Chelsea (00:04):

Hello and welcome to Embrace Relief with Chelsea Winterholler. I am a certified life coach who helps moms embrace the relief that comes from finding emotional freedom around your child’s future. I have had a child die. I have a child who experiences anxiety, and I have a child who lives with a life-threatening allergy. And I used to go at facing it all alone. The worry and fear completely consumed me, until I found a life coach who would help me process all of the emotions that I was having about my children’s futures. I am so excited to help you on this journey and watch you in turn help your kids. This is episode 36, an interview with Master Certified Weight and Life Coach Corinne Crabtree.

(01:05):

Hello. Hello. First things, first, I want to tell you a little bit about my guest today. Her name is Corinne Crabtree. She’s a Master Certified Weight and Life Coach, and her mission is to help every woman break generational curses in order to improve their personal health and wealth.

(01:28):

Something really amazing about Corinne is she lost 100 pounds 15 years ago. And ever since, she has dedicated her life to teaching women how to do the same. Not only does she do that, but Corinne is one of the leading voices in the weight loss and business industry. She is the host of a wildly successful podcast. If you have not listened to it, pause what you’re doing and go follow her right now. It’s called Losing 100 Pounds with Corinne. It’s been downloaded over 50 million times in 160 countries. And over 1 million women have taken her free weight loss course, and Corinne now serves over 14,000 paid members in her program called the No BS Weightloss Program. And I actually have friends who are a part of her program and cannot stop raving about it.

(02:32):

After she was featured as an expert at The Life Coach School and having her business rank number 1052 in the 5,000 fastest growing businesses of 2022, Corinne founded the No BS Business Women’s Membership, and this program provides online entrepreneurs with simple frameworks, and tools, and the focus that they need to take some action and learn how to build the business of their dreams.

(03:04):

And in addition to that, Corinne offers advanced weight loss life coach training for coaches, and dieticians, and medical professionals who want to improve their clients’ weight loss outcomes. And this is what you all really want to know where you can find Corinne. You can definitely find her on her podcast, and you can also find her on Facebook and Instagram, talking about how she doesn’t exactly love diets, and also about the online marketing industry. Her greatest passion is helping women get rid of their old thoughts by using self-love to never quit on themselves again.

(03:47):

And can I just tell you, I need that. We all need that. We need a little more love, a little more compassion for ourselves. We all need to figure out how to stop quitting on ourselves, and that’s why I am so excited to share this interview with all of you that I did with Corinne Crabtree.

(04:13):

All right. Well, hello listeners. I’m so excited for today. I have my new friend here, Corinne Crabtree. And as I was thinking about, what do I want to approach with her? She has so much knowledge and so much to offer each of you. I was just thinking about how I talk to each of you every single day about how to find emotional freedom from your child’s diagnoses. And it’s specifically around your kids’ food allergies, and we talk a lot about all the fear and overwhelm that comes along with it.

(04:50):

So Corinne, I don’t know if you know this, but my son is in a program that helps him find, it’s called Food Freedom. That’s what they call it, from his anaphylactic peanut allergy. So they’re actually going to help him find remission from it.

Corinne Crabtree (05:05):

Oh, wow.

Chelsea (05:06):

Yeah, it’s really neat. So I know that you have some challenges and knowledge around feelings of fear and overwhelm with a child who has unique circumstances, and I think that that is similar to what my listeners experience on a daily basis. And I work with those moms to find emotional freedom and to take a step back from their child’s constant needs, and kind of focus on themselves, even if it’s only for a short time.

(05:41):

So I feel like you are the perfect person to help my clients find freedom around one specific area, which is their food freedom, kind of figuring out how to put themselves first every once in a while, and find their own version of freedom in their lives. So I am just so excited to introduce you all. Corinne, thank you so much for being here.

Corinne Crabtree (06:06):

Well, thank you for having me. I’m really looking forward to this conversation because I definitely… With my son having autism, I had to really work on my relationship with myself as a mother and everything that came along with that in order to be able to just have a relationship with him that wasn’t just therapist. For me, that was my big issue was for years, I just went into therapy mode. I’ve got to save this baby, I got to do all these things, and it was like, “We don’t have time to be a mother. We have an emergency happening here.”

Chelsea (06:38):

Yes, and that’s how we feel all of the time with our child’s diagnosis. We just have to make sure they’re safe and alive, and hopefully they make it through the next few years of their life. It’s such a panic mode.

(06:53):

So I’d love you to fill us in a little bit, maybe on some of your most common feelings. And maybe when your son was a little bit younger. He’s old now, right? How old is he now?

Corinne Crabtree (07:07):

He is 20, he’ll be 21 in October.

Chelsea (07:10):

Okay. Okay. So yeah, some of the feelings that surrounded your relationship with him as you have been navigating his diagnosis.

Corinne Crabtree (07:20):

Yeah. So one thing I would like to tell all of you is that even though he’s 20, I still work on it. It’s one of those things where I’m almost 50, and I asked my mother the other day about, “When do you quit worrying about your kid?” She was like, “I don’t know. I haven’t quit worrying about you and your brother ever.”

