How Embracing Rage Fuels Body Liberation and Heals Diet Trauma

Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation, and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your somatic nutritional counselor.

One underdiscussed aspect of a body image or food recovery adventure is the importance of rage. What can occur is that all the anger that might be felt about how you were treated in the past gets turned in on your body. Your body becomes the focus of all your rage rather than on a culture that ever taught you that your body should be different than it is. Your food behaviors become a way to express this anger when it doesn't feel like it has an outlet.

Somatically, if your experience of rage is scary, overwhelming, and threatening then it can also feel unsafe to feel and express rage. This is why I like to explore small safe micro moments of feeling rage so that you get to slowly take it off of your body's appearance or express it with food. What this might look like is drawing rage, writing as if you were rage, putting on a song that taps you into rage and moving as rage would move for one song. This could look like throwing an egg against a tree or ripping a piece of paper. This is all about getting used to the felt sense of rage so that when you start to judge your body, you can feel the rage, express, move through it, and not blame your body for it.

I chat about this and so much more today with Paula D. Atkinson. Paula is a queer, woo-woo desert witch and a liberation-focused psychotherapist. She has been working for almost two decades with those who suffer from disordered eating, food obsession, exercise addiction, and body hatred. Clients of all sizes and identities are treated with a weight neutral, anti-diet, body liberation approach. For many years she taught courses on the history of fatphobia, eating disorders and body fascism as a professor of Weight & Society at George Washington University. Paula also trains other professionals, clinics, and organizations in doing less harm in a thin-obsessed world. She has been interviewed for various articles and broadcasts, including NPR, many favorite pods, an episode of Jubilee’s Surrounded, and she co-hosts her own podcast that explores how psychotherapy can at times conspire with the systems that cause the majority of modern mental suffering. We chat about the trauma of diet culture, the impact of starvation, embracing rage and how to use it as a tool for body liberation, the history of fatphobia, the intersection between body image and social justice, and the importance of experiencing pleasure and joy.

If you're looking for more resources after this episode, be sure you're on the waitlist for my Somatic Eating® Program where you will learn how to somatically move through difficult body image moments. You can go to somaticeating.com to get on the waitlist now. And, if you've been loving the Satiated Podcast, please consider leaving a review so others can find the show. Now, welcome Paula! I am thrilled to have you here today, and really excited just to see where our conversation takes us. But as always, I like to start how you got into the work that you're doing today.

Paula D. Atkinson 03:57

First, I want to say thank you so much, Stephanie, for having me. I really am excited for our conversation and getting ready I listened to parts of and whole of episodes of other people that I admire so much on the show, and so it was great to listen. And I I was excited. The more I listened, the more I was excited for this conversation. So how I got into this work, it was completely by accident. It's a little bit of a long story, but I was born almost 11 pounds. I was a big girl. I was a fat kid. I was a fat kid in the 80s and 90s, so I was, you know, bullied and lived through all of that. And I was diagnosed obese, and I put that in quotations. And we can talk about more why I put that in quotations if you want, and then I started my first diet when I was 16. Quickly snowballed into anorexia nervosa, you know, addiction to starvation. I almost died of starvation at age 21. I went to rehab for a year, inpatient for a year to gain my strength. To get my body back to where it needed to be, and to try to get my brain online, but it was also I went to rehab in 1997, and so I was trying to develop a relationship with food and my body in the midst of you know early 2000s media and friends and you know jeans below a belly button, and also it was terrible. It was really horrible. And then I kind of moved away from all of it. I didn't want to work with eating disorders. I so didn't want to. And then I went to school and I became a clinical social worker. And I tried to work with other populations. I majored in aging adults. I love working with with older people, but every time I tried to work with other people, whenever there was a clinician in the room who had a client who was struggling with food or body stuff, they would tell me what they said or what the interventions that they used on that particular client, and I I cannot control my rage or my judgment on what was said, and so I allowed my rage to be my guide, and we could talk more about how I have used that a lot. But that sort of showed me that, like, oh, I think I do have to do this work. So I started working with people with like clinical diagnosable eating disorders. You talked about that a little bit with Savala, right? That there are subclinical or not diagnosable eating disorders based on the exceedingly racist, weird, bizarre metrics that we use to diagnose an eating disorder in in the clinical field, in the mental health field. And then I started teaching. Somebody gave me the opportunity to teach a course to create a course called Weight and Society, and they sort of handed it to me as this like kind of fluffy class about like how to keep your body at a healthy weight, and I took it and ran and turned it into basically a social justice course and a body justice course. And so I taught that for about a decade at George Washington University, and then I haven't shut up about any of this stuff since. So that's that's how I got here.

