17 - Healing Eating Disorders: A Family-Centered Approach—with guest Carolyn McCarter Wood, LCSW

Episode Notes
Written By

Anne and Alison interview Carolyn McCarter Wood about trauma, families and eating disorders. Carolyn shares some heartfelt life experiences in her path to this work and her personal healing. Carolyn McCarter Wood is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Eating Disorders Specialist, and Licensed Clinical Addiction Specialist who lives near Asheville NC. Carolyn grew up in a working-class family in Western North Carolina. 

Show Notes:

Introduction:

Interview:

Guest Bio:

Carolyn McCarter Wood is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Eating Disorders Specialist, and a Licensed Clinical Addiction Specialist who lives near Asheville NC. Carolyn grew up in a working class family in Western North Carolina. She was the first in her family to attend college, and after graduating from Gardner-Webb she began her professional life as a teacher.  Always a seeker who questioned everything, she sought to resolve her questions about faith by obtaining a Master of Divinity. Her questions weren’t answered, but she did find her career path in counseling and human services.  After several years working with victims of domestic and sexual violence, as well as people involved in the criminal justice system due to addiction, Carolyn went on to earn a Master of Social Work at UNC-Chapel Hill.  

During Carolyn’s social work studies, her pre-teen daughter began showing signs of an eating disorder. Dispite early efforts at intervention her daughter’s illness was severe and lengthy. Their family’s experience in fighting for her daughter’s life led to a focus on eating disorders and trauma in Carolyn’s career.  In her therapy practice, Mountain Counseling Works PLLC, Carolyn supports adults with trauma and long term eating and body concerns.Through CMWConsulting and Coaching LLC, Carolyn offers Spoonful of Courage, a virtual coaching program for parents of teens or young adults with eating disorders.

Outside of work, which her husband of 36 years says she does too much of, Carolyn enjoys watching old TV favorites with her hubby and two dogs, as well as savoring delicious food and exciting experiences with friends and her beloved adult daughter.   Carolyn is happiest in front of a fire or next to a mountain stream, where she feels most connected to her mountain roots.

Carolyn's Website

Transcript

Alison Cebulla 0:05
Hi, welcome to latchkey urchins.

Anne Sherry 0:10
I don't know how to do friends.

Alison Cebulla 0:14
I don't know. I'm like, do I remember how to do this? We've only taken two weeks off.

Anne Sherry 0:18
I know. And yeah, it feels like this whole new portal or something. Or like I'm like, hi, Alison. I am and nice. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.

Alison Cebulla 0:28
I am a robot. I do have robot.

Anne Sherry 0:32
Yes. For sure. I don't know. Happy 22 I felt really strange about saying Happy New Year for some reason like this yearly. Why? Yeah, cuz,

Alison Cebulla 0:43
cuz it still feel happy.

Anne Sherry 0:45
It doesn't feel that happy? Or what's all this focus on? Happy New Year, I feels like there should be another phrase like, welcome to the

Alison Cebulla 0:55
New Year. Welcome. 2022 outcome to

Anne Sherry 0:59

  1. But if you start it with Happy New Year, it's already got this like goal. And you you're failing, if you're not happy or something that happy of a world in many, many, many ways. I know we can. Anyways, I'm trying to.

Alison Cebulla 1:16
I mean, yeah, go ahead. My goal is to have more joy this year. 100%. So like, I'm skipping Omicron news. I'm just not doing it. And like, people might get mad at me for saying that. And like, I still love health care workers. I'm still grateful. You know what I mean? But I'm just not. I'm just I like I can't, I can't Oh, and when people are like, I'm like, I Okay, I hope you feel better soon. Like, I don't have any more. I can't, I don't have any more to give. And I'm just like, I want the best for all of you. But I'm just not mentally doing COVID This year, like I'm finding other things to focus on.

Anne Sherry 1:57
I mean, we're basically just going to be living with it. Ad infinitum it it feels like so it's just an adjust. And I would say that is a gift that latchkey people tend to have we can make adjustments to our detriment. Just get used to shit and on some level, but we're also well suited to be like, Oh, so this is how things are now.

Alison Cebulla 2:21
Well, and that's you've said, that's what makes you well suited to be a therapist, because you can actually hold space for some fucked up shit. My mom to what you know, worked for hotline, like my entire childhood as a volunteer just taking people's crisis calls. Did it impact her in the least she could take or leave those crisis calls you I mean, she could just walk away and be like, well, you know,

Anne Sherry 2:43
I know it's some it's a strange line that you got to watch that where you're, you're so buffered. You know, I sometimes I like, I don't know, in therapy. I'm like, I'm like the Michelin man. You know, I like so much. Like padding or something that I forget to actually feel shit or whatever. So.

Alison Cebulla 3:06
Yeah, no, that's amazing. I love that analogy. So I want to say just in case I'm paying myself to be particularly cold, I did absorb all the stress the last two years, just as I think we all did, and I'm just like, this isn't I can't this isn't a way to live a life. Yeah. So it's so funny because I feel like the folks who are watching like Fox News, like my grandparents, this whole time I've had this spin. My grandma always says you just need to think more positively. You can't get into the fear like this propaganda. And now I'm like, Alright, Grandma, you got me a minute on your team fear

Anne Sherry 3:42
here so what does the hell is she talking about? It's just propaganda

Alison Cebulla 3:46
but I'm in now Amen. I can't live my life in fear.

Anne Sherry 3:52
Somehow it's all paradox being maturity is moving into paradox. How do we hold both? So say that again?

Alison Cebulla 4:00
Sure. That was profound.

Anne Sherry 4:04
Was it? Well, we can cool Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it's like how do you come to the you know, we hold these polarizations and if you're just like oh, it's either this or I can't be happy unless these sort these these this and this happened? Well, that's just not possible right? We got to find i The why is the word happy fucking with me so much. I'm like this thing what is I don't know being happy we just want you to be happy that's one of those neglect phrases we

Alison Cebulla 4:38
just want you to be happy Well, that's what we were talking about in the toxic positivity episode right right.

Anne Sherry 4:43
So that's why I'm I'm I want new words for Happy New Year Merry Christmas. Um, yeah, we were gonna talk a little bit about like that whole Christmas shit that go go go industrious, do all the things every fucking year it drives me nuts. I just want to go somewhere Go away. Go into a deep dark hole and just, I don't know reflect or something, but it's like ramp it up during Christmas.

Alison Cebulla 5:14
Did you ramp it up?

Anne Sherry 5:16
Kinda I mean you gotta buy shit for kid you gotta did we ramp up and it was just in a resistant place and it felt like maybe what maybe I was maybe I could have stopped or something, I don't know. 70 degrees here in Nashville, which was I don't we got

Alison Cebulla 5:35
a bunch of votes for you and for me in terms of how to do Santa, so people really did people emailed us. Emily, who was our guests.

