Seeking Stillness With The Tao Te Ching On The Path To Healing From An Eating Disorder

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. I'm so excited to be introducing you all to Jessie Asya Kanzer. For years, Jessie felt like a failure, unable to hustle hard enough to make it as an actress. Her childhood as a Russian immigrant in post Cold War America, heightened her insecurity, threatened her identity, and increased her desire to fit into a culture that was alien at best and hostile at worst. She experienced depression, an eating disorder, and all sorts of existential problems. This sent her on a spiritual journey, during which she discovered the Tao Te Ching, which changed everything for her. The Tao taught her that there was a power in stillness and that all strong goals come bearing gifts, if you know how to recognize them. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, New York Daily News, Wall Street Journal, The Independent, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Ravishly, and Romper. She just came out with a new book called Don’t Just Sit There, DO NOTHING: Healing, Chilling, and Living with the Tao Te Ching. She uses ancient philosophy to help us thrive amidst our modern chaos. Welcome, Jessie.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 01:34

Thank you so much, Stephanie, for the lovely introduction. I sound so good to myself when you read it like that.

Stephanie Mara 01:44

Yeah, I'm so excited to be connecting with you today. And I would love to start off with as our listeners are exploring, healing their relationship with their food and body, I'm curious to hear more about your history with an eating disorder and depression. And how did the Tao Te Ching support you on your healing path?

Jessie Asya Kanzer 02:02

Yeah, and that's a really big focus of my book as well. In Don't Just Sit There: DO NOTHING, I talk about my healing journey. And of course, as folks who are on this journey know, or will learn, the eating disorder, or the disordered eating, or the any kind of complex relationship with food is, of course, about more than just the food.

Stephanie Mara 02:25

Yeah.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 02:26

And so, my book looks at all of the underneath stuff as well, that we all deal with. And listen, for some of us, it manifests as issues with food. And for others, it manifests as issues with other stuff, but everyone's got their issues. And especially in today's world, it can get really complicated and difficult to connect with our own inner power and our own inner healing power. Because we all have the ability to actually heal ourselves to heal ourselves from the, from the suffering and the the psychic traumas. And all of the stuff that we do end up dealing with throughout our life, we have that as what I learned from the Tao Te Ching is that we have everything we need within ourselves. But because there's so much noise in this day and age, there's so much noise and external messaging, it's hard sometimes to connect with that inner power. And so that's what my books about. And for myself, my eating problems started around teenagehood as I was becoming a teenager, so really early on at 13, I already was counting calories and limiting my caloric intake. And using exercise as a sort of control mechanism where if I ate more than whatever I deemed, I would over exercise, and I was getting really, really rigid around all of these things. And I tell people now, you know, it was National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, just recently, and I spoke a bunch to a bunch of different outlets, to different news channels about that. And I always say that's a warning sign for people who may be raising teenagers, maybe you have young people that are struggling, the rigidness, the more rigid we get around our eating, the more that's an indication of a deeper problem in the work. So that's how it started for me anyway, when I was 13. By 14, I was bulimic and my bulimia went on for a very long time on and off, not 100%. You know, it wasn't continuous. There were years that were better than other years. And there was some that I thought I was healed and I wasn't because I had not sought therapy yet. And I had not sought support groups. And so anyway, I was not fully well until I was 25. So it's a long process.

Stephanie Mara 04:36

Yeah, I completely agree with that. I've seen that a lot with patterns of eating disorder behavior, is that oftentimes there's this focus of the surface level, like it's just focusing on these patterns with food, and like you're referencing there's so much deeper underneath to be addressed. And I'm curious as you started seeking further support what did you discover were the things underneath that led you and inspired you on your healing journey?