Stephanie Mara 07:05

Yeah, yeah. I really hear the winding road that it took to get here, and also just there was a part of you, and I see this a lot in food or body image recovery of like needing space from it. Like when you get to a place where you're like, I'm actually feeling stable. I don't want my entire life to be about this.

Paula D. Atkinson 07:29

Yeah, and I did, and I tried to get away, but it's you know sometimes our passions are given to us. You know, sometimes we can't, you know, we don't really have a choice. And it is like teaching the course. I had no plans to make it into this social justice course, but it-I just couldn't stop. And the same thing with working with people, and even working with like eating disorders. I-I never describe myself as that. I describe myself as as a body liberation therapist, working with body hatred, working with you know people with a history of dieting, because as you know, and as you've talked about with other guests, it's so much bigger than you know people with quote unquote you know diagnosable eating disorders is such a tiny part of the population. People with fucked up relationships with food and bodies is 99.9% of us. So I like to keep it broad because we can all attest to, we can all relate to, we can all resonate with body hatred.

Stephanie Mara 08:21

Yeah, completely, absolutely agree. And I'm wondering first if you can go back for a second. You said addiction to starvation, and I'm wondering if you could say more about that because I don't feel like that's talked about enough. I put out some posts on social media on it, but how much, like I think that for a lot of people, their focus is on binge eating, but not the reaction to the restriction or the starvation that's happening potentially all day before that.

Paula D. Atkinson 08:52

Yeah, I tiptoed around the word addiction. I guess I say I want to say like use it loosely. I don't think you know. I don't really believe in like addicted to food. I don't really believe, you know. So I using I'm using it really loosely. But my lived experience was I can I can attest that my internal experience was an addiction to starvation. I'm not saying that's everybody's experience, but I think we don't talk enough about number one, that the euphoria that happens with starvation, number two, whether it's external or internal, the delusion of superiority that happens with starvation, right? And again, that comes from external, from white supremacist fat phobia, but also there is kind of that internal, I would call it like puritanical white supremacist belief that like because I'm surviving on so little that I'm better than everybody else. There's also the actual biological evolutionary experience that we know from the Minnesota Starvation Project that I know you've talked about, that you know once your brain goes into that mode, a lot of what we call like you know mental symptoms of anorexia are actually just the mental symptoms of starvation across the board, and it doesn't matter if you're starving because you have ARFID or because you want to look cute in a bikini or because you're in the middle of a famine. There are things that the brain does while your body is starving that are addictive that it feels good in a terrible way. I don't think people talk about that enough, right? And they just talk about anorexia in terms of like this weird thing that only happens to some people. But ask anybody who's been on a fast. You know, there are those moments of like I feel amazing, and then you feel really terrible, but like right, like it's it's that's a that's a biological component of all of this.

Stephanie Mara 10:47

Yeah, I'm curious if you could say more of what you've seen for yourself and those you've worked with of how to move out of that because it is, and I use the word addiction really cautiously as well.

Paula D. Atkinson 11:00

Totally.

Stephanie Mara 11:00

In just the kind of when you're feeling that sense of euphoria, and you're like, but I feel so good doing this. I find for a lot of people, it's really hard to step out of that because what you're stepping into is a sense of maybe feeling more embodied or grounded or stabilized, and that's not going to feel good at first.

Paula D. Atkinson 11:22

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I talk about it all the time. I mean, I I love. I'm sorry that it happened to those men, but I love that we have the Minnesota Starvation Project to refer to. It's such a powerful tool for those of us who work in the field to have these men who were not trying to look cute in a bikini, they were not doing right, and they had completely quote unquote normal relationships with food. It was the 40s, so they probably had more normal relationships with food than we do in 2026, right? And the degree to which they felt superior while they were starving, the degree to which they did a lot of the things, you know, made everybody around them eat would go out to dinner with their with their partners or their girlfriends and make them eat the the degree to which they walk you know are obsessed with looking through cookbooks like all of these things this dissociated state when it makes sense evolutionarily right that like you can't think about anything other than food and also you're not in your body when you're starving, and it does feel quote unquote good. You know, there is a there is a again I use this term cautiously, but like there is a high to it, you know, and it can be really hard. I mean, I've lived through it a couple times. I had to do the refeeding process twice, and I've worked with clients a lot around the refeeding process, it's not cute. It's not fun. That's not a fun part of the process. Sometimes it's really good that it's so uncomfortable because then people are like, I never want to do that again. That because it's hard. It's really hard. It's hard to come back into a body that you've been abusing for some time. You know, from my experience, five years I was so much abuse on my body, and so to come back into it was really not fun. It was not cute.

