It is. In how to help people feel better.
[00:37:35] It's a huge piece. That's why we're doing this.
[00:37:37] I know. We're awesome.
[00:37:39] Yeah. I do wonder how it's gonna go when we bring it, like you were talking about before, to the other side and present or speak with, or however we end up bringing it to the sort of health at every size or body liberation groups and see how that's received.
[00:37:53] Because I think it could be a bit of a longer process to talk about it, but that's okay.
[00:37:59] Yeah. I think it's okay. What's important for me is in it is decoupling my own value from mm-hmm. Other people believing what I believe. Right.
[00:38:10] Yeah. It's like, you know, it, it is, it is a communication challenge.
[00:38:18] Mm-hmm.
[00:38:19] Right? Like, it's like unpacking and exploring. I mean, I think that's part of the healing work. Is unpacking and exploring our beliefs about our bodies. Yeah. What we've been told about them. But it's so hard to just unpack it and then just be like, yeah, but I'm still feeling pain.
[00:38:38] Right.
[00:38:38] You're like, I've unpacked it and now I have, I'm surrounded by a bunch of shit.
[00:38:43] Right.
[00:38:44] And now I don't know what to do.
[00:38:46] Right.
[00:38:48] You're like, great. Now I feel kind of almost even worse.
[00:38:54] Yeah. Sometimes that comes up for clients of mine where like it's, you know, it's not just education.
[00:38:59] Like I have plenty of clients who've ride the way out or read healing back pain and that's, they have the intellectual knowledge of it, but it hasn't translated to somatic safety. Right. So that's a, it's a process.
[00:39:11] Yeah. Let's talk about somatic safety because that is the kind of where we're headed, right? Yeah. That's the touchdown zone. And that's different for every person,
[00:39:26] right? Right.
[00:39:27] That work is like, nobody can do it for somebody else.
[00:39:33] Yeah. Right.
[00:39:34] We can share the idea and then help people navigate their way towards it and create experiences that help bring them in contact with safety or a lack of safety.
[00:39:46] Yeah.
[00:39:47] What, don't know
[00:39:48] just sitting with that, that idea of somatic
[00:39:50] safety. Yeah. I, it's like sitting being like,
[00:39:51] how do we do that?
[00:39:52] How do we do that? How do we do that in 10 seconds or less? No, but I guess like the first thing I wanna say is like, and we did this in our presentation, which is if you're not talking about both body size and weight stigma and understanding that, that this is a foundational piece in a sense of, in a lack of somatic safety.
[00:40:16] Yeah. You are missing something.
[00:40:18] Right. That is, that's all about the body. That's all about how your body's perceived, how you move through the world, how you perceive yourself. So it's a big piece of the puzzle for a lot of clients with neuroplastic symptoms. So think in the chapter and in the presentation we just gave the invitation to maybe ask about it.
[00:40:36] Have practitioners just even ask what's your relationship with your body? If the client is open to talking about it. Because so many practitioners probably don't think to include that or aren't trained maybe in that type of work.
[00:40:51] And I think sometimes practitioners they think they'll upset their clients.
[00:40:57] Mm-hmm.
[00:40:58] If they ask them to reflect on their body size because maybe they know that they don't, you know, maybe they think of it more as like, they don't like their body and I don't, we we're gonna just kind of avoid it.
[00:41:09] Yeah.
[00:41:10] You know? I'm like, Hmm. Avoiding it doesn't help people and make those connections.
[00:41:17] Right. That's right.
[00:41:20] How, what are things that you find effective for, like, when you're working with clients?
[00:41:26] Yeah. In terms of bringing up body size stuff? Yeah. I think I, if it's not someone who's explicitly coming to me for disordered eating or an eating disorder or weight stigma. 'cause I do have clients who've come for that.
[00:41:42] But when I do my assessment intake, I'll just kind of ask if this is something you would like to explore. I'm curious, what's your relationship with food and your body been like? Um, and just kind of like give an invitation. And also if that's not something you wanna explore today, that's okay.
[00:41:59] But I would, I'm curious. And some people will really be very appreciative that someone asked about that and just open the conversation up and they'll really start talking. And other people were like, oh, you know, I'm not ready for that. And that's fine too, but it's there. I've sort of planted a seed and sometimes it comes up later on in our work and then we go down that path.
[00:42:21] Yeah, that planting the seed, right. And then, yeah. 'cause part of the safety also that you're creating is between you and your client.
[00:42:30] Yeah. The therapeutic relationship. It's a big piece of it. Yeah.
[00:42:34] I
[00:42:34] just, as we were talking and other things, sometimes I'll do where people will sometimes just tell me like, I've been trying to lose weight, or they'll just kind of throw it in there.
[00:42:44] Even if I'm not seeing them for neuroplastic symptoms. And I'll kind of like make a disclaimer at some point. I practice from a health at every size perspective. I am here to support you no matter what your body size is. I'm not gonna encourage you to change your body in any way.
[00:43:00] So I kind of just say something like that so people know this is a safe space for bodies not to be judged essentially. 'cause some people, even though it's on my website, you know, people don't always feel that when they're coming into your office for the first time, they don't know.
[00:43:15] And it's complicated, I think, because there's always so much
[00:43:19] projection and protection, right?
[00:43:21] mm-hmm.