Jessie Asya Kanzer 05:05

So I am a big spiritual seeker. I have been for a really long time. And I think that honestly, part of the eating disorder was this loss of self, which you had mentioned in the introduction, I was an immigrant, I was a refugee, actually, from the Soviet Union, which now, you know, I'm reliving some of that trauma because of what's going on in the world. I was from a country called Latvia, but it was part of the Soviet bloc then. And it was, it's hard to be a refugee, it's hard to lose as a child, the only stability you had. And that was not addressed because survival was what was at stake. So people were viewed, there was not really time or energy for the adults in my life to address my trauma, my childhood trauma. And so as you know, everything that's not addressed, catches up with us in one form or another. And I worked really hard, because that's what I knew how to do. I mean, I was a Soviet child, I was trained to work hard. And I worked really hard in America to fit in early on and to become what I knew would get me not made fun of, get me the friends, get, because initially, it was very difficult. And there was a lot, you know, look, I was dressed like a Soviet child, I spoke like a Soviet child and is, you know, kids could be merciless and they were, and it was on the heels of the Cold War, and I did everything I could as quickly as I could to fit in. But in so doing, you really do have to, when you're living for the parameter set by other people, you lose parts of yourself that are important to you. And if you're a sensitive person, and I think a lot of us who have struggled with eating disorders who continue to struggle, we're sensitive people we're, we're porous, we feel a lot. And so if you lop off parts of yourself, it almost makes sense in hindsight that I needed to feel a sense of control somewhere. And as this carefully created Jessie person, because I was I was born Asya, I changed my name to Jessie, began to develop and become a woman, which is what happens in our teenagehood and my body began to change and that was the straw that broke the camel's back, because it was one less thing that I was not willing to let go control of. And so I began to control that, to control what I could, to control my food intake, to control the you know, how much exercise I put my energy into, and then eventually, when I couldn't control myself, because that's what happened to me with bulimia, then I what could what could I control, I could control how much of that food actually became part of me, and I decided it wouldn't. And so something that started off as a control issue later became a really out of control situation. And using the Tao Te Ching, you know, a support group was very helpful for me, I didn't find regular therapy, I had this terrible therapist early on. And this is a really good lesson to keep seeking, because I did have a good therapist later. But my first one was, you know, she, this is gonna sound terrible, but it's almost like a comedy when I think about it. She knew that I was there for bulimia. And she put a giant cookie platter in front of me and fell asleep on our first session.

Stephanie Mara 08:22

Oh my gosh!

Jessie Asya Kanzer 08:24

It's almost comical, right? Like if I was writing a sitcom, I would put that in. But no, but you have to continue on your journey. Look, there's like in any job, there are people who are great at what they do and there are people who don't care. And eventually I did have decent therapists that really helped. And I also had a really good support group. And for me, because I'm the spiritual seeker, I found all of these books, all of these books that were so soothing. And the number one of those was the Tao Te Ching with its very simple verses. Now, for those who don't know, the Tao Te Ching is from sixth century BC. So it's ancient. And it's really simple. It's like this tiny book of 81 verses that are very simple and yet very complex. And they tell us to simplify everything to simplify our thoughts, to simplify our wants, to simplify the way we look at the world. And so that's actually what I really needed at the time. I think I really needed to go back to the simplicity of who am I? What do I want? What do I need most? And what I realized I needed most of that time was healing. And that's what, that's when the journey really began for me.

Stephanie Mara 09:28

Yeah, I really appreciate you bringing this aspect of needing control. And I think it's really a natural human impulse, especially with everything that was going on in your life, that your relationship with your food and your body became the place that you could feel a sense of control in and like you identified, continuing to kind of hyper control that relationship though, started to feel like it was becoming out of control. So I really like normalize that often when we first lean on food and our body to gain that sense of control, absolutely, in the moment, it is very supportive. And we have to catch it of that moment where it's Ooh, now I'm leaning on this so heavily that now it feels like I'm not in control over my own actions, my own life anymore. And I'm really hearing that things started to shift with you, where that sense of control got to be, ooh, I get to choose what I'm thinking, how I'm interacting with myself, what I'm reading, how I'm caring for myself.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 10:34

Yes. So what happened was, I was super depressed at the time as well, which of course that goes together. Because guess what, like when you're not taking care of the actual problems on a internal psychic soul level, and on top of that, you now have an eating disorder, that becomes a disorder. And I do I the reason I also talk about those very beginning stages, is I want people to realize that a disorder doesn't become a disorder overnight.