Stephanie Mara 13:06

Yeah, you know something you're pointing to that I've touched on briefly here on the podcast is how much many people come to me and they're like, I know how much you talk about how our food, our body image behaviors, are a response to past trauma, but I don't have any past trauma, and I always like to point out that dieting and being a part of diet culture is traumatic, which is kind of something that you're pointing to. I'm curious because I know you share similarly in that. If you could share more about how you view kind of diet culture as trauma.

Paula D. Atkinson 13:38

Please. I'd love. I could talk about this all day. So I mean, first is just the the trauma of starvation and whatever you you know starvation, which we call dieting in our culture, right? So any time I'm going to say this really explicitly, and I say it explicitly on purpose to kind of rattle all of us. Any time you are eating so little that your body is eating itself to survive, which is what weight loss is. That is trauma to your body, even if your body is quote unquote too big, even if your body is the BMI scale says I'm too fat, even if whatever that is. Again, think about it evolutionarily. Sometimes I say to my clients, What would your great great great grandmother say? When you get out of the delusion, and I call it a cult, the cult of thin worship, and think about nature, which is what your body is. Your body is nature, and think about starving a hunk of nature such that it will be dominated to your will over it. That is trauma. That's capital T trauma, and a lot of times, you know, I have clients who are like, I'm still am thinking about food, or I'm still thinking about my next meal, or I'm so. And it's like for years, and I'm like, Yes, you lived through a famine. You live, it is real in your body and in your brain. It is real. Everything you're still experiencing is the is the symptoms is the result of prior starvation. I always say like nobody quote unquote and I put it in quotes quote unquote overeats because what does even does that mean? I hate that phrase. I hate all of it. Right? Nobody overeats unless they are the victim of past starvation or there's plans for future starvation, right? And so, like your body knows how to eat, just in the same way your body knows how to regulate water intake, knows when to pee, knows when to sleep. Like your body knows what it's doing. We are the dumb ones who got involved in a process that that humans have, and that I think going back to like diet culture trauma. I think that the basis of diet culture trauma is self-abandonment because to abandon your body is to abandon yourself because your body is infinitely has always been on your side, is so loyal to you. She pronouns for my body. She has never abandoned me. She has never betrayed me. I betrayed her so much because I was convinced, which is what a cult does. For the record, I was convinced by the cult of thinness to betray her, to seek external validation from a system that was never going to give it to me. You know, from a system that was was never really interested, and that's I think that's one of the hardest things of recognizing. I talk to clients about this a lot. That like you can't win. It'll never be enough. You'll never be thin enough. You'll never be, especially for non-white cis straight men. Like it'll never be enough because there's no. They can't give you a finish line, you guys. If they give you a finish line, they won't make any more money. So there's no finish line. There's no there there. And I think that's when I think about trauma, I think of self-abandonment, and when I think about the trauma of diet culture, I think of about that. The like, the first time you know, sometimes I'll ask clients like, tell me about the first time you realized that your body was the wrong shape according to people around you. That's trauma. That's insane, and I know you know this too. Like the ages at which non-men were convinced that their body was the wrong shape or that there was something wrong with their body, like that's horrifying. That's trauma.

Stephanie Mara 17:13

Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with you that a lot of this is disembodiment, which is why I'm so passionate about the field of somatics because to binge or to restrict, you cannot be in your body to do those things.

Paula D. Atkinson 17:29

Nope, and to do the things that we've done require, again, require non men to abandon themselves first, and then we will restrict, then we will binge. Then we will, and you know, put all those quotes because it means different things to different people. But all of the things that we do to our beloved, loyal bodies require first disembodiment, self abandonment. We're also we're saying the same thing. Yeah.

Stephanie Mara 17:53

Yeah. And the imagery that was coming up for me as you were talking about our bodies, our nature. Like we think of a plant and not giving it water, it's gonna shrivel up and die.

Paula D. Atkinson 18:04

And the idea that that's what's necessary to get this plant to be the shape I need it to be is that's bizarre. That's insane. Again, like ask your great great great grandmother about that, right? I think I talk to clients all the time. I'm like, the willow tree is not going to be the palm tree. Is not going to be the ficus tree. Is that you know like and your desire to make a palm tree into a willow tree is your problem. That's not the tree's problem. That's your problem, girl. Like you have to work on that because go ahead and try to control nature. Look how well we're doing at it right now. Look how look how well it's going for us. Right, like it's not going great.

Stephanie Mara 18:40

Yeah, nature's just like, uh, uh.