Anne Sherry 5:47
Yeah, I wasn't sure that I

Alison Cebulla 5:49
she was in the preacher. Yeah, yeah, she was in the magical creature camp because I was like, I was like, Wait, I don't understand what you're saying. Are you on Anne's team? Or are you on my team? And she was like, I'm on your team? In that. Yes. Santa exists but he's a mad he's like a unicorn or? Yeah, the other ones that we do. What are the other magical? I don't know. Any Tooth Fairy all that shit? No, but those those ones are like Santa where parents are saying it's true. tricking you that this is real. Yeah. So but for your team, you got plenty.

Anne Sherry 6:24
I'd love to see the demographics on it or whatever, what ages or something. And I will say what I was so violent towards that Instagram lady, I was responding to what she was sort of answering like, like, you mean, I can't tell my kids Santa doesn't exist or, or I can

Alison Cebulla 6:43
say that she was responding to an angry parent. And so yeah, responding also to the angry parents.

Anne Sherry 6:49
Either, right, then what? Yeah, so anytime somebody says you can't you have to do it this way. Or that way. I generally go to the place of wanting to punch in the face. So you're not the boss to me and some parts that develop somewhere along the line. So I typically

Alison Cebulla 7:10
hate really, really successful people just in general, I just get really bitter and they have a really the big little feelings. They have like 2 million followers. But I gotta say, I just don't hate them because they do vulnerability really well. And like imperfect parenting. They do it really well.

Anne Sherry 7:27
I agree. I started watching some of their stuff. And I was like, yeah, that's some good stuff there. For sure. Yes, the thing that I would that I think I would, I would warn parents. Just talk to your kids that other families might do it differently. Because you'll have that fucked up. situation where a kid goes in, like, Santa is not real Santa is not real. So talk with your kids that other families have different tradition. And don't be fucking up other parents decisions to say that Santa does exist. And it's a big, wonderful, beautiful thing that's happening in that household. So lives.

Alison Cebulla 8:07
Yes. Okay. Teammate, team, Alison. All right.

Anne Sherry 8:10
Yeah. August, August. I was on my team.

Alison Cebulla 8:15
He was on your team. He was on your team, but he had some some constructive feedback that I loved. To the Christmas episode, or holiday episode. That one was so fun. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, I would definitely listen. Um, so today we have we're Erlinda wood, Carolyn wood, who's an Asheville therapist, and she specializes in in E trauma and eating disorders, which I frickin love. I work in a trauma field where we're trying to like, we're trying to get like everybody in every industry to understand like, it's trauma. So anytime I'm like, Oh, here's a therapist, you know, who's doing a thing. And it's trauma informed? I am so excited.

Anne Sherry 9:04
Yeah. Yeah. And that is that is an area eating disordered eating that I? I don't, I would refer out. I don't know if I right. I feel

Alison Cebulla 9:18
good. Yeah. I mean, you're like, yeah, not everybody can

Anne Sherry 9:21
do everything. And yeah, there's a lot of expertise around it. Because I do think, you know, with restricted eating, I know, I mean, it can get to where your brain isn't functioning properly. So no amount of feel good compassion is going to really go in. Right, but yeah, it said it's an area. I'm super interested in. I we were just talking about that. I do think women particularly are susceptible to disordered eating in general. And men too, no doubt, but I'm kind of with Tom and I, as I move into my 50 year old body 53 Almost 54 year old body postmenopausal. It's not like I binge and eat a lot of anything, but it's just expanding. And I'm like, God damn, like, I do not want to work really fucking hard to have a 40 year old or a 30 year old body. So this whole what it looks like I, I find in this culture, it's like, it's in my mind a lot, even though I feel like I have pretty good acceptance overall. But it's like, Ha, it's just like entering that phase of God, I gotta get into a new relationship with like, how I swim to like Tom and I started swimming. And we used to be competitive swimmers, and his fucking male body, just like after three or four times, he's like, I'm still I'm good and under 110. So my 100 free, which will mean something, just swimmers, fuck yourself. Like, I am now like, the lady who can't just hop out of the pool, I have to use the goddamn ladder to get out of the fucking pool. I'm like, and I used to be like, Oh, look at that poor old lady having to go up that ladder. Now I can, you know, roll out like throwing a fish. You know, I can either roll out of the pool like a fish or use the ladder like a grown up. So anyways, it's just different. But it's coming into these places of acceptance, which this is how I swim now. Yeah, this is what feels good. But when you get into those tear those places where your brain says, not enough, not enough, not enough. That's a downward spiral rather than like, just go walk.

Alison Cebulla 11:48
Just go walk,

Anne Sherry 11:49
you know, just do a little something. And yeah, thank you, Alicia. Getting into

Alison Cebulla 11:56
code on an empty toolbox was so inspiring. And I'm looking for I've been hunting around for the right gym here. Yeah, I'm just going to the dam why

Anne Sherry 12:04
and starting to lift weights and it feels good. And even Chris Hayes on MSNBC, his Why is this happening? He's interviewing a woman, a swell, woman. W whatever, SW o le, and just talking about functional lifting. And that it's like, it is really, really important for bodies to lift weight. So and just to feel strong in general. So I think it does something certainly mentally as well. So definitely a 2022 Welcome to wellness. Brand your body.

Alison Cebulla 12:43
Yeah, love you. Um, obviously, we've talked about the fact that I am a certified health coach since 2014. And so I think for me, it really wasn't so much about helping people get in shape, per se. It was more like, I just noticed that there's so much junk food around us. And, you know, I was like, gosh, like it just seems like people want to do better. Weirdly, don't have the tools. Like I taught an online course called give up sugar for good. You took it for four years.

Anne Sherry 13:27
I just made a Blow Pop, it didn't work. So

Alison Cebulla 13:31
thanks for letting everyone know my course didn't work for you. Okay,

Anne Sherry 13:35
thing works for me.

Alison Cebulla 13:38
Um, and you know, like, first day first lesson is like, pick up your food item and read the ingredients. Yeah. And, you know, like that. The fact that people just weren't doing that or didn't know what to look for kind of kind of blows my mind not to not to really shame anyone but like, even that, and I think it doesn't, you know, doesn't speak to any one person's, you know, stuff but like, I think like our society is like, GO GO GO, GO inhale your food, you know, like, keep doing keep having a side hustle, get home, work some more, get home late, you know, eat whatever you can. So people just weren't slowing down, you know? And like thinking like, what am I putting in my body and then also there's like this weird thing about going to the grocery store and then being like, this is where food is sold. Therefore everything in here is food. Right? It's like no, it's not like weird right? Like this is not like we live in this kind of like it so much about marketing or food product marketing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's

Anne Sherry 14:41
some great YouTube stuff on food theory. Anyways, Tom on August watch a ton of these YouTube videos that are super great around that anyways. Yeah, I'll send you some links.

Alison Cebulla 14:51
Yeah, but yeah, so I mean, so my angle like I was, you know, I studied agriculture and undergrad, and that I just thought, oh, like it would be so fun. To help people eat better and just do a couple things here and there, but that is in no way. I am not helping people with an eating disorder. That's like a whole thing. That's, that's a lot more like my meth addiction, I think. Yeah. You know, interesting

Anne Sherry 15:14
to talk with Carolyn about it, because it is an area I think I have put over here and I'm not I'm curious about it. It feels like there's a lot involved in understanding. But it's like, I mean, when it

Alison Cebulla 15:26
comes down to it, it's like control. And like I just started reading.