Stephanie Mara 11:00

Yeah.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 11:00

It starts as as disordered, maybe slightly disordered, and then it gets...so it is important to pay attention to ourselves, and to pay attention to our relationship, because you don't want to get to the place where I got to where I was completely out of hand. And that lasted for many years. And I think that happens to a lot of young people. And I know that right now, eating issues are on the rise for young people. And it may it does make sense that the world is not in in a homeostasis, let's say it's not in a good state. And a lot of times, that's one place one arena where we can feel in control. But like you said, and I want to stress that as well, it's really easy to lose sight of the fact that that control is an illusion. The real control happens, like you said, when you take the time to get still, don't just sit there do nothing. The reason that's a funny title, by the way for a book for someone like me is because I so couldn't stay stay still then that when I was still with my neuroses, with my issues, with my emotional problems, I binged and purged, I didn't stay, I never stayed still. But what happened was after college, I got into a major car accident. And my body was broken. So I had, you know, bad concussion, and I needed to heal. And I was still bulimic. So here was this, you know, that's why I think it's so funny, and it's so good for my ego, when I hear you read such a lovely intro of me, because I still hold on though to the humility of the person who had a broken body, and was so broken inside that I was on the bathroom floor, still doing what I was doing before, still succumbing to my bulimia at the time. And I think it's important to remember that that brokenness is not who we really are. Because I am the strong person who's accomplished a lot of things at this point. And I'm also that person, I'm also that girl who was really suffering and struggling. And the reason I want to bring that up is sometimes when we're in our brokenness, when we're like, in our most low points in our life, we think that's who we are. And I had this really spiritual moment, this realization, when I almost saw myself from the outside, looking down on this broken person, with a really beat up body, a scar on my face, stitches, you know, throwing up and I realized, this is a bottom from which I am yet to rise. I had this supernatural feeling, and I really want people to hear that that we are not our bottom, we are not our brokenness, we are not our problems. And so that's really when the healing journey started for me. Often, and many folks problems of any kind of addictions or detrimental behaviors, there is a bottom. That was my bottom.

Stephanie Mara 13:44

Yeah. I just got chills when you said that. Over just recognizing, okay, this is bottom, this is where we are. Sometimes we do have to get to that point. And that the habits and patterns that are playing out with food and body, sometimes they need to play out over and over and over again, for us to see that it's not giving what we think it will. It's like, oh, I started this for XYZ reasons and now that I'm doing it over and over and over again, I'm realizing it's actually not giving me the sense of safety or control or inner peace that I was originally looking for.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 14:23

You're absolutely right. And you know, that's a good point that you bring up because everything you know drugs for people who do become addicted to drugs serve a purpose, your eating obsessions serve a purpose and it's not just oh, I'm doing this bad thing or I'm you know, there's a purpose. There's a there's a use on a on a level. You know, I had a friend who recovered from heroin addiction, and she often says in her speeches, she says heroin saved my life because she was in such a state of self hatred. And she what she means is, she would have probably taken her own life had she not become a drug addict you know. And I know I know how that sounds, but I think it is very important to look at how is this eating obsession serving us because it's doing something for us. And often it takes, unfortunately, we don't see that often until, in hindsight, we see that, oh, this was my way of holding on to control. But, it is helpful to look at it, because then you could start to ask yourself, then you can pose the question, How can I give myself that in a healthier way?

Stephanie Mara 15:28

Yeah. So what do you feel like are little points in the Tao Te Ching in your book, that as individuals are listening to this, they're like, oh, my gosh, that's totally where I'm at right now that might feel supportive to them?

Jessie Asya Kanzer 15:42

So first, I always say this to people, now especially, accept where you are, like, wherever you are. So that's why I bring up the moment where I was, you know, on the bathroom floor, like a broken girl. And I had that moment of this is a bottom from which I am to rise, wherever you are, it's okay. There's a purpose in everything. And every struggle, and every bottom can be turned into a beautiful lesson, a beautiful, you know, often it's the crisis points from which we really grow. So do not judge yourself for where you are. Accept it. You all healing on all movement forward starts from a place of acceptance. And that's what the Tae Te Ching says, as well. And there's a verse where it says, you know, there's a time to be happy, there's a time to be sad, there's a time to exert yourself, there's a time to be exhausted, there is a time for the ups and the downs of life. And if you're in a down, that's okay, once you tell yourself that it's okay, you can move forward step little step at a time, that's another Tae Te Ching teaching is a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. So then you have to ask yourself, you have to get still, with yourself, get quiet, this is where we block out the noise from the external world, maybe the noise that tells us we need to look a certain way or we need to fit into a certain size, or we need to exercise a certain amount, whatever that noise is telling us, when we are able to block it out and get still with ourselves, and just really, really compassionately listen to ourselves in our own hearts, that's where really, we can, you know, we have the seeds of healing within us.