Paula D. Atkinson 18:42

Yeah. No, nature, mother nature's like, okay, sure, we'll try this, but like, you're just not gonna win. And the like relaxation, you know, I think about it a lot. I love the imagery you're talking about, but like the relaxation that can come when we relax into allowing our bodies to be the shape they want to be is like it's almost baffling to those of us who spend our whole lives trying to control it, right? Thinking that we could control it. It's like there's nothing else to think. There's so many other things to think about. There's so many other things I could involve myself in when I'm not doing that. Like like you and Savala talked beautifully about, like the cult of like trying to change it, right? Body changing, and yeah, like when you give it up, it's a little terrifying, but it's also incredible. It's so much nicer, so much more fun.

Stephanie Mara 19:30

Yeah, and I always like to remind listeners that, like you're pointing to, it can feel terrifying, but there are people out there that want to step off out of the cult of dieting with you, they just also don't know how to do it either, and so it's so funny. I think of the first time I went on a diet, and I've shared here many times. I was 13. It was Weight Watchers, but I actually did it with my best friend in high school at the time, and so I just kind of thought about this of like why can't we get a buddy and just as we like are like, hey, let's go on a diet together, can you get a buddy and be like, let's step out of diet culture together? How do we support each other? How do we cheer each other on so that you don't feel so alone and feeling like you're swimming up a stream against all of culture?

Paula D. Atkinson 20:20

I mean, I love that. I run a group that is only for people in large bodies, people who identify as fat, who, and that's basically what they do. And we've been working together, all of us, for it'll be six years in August. But to watch them support each other in advocating for themselves in doctors' offices, in you know going to visit family and being like, you will not talk about my body. You will not talk about what I'm eating. Right? Like to watch them. Then we're we're out here. Hang out with us. We're having so much more fun. We're at the pool. Like we're having such a good time. We're getting tacos and then going to the pool. We're having such a better time. And yeah, there are people who want to do this with you? I often talk about like when I first started doing this work so many clients would be like, oh my god, it's you know, it's the holidays. I have to go be with family, and so I like to think this is a little bit of a woo vibration to it. But I'm from California, so you have to deal with it. But when I think about you know physics, everything rises to the highest vibration in the room. So if you, you don't have to convince you know one of my teachers taught me you don't have to convince, cajole, or recruit anybody. You can just float through the, so when Aunt Linda is like, oh my god, this cake has too many calories, or blah blah blah, you know, you could just be like, my one of my favorite things to say is, oh, I don't believe in calories, because like everybody who's still in the cult is like, I didn't know that was an option. You know what I mean? So it's just fun to just like kind of float above it, and you will draw to you the people who are like, that seems way more fun. That seems like such a more delightful way to live. I'm gonna go hang out. I'm gonna go to tacos with her. Like I'm not going to tacos with Aunt Linda. That sounds terrible.

Stephanie Mara 22:05

I love all of this. I, you know, something that I can really sense is your passion, your embodiment, and your sense of self in this. And I'm sure that it took you like space and time and practice to get there. I'm wondering what really whether because I hear you got really into the social justice piece, which I feel like is really important to start to challenge all of this. But I'm curious if you could say anything about the pieces that really helped you be like, I am allowed to feel pleasure and joy and aliveness and vibrancy in my body, regardless of how my body appearance expresses itself in the world.

Paula D. Atkinson 22:43

Ooh, I like the way you just said that sentence. Yeah, I mean, a lot of this I have to attribute to the brilliance of women of color. You know, a lot of it is, you know, Sonya Renee Taylor, is Roxane Gay, is Savala Nolan, is Adrienne Marie Brown. Pleasure activism, you know, a lot of it is, you know, women of color who may or may not be in fat bodies, but like we're we're carrying more of the social load than I ever did as a white cis woman, and then I allowed that to coming back to what you we were saying in the beginning, the most powerful tool, and nobody talks about this, and I will go down in history as saying like this is the most powerful tool for me to get myself out of diet culture was seething feminist rage. Talk about embodiment. You cannot. I want every non man to hear me say right now. You cannot be rageful and shameful at the same time. You can only be one of those things, and rage is your friend. My favorite book says she's not your nicest friend, but she's your most loyal friend. And so I used rage to get me out of it. Like I have the tower tarot card right here to remind me. Right, like the fire burns down the structures that were keeping you imprisoned, and I used it with myself again with the help of all of these incredibly brilliant, smarter women of color that I devoured all of their books. I would give myself permission to sit in the truth that when I hate my body, I am participating in the oppression of everyone under me on this delusion of hierarchies that we live in, this delusion of body hierarchies, right? That where a straight cis white skinny man is at the top and all of us are below it. When I hate my thighs, I am oppressing everyone who's on this ladder below me. The ladder doesn't actually exist, but if the ladder doesn't exist, then I don't hate my thighs. That's what I used, and it was really powerful. And that's sort of where the social justice bend to my class came from, where I was like, oh, I can't do this anymore. And so I would use, I love a little self love mantra, but I love even more a rage mantra. If I was like looking at myself in the you know in the window of a of a store and I was like you know is my ass too fat or whatever I would be like absolutely not I will not be participating in this. It really burned away a lot of it it allowed me to come back into my body you know and I think rage gets a bad rap mostly because men's rage has created a lot of terrible things in the world. But men's rage doesn't come from care for other beings. You know, the men's rage that destroys the world comes from selfishness and self-loathing and narcissism. I think women's rage or or the rage of non-white cis straight men is a rage of care. Is a rage of how dare you hurt my sister? How dare you do that to my beloved? Right. So I think it can be so helpful, and I think that's sometimes that's where I'm like, you didn't ask this, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Stephanie Mara 25:55