Chelsea (07:40):

Good to know.

Corinne Crabtree (07:43):

Yeah, I think it’s normal for us as mothers. I always have told my clients, it’s like we are equipped with a tornado siren in our head, and it doesn’t go off until we have children. And then when you have children, it’s like all of a sudden little things just like, I mean, it just kicks up. And just in case something bad’s about to happen, I’m going to sound the alarm every single time.

(08:11):

So for me, when he was little, probably the toughest emotion that I had to navigate was guilt. I had a lot of guilt around… And it would come in waves of different things and it literally lasted… It probably didn’t start going away until 2020 during the pandemic because I remember getting coached on this.

Chelsea (08:36):

Yes, I was going to say, why did it start going away? Was it because of his circumstance, or something clicked for you?

Corinne Crabtree (08:44):

It was the exact same things were happening all the time. I really had to change my outlook on it. So when he was little, the initial waves of guilt came in from, I felt guilty that I couldn’t fix him all the time. “I should be able to fix him.” Or, “There’s going to be something that comes out and I should be able to find this.” Or I was always worried that there was some discovery or something out there and I just wasn’t finding it. Or I would feel guilty for getting tired and not wanting to… He was real high needs, so I felt guilty that I wasn’t just on all the time. I would feel guilty in the moments when I was frustrated with him. I’d feel guilty when I didn’t want to be with him.

(09:32):

He’s a wonderful child now, but good lord. When he was between the ages of… He got diagnosed at five. And from about three until 10, he had no way to really ever tell us when something was wrong outside of throwing a huge fit. It was just crying, it was tears, it was anger. He went through a stage of fighting and fighting. It was all these things.

(10:01):

And I would have so much guilt around, it wasn’t that I didn’t love what he was doing. And I used to associate that with, “I must mean I don’t love him.” So there was just all these things that went on. And then he got better in terms of being able to self-regulate. We did so much therapy and stuff. But then when he got to… What’s hilarious is when he was little, he didn’t talk. He had language, but he didn’t know how to communicate.

(10:33):

So he could point to president faces and tell you exactly which president it was. He could tell you what years that they were the president. But to just have a conversation about… I would ask him, “What do you want for dinner?” He never could pick. If we wanted to just talk about, when he was 10 or 11, if I just asked him how his day went. “Good, good.” He just couldn’t really communicate. And so eventually he overcame that, with enough therapy that happened. But I used to worry so much that he would never be able to talk to me, and that would happen.

Chelsea (11:13):

Yeah and moms-

Corinne Crabtree (11:15):

Go ahead.

Chelsea (11:15):

Sorry. Moms feel that so much in general, right? We’re always worried and projecting about what the worst case scenario is going to be, and that brings that guilt in so fast and heavy.

Corinne Crabtree (11:28):

For sure.

Chelsea (11:29):

So how did you find a little release from that guilt?

Corinne Crabtree (11:34):

It wasn’t until literally in 2020. So he was diagnosed probably in, I think it was 2006, seven. And then in 2020 I had a coach, and we were home all the time. And of course I was still running my business and my business was running great. And all I wanted to do at the end of the day was sit by my pool and do nothing.

(11:59):

Well, he would just wait. And then the second that I’d go outside, he’d want to talk to me. And I mean, when Logan starts talking, it is nonstop. He and I just don’t have a lot in common. I love that child now to death, and I can appreciate some of his topics. But you can only talk about Russian operas so much and the lives of North Koreans. He just got so fascinated with these obscure topics, and I’m more like into fashion and sports, and stuff he could care less about.

Chelsea (12:35):

I have someone in my life that has autism. And I could not love the kid more, but yeah, the topic differentials, they are real.

Corinne Crabtree (12:45):

Wide.

Chelsea (12:45):

Yes.

Corinne Crabtree (12:46):

Every day he’d come to me and he’d want to talk, and all I would sit there and do is just think, “I don’t want to talk to you. I hate this topic. This is so boring.” In my mind, I was just in excruciating pain. So I went to my coach, and I would feel so guilty about it, because I wasn’t one of those moms who was just like… In the autism land, there’s a lot of these moms that’s just like, I don’t know, on social media, everything is just pancakes and syrup, and they’re just sitting there just trying to get all of it. Sop every last second of it up. And I’m just like, “Boo pancakes and syrup.”

Chelsea (13:21):

Exactly.

Corinne Crabtree (13:22):

She said, “Corinne, this is mothering.” And she talked to me about what mothering is and she said, “Mothering includes sometimes not liken your child. Mothering includes being bored, mothering includes wanting time for yourself. Mothering, it includes all of it, and it includes your love for your child, your passion to help your child. It includes so many things.”