Anne Sherry 15:31
No bad parts.

Alison Cebulla 15:32
No bad parts. Dude, you're doing Dix Schwartz. With a foreword by latest Marissa about coming to Asheville and getting healed. She did. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know that. Okay. I haven't read that book. Asheville is like, where people go to get healed. That's what I did. But it's yeah, the back man. He got endorsements from every motherfucker. Jack Kornfield vessel Rihanna, Cole gabbro monta Lissa Rankin Terry real. Do you have you read Terry rails books? I love.

Anne Sherry 16:04
I've listened to some podcast stuff with Terry rail. I like it. Yeah. Life changing. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 16:11
Yeah. So this is yeah. This What was

Anne Sherry 16:14
he saying about about eating disordered parts? I mean, that's sort of his that was his. That's where he started. Like,

Alison Cebulla 16:23
the Asus study. The study was originally a weight loss study. So all the trauma stuff comes from people trying to lose weight. Yeah, right. pretty obsessed with losing weight in America and realizing

Anne Sherry 16:35
it's big. Fucking business. Yeah, well, seven out of 10,

Alison Cebulla 16:39
seven out of 10 adults in America are overweight or obese. So that's a lot. Yeah. And not that I'm I would never ever, ever shame anyone for being any weight. You could be healthy and happy at any weight. But we have a foods we just have a food systems problem right here. Sure. The right foods are not reaching the right people. Yeah, right.

Anne Sherry 17:03
And we probably I mean, we just don't start like, queer I watching you. And I'm like, I can't remember which one, the guy who does the food piece. But he I think that's so amazing. And fab Antony, right? Like, he really helps them. Like he says, Let me meet you where you're at, essentially, and let me help you have a better

Alison Cebulla 17:25
relationship with something kind. They're he going to heal

the world. They literally are. That's why they're so

Anne Sherry 17:33
famous, the model that we need to.

Alison Cebulla 17:36
I was just thinking, as I was getting ready and looking at my own body, that no matter who they meet, no matter who they meet, doesn't matter what gender or what size guy, they look why animago You have a gorgeous figure, honey. Yeah, have a gorgeous figure. Every person Oh, my God.

Anne Sherry 17:59
I think they actually see the person and say and say what they're seeing, you know. So I think it is true in their world.

Alison Cebulla 18:10
Say But ifs. Yeah, but yeah, sorry. Watch all of queer. I watch all of it. All of them. If you haven't already. You probably already have though, because it's so popular. But yeah, okay. But the new Austin season just dropped. It's like their best ever. Okay, yeah. But ifs internal family systems. This is what an has been doing. And I've dabbled, I've dabbled, you know, I've looked at here and there. But this is the first book I read. But you know, this thing about the exiled parts. And then the protector parts is really nice and easy to understand a nice framework. He's basically and he says in this book, he's just renamed, you know, things that already exist in psychology, but in a way that's like, easy to understand, which I love. Yeah, so you know what, I love that he kind of talks about, like, those parts of us that had this joy as children like this, like curiosity and wonder, and how those parts often got, like, just absolutely squashed by parents and other adults like, yep, with contempt. You know, there was a lot of that for me as a kid, and those are like, become our XL parts where we don't feel safe to have that curiosity of joy and wonder and if there's too it's too wounded that sauce, right? That like soft part, you know? Yeah.

Anne Sherry 19:28
And literally, it's like it gets exiled, but it's really to buy protectors or protectors develop, but it keeps it safe. And that's what's kind of cool about ifs. Deep Belief that that still exists, it still is there. It's still protected. And so it's called Hope merchant therapy.

Alison Cebulla 19:48
So yeah, if it's yeah, if food is your thing, I love this idea of like, the food is the protector, you know, and just seeing like, oh, like my disordered eating is pretty protecting me from the pain. And so for me, like my big thing that I still struggle with is my suicidal ideation. And so, you know, reading this book, I had this huge epiphany for the first time just like last week of like, Oh,

Anne Sherry 20:20
my God tell you this,

Alison Cebulla 20:21
I don't know that suicidal ideation is protecting me. That's it, I had a thing happened where that that ideation started to creep in the other day. And I went, Oh, what is this protecting me from? And then underneath it was the grief. And I got to step into that, and the ideation just,

Anne Sherry 20:41
yep, just because it got your attention. It did what it was supposed to do. And caveat here, like, there are many people who do not have solid access to their sense of self, there is a quality of, you know, some internal relationship that exists. And so there are suicide parts that are trying to take over and you need help immediately. But it's worth getting curious when you're not in such a blended state.

Alison Cebulla 21:09
If you're feeling like a suicidal ideation that feels urgent, please do call a hotline. You can just Google suicide hotline and find it please call.

Anne Sherry 21:18
Yeah, please stay here long enough so that you could learn what it's actually trying to get your attention.

Alison Cebulla 21:25
It's really worth it. Because every time that I find those soft places that I'm being that my like, other stuff is protecting me from it feels like so nice, like it is those soft spots are what make life worth living. But like we have all these protectors like keeping us from them, what

Anne Sherry 21:44
they don't know how old you are. I mean, this is why the protectors have to do their job parts literally get stuck in time. So something happens in today's world. And it registers as ooh, this feels just in the blink of an eye registers as this is exactly what it felt like when I was three, four, or five, six, whatever. And it's like, Oh, you're 345 or six, we're gonna respond in in this certain way. You know, so it is a really, really good modality. It's hard to find ifs therapists, but we will put there's a book by Jay early called self therapy, it's a place you can get started using his, he just sort of walks you through the IFS steps, so and tons of videos, you know, on and on. We're going to do another episode with somebody that's going to really talk about ifs in general. Yeah, yeah. So we'll bring that forth more and other therapy modalities to address. By no means the only one does

Alison Cebulla 22:43
not someone that does MDR. Yeah,

Anne Sherry 22:47
we might find somebody with all of those. Package,

Alison Cebulla 22:52
but I do love ifs because it does make it it just makes it easy to do the work. It's it's really just such a nice clean structure. I mean, I like I said like, it's so good to, like I said to you earlier, before we started recording, I found a couple things that he said problematic. He kind of does that whole like we're building towards some sort of ideal awakened world that I just don't believe I think that life is always supposed to be messy. And there's no great awakening. Yes,

Anne Sherry 23:24
yeah. I've heard that term. Now that I like binge can spirituality and some and I'm like, oh, yeah, never what I meant when I said it. So if you're listening today, and you heard me say Great Awakening, I don't subscribe to whatever that kind of thing. Yes, I'm Allison is disabused me now on the trudge train. So

Alison Cebulla 23:48
but like I mean, yeah, like the enlightenment, which did you know that a lot of scholars believe that the Enlightenment was fueled by coffee.

Anne Sherry 23:57
I have heard that that was Pollan's book, wasn't it? Because he couldn't be happy. He was going to I didn't read his book on coffee, but I have Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So I have my enlightenment every morning. And if I don't have it, it is the fucking dark ages for sure. So maybe

Alison Cebulla 24:16
psychedelics and MDMA not that we're promoting for everyone to just go use those in an unsafe settings but they could just could stimulate I would lighten meant who knows?