Go for it.

Paula D. Atkinson 25:56

That's sort of where I bump up against body positivity, and now body positivity is officially over because everybody's on GLP-1s, but a lot of my struggle with with body positivity was like that's so cute. However, why are we not burning down all the structures that oppress all of us? You know, it was like it was such a little, just just such a small piece of the huge picture.

Stephanie Mara 26:16

Yeah, thank you so much for bringing back around the piece of rage because I see that come up in a lot of my sessions, and I'm curious if you could say anything more. Like I love the example you gave of how you would start speaking to yourself, but I find that for a lot of women or women identifying people, that when they start tapping into their rage, it feels a little scary because a lot of people, maybe around them, aren't used to that. Start calling them an angry person. Start like kind of twisting their rage as something that's bad or wrong. And so I'm wondering what helped you or you know those that you've worked with to actually like embrace the rage, express the rage. I know somatically, sometimes I'm trying to explore with people how do we give the rage a voice and move it through you when it shows up. But I'm wondering from your perspective and experience.

Paula D. Atkinson 27:15

I think the thing that helps because I have that too. You know, I've had so many clients be like, oh no, thank you. Not really into the whole anger thing, and you know, to which I'm like, well, your body is. What I've said to some clients that has helped is like, it's there, whether you like her or not. She's there because you have been betrayed and you have been brainwashed to betray yourself. It can either go in to you and your body, or it can go out to the systems that it actually belongs to, to the systems that actually deserve it. You know, I'm like, you don't have to tell everybody. You don't have to tell your mom. You don't have to tell Aunt Linda. Like, find your places. You know, find your find the safe places that work for you. Mine goes into a lot of my writing. Mine goes into a lot of like poetry. I love a good rage walk, especially now. I'm in like menopause, so I'm even more rageful. When I reflect back that it's not something you can actually opt out of and be sane, you know that it's there anyway. So you better make friends with her. You better learn to dance with her. Right? It's like all those memes that I love right now. That are like, turns out you can be a bitch, or you can have an immune disorder. It's like I think that's fucking true, you guys. Like I think that's fucking true. I don't think any truer words about you know, again, to get a little woo on you, I think we're getting really called by the universe in her infinite wisdom right now to like get angry, you guys. You don't have to be. The thing is that like all of the examples of rage that we have are destructive. I need you to hear me when I say a lot of rage is constructive. A lot of rage is constructive, and I burned down all of these things inside of me that said I was the wrong shape and I'm a bad person because I can't keep my body small. And in its place, I constructed beauty. You know, I constructed this beautiful place where, like, everyone around me gets to enjoy food around me. I constructed this beautiful place where, like, everybody gets, you know, I live in a place where it's hot all the time. I live in Palm Springs, California, so I love that. Like, everyone knows they can come to my house. My partner's Italian, so they they know they will be fed, and they know they no matter what they look like without their clothes on, with their bathing suit on, they know they will be loved here, right? There's no vibration of judgment here around eating and about food, and like that's what I constructed with my rage. So I understand that it feels scary at first, but trust that like you don't have to destroy anything outside of you. You you can just use it to destroy the structures inside of you that have been causing you pain this whole time.

Stephanie Mara 29:43

Yeah, I love that reframe because what anger and rage does is it's about creation.

Paula D. Atkinson 29:48

Exactly.

Stephanie Mara 29:51

Anything that we have created, something needed to be destroyed and and built in its place, and that's what rage is calling forth is something new, not to continue to destroy.