Stephanie Mara 17:21

That's so beautiful. And I love that you're bringing in this aspect of first embracing and owning where you're at. It has to start there. The ownership of I'm playing out these habits and patterns with my food and body for a reason. And that's okay, that's okay, that I've been leaning on this for maybe years, maybe even a decade, maybe even longer than a decade, that it starts, it starts with that place of ownership that okay, here is where I am at. And I've been doing this for a reason to kind of begin to decrease any sense of shame, or judgment or guilt over still being where you are at.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 17:59

Yeah, and thank you for bringing up shame. Because what I've realized is I kept my problems hidden for years. And from my own family, you know, I was young, I lived with my parents at the time, and I kept it hidden. And for far longer than I you know, initially, you keep things hidden because they're working for you. That's always short lived. And when they stop working for you, and you need to seek out help, what keeps you from getting that help is the shame. And it's okay to feel the shame. I mean, we're human, and we do care about what other people think. And don't let the shame...you are not your shame, you are not your thoughts. So don't let the shame stop you. Because guess what, what I've realized is I wrote a book, Don't Just Sit There: Do Nothing, I wrote a book that in which I share all of my humiliations. Because what happened to me and this happens to people who have addictive behaviors, is after I dealt with the eating disorder, I ended up with a real love addiction. So sometimes until we really, you know, the healing journey is a journey. And so until we fully healed and dealt with the underlying issues they can manifest as other things. But my point being, I share all of these humiliating experiences, and boy, did I look like an idiot and some of those relationship dramas. And the most freeing thing in the world has been for me is how much people see themselves in me when I share the most embarrassing and shameful things about myself. So what I want to say is, you know, we all walk around with a shame, but what we don't realize is, everyone has their shame, do not let shame stop you from getting well and also the people who love you, they want to know and they want to be there for you. And if you come to someone and you explain to them, I think that this has turned into a problem or this has been a problem or they will want to be there for you because wouldn't you want to be there for someone who you really care about? So I think that shame angle is really important for us to understand that it is a human it's a natural human feeling, but not to give into that.

Stephanie Mara 20:02

Yeah. I get this imagery of kind of putting shame in the passenger seat, like you're recognizing, okay, you're, you're on the drive with me, here you are, but I'm going to stay behind the driving seat, calling all the shots so that I can reach out for support, so that I can get the support that I need, so I can feel seen and what I'm going through. And it's just that recognition, oh, here's shame. Shame is with me on this journey, and that it's not letting the shame stop you from putting yourself out there and getting what you need.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 20:35

Yeah, and it's what we've talked about before and what the Tae Te Ching teaches us is acceptance. So full acceptance is accepting exactly where you are, and exactly what you're feeling. And what's great about full acceptance is once you accept these things, you like you said, they don't have to be in the driver's seat anymore. Your shame, your need for control, your lack of control. Once you see, that's why I always say self awareness is a superpower. And that's what the Tao Te Ching teaches is this quietude this stillness, because guess what, once you get still, and you really look at yourself, you see yourself fully, you see yourself wholly. So the Tao Te Ching teach us three things that I think are really helpful on the journey to healing from disordered eating, or an eating disorder. And that's, it basically teaches, it basically if I had to sum up the entire teachings of the Tae Te Ching, it would be three things simplicity, patience, compassion. One of the verses, that's what it says, I teach three things simplicity, patience, compassion. So to me, when you realize where you are, the simplicity has to be that the focus of your life becomes your well being. So it's not anymore, you know, it's a small shift. But instead of for example, if before it was losing weight, and that turned into an eating disorder, you switch the focus to health. And whatever it is that you're struggling with, in your relationship to food, if you put the focus on your well being, that is your guiding light on your life, you simplify everything to fit into that guiding principle, your wellbeing. And then patience is the understanding that this is a journey, a healing journey, and it's going to take time, and changing ourselves, from the inside out takes time. And compassion starts with compassion for yourself, where you forgive yourself for the past where maybe you mistreated yourself, and you forgive yourself for your weaknesses, and you forgive yourself for the shame that you feel and for the, whatever shadow feelings are on board with you on this journey. You forgive yourself, and you embrace yourself wholly. And what I've learned when I finally did give myself the compassion I needed, well now, that compassion flows out of me so easily to the outside world to other people. Because when you give yourself, when you treat yourself, like the primary relationship in your life, it sets you up for great relationships with everyone else.