Anne Sherry 24:27
Hey, yes, stay open. Stay curious. Yeah, just stay open and stay here because that you know, I've done enough to be like, Oh my god, I have the answers. I know what's gonna happen. And then after a while later, I'm like, oh, no, that's that's really interesting. Like you keep but you need to stay in this body in this planet work locally, connect locally. That's the one thing that you know we're just wanting to because it is so hard to do it locally, like I'm finally going back to my church. And you won't, I mean, I get so many messages it's so great to see your face. We just love you here right now because I'll be texting like oh, sorry I disappeared you know but I mean literally it is a community that is like we love seeing you and I'm like how

Alison Cebulla 25:21
I love church so much yeah, how

Anne Sherry 25:23
Yeah, yeah, not all churches I'm starting I'm also listening to the fucking scene on radio the climate series. Okay. Oh, Christianity really fuck some shit up. Truly, you know, so

Alison Cebulla 25:35
it's really just people it's people that function I hear people I know. Listen for different means, you know, I

Anne Sherry 25:43
know so. But the the way that it is practiced in many, like, the spiritual just like if you actually follow Christ, like how that dude lived. And follow what he says. I still remain baffled that it gets so co opted weirdly. I'm like, he just fucking said it. Like, be loving. Be loving, you know, love and so it just blows my mind. I'm like, how is that turning into a crusade where you're fucking killing everything in your path and enslaving people. So anyways, anyway, I got more study. Anyways, Happy New Year. Happy,

Alison Cebulla 26:32
happy, happy, happy.

Anne Sherry 26:35
We plan on having a happy new year with latchkey urchins and friends

Alison Cebulla 26:39
with you. We have a lot of great guests lined up, we're so excited to have them have already cancelled because of COVID Omicron or whatever, hey, we're all going to be okay. Hopefully or not, and we can handle on the pain as it comes. That's see that's the thing that I'm doing is that I'm like, I don't want to live my life anticipating pain and then being in fear of it. I will meet that pain when I come to it. You know that?

Anne Sherry 27:09
That is a quality of having self which is big to ifs confidence. Right? Right. You you tell those parts that are doing such a good job right? They're out there trying to be like okay, Allison, this is on the horizon. This is they're trying to be helpful, right? So just say Hey, guys, thanks so much guys and gals. Thank you. I got it. Come home have some tea, or Blow Pop, although you can't and Allison's we're

Alison Cebulla 27:36
Oh, sugar. I know. Okay, so come to my

Anne Sherry 27:40
world. We Blow Pops from time to time.

Alison Cebulla 27:43
All right, Carolyn Would everyone.

All right, we are here with Carolyn wood. And we are super excited to interview her. And so let me just introduce Carolyn. She's a licensed clinical social worker, and a clinical addiction specialist and also a certified eating disorder specialist. And she also has a master of divinity and a Master of Social Work with a certification in substance abuse. And so she is an Asheville based therapist and Coach, and we're so excited to have you on Carolyn today to talk to you about trauma and eating disorders. So thank you so much for being here. Did you have anything to add to your bio?

Carolyn McCarter Wood 28:59
Let's see. Did I have anything? I go by. I always include my family names. So I go by Carolyn McCarter would pretty much everyone knows me.

Alison Cebulla 29:10
Yeah. Welcome. Yay.

Anne Sherry 29:15
Carolyn and I go to church together too. So she's a fellow church member Atlanta. This guy shout out. So I know we've you know, we've talked in cross paths and hung out and been on committees and stuff together, but I don't think we've ever had the are you a latch key? Are you an urchin? Are you a friend? Are you all of that? Speak to that similar age, I think. Yeah.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 29:41
I'm a little bit older than you and I have my quasi latch key. And I would say to some degree of an emotional latchkey. My mom went to work when I was seven. And so both my parents were working Last, my dad was a deputy sheriff and work days and nights. And my mom worked as a nursing assistant in a hospital and she also worked days and nights. So they're two different things parts about latchkey, sometimes I was literally by myself a lot. And sometimes I, which is sometimes even harder, I was, oh my gosh, I'm gonna tear up. I was not I had a parent present, but they were in bed asleep. And so I was alone and not alone. Several of

Anne Sherry 30:41
our guests have had that experience where they kind of had to, it's almost harder, like, because there is that like that, that being in the other room, but you cannot access them. Right? So that's different if they're just not even there. Or you have to be quiet or, like somebody else we were talking with had to be the like parent for the little kids to keep them quiet. You know? So yeah,

Alison Cebulla 31:05
this is of emotional neglect, you know, of like, my parent was there. I didn't, I don't know it, you know, and that's like, there's so much missed. There's so much missed. In in that running on empty, and the author janiece web outlines so well. All the different types of interactions that you could have with your parent when you get home from school, including one in which the parent goes, you know, oh, did you feel disappointed when done it? Either? Da it's just like, Where was that parenting?

Anne Sherry 31:43
Yeah, I know. I'm i The more this damn feeling thing, y'all. We need a warning once you start this work and you start these bucking feelings. God queer I were watching that. Carolyn, are you watching where I am? Right now on Netflix,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 32:02
where I have not been shut up.

Alison Cebulla 32:04
Oh, yeah, they're gonna heal the world. Hi, people being so kind to other people. It's just

Anne Sherry 32:11
so get people back. They'll get like families kind of unite them or find a way to talk and then you get these long lost conversations or whatever. And I'm like, Tom and I are sitting there streaming and August streaming tears, because it's not happening in our world. And August is like, yeah, come on. We're like, you securely attached little brass.

Yeah, so because we're not getting that and the little parts of us I'm learning more about like, just learning to grieve is really important. Like not trying to, like, heal everything away. So a lot of this is just being in relationship with at all. So I really appreciate you as you were introducing yourself saying Tears are coming up like, Yeah, can we do more? spare ones? Yeah, yeah. So yeah.

Alison Cebulla 33:04
Yeah, any, any other any other notes on like, the emotional environment of your childhood. So your parents were so James home, but they were tired. They were tired. A lot. They had hard jobs.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 33:17
So my father was the person that was securely emotionally attached to he was he, I was the apple of his eye. My mother was the one who of course, had more responsibility for rearing me, and she didn't do feelings. And depression, anxiety runs in my family really strongly. And so my dad struggled a lot. My mom struggled a lot with being angry at him. And then lo and behold, that took after my dad. And so I learned very early to be ashamed of having fears or questions. And so there were so many things that I that I struggled with alone, including, you know, early onset of health anxiety when I was a child, which I've dealt with all the way through, you know, even now, so I learned I learned that it was not okay to have a question or to be to be scared or to be sad, because it was just

Anne Sherry 34:46
totally you got to put that shit away. She's like okay, it's me like seven year old me six year old me against it. I just, you know, like, going to school Whatever, I got it, I'll take care of everything. I'm not asking anything. Nothing happened. Yeah, it's

Carolyn McCarter Wood 35:05
Yeah, yeah. So physically I was I was pretty, pretty well taken care of, but emotionally, and I have to say to that, of course, it was from what their own limited wells were. So one of the things that happened was when I was in fifth grade, I was diagnosed with a heart murmur. Excuse me, which meant that I had had rheumatic fever the year before. And it Yeah, I had, I would get sick every year. And it was just, we just thought it was the virus. But it See, I It terrified my parents. And it terrified me. And there was, you know, I just picked up on their fear and grew up thinking of myself as frail and Oh, not well, you know, they were very protective. Don't Don't don't overexert yourself, all these

Anne Sherry 36:14
things. Wow. Yeah. So

Carolyn McCarter Wood 36:17
I feel like if that had happened with my daughter, I would have probably, hopefully, been able to do a little bit better job of helping her know that I was okay. Yeah, I'll

Alison Cebulla 36:28
be there feel safe.