Paula D. Atkinson 30:05

Exactly, and thinking about like what diet culture does, which makes you as small and as rigid and as digestible as possible, right? And rage is like no, like what if I create? I don't know if this is true, but something that I have been known to say is that like everything good in the world exists because some woman got pissed off. I think again, I don't know if that's true, but it feels true when I say it. You know what I mean? Like the good things have happened because somebody got rageful and somebody said absolutely not. Like in in The Artist's Way, she says you know anger is a map. It shows you where your boundaries are. It shows you when you cross your own and when somebody crosses yours. It's not bad. It's a normal. I mean, even the word "normal" doesn't constitute what it is. It's a necessary emotion. Like dogs get angry, birds get angry. You know, every every sentient creature has the capacity to be angry, and it's necessary. It's just that we don't have context for it. Now, I love her. I love when she when I'm angry when she bubbles up I'm like okay you know it's a call again. In The Artist's Way she says you know anger is meant to be acted on not acted out which I love right and it's like oh shit now I have to do it's always a call to action. Shit now I have to do something different. But it's always the best action. It's always going to lead to to peace and freedom in the future.

Stephanie Mara 31:27

Yeah, you know what you're speaking about really makes me reflect on how much diet culture and what you're talking about, and just the history of all of this has made us turn all of that rage inward on ourselves. So if we can see that the moments of self body judgment are moments where we're turning the rage in on ourselves that actually needs to be expressed externally.

Paula D. Atkinson 31:50

Exactly, and not to beat a dead horse, but that's what cult leaders do. They convince you that if you are not measuring up, it's your fault, and that you're doing something wrong instead of lifting the veils and seeing that the cult leader is a sociopath and there's no way to win and the diet culture is a sociopathic system. It's a narcissistic sociopathic system. There's no there's no end game. There's no I mean how many of us it makes me so sad when I think about it. But so how many of us know you know women mostly women, who died hating their bodies, dieting at 70, dieting at 80, dieting at 90 years old. Oh my god, so horrifying!

Stephanie Mara 32:30

Yeah, and you know what this also makes me think of is the example that you gave of you were like no when you like saw yourself in the mirror and that inner judger came up is how much you can also utilize that rage in setting a boundary with your own internalized dieter.

Paula D. Atkinson 32:48

Absolutely, and again, like mama bear rage, not like you piece of shit, how dare you? But in this, like, no, I'm not going to let you run across the street, you dumbass, get over here, right? Like, absolutely not. We're not doing that, and that's what I talk about is the mama bear rage of like I love you too much to allow you to do this to yourself anymore. Not oh my god, I did it wrong again, right? That's not that, but the like no, I'm not going to do this to myself. I'm not going to do this again to everybody, like Sonya Renee Taylor talks about, everybody who's on this imaginary ladder underneath me. When I talk shit to myself about my thighs, I am I'm oppressing all of them. All of these beautiful, incredible people, gender nonconforming people, people of color, people right like that's. I'm not going to do that.

Stephanie Mara 33:34

Yeah, I'm curious because just you know created a whole class on social justice, if there were pieces of the history here, or of you know, starting to step into the social justice piece, which I have seen for a lot of people in food or body image recovery. It's the social justice piece that I think has freed a lot of people. And understanding the history of how we got here today, I'm curious if because there's like a lot there. There's a lot there. Some main bullet points that you feel like are important for listeners to know.

Paula D. Atkinson 34:06

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, like Sabrina Strings' book, Fearing the Black Body, is so incredible, right? That like it was so brilliant to read it and then to listen to pretty much every interview she was in, because it was like there was somewhere in my body that I knew that was the truth, but having her do all the research and write it all out, I was like, oh, thank you so much. But I mean, some things that like touchstones that I think can be helpful. One of the most incredible touchstones I love is to remember that the hatred of fat people came first, and then came the health worries and the health concerns. I think that's in the same way that homophobia came first, and then homophobia was diagnosable as a mental health right. Like to just and again, I'm not going to get into a Jillian Michaels debate with everybody about about health at every size and blah blah blah. But to just think about things sociologically, right, and to just you know one of the classes that I would teach would talk about how whatever was happening politically magically happened to influence what shape women's bodies were allowed to be, right,. So like in the '60s, when we finally got birth control pills, suddenly Twiggy was the body shape we should all have right. It's it's just not a coincidence, you guys. And again, I can get real conspiracy theory California on you, but like it's when you look at the pattern, it checks out, right? Like it's not a coincidence that during a you know hostile government takeover by fascists, everybody we are glamorizing emaciation again. That is not an accident, right? These things are all influenced by each other. I think, in terms of the white supremacy part, to just you know think about the fact that that the idea that all the bodies can and should be the same shape is a eugenics ideal, and it actually came from France, and it came in the 19th century, and it came in women's magazines, American women's magazines that were trying to be like the French women's magazines, and it was such a tool to distinguish between people who were purely of European descent. If that sounds eugenicsy, that's because you're right. Right? And people who may not be purely of European descent, you know, after years of slavery and after obviously there were a lot of mixed race people, and so to just be aware that like this is not-it's not about health, you guys. Like it's not about health. It's about classism. It's about racism. It's about colonialism. It's about the control of women. It's about the control of women's bodies. It's never been about health. Health is a kind of a shroud we put on top of it of like, aren't we concerned about fat people's health? I say like in the same way people would be like, I you know I like gay people and just like afraid they're not going to get into heaven. And it's like, no, you're not. You're homophobic. That's just homophobia. You don't get to dress it up in this cute thing, right? Like, no, you're not. You're just fat phobic. Like, you don't actually care. And one thing I say a lot as a mental health provider is like, to say that you care about fat people's health, but then to be oppressing them, being biased against them means you don't care about their health because you don't care about their mental health, right? And that's something that Lindy West said a long time ago, which I love when she was touring for her book Shrill. You know, they kept asking her about glorifying obesity, and she was like, If you claim to care about fat people's health, but you keep asking me about glorifying obesity, you are a liar, and I will not be answering this question again. I love that so much because you can't pretend, and that's kind of what I tried to bring up when I was on the Surrounded thing with Jillian Michaels that like you saying that you care about fat people's health, but if fat people are saying that body positivity and body justice is helping them, what the fuck do you have to say, Jillian Michaels? She did not like that question, and she didn't really answer it. For the record.