Stephanie Mara 23:07

Yeah, this these are such powerful tools that you're offering. And I'm curious about what did it actually look like for you? Because you said that, that piece around actually getting still was such a crucial piece. So here you are, you have this, like, if we go back to your timeline of your story, you have this broken body, you're still engaging in bulimia behaviors, and there was this piece around starting to learn, read different books, the Tae Te Ching was one of them, and discovering Oh, I have to be still with myself. I know for myself, the moment cuz I engaged in binge eating for a really long time as a coping mechanism. And I tell the story, a lot of the moment that I was literally holding a jar of almond butter, wanting to binge on it and just like sitting with it, and not doing anything about it. Just sitting with the urge and actually saying, Okay, here's this urge to do this thing. And I know what's going to play out after this. I know what tomorrow morning is going to look like. And I actually don't know what it's gonna look like to not do this to wake up tomorrow morning and not have engaged in this behavior. And I'm curious what that process was like for you?

Jessie Asya Kanzer 24:24

Yeah, that is a good question. And it is a process and there was falling off the wagon that happened as well. You know, there will be this...for a long time as I was getting well, and I would resist, like you did the urge. So it was both resisting the urge to binge and then when I did mess up and binge, resisting the urge to purge, it was both. So I understood that if I just waited to get well for when I just didn't binge anymore that would never happen because okay, I messed up on step one doesn't mean I need to do step two. So, there was a lot of one day at a time is what I would say is, one step and one meal at a time is how I lived. And I did learn that from the Tao as well, which says, a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. And it kept bringing us back to the present that when you obsess too much about the future, you know, it doesn't serve us. So I would just live one meal at a time. And I went to therapy, and I went on medication at the time as well. And I was able to, you know, things usually get easier with time. But a couple of years into my recovery, I did fall off the wagon. And I was mostly not purging at the time, it was mostly binging, I did put on some weight, but there was purging going on as well. And I realized, you know, first it was one time, that was two and I couldn't believe that after quite a bit of time of being well, I was off the wagon again. And that's when I had a dear friend dealing with a similar issue. And we ended up in a support group together, that was really helpful for me. But I have to say that I had dreams for a long time, I had dreams. And in my dreams, I messed up, and I forgot that my commitment to my wellness and in my dreams, I would purge. And then I would binge I mean, I'm sorry, I would binge then I would purge. And then I would wake up with this feeling of a tragic failure, almost, I would wake up feeling so down, because I was doing so well. And then I messed up. And then I would realize, no, that was just a dream. But what that taught me was, and I think it's very important for anyone trying to heal any sort of addictive behavior. And these are, you know, our relationships with food do become addictive, when they're no longer healthy, but serving something inside of us that is an urge that we have not figured out yet how to do in a healthy way. So I found that having this all or nothing mentality didn't serve me. Because I would count you know how long I've been well. I've been well for two weeks now. And then if I messed up, I would just go back to zero. And I stopped doing that. I gave myself the compassion for when I messed up. And I can't, I don't have a count. I don't know how many times I messed up. But it was a process. So when I messed up, I would forgive myself, like immediately like I would work on that. And because it's so it's so counterintuitive. You think that if you forgive your own messing up, then you will just go back to doing it. But in fact, when I was able to forgive myself, because I wasn't always able to catch myself before I did what I didn't want to do, but what was became like a program when I forgave myself afterwards, and I said, Okay, we don't like how this feels that this is not how I want to feel this is not what I want to be right now. And I would forgive it, I was able to continue. So it was almost a two step forward one step back kind of situation for me that it took time. And there was a time when I had to stay away from a lot of trigger foods really had to be not just an a, you know, had to be very simple with my diet. I really couldn't deal with things like donuts, which was something I would binge on before, pizza, like these things were all triggering for me, I had to be very monastic almost about what I ate. And it had to be one meal at a time and a hell of a lot of forgiveness for when I did mess up.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 24:25

Yeah, the word compassion was just popping up in my head also over and over and over again, that it's, and I love that you brought in, you have to let go of like, oh, this is how long I've been, quote unquote, good. And it's just it's one a meal, one eating experience at a time and some eating experiences are going to go smoother than others. And it's showing right back up for yourself again, and again and again. And something that I hear in that is also needing to address like perfectionistic tendencies that sometimes show up of originally the perfectionistic tendencies might have been on, well I'm going to move in the perfect way, I'm going to eat in the perfect way, I'm going to look in the perfect way and then it kind of morphs into well, I'm gonna heal in the most perfect way.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 29:09

Right. Right.