Anne Sherry 36:30
Yes, that's fine. I can imagine like you put away a lot like having to manage a lot around exuberance, and aliveness, and I can't and just all these messages that come around us. And, you know, we've talked we talked a lot about this on the podcast of like I did, our parents are also they're really scared, like the medical community isn't knowing how to help you to say, no, she's okay. She can, you know, like, keep moving around. And exercise is good. Maybe isn't as good if you've Oh, yeah. Like, I'm a fucking doctor. I'm like, no,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 37:06
no, no. The truth was the main, the main thing was that they didn't want to have a later infection. And actually, everything that's good for anybody else was fine for me. But my parents didn't know that. Right. And so, yeah, yeah, we just heard heart. And everybody goes,

Anne Sherry 37:32
right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 37:35
Well, thanks for sharing that. What do you

Anne Sherry 37:39
like the topic being eating? Certified eating disorder specialists like this? I was saying to Allison, a little bit ago, it feels like an area an internal family systems or therapists, you know, we should be able to work we can work with lots of different modalities. But this really is a specialty. Yeah. I'm curious, like, is maybe even talking to because you know, people are like, I just lie there. Yeah. And do it and why did science go?

Alison Cebulla 38:12
What is Yeah, but also just like, just a little overview. For our listeners who may not know not everyone listening is going to have any familiarity with it. So for a beginner, you know what I'm talking about.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 38:24
So I certified eating disorder specialist is a certification that's granted by iadapt, which is the International Association for eating disorders professionals. And it is a wrench and originally it was the designation for therapists but now it has broadened to be the designation that can be for dietitians, medical doctors, allied health, people, like coaches and therapist,

Anne Sherry 38:55
grant a great idea that all share the same analysis, all the people that are needed to help in this. Yeah.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 39:03
So eating disorders are one of those. One of those illnesses that really is at the nexus of mental health and physical health, and they feed each other in a cyclical way. So part of the reason for the need for this specialization is being aware of the team approach that's needed, so that we can address the nutrition and medical stability and sometimes, you know, other co occurring illnesses. And it also, it's really important to understand when it's safe to be treating someone up outpatient or whether they need a higher level of care and like In any field, there have been some splits and divisions. And so one of the things that happened early on in eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, anorexia and bulimia, and now we understand that there's an illness called binge eating disorder. But they, they've been around forever. But at first, we do what we always do, when we don't understand what's causing something, and we figure it was probably the mother. Right? So there was this. There was this theory that was built up around the idea of a family dysfunction out of which the eating disorder grew. In the 80s. Some folks at Maudsley Hospital in London, tried to do is they did a study trying to figure out what it was. And what they found out was actually that there was no difference between families that did have eating disorders in them and families that didn't, that of course, there were problems of functioning. But, yes, so they had to rethink this idea of the family's problems being causative. Got it? Yeah. And out of that came family based treatment, or what's called Maudsley in the UK, which is the idea that parents and family can be the primary source of support for a kid getting better, so that we won't be so quick to send our kids away to a treatment center. I

Alison Cebulla 41:48
love

Anne Sherry 41:49
it. I like that. Oh, yes. Because the whole family gets treatment. It's not this, you know, and I know we're moving more towards that. That is this is a systems problem and not being away from the identified patient. That one out, yeah. And they will be okay.

Alison Cebulla 42:05
Trial of trauma. I work in child abuse, education prevention, and might with my day job, Carolyn, is that all the data is now showing just how bad it is to remove kids from their caregivers, if even if there's aces adverse childhood experiences, if you move them into foster care, they're also going to have aces. So even if it's even if it's bad, and of course, we don't want any home to be abusive, it's really important that kids stay with their families of origin. If you know if it can be managed, if you can help the family and lift them out of those aces,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 42:37
it's just bad because of the trauma, right? And so, like, going to treatment or recovering from an eating disorder can be traumatic. And so part of my work in my new venture, which is called spoonful of courage, in which I am collaborating with the treatment providers to be a coach, and a consultant to parents whose kids or young adults have eating disorders. What I'm trying to do is pull together what we know from the evidence base for family based treatment, but also, but also the other part about like, safety in the home is not just about abuse. It's also like I didn't feel safe growing up in my home because my parents were scared of so many things.

Anne Sherry 43:32
Yeah, totally. Yeah. Evasive fear,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 43:35
right. Yes, yeah. So helping parents learn how to how to manage their own fear, how to resource and using somatic resources, in order to be able to stand up to the very hard job of helping your child eat and keep them because it's very hard, essentially, a lot of times what we hope it doesn't always happen. But what we hope is that the parents with a team can nourish their child at home, and the child can get better at home. Rather than what happened in my own family with my own daughter's eating disorder experience, which she basic. We would send her to treatment she would give better she would come home, she would get very sick again. The cycle got it.

Alison Cebulla 44:35
Yeah.

Anne Sherry 44:36
Wow. I imagine that leads to a certain level of hopelessness on can we be together? Yeah,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 44:44
or my kid? Yeah. Like will my kid ever be okay, well, my gather be okay.

Anne Sherry 44:49
Right. Yeah. And feeling helpless yourself.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 44:53
Imagine what am I doing wrong? And why? Why? Why is my kids sick?

Anne Sherry 45:00
All right. So so this new venture, so is this this is more like, a new way that like treating again treating the whole system like I have to like, how do I support the parents? Because again, it's that wanting, I mean anything with extreme, I think where the parts are the showing extreme behaviors. It's like, gosh, if we can just heal that one thing right then. But then all that pressure is is on that. So, Allison, you look like you're about to ask a question. Yeah, go ahead.

Alison Cebulla 45:36
So okay, so Carolyn, your website talks about eating disorders and trauma, which, you know, we're essentially a trauma podcast. And so I absolutely love what you have to say about sort of decoupling this idea that the feel like, you have to take the kid away from the family and heal them outside the family. It needs to be sort of within families. But then I guess I do want to ask you about what role trauma does play in eating

Carolyn McCarter Wood 46:09
disorders. That's great. So one of my, like I said, there was this discovery that families with eating disorders didn't look that different than families without eating disorders in them. But there has, there is an institute called the embodied Recovery Institute with two amazing therapists who have developed this type of study, that what what we look at in the development of eating disorders is three things. One can be just a sensory differences. We're learning more and more and more yet, sensory differences are often a big part of both anorexia and art.