[00:43:22] There's so much scrutiny.
[00:43:24] Mm-hmm.
[00:43:25] Internally and externally. It's like really, I mean, it really does affect every body.
[00:43:31] Oh, yeah. That's not exclusive to people in larger bodies. That's any, it could be any of my clients in any size body.
[00:43:39] Yeah. Hmm.
[00:43:41] Ooh, we got our work to do.
[00:43:43] I know. Just at the beginning.
[00:43:46] Yeah.
[00:43:47] This was so great.
[00:43:48] This is so great. I'm so happy that you said yes to this conversation.
[00:43:53] Yeah.
[00:43:53] What do you think about your back now?
[00:43:56] Oh, how do I conceptualize my back?
[00:43:58] Yeah.
[00:43:59] Hmm.
[00:44:00] Or maybe you never think about your back.
[00:44:01] I think about it as I have herniated discs just like most people over the age of 20. And it talks to me when it wants to tell me something. That's how I think about it. That's how I talk. Think about like when if I feel some symptom coming on, like my first thought is not normally what's wrong with my body.
[00:44:24] It's like, is this neuroplastic what's going on? And then just an observation and a curiosity that happens from there.
[00:44:33] Yeah. Like I could just feel my nervous system settle with that. When we move away from that first line of panic.
[00:44:42] Right.
[00:44:42] Yeah.
[00:44:42] We're okay.
[00:44:44] That's right.
[00:44:44] We know how to explore this.
[00:44:46] We know how to do this. I have another thing I tell clients sometimes, which has been helpful to me, which is like sometimes I never figure out if something is neuroplastic or structural, but if it's structural, like a muscle strain or something, it's gonna heal either way.
[00:45:00] Right? It's not gonna be forever. And you can always get it checked out if you need to, but I think I had like wrist tendonitis after I had one of my kids and some people say, oh, that's common because you have the relaxin in your system. And it was a couple of months and I never figured out was it neuroplastic, was it structural?
[00:45:18] I don't know, but it eventually got better.
[00:45:21] I was just listening to Charlie Merrill talk about like that, like trying to figure it out.
[00:45:26] Mm-hmm.
[00:45:27] Is kind of a problem that doesn't need to be solved. Like Right.
[00:45:31] It
[00:45:31] can be a one of those avenues of confusion that we end up going down.
[00:45:36] Yeah.
[00:45:36] And the body is also like, having gone through surgery this fall.
[00:45:40] Mm-hmm. I was like, my body is working hard all the time behind the scenes.
[00:45:45] Oh yeah.
[00:45:46] Half of my job is to get out of the way.
[00:45:50] That's right.
[00:45:50] Like take, stop focusing on it. Make sure the environment is like good enough, right?
[00:45:57] Yeah. That's right.
[00:45:58] Good enough, enough sleep, good enough. Nutrition, good enough, whatever.
[00:46:02] Yeah.
[00:46:04] Lower some stress. Look away.
[00:46:07] Right?
[00:46:08] Pay attention to something else. My body's just like, oh, thank God. Now it's just knitting itself back together. Like
[00:46:14] That's right. It's amazing. Yeah.
[00:46:17] Our bodies are amazing all the time without our help.
[00:46:22] What really exemplifies that to me is I have had two C-sections, one with each of my kids and like, I don't think most of the time I was thinking about the C-section recovery.
[00:46:30] 'cause I had a newborn to take care of and it still did its thing without me doing anything. Right.
[00:46:36] That is a masterclass just in and of itself.
[00:46:39] I don't know how we do it, but we do it, we do it all.
[00:46:42] Well, I think wellness culture creates over responsibility
[00:46:46] Yeah.
[00:46:47] Of our individual health.
[00:46:48] That's right.
[00:46:49] So we see the same thing around bio-psychosocial impacts on health. Yeah. Right. We're over individualizing it. We're personalizing it. But then again, it's almost as if we feel responsible for the natural healing properties of our body and like we're actually, you know Yeah.
[00:47:03] Taking supplements and doing things right. Okay, it's already part of our makeup.
[00:47:11] That's right.
[00:47:12] Already an existing part of us. And so it's like clearing away.
[00:47:18] Mm-hmm.
[00:47:19] So that it can do its job better rather than adding more. That's right. Can be so powerful. So I love that when you were attending to your newborn, your body was doing its thing
[00:47:33] That's right.
[00:47:34] That it was doing its thing together. It's a beautiful symbiotic experience and like probably designed that way.
[00:47:43] Right? That's right,
[00:47:45] yeah.
[00:47:45] Whether you're heal any kind of childbirth, you have to heal, so, and we've been doing it for ages.
[00:47:50] Yeah.
[00:47:50] Yeah.
[00:47:51] Hmm.
[00:47:52] So we didn't even really talk about IFS so I think IFS should be its own conversation. So maybe I'll have you and Phil on or iFS MINDBODY people. We'll do that in the future.
[00:48:06] That would be great. I love that.
[00:48:07] 'cause it's such a great modality and it goes so well with PRT and EAET and the other modalities. So would love to chat about that.
[00:48:18] This was awesome. It was so great to talk to you. I look forward to doing it again, and of course. We'll let everybody know when the book is out.
[00:48:27] Yeah.
[00:48:27] This is great.