Stephanie Mara 29:09

And I'm wondering how you even, I know that you address a little bit of perfectionistic tendencies and people pleasing in your book as well.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 29:17

Yes, and this is very good. So in Don't Just Sit There: Do Nothing, I say quite a bit that I'm a recovering people pleaser too, which I am and I still like people to like me. But what I talk about, what the Tao talks about is care too much about the opinion of others, and you become their prisoner. And what I've learned is when you're spending your time caring, because that's what perfectionism is. Perfectionism is a focus on the outward, not on the inward. It's the focus on the outward presentation of yourself and your experience. And what it takes away from you is the unconditional love for yourself in every experience and as the understanding of our own humanity, and the understanding that perfectionism and people pleasing, are literally the opposite of authentic connection. Because when you're spending so much time putting on a perfect mask of yourself for the outward, you know, for the outside world, and when you're trying so hard to please other people, you're not showing up as your authentic self. And so they can't even like you for you. So you can't even have these authentic relationships where you're just being you. And it is really interesting. It was such an interesting realization that ultimately, when you're people pleasing, it's because you want to be accepted and you want to be liked, and your own people pleasing stands in the way of actual connection, it's so interesting to realize that and by the way, when I was the most unwell I looked the most perfect, I just did. I dressed to the nines, I did my makeup, I presented as a straight A student, and I was the picture of perfection. And now when I see people who look, you know, 100% put together and everything is so perfect and to the nines, I know that there's, there's pain underneath that they're hiding. And the harder you're trying to be together, the more I know that there's a fear of a lack of control, and a fear of all of it falling apart within you. And I've learned that the hard way by just being that myself. Now, of course, as a mom of two little kids, I'm very haggard a lot of the time and I'm haggard but happy, you know, tired, but happy.

Stephanie Mara 31:42

Yeah, I find a piece of this journey of healing relationship with food and body is embracing messiness.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 31:50

Yes!

Stephanie Mara 31:51

Like showing up messy, not having it all together, not needing to know all the answers, and also allowing yourself to show up messy with other individuals so that you really get to learn who are the people you truly connect with, and can hold space for you on the days that you feel like you're kicking butt, and on also the days where you're on the floor crying, and things feel like they're breaking down, that it's, it's got to be, hey, these people can see me in all my many different colors and shapes, and expressions. And that can feel a very vulnerable place to step into that, that is also just normalizing why our relationship with food and body in these perfectionistic tendencies can continue. Because they're, they feel protective in a lot of different ways from that vulnerability.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 32:44

Yeah, they serve their purpose, they serve the purpose of like an armor a mask that you wear. But here's the thing, showing up messy eventually, it is uncomfortable at first, I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna say that vulnerability is like, Boom, and it's, you know, it's easy. It's not easy still for me to this day, because it was one thing, for example, to write, Don't Just Sit There: Do Nothing, which is a very honest book of my own journeys and struggles. And it's another thing to now have people being like, wow, I never know, I never knew you went through that. And they're emailing me constantly. And they're contacting me constantly. And I know that everyone in my life is going to know what went on inside my head, inside my bathroom, inside my body. Like, is it 100% comfortable? No. But I've also learned that discomfort is how we grow. And I think it's interesting that you had brought that up too like, sitting with the discomfort of not allowing the addiction or the disorder to own us, there's a discomfort that happens there. We have been interacting with food for quite a bit of time, usually in a certain way. And to break a pattern is uncomfortable and learning, like you said, that's the messiness, learning to be with your own discomfort, it is the most powerful thing in the world. And there's, there's a quote, I have a chapter called, "Captain of my Fridge" in my book. So this is two lines from Tao Te Ching, verse 33, she who understands others as wise, she who understands herself as wiser, she who conquers others is strong, but she who conquers herself has true power. And then I wrote, I always write my own take on this, when you learn to master yourself, your thoughts, your habits, your compulsions, the whole world is your freakin' oyster. Now, the only thing I would add, and I talk about this in the book, it's a process. Some days, I am the master of my thoughts and some days I'm not and that's the discomfort with which you learn to live. Instead of plugging that discomfort with food or with alcohol with whatever people use as a bandaid for the discomfort, when you live to when you learn to exist in a state of discomfort, it is a great power to be able to do that.