Anne Sherry 46:58
Do you mind by?

Carolyn McCarter Wood 47:01
I have heard of it. Yeah. Anyways, okay. Yeah. So So for it, for example, a lot of some some folks who have tend toward anorexia, or arfid, they may experience the world as being too much, in a lot of ways. Too loud, too rough. Wow. Right.

Anne Sherry 47:28
So the restriction of food is, it's a way to get control on their environment. Oh, wow. I can't control this. Right. Yeah.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 47:37
Yeah, they, they, but it's, but it's not necessarily a conscience, a conscious decision. So there's the sensory differences. There are developmental losses. And this is where we talk about things that happen here, like a lot of neglect that happens was somebody trying to neglect, you know, like, there can be things that happen. So for example, in my home, way, before I was born, when my father, when my brother was less than two. My father went into the hospital for nearly two years because of tuberculosis. And my mother's job, yes, why. And my mother's job was to keep the household running, go see, my father, and my brother was, like, shipped around from, you know, people taking care of him, I went along. So that was, that was nobody's fault. But you know, that impacted his attack tree

Anne Sherry 48:34
100%.

Alison Cebulla 48:35
I know, I really love this moving away from the, which I kind of think of as like the 80s Alice Miller era of like, blame the parents blame the parents, which was kind of needed to wake us up. But now I love that we're moving away from it, you know, you do have to have that thing where you process your anger of your childhood. There's a lot of anger in there. And then you have to be like, Well, what were the factors that created this situation? And how can I move away from that blame and move towards that compassion, right? It's no one's fault when you get tuberculosis or it's no one's fault. If you had an economic hardship, a job loss, you know, even even substance misuse disorders, you have to look well, what were they dealing with? Why was Yeah,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 49:20
exactly. Yeah. And so part of the thing that, I believe is that often, well, eating disorders are very complicated. I'm really into the science and the neurology. But when we are in defense mode, so fight flight or freeze, we know that digestion goes offline.

Anne Sherry 49:48
Yeah, right. Yeah. So parasympathetic or sympathetic, sympathetic response, right? Yeah. vagus nerve and all that. Yeah. What about Yeah,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 49:57
so So like for the exam? Pull up a parent helping a child eat. There has to be like this unremitting insistence just like in treatment of like it would be in treatment and unresolved remitting insistence that they eat all the while doing it. Not through threat, that by secure insistence, just like this, this, this is what needs. Yes. So then there is this wonderful little YouTube by a woman named Eva mousse B, that explains how you cannot logic someone out of an eating disorder and showing Where's Yeah, yeah, she she compares, like, trying to get a child to eat, who has like anorexia to if you were bungee jumping, you know, and, and the bungee jumping, we don't need somebody to explain to us about how strong everything is, and everything. We need someone to be confident and competent. Yeah, they know what they're doing.

Anne Sherry 51:09
That must take a tremendous amount of work with parents, to get all of their parts to calm down, to be able to stay in a place of secure attachment with themselves while they're watching their kid be.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 51:25
It's so hard, it's so hard. And I gotta tell you, I did not do this with my child, because family based treatment kind of things, they were just coming to the US. And when we were apart, we were kind of, we just did what we were told to do, which was handed over to the therapist and the nutritionist, and you stay out of it. And sometimes I feel really awful, because I'm like, could I have done it? And the answer is, I don't know. But I've spent a lot of

Anne Sherry 51:58
coaching and help yourself. You know, I mean this with me, just as culture in general Tom and I joke all the time about independent personality disorder, you know, I do myself or just do it. I know, I'm getting my sort of DSM, like, if you meet these criteria, it goes into like having a community I can imagine needing like support or a community to go cry to just like, yes, it's so hard and people saying we've got you you can do this, you know. So just like, I just keep seeing these concentric circles of like support and how hard that is to ask for. Create, feel like you deserve or receive it. I mean, when I had my hysterectomy I remember Sarah or whoever at church was like, Okay, you're on the meal train. I was like, get my fucking name off there because we got it. We got it fucking trying. Like, no. And people came in and it was bulking awesome. You know?

Carolyn McCarter Wood 53:13
Is when I when I broke the shit out of my arm who was it that drove all the way over to my house to take me to church? It was you it was me.

Alison Cebulla 53:27
Showing up for your community and I

Anne Sherry 53:34
COVID is like a race so many fucking memories. But take that up. Yes, that's me. I was like, You know what? People can show up. But I could do that. So I'm still on that edge of like, having a need or, you know, just like I don't. I mean, I think it could get to the point of like, we're just depressed this week. Could somebody bring us deals like we're yeah, there's this thing of like, you got to have some you got to have a hysterectomy. You got to break your arm.

Alison Cebulla 54:00
You have to get really Drabek. But I get nurturance do ya

Anne Sherry 54:04
do see and I have like, mad respect for people at church. I'll get we'll get those just like they're just having a really hard time. No details, no specifics. And they need extra support. And people are just like, oh, fill out like, you know, Monday the 24th and just filling out all the days we got this and I'm like, That's wild. I aspire to that this lifetime or next? I don't know. Yeah,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 54:29
yeah. Yeah. I gotta give a shout out to my husband right here. Because I feel I feel like often the reason that I've been able to do all the work, the things that I do is because that he has accepted the role of I'm okay, you know, like, it's like, he is just the he's, he's just rock solid and man if he's not okay, you It is so hard for me to regulate myself.

Anne Sherry 55:02
Chudley ship is one of the sweetest, kindest, like people on the planet I have always appreciated just yeah, you're just he's one of those people you know when you go the past the peace at church, it's like, Hi chat. Yeah. Like, Oh, awkward, awkward, awkward, you know, and it's like he's always there with all he's just huggable. Yeah.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 55:29
He is. Yeah, good people, but I have to work at letting him be not okay sometime. That's

Anne Sherry 55:35
right needs. Yeah, he's just a natural

Carolyn McCarter Wood 55:37
nurturer.

Anne Sherry 55:38
Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 55:39
Got it. Got it.

Anne Sherry 55:41
Yeah. I don't know, if we got to the third thing that you'll find that i my i had a Blow Pop before we got on this. I was judging me a little bit of you sensory differences, developmental losses. And then the third thing

Carolyn McCarter Wood 55:56
was, was the trauma was trauma of living living in either fight flight. Got it? Yeah, yeah. And so I don't get into all those things, you know, because my job, I, my work has fallen into two paths. In my therapy, I work with people who I call severe, they have severe and enduring eating disorders, you know, I work with people who may have had an eating disorder for 20 years. Right. So those who are the adults, and then in my coaching and consulting business, I don't do treatment of the kid, I try to actually not even have contact with the kid just to keep those lines. Clear. Yeah, that my my job is to support the parents in, like, knowing their treatment options, understanding what all this what all these fucking letters mean, right? Can you?

Alison Cebulla 56:58
Can you walk us through what are you know, what are? What are parents? What do you tell them to do?