Stephanie Mara 38:01

Yeah. Thanks for giving all of that because what you're really bringing in is how much we have to question and constantly internally get curious with ourselves about what we have internalized.

Paula D. Atkinson 38:14

Exactly. You know, I am a full body liberation advocate, so everybody's allowed to do with their body whatever the fuck you want. You want to be on GLP1's, be on GLP1's. You get to do whatever you want. And I always this is the term I always use. And you could be lovingly curious about where these ideals come from, or why you want your body to be smaller, or what you think you will gain with a smaller body. And do you want to be participating in a system that requires you to starve yourself in order for you to have more merit or value as a person? Like, is that a system you want to be participating in? Again, you're allowed to do that, and you're going to have that in your head. I love what Savala said about the first for language. I love that, and I think about it as like members of a cult. Like that, you were born into a cult. All of this stuff was downloaded into your consciousness without your consent. Like it's in there, and with everything, just like everybody in the United States has racism in their head, because how would you not? And to be lovingly curious about those things, and to you know, part of growing up is being like, oh, I'm going to choose to participate in this system, or I'm going to choose to no longer participate in this system.

Stephanie Mara 39:28

Yeah, you know what this also makes me reflect on is what a process this is. Because what you're talking about is when you start to step out of this system, realizing that it was a download that you received that you get to kind of reject inside of yourself, like, put in the trash can internally. Ultimately, that will do is potentially make you feel more seen as you start stepping out more. And I know a lot of the work that I do with people one on one and in my programs is also can we find ways to support you in feeling safe to be seen, and I feel like some of the rage that you're also talking about is like, can I know that within myself that I know myself so well that I know that I'm worthy, that I know that I'm deserving, that I'm enough, and to tap into that rage so that when I'm seen, when people push back, when people want me to conform, I know that I can handle that.

Paula D. Atkinson 40:22

I mean, that's hard. I love that you brought that part up. That is hard, and I'm not. I will never in a million years say that that part is easy. You know, I I do think a couple things. Number one, I know that like as a 50 year old woman who's only going to get older and rounder and softer and probably fatter because that's just about what the women in my family look like. I like the idea of practicing now because the culture already has deemed me relatively invisible, and I'm just going to get more invisible by the culture, which seems pretty great, honestly, to all of you in your 20s and 30s. Like it's pretty awesome. It's fantastic. Don't be afraid. It's great. There's that. I think also like this is where I go back to. I was in 12 Steps for a long time in my 20s, and one of the things they say in 12 Steps that I think is genius is we act ourselves into right thinking, and so it's one of these things where you can't wait for your head to say, oh, I have enough confidence to stand up to Aunt Linda when she tells me that I am too fat for this bathing suit, or whatever, right? You just have to like imbue it, you know. Like I tell clients, you have to Sasha Fierce it, right? Like if even Beyonce needed an alter ego to go on stage, then we all needed it so there you go. So we have to Sasha Fierce it a little bit, you know. We have to. I tell clients to like channel Miranda Priestly, like no, no, that wasn't a question, right? And and you may go into the bathroom and cry, right? And and I'm not saying any of this is easy. I'm just saying that like life is easier when you have committed to working towards never ever ever abandoning yourself. I am not saying that to get from where you are now to that place is easy, but I am telling you that, like, life is so much sweeter when that's your intention, and that's the intentional way you want to live is in a vibration of never self abandoning.