Stephanie Mara 35:01

Yeah, you're bringing in such an important point right now that actually this healing journey is not that you will never have the impulses, the urges, the harsh internal dialogues, the negative thoughts ever again. The process is actually catching and noticing them when they arise and giving yourself space to sit with them and allow them to be a part of your human experience without needing to act on them or try to make them go away or numb out to them.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 35:30

Exactly. The numbing out part is exactly what you know, what you brought up is, I think, what we all have been using food and our relationship with food, if we focus on something like that, whatever it is that we focus on, if we focus on just this one thing, and we get it and you know, we feel like we're in control of it. Well, we are numbing ourselves actually to what is it that we're really scared of, what is it that we're really trying to get a handle on? There's, it's more it's because you know, food is just food. It's a hard journey. But it's a beautiful journey. That's the other thing that I would tell people that, you know, we carry shame around being these people who ended up less than 100%, healthy or with a disorder. And we carry shame, because of course, that's not everybody, not everybody develops these disorders. But the gift that these disorders carry with them is that in healing them, we grow so much as humans, and we open up so much to ourselves, in order to heal the disorder. This is what's interesting, in order to heal the disorder, you have to go deep within yourself. And that invitation is really beautiful. And I thank my disorder of the past for introducing me to these deep parts of myself that I needed to bring forth in order to heal. It served its purpose in my life. And I know it serves a purpose in everyone's life.

Stephanie Mara 36:57

Yeah, something that keeps coming up for me, as you're talking is this sense of freedom that you experienced finally, being with what is. And I'm curious if you could speak more to that as you started to find therapists that you connected with, so important. I'm glad you also brought that up. If there's someone you're working with, and you're not clicking with them, like, please go find someone else. There is a like more resonant support out there for you. And I'm hearing that as you got into the support groups and even reached out to friends, like what did you notice shift and change in how you started to relate with yourself.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 37:35

And again, I will, I will add that it is a journey. And when I say journey, I'm saying years and I hope that there are people out there that could do it faster than I did. But don't worry if you can't because mine took a long time. So even as I was able to get the behavior under control, self love took a long time to come. So as I mentioned, I ended up with love addiction afterwards, I was really just throwing myself on the feet of these people that I would subconsciously find who were not good matches to me because I was just full of need. And so I was not automatically loving myself just yet. And that was like the second part of my healing journey is this other kind of disordered addiction to infatuation and relationships that weren't realistic, that develop that that developed for me so that was like kind of part two of my ultimate journey to loving myself. Ultimately, that's where we're brought full acceptance and compassion for ourselves that's where we're all ultimately brought to love ourselves with all of our idiosyncrasies, all of our messiness, all of our imperfections and even love the part of ourselves that sought to be perfect that sought to have this ideal body or ideal food relationship or ideal whatever. Like I love that childish part of me too. And I say childish because when you grow past that, you you know, you grow past it, but I love that little girl in me that wanted to be a model. I'm 5'2, by the way, that's why I laugh.

Stephanie Mara 39:19

As am I.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 39:21

But I, but you know, I love that little girl that would just pour over back then it was you know, teen mags now it's god I can't even imagine the teenagers now and the social media that bombards them with these images of sexy women that they want to look like. But you know, that part of myself that just wanted to present herself as sexy and beautiful and pretty at the same time and liked by women, wanted by men, like, you know, I really love that little girl that just really wanted to be loved by everyone in the world because of course, that's not possible. It's not possible. Everyone in the world is not going to love you. And I know this now because I've put myself out there. You know, I tried to be an actress, as you said for a while and that was just a shitload of rejection. I mean, I had parts, I had some successes. But no matter what, that's a journey of rejection, there's always rejection on the way to even even the stars that are huge successes now had rejection. And you know, eventually I became a writer. And I would write these really personal essays, and put them out there. And I would get comments like, oh, this horrible woman, or, you know, amongst, amongst good comments. I wrote a really funny but very vulnerable essay called My One Sided Competition With My Husband's Ex Wife. And it was, you know, because my husband was married once before me, and it just went viral. Funnily enough, it went viral in Australia. And I, there was these comments that were like, I think the second wife was crazier than the first. And it was really funny. I got to a point where some of these harsh comments were so comical, it was a really cool experience for me to finally finally finally, let go of caring so much about the opinion of others. And that's what the Tao Te Ching always talks about. And I finally, when I experienced the harshness that people who didn't know me put out there, which is what happens when you whenever you put yourself out there in any fashion, it doesn't have to be, you know, out in public, just whenever you put your truth out there, there will be people who like it, and there'll be people who don't, and really accepting having that harshness on the outside actually work to increase my love for myself on the inside. And ultimately, when you can rest in love for yourself, it really doesn't matter what the external outcome is.