Carolyn McCarter Wood 57:04
Well, the first thing

Anne Sherry 57:06
to do you meet to like, sound,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 57:08
right? So often, early on, I may be meeting weekly, and then it may move out to bi weekly, and they they purchase a package, and then they can re up with the package. And then another piece of what I do is that unique is that they can Voxer me, any weekday, and I'm gonna check it at least once a day. Is that

Anne Sherry 57:32
one of those, like, secure? It's, it's like messaging or whatever, like Marco Polo, it's just like,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 57:39
Yeah, it's like Marco Polo, where you can do voice or you can type it or whatever. And, and so that way, if it's like, Oh, my God, they just threw their hamburger across the room, you know, you know, if they need some, some support around that, I can give it in the moment. So Wow. So that's a piece of it. But the very first thing that they're going to need to do is to get an assessment, and I have a have a list of 12 things that are needed. You want an assessment from someone who specializes in eating disorders, to see if we're looking at it. If we're looking at disordered eating, or a diagnosed eating disorder, which it doesn't really matter, you're going to pretty much treat it the same way. But

Anne Sherry 58:30
you want to know just where are we on the Yeah, the severity? Right? Yeah. Then,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 58:35
you know, they're, they're gonna need medical supervision, because you need medical supervision to know whether it's safe for someone to recover on an outpatient basis. Okay, got it. Yeah, our culture has moved. Eating Disorder, treatment centers did a really good job of reaching out and saying, We know how to handle these things. But what has happened is now like a meat almost immediately, when someone has an eating disorder, one of two things happen. Either it's minimized, or it's referred to a higher level of care. There's not a lot of knowledge about how Hey, tell, where are we right? And how parents can and I believe should be a part of helping their kid get better by number one thing for restrictive type disorders is taking over the, the anxiety of choosing and preparing the food. And so parents, okay, so the parents end up doing largely what would happen if they went to a treatment center, but so they need that medical supervision. And then the other piece that we can do is talk about how do you help your kid eat without threads because threads. Now, here's one of the things that's tough that we know is that brain imaging has shown that specifically with anorexia, which is what I have the most experience with their brains respond more to threat than reward

Alison Cebulla 1:00:20
into relaxing. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:00:25
Yeah, you can't reward somebody out of an eating disorder. And that that's part. And there's also they're finding that there is this lack of communication between the urge to act on a sense of hunger.

Anne Sherry 1:00:41
Right? Like, they don't even have response to that that's a part that's been shut down, like, right, and

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:00:47
there's some great differences. And one of the things that I want to learn more about is a trait, a treatment that takes into account the traits that a person has, and working with those traits, because a lot of the traits, for example, that cause anorexia are good traits go on a ride, like having, you know, commitment to excellence, and being very detail focused.

Anne Sherry 1:01:19
Writing like that. Right.

Alison Cebulla 1:01:20
Right. That's how

Anne Sherry 1:01:22
systems work. So well, they will co OPT, you know, like something you already sort of naturally possess. But they'll take that and then roll that part, you know, speaking for my Fs language, right, to an extreme role, right? Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 1:01:38
That makes a lot of sense. Wow. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 1:01:41
So Carolyn has had sort of a, like, how do you keep your eye heard you said, Chip, helps you regulate? I mean, just how do you keep do this work with a sense of hope and joy? And I mean, this is tough stuff. This is people like I mean, these extremely what's in your self care toolkit? Yes, yes. Yes.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:02:08
Well, let's Well, first of all, at this point, my daughter is 33. And after many, many, many years of battling, not only eating disorders, but other things, she is in a really good place. She, she's healthy, she's in a good relationship. She's one of the wisest people that I know. So having had that experience of knowing that it can be a long, long road, but yes, things can get better. Makes it easier when she's been in tough times. It's been harder for me. Yeah. Animals are so important to me, I have two dogs, one that my husband loves, and one that my husband hates. That's for another podcast.

Anne Sherry 1:02:57
A champ not a dog.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:03:02
Having having a strong community, having colleagues and friends. I tend somebody, a therapist taught me once that being confident was much more a trait. It was much more trait based than actual skill based. And so that helps me stay. Yeah. So we can all think of people who seem to seem very confident for no apparent reason, right.

Alison Cebulla 1:03:35
Oh,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:03:36
yeah. As so having people around me who remind me, yes, you do know what you're doing. That that's that helps a lot. And I mean, it sounds like hi, outside. Yes, yeah. Fire, fire and water. Right. Like right now. I'm editing this. Sitting beside my woodstove, which I added

Anne Sherry 1:04:06
here, see a little bit of warmth over there. I mean, just really struck by what we keep coming back to is like, create a secure family. In your, like, we keep talking about like the elements that are you know, secure childhood.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:04:22
love you no matter what, and, and whom you can bring the same fucking story over and over. Like, you know, for me, I'm often going to be scared about health, and I'm going to be scared about money. Those are my two things. And to know that I can go to these people and talk to them about this stuff. And they're going to still love me and they're not going to tell me to

Anne Sherry 1:04:52
figure it out. Get over and over it. Yeah. You should see a therapist about that.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:05:00
So can I tell you one of my stories of emotional neglect? neglect that that raised up? So I told you that my mom, you're in the right place. Bless her heart. I'm feeling bad for writing her out right now. But my mom, she worked nights and slept during the day. And when I was 12, I had we lived kind of out in the country in western North Carolina, and I had a pet duck. And I went to let my pet duck out of his cage. And he was dad. And I don't know, I don't know what happens. So of course, I ran in and I woke my mom up. And I was like, Mama, Mama, my duck, a duck said, and she goes, Well, I don't know what you expect me to do. How do about it? Now? Get out of here. And let me get some sleep.

Alison Cebulla 1:05:52
Mom, no.

Anne Sherry 1:05:56
I know. This is one of these places where we heal, you know, be with 12 year old Carolyn. And we can also appreciate mom's you know, sleep, whatever. Whatever

Alison Cebulla 1:06:10
do you mind? Like just for the sake of it? I'm sharing with our listeners what? Maybe like, if you could go back in time and be the mom what you would have said to yourself,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:06:22
I would have said about how she responded or about about your

Alison Cebulla 1:06:27
duck house.

Anne Sherry 1:06:29
It's called the do over.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:06:31
Yeah. Oh, honey, I am so so sorry. How terrible. Let's be. Let's be heartbroken.

Alison Cebulla 1:06:43
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:06:47
And what was interesting, even though I did learn that it wasn't really safe to like, ask for emotional support. Even in that moment, there was this part of me that was like, hey, right. Totally. Mom's to do.

Alison Cebulla 1:07:07
Oh, interesting.

Anne Sherry 1:07:10
I do. I think that's our future cells, like inserting itself a little bit. The moment to just cut.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:18
Okay, yeah. Let's bow here. Like, yeah, not cool. Not right. Sorry.

Anne Sherry 1:07:23
You gotta go back and finish out like this childhood, but I do think it says little, those are little bits that help remind us that Yeah, yeah. Yes. feel

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:07:33
that way. Kind of like adult Carolyn going? Yeah,

Anne Sherry 1:07:37
not cool. Yeah. That's so funny.