Stephanie Mara 42:09

So well said. You know, I always like to offer individuals like a little baby step. We've talked about so much today, and some really powerful things. I'm curious if someone is listening to this and maybe just getting started on this path. Is there a baby step you would offer them that would maybe immerse them more into this practice?

Paula D. Atkinson 42:32

Yeah, that's a great question. So the the fun thing that you start to realize when you like give space for pleasure is that pleasure and rage are closely related. Again, forgive me for my woo-wooness, but I am a I am a certified psychic witch, and I in psychic training I graduated from psychic school, and in psychic training we talk about the vibrational differences between emotions, and so you can kind of picture it as like down here is like apathy, self loathing, depression, and then up here is like pleasure and joy and delight. And the bridge emotion is anger. You guys, the anger pulls you up out of that dark place, right? So I, my baby step would be to just just start dancing with your anger a little bit. Just dance with her when she bubbles up, don't immediately lock her away in a closet. Just see see what she has to tell you. You know, I've had clients like do this is a super weird thing, but like write a letter to their anger and then have them have their anger write back to them. So good. So just start to dance with her a little bit. You can also start to dance with pleasure more, and pleasure will lead you to anger, and anger will lead you to pleasure. But these are these two things are again like I have too many dogs. I have three Chihuahuas, and two of them like to fight, and the degree to which they're fighting and then licking each other and then fighting and then like like that. It always reminds me of that of like stop it. I love you, stop it. You know, it's like it's they're related when you give them space. So to to give your pleasure some more space, and then to give your anger some more space, and just you probably won't ruin your whole life. I bet you won't. It might feel a little scary, but I bet she will actually lead you to a life that you love way more.

Stephanie Mara 44:18

I absolutely love that suggestion, and you know, it's supporting people to tap into things that being immersed in diet culture and body image culture of trying to control your body for so long to start to tap into what this all suppressed inside of you.

Paula D. Atkinson 44:35

Yeah, and I'm sure you give them give people some version of the assignment of like, okay, if you're gonna eat the entire box of Oreos, can you enjoy each bite? Can you actually like feel give yourself permission to have the pleasure? You might decide that you don't even like Oreos, or you may decide that you need them all day. It doesn't matter, but like to give yourself the room to enjoy the brownie, or enjoy the piece of cake, or enjoy all of the forbidden foods, you know, either one of these pleasure or anger. Like, just give yourself permission, because yes, to be to be in thin worship is to suppress all of those things. Because you can't, again, you can't be shameful and rageful at the same time. And so, your rage is your friend.

Stephanie Mara 45:17

Yeah, and that just made me think of how much those two go hand in hand of like even if you're giving yourself a moment of pleasure with food because yes we do talk about that here of like if you're gonna eat a food own it embrace it experience the pleasure of it and what that made me just think of is like get rageful afterwards that you were ever taught that this was something wrong or bad to do.

Paula D. Atkinson 45:38

Yes I love that I mean, I've had that happen with clients, right? That I'm-they're like, I just had a client go to the beach for the first time in 20 years, and they, you know, wore a bathing suit and they were on the beach, and nothing happened, you guys. And and then they came to my to our session, and they were so mad. They were they were like part of me that wanted people to you know run me off the beach like I'm the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but nobody cared, and and I was mad of all the years I lost, and that's you know then that's a whole nother episode. But getting into the grief of what what's been lost, yeah.

Stephanie Mara 46:14

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I'm absolutely going to have to have you back on, but I'm curious how individuals could keep in touch with you and this amazing work that you're doing in the world.

Paula D. Atkinson 46:24

Thank you. So I am Paula D, as in David Atkinson, on all the things on Instagram. That's my website. You can see everything that I'm offering. I teach The Artist's Way once a year. If you are a person in a larger body or who identifies as fat and you would like to be in a support group of other people who are helping each other, supporting each other, and getting out of diet culture, the information about that is there. So yeah, Paula D. Atkinson on all the things.

Stephanie Mara 46:49

Amazing! I will put all of those links in the show notes. And just thank you so much for being here. Your work is so so so important. So just thank you for sharing your wisdom today.

Paula D. Atkinson 46:59

I really appreciate it. Thanks, Stephanie.

Stephanie Mara 47:00

Yeah, absolutely. Well, to everyone listening, if you have any insights or aha moments, email me at support@stephaniemara.com any time and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of the day. Bye!

Keep in touch with Paula here:

Website: https://www.pauladatkinson.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pauladatkinson/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pauladatkinson