Stephanie Mara 41:39

Oh my gosh, that's so powerful. Yeah, that is such an important part of the healing process. And I'm hearing also, and I'm so glad you're you continue to bring in that it is a journey. There's no timeline or destination. Just think if you were in your habits or patterns with your food or body for 10, 20, 30, years of your life, it's going to take some time to unravel that. And that even when you start healing your relationship with your patterns that are playing out with your food in your body, it might morph into something else. And that's okay too.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 42:15

Right.

Stephanie Mara 42:15

Right. That's also the process of unraveling to get back to this core sense of yourself. And what I'm hearing also a part of your journey was embracing that inner child that still has wants and needs and sometimes speaks up and seeing her as this wonderful little being inside of you that sometimes needs your attention. And you get to give her that attention, while also knowing what she needs or wants maybe isn't a truth or a fact, or something that even needs to be like satiated in the moment that she says she needs something, but just giving her space to be heard. And stepping into that place of oh, I'm really hearing that you're attaching that if we got this today, you would get some kind of love or acceptance or acknowledgement that you're needing and let me just give that to you right now.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 43:07

You're so right. It's such a beautiful experience to be the inner child and the parent to the inner child because you can be both. And once you have the power, once you're able to really and again, this is where stillness comes in is taking time, you know, and it doesn't have to be stillness of the body, it's still really what we're talking about here stillness of the monkey mind. So if your stillness comes when you're walking in the woods, you know, who am I to say that's, you know, you, you know, you can figure out your own way to find that stillness, and that that place of simplicity that we talked about, but when you're able to really hear that inner child, and you can embrace them, wholly, that's all that's all your inner child actually needs, is your own embracing of that child, your own love for that child. That's it. Once you're able to do that, you start to rely really much less on external validation.

Stephanie Mara 43:59

Yeah, well, I am so excited to read your book and I'm wondering how listeners can continue to keep in touch with you and learn more about you and this fantastic book that you've just come out with.

Jessie Asya Kanzer 44:11

Thank you for asking me the question that can actually you know that I forget, I forget to talk about that. But it is important to market yourself so that actually so that folks can get this information. I wrote this book with so much love for my own broken self of the past and for anyone else who finds them in themselves in that situation. So Don't Just Sit There: Do Nothing is available everywhere books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indie book shops, and all of my information is on jessiekanzer.com. There's order links, but there's also a ton of free resources. You can get a few chapters for free and all my contact information is on there. I'm @jessiekanzer on Instagram as well. But all of that is on my website.

Stephanie Mara 45:01

Yeah, there is a beautiful clip on your website. I think it was from the New York Times of telling a little bit of your background and your story even more. So I would definitely recommend checking out your website and this new book, and just thank you so much for your time and your honesty, and your authenticity today. You know it, this is a part of it. It's also these conversations are so important so that if you're listening to this and saying, Oh, my gosh, I'm in it right now, please know you're not alone. And you don't have to navigate this all by yourself. There are individuals out there who have been through what you're going through right now. And yeah, there may be shame, like we talked about that's coming in on this journey, and reach out for support, you can reach out to either of us anytime, and we're here for you on this path. So just thank you so much again for your time and for listeners, thanks so much for listening today and tuning in and I will connect with you all again very soon. Bye!

Keep in touch with Jessie here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessiekanzer/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JessieKanzer

Website: https://jessiekanzer.com/

Book: Don't Just Sit There, DO NOTHING: Healing, Chilling, and Living with the Tao Te Ching