Alison Cebulla 1:07:39
I don't relate to that at all. I'm like, whatever my parents gave me. I was like, this must be love. Okay.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:07:49
So they're teaching me that?

Alison Cebulla 1:07:51
Yeah. Okay. It's yeah, animals die.

Anne Sherry 1:07:57
They go too far. Yeah. Sleep is more important than dead child grieving or something. Yeah. And I do. I wanted to here's was the question that I had, like, going back to a lot of what you're describing, because we do this, you know, structurally how hard our culture is, Does insurance pay for this? Do people need to be resources to this level of how like,

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:08:26
this is why I continue to accept insurance, go against the grain for my therapy work, and then realizing that I'm getting closer and closer to needing to retire, you know, I want something that's going to be one thing, it's going to reach more people. Yep. And the other interesting thing is that there are a lot of people who have significant financial resources who have eating disorders in their family. So right, so this totally is this is a service that coaching is not if you're not licensed as a coach or a consultant. It is not covered by insurance. And you know, to be honest, that's a part. It's a part of that balance of taking care of me. Absolutely, yes. Yeah. So ya know, if that makes sense, but

Anne Sherry 1:09:29
never like what the individual therapists you must, you know, I mean, we are we're in a system, right, like, so you can't fix it all by saying, well, I'll just like work for nothing, you know, that doesn't work on that monitor, too. Yeah. And call this you know, structurally Allison, I continue and lots of people are continuing to call out come on. Yeah. You know, like this should be covered or we should you know, like,

Alison Cebulla 1:09:59
I I, I Carolyn really relate to that, because I worked as a coach also for a few years, many years, working with people one on one, and yeah, it's expensive, it's expensive. And then I, my soul got tired, I was seeing the trauma being related to a lot of addiction issues. And so, once I kind of learned more about ACEs, I thought, Gosh, I want to try and solve some of these root problems. So I've been working in the Asus field now for about three years. And now I'm a thank you

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:10:30
for that, by the way, thank you, thank you.

Alison Cebulla 1:10:34
But now I'm exhausted. like to know, so it's, I don't know, I think it you just have to try and just like do a little bit here and there when you can, because working on these issues of poverty, injustice, inequities based on race and class and all this and just constantly, like, I'm just reading about child abuse all day long, and you know, systemic, all racism. And I'm like, I'm exhausted, like, I'm exhausted because it's so pervasive, and there's no quick, easy fix, and the progress is so incrementally, you know, slow

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:11:12
a lot like eating disorders for dads I

Anne Sherry 1:11:15
was, like, well, and that that's it, like, how do you hold the HoH? Like, I mean, you just you're the embodiment piece of just embody the hope and not false promising to I know with some clients I have whose kids are off the rails or don't seem to be launching and for them, you know, I have once at five years old, they may have a little oppositional defiant or something, and they're already have this kid like in a terrible wife, and I'm like, Oh, wait, we got a Yeah, you can't do it at five. But how do you hold hope at 25? And let go. And yeah.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:11:58
One of the things that comes to my mind is when my daughter was in her early 20s, and we got a call that she was in the hospital and this was because of suicide, pretty severe suicidal ideation. And she was in another part of the state and my husband looked at me and he said, we have to be okay. No matter what happens with her, we're, we're a team and we have to be okay. And, and like that giving permission to me. There was this part of me that felt like if my kid wasn't okay, I wasn't allowed to be okay. That's Oh,

Alison Cebulla 1:12:39
yeah, totally. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Just set setting that intention. Yeah. And permission.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:12:48
Yeah, yeah. Which is still really hard for me. I can tell my mood, you know, if I talk to my daughter, and she is really off, I can feel that uneasiness that comes from some of that trauma. And yes, yeah, free thing. But yeah, so the good news is off. And I we're winding down. But the good news is that often if we catch certain eating disorders early and treat them well, with the parents, like within a year or so we can see tremendous improvement. I

Anne Sherry 1:13:21
just love that. Yeah, yeah, like meeting it. Right? Where we need to meet it with the family. And not just this either or. Right, right.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:13:30
And that's not always the case. But But, but you know, that's what research is showing. And then on the other end, when we're dealing with someone that's already been in this for a while, it comes to more of that, how do we not give up on recovery, but start taking care of ourselves and setting limits and boundaries that will make it easier? Are we are we making it too easy for them to stay the same? By protecting them from the consequence?

Alison Cebulla 1:14:03
Oh, interesting. This sounds like that's where

Anne Sherry 1:14:07
that's why under circus act stuff like tightropes on some of this community, you really do need places to go and so we because like we keep coming back to that, like community is really important. Yeah. In all of this. Yeah.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:14:25
Grateful to yours. Thank you

Anne Sherry 1:14:28
for coming on Carolyn. So much. It's so nice to spend

Alison Cebulla 1:14:33
so many new days from you, Caroline. And I work so

Anne Sherry 1:14:43
hard, but it's just it's a real complex, like I have a lot of appreciation for kind of like taking time to treat this. Specifically, you know, like, in a way that seems to be having some pretty great impacts. Yeah. And at least

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:15:00
Have a lot of good clinicians in our, in our state and in our nation. We're

Anne Sherry 1:15:06
gonna put a shit ton of stuff in the show notes.

Alison Cebulla 1:15:08
Yeah, well. Oh yeah, I just wanted to say I really appreciate you constantly coming back to what does the science say? That's like, I always do that and

Anne Sherry 1:15:19
she does science corners behind my back. I'll listen to that episode and Alice No bust out of science corner,

Alison Cebulla 1:15:26
which I like. Yeah, thank you for doing that, Carolyn. But what were you gonna say?

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:15:31
I was gonna say that I'm, I'm gonna send you a link to my to my new website for this venture grant. Also, I'll send a couple of places where people can get information, like one of the great places that does research is University of California at San Diego, right in there. Yeah, there's also a nonprofit organization called Feast, which is family support empowered in supporting eating disorder.

Alison Cebulla 1:16:03
Okay, great. Great. Great, great. Yeah, well, we'll include all of those. So yeah, so I'm not over and then are there? Do you have public offerings that people need to be aware of like a coaching group or anything that you are looking to promote or not?

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:16:20
Not right, yet. I'm still, at this point. I'm still doing the individual family coaching. But the plan is for this to become more accessible to more people that probably in March, I'm going to be collaborating with a dietician, group practice called nutritious thoughts, and offering workshops to the parents of their clients who are teens. So great at something that that may be something that other people can hitch on to. And

Anne Sherry 1:16:56
we have people listening to our podcasts from all over the world. So yeah, so it sounds like that is great with Zoom. People can you don't have to be here in Nashville to attend one of that's? Yeah, yeah. Good.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:17:09
Yeah, I get tired of it. But yeah,

Anne Sherry 1:17:12
some gifts. Thank you. Thank you, Carolyn.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:17:18
It was so great to meet you, Allison.

Alison Cebulla 1:17:20
Yes. So great to meet you. And yeah, have a great rest of your day.

Carolyn McCarter Wood 1:17:26
Thanks. All right. Take care. Bye bye. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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