Liberate yourself from the toxic body positivity culture

Transcript

Rita De Michele:

Hi, I’m Rita De Michele, and welcome to another episode of Beyond Diagnosis.

How many times have you heard women say, “I’ll feel better about myself in a smaller pair of jeans,” or “When I’m 10 kilos lighter, then my life will be great”?

As women, we have heard countless reasons why we diminish our self-worth because of our appearance. Maybe some of our listeners have felt this way too.

Today’s guest has a different perspective on diet culture and toxic body positivity through the power of healing and shifting our emotions.

Hello and welcome to Beyond Diagnosis, a podcast created to raise your awareness, decisions, and voice around alternative practices, so you can take back control of your health.

I’m Rita De Michele, your host, mindset and empowerment coach, and founder of the Onus platform. Join me each week so you can create the health of your dreams.

Layne Allen is a certified global EFT practitioner and body acceptance coach. Her mission is to support and liberate women to unsubscribe from diet culture through the somatic healing of Emotional Freedom Techniques and coaching, allowing women to claim their bodies exactly as they are.

Layne, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Layne Allen:

Thank you for having me, Rita. I’m so excited to be here and have this conversation with you.

Why Body Image Is Such an Important Conversation

Rita De Michele:

This is definitely a hot topic. It is a hot topic, and it is an important one for women who are struggling with body image.

We know that is a lot of women, because of the way society places pressure on how we are meant to look, how we are meant to feel about ourselves, how we are meant to talk, move, and be.

It is too much.

Layne, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to get into this work?

Layne Allen:

I would love to.

I am Layne Allen. I am an advanced EFT practitioner and body acceptance coach.

My work centres around empowering women to break free from the constraints of diet culture and reject harmful narratives around toxic body positivity.

Personally, I have experienced this myself. I am sure a lot of your listeners have also seen firsthand the struggles women go through when trying to shrink themselves into society’s very narrow definition of beauty.

I think women often blame themselves when they cannot meet these unrealistic expectations. They may not realise there are large-scale systems in place that profit from their insecurities.

I believe every woman deserves to feel comfortable and confident in the skin she is in, no matter her age.

That is why I am dedicated to shining a light on these systems and helping women recognise that they are being manipulated. I want to guide them on a journey towards self-acceptance and liberation.

Rita De Michele:

That is fantastic. It is incredibly important.

What Is EFT?

Rita De Michele:

You are an EFT practitioner, which stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques.

Is that the type of work you use to help women shift their emotions?

Can you explain what you do and how you support a woman who is very stuck in that culture, where her whole self-worth is based on how she looks and performs?

Can you take us through a short journey of how you help women come out the other side feeling good about themselves, regardless of their size?

Layne Allen:

Definitely.

EFT is one of the modalities I recommend and use alongside general coaching practices.

EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques. It is also known as tapping. If you hear me use those words, they are interchangeable.

Essentially, EFT is an alternative treatment for physical pain and emotional distress.

The best way I can describe EFT is this.

Imagine you are on a road trip, and you come to a beautiful place. You pull the car over, get out, and think, “Wow, this is incredibly peaceful.”

That is what we can achieve when we practise EFT.

Imagine your body is the landscape of that road trip. There are highways running through your body. These are known as meridians, or your energy system.

When we start to feel stressed, anxious, or we have negative and limiting self-beliefs, it is like there is a traffic jam on that highway.

EFT helps clear that traffic.

By gently tapping on specific points of the body, you send signals to the traffic control centre, which is the amygdala. That is the part of the brain that controls the stress response.

You are essentially saying, “It is all good. We are safe. We can clear this traffic.”

This action helps soothe the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response that can occur when we are stressed.

When we talk while doing EFT, it is like being on a road trip with a girlfriend. You are not going to sit in silence. You are going to talk, laugh, maybe sing along to music.

During EFT, talking allows expression and release. It helps us change how we react to certain problems.

The goal is to restore the body’s energy system, so the next time we dwell on the past, worry about the future, or have negative self-beliefs, the intensity around those feelings has hopefully decreased.

Then the action we take becomes less reactive and more neutral.

Rita De Michele:

That is a fantastic explanation.

Diet Culture, Shame, and Self-Worth

Rita De Michele:

With talk therapy, so many women subscribe to the collective delusion that we are seen if we are slim, and we become invisible if we do not meet society’s parameters of feminine beauty.

Then we judge our appearance. We do not accept ourselves. We go down the shame path, where we shame ourselves for not being what society thinks we should be.

Would you agree that a lot of this starts earlier in life?

Layne Allen:

Yes.

One example I was taught while studying EFT may help people understand this.

Imagine a table. What I imagine as a table and what you imagine as a table may be completely different. You might imagine a table with one leg that stands perfectly fine. I might imagine a table with four legs.

In EFT, we can put a limiting belief or subconscious belief on top of that table. Then we look at the legs underneath it.

Those legs may represent the past experiences, memories, messages, and emotional events that hold that belief up.

For example, one woman may experience binge eating because she fears abandonment or because of emotional wounds from her past.

Another woman may also experience binge eating, but for a completely different reason. Maybe she grew up in a household where chocolate was not allowed. Now she eats it quickly and then feels guilty afterwards.

So, we may see two similar behaviours, but the emotional roots can be completely different.

When Traditional Therapy Is Not Enough

Rita De Michele:

I think some women feel they cannot share certain things with other women.

Technology has helped us share information more quickly and be more vulnerable online. That can be a great thing.

However, we can still get caught up in the idea that there is only one way to be healthy, only one way to look, and only one way to heal.

I disagree with that completely.

We are starting to see more inclusion of women of different sizes, women of colour, neurodivergent women, women with disabilities, and more.

My question is, when someone is seeing a psychologist and they are not getting the results they want, how do you talk about toxic positivity with them?

Layne Allen:

I am definitely not a psychologist.

But from my perspective, I would say do not give up. Try something else.

If psychology and talk therapy are not working for you, maybe you might want to try EFT. If EFT does not work, there is breathwork. If breathwork does not work, there are many other options.

I want to encourage people to stay on the trying end and not give up after the first thing that does not work.

Healing is a journey. It is not a destination.

What Makes Body Positivity Toxic?

Layne Allen:

Sometimes body positivity becomes toxic when someone says something like, “I hate my thighs,” and another person responds, “You cannot say that about yourself. You need to love yourself. If you keep saying that, you will never be happy.”

To me, that can feel unwarranted and unhealthy.

I want to clarify that not all body positivity messaging is toxic.

I think we have moved away from its original meaning, which was about seeing more diversity in media. That was important.

But now, some messaging can invalidate how a woman genuinely feels.

Rita De Michele:

Yes. It is like when you are walking down the street and someone yells from a car window, “Smile, honey.”

It feels diminishing. It diminishes how you feel in that moment.

Layne Allen:

Exactly.

Weight, Health, and Misleading Assumptions

Rita De Michele:

Another question is about body positivity when someone is very obese or morbidly obese.

How do we talk about that without shaming people, but also without ignoring health?

Layne Allen:

This is such an important conversation.

For me personally, there was a time when I was drinking a lot, working ridiculous hours in hospitality, partying almost every other night, smoking, and engaging in very unhealthy behaviours.

From the outside world’s perception, that was when I looked my best.

In reality, I was at my absolute lowest.

Now I am the heaviest I have ever been, but I am also the healthiest and happiest I have ever been.

I understand where people are coming from when they say we cannot ignore health. But there are so many things that contribute to health.

Physical health is only one dimension of wellness.

There are many other things that contribute to a person’s overall health and wellbeing.

Rita De Michele:

Absolutely.

That is what I find so difficult about subscribing to one idea of how someone should look.

It diminishes the fact that we are multi-dimensional people.

We have so much more to offer. We have vibrancy. We have intelligence. We have so many qualities beyond appearance.

Layne Allen:

Absolutely.

Making assumptions about a person’s health based only on their body size is unrealistic and unwarranted.

The Legacy Behind Layne’s Work

Rita De Michele:

That leads me to my next question.

What legacy would you hope to leave with your work supporting women?

Layne Allen:

There is a quote by C. JoyBell C. It is quite long, so I may not get it exactly right.

The essence of it is that when women understand their worth and beauty outside the way they look, society loses one of its strongest tools for keeping them small.

That really connects with my work.

This is why I love EFT.

The next time someone walks past a mirror, they might still think, “Gross.”

But maybe they can also recognise, “That is not a kind thought about myself.”

They may begin to say, “My body is my home, and I need to be kinder to it.”

It is about shifting the needle little by little. Day by day. Habit by habit.

We change the narrative and the actions we take, so we can create a healthier relationship with ourselves.

Changing the Inner Narrative

Layne Allen:

Sometimes we realise where those beliefs came from.

Maybe when we were children, our mother said we looked fat in a particular dress. Maybe a sibling laughed because our pants no longer fit.

We can tap into the subconscious mind and say, “These are some of the reasons I invalidate myself. These are some of the reasons I believe I am unworthy.”

But then we can also say, “That is not me anymore. That is not who I want to be.”

Then we can start tapping on what we want to bring into our lives, because what we focus on, we create more of.

Comparison, Social Media, and Body Acceptance

Layne Allen:

When you are in that comparison phase, start stepping away from it.

Unfollow people who make you feel bad about yourself.

Start following people who do not necessarily look like you. Create diversity in your feed.

Then you can start to see, “There are so many bodies out there that do not look like mine.”

Rita De Michele:

That is a really good point.

Layne Allen:

The third thing is to remember that there will always be days when you do not feel good about yourself.

On those days, focus on facts rather than forced positivity.

Instead of saying, “I love my stretch marks,” when you do not believe it, you could say, “I have a stomach that gave birth to a beautiful baby,” or “I have a human stomach that digests delicious food with people I love.”

Those statements are true. Your body and mind cannot reject them as easily, because they are facts.

But if you stand in the mirror and say, “I love my stretch marks,” or “I love my arms,” and you know you do not believe it, your body will reject it.

Closing

Rita De Michele:

Thank you so much for the work you are doing and for taking such a strong stance in helping women regain confidence in their bodies.

I am also grateful to our listeners for joining us.

If you would like to hear more insights from Layne, tune in to her podcast, Wait, There’s More, in Melbourne.

Thank you, Layne. It was a pleasure having you on the show.

Layne Allen:

Thank you so much, Rita. It has been great.

Rita De Michele:

I would love to know what was the biggest insight or aha moment you got from this episode.