(13:47):

But it wasn’t until she really had me define that mothering was more than perfect moments or this perfect way to show up. I was left with guilt. And I remember crying my eyes out and she just said, “All I want you to do for a few weeks is every time you’re not happy, every time you’re not having a good time, any of the negative side of it.” She said, “I want you to just put your hand over your heart and tell yourself this is mothering too. This is when it really matters. Because mothers love their children even when they themselves don’t feel all the feelings.” And I was like, “I wish somebody had told me this when I was younger.” It was all the years where I was like, “I must be a bad mother because this is happening.”

Chelsea (14:33):

Yes. Sometimes you need that permission from someone and just someone to point it out. What if it’s just, all of you is exactly who he needs? Right here in this moment, you don’t have to be any different than you are. And we feel that so strong and it totally brings that guilt.

Corinne Crabtree (14:53):

I think it’s also when you have such a high standard for yourself, like this perfect idea of what it’s supposed to be like, and you’re always comparing up to that, what happens is you miss out on all of the actual good things that you do. It’s like you’re so focused on who you’re not, that you don’t even get to have the moments where you’re just like, “I’m just proud of me for showing up.”

(15:22):

When I look back, now I can look back on all the years, hours upon hours, spending time in the car with him, driving him to therapists all over Nashville, 90 minutes away from my house in traffic and stuff. And I never was proud of that. I never patted myself on the back. It was just like, “You’re supposed to do this, and you’re a terrible mother because you’re sitting in the car wishing you were at home.” It’s like-

Chelsea (15:52):

Come on.

Corinne Crabtree (15:54):

Yeah, you just set aside everything you needed to do for the day to make sure this baby gets taken care of. When we do that comparison, if we don’t really embrace that motherhood is all of it, then we don’t even get to enjoy the parts in the moments where we are showing up.

Chelsea (16:15):

I love that so much. Motherhood is all of it, and it is. I like that you said comparing up. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before, but it’s so true. We are constantly comparing up to this crazy level that no mother or human actually lives at, instead of appreciating us, and taking a breath and looking at how awesome we are sometimes. For sure.

(16:43):

So I want to talk to you a little bit about processing fear. And I have listened to you quite a bit, and I know that you’re a master at this. And I feel as well as all of my listeners and my clients, this is what we tend to coach on most is the fear that we have around our child’s futures. So can you help us, walk us through how you have done it maybe in the past, and now how you know would be best to do it for yourself?

Corinne Crabtree (17:26):

So I guess what’s really helped me recently is… I really had to just come to grips with, really don’t know what’s going to happen in Logan’s future. I remember telling myself it is equally as true that it could be a disaster, and he lives with us for the rest of his life, and can’t take care of himself. And it’s just as equally as true as he could be fine. Nothing I think will happen.

(18:00):

In the beginning, that was the most peaceful thought that I had. It gave me compassionate understanding for the part of me that was very afraid for his future, which I think is a normal mother response. I think a lot of times, coaches are trying to get us to not think those things, and I’m like, “I don’t know.” I’m looking at my 60 something year old mom and she’s still sitting there worrying about me, and I’m almost 50. And I’ve done well and she still figures out a way to worry about me.

(18:34):

I just think rather than trying to extinguish it or whatever, it’s like just know when it’s happening, but at least give yourself the grace to say. I think it’s normal for moms to worry, but the healthiest thing that we can do for ourselves is just tell ourselves the truth. Our worries and fears aren’t the only truth in the room. There are other things that are equally as true. Just like everything you think bad that’s going to happen, there’s probably other things that could happen. They may not be the best. They may be awesome. It’s like this whole idea of we really never can predict the future, but our brains really try, because it wants to be certain.

(19:18):

So one of the things for me, it’s been like to give my brain certainty, I always say I’m certain of one thing. I have really no idea what will happen. I’m certain that I get afraid of the worst case scenarios because I love him so much. I’m certain that in the moments when I’m scared and when I’m worrying, I can calm myself down.

(19:41):

There’s two things that I do a lot of. Number one is, what is in my control right now? That just brings me so much peace. As someone who is like, I’m not a control freak, but I’m definitely an A type personality, so I like to check charge. I like to take the lead. And my fears run away with me on things where I can’t just fix the outcome.

(20:03):

And this is a situation. I can’t fix Logan’s outcome. I do not know. It’s dependent upon him and his autism. There’s so many factors that go into it. There’s no guaranteeing anything. But what is in my control, and I often tell myself, for me, I was like, “All right, if I can’t control Logan’s future, what I can control is how much money I put away for his future. I can control how we set up him financially no matter what happens after we’re gone.” That was a huge fear for me, was that we would die. He has no siblings, and he wouldn’t be able to take care of himself.

(20:41):

And so what I knew that I was in control of was figuring out how we would set him up financially so that he could have a life where he was taken care of and all the things. And I worked for years on doing that.

(20:56):

And then I also tell myself in those moments, I put my hand over my heart and I just take a few deep breaths, and I usually just tell myself, “You’re just worrying. Your mind is creating a lot of catastrophes, most of which is probably not true.” And the reason why I can believe that in the moment is because when I’m not panicking, when I’m not worrying and freaking out, I often will write about Logan, and I will write about our relationship, and I will write about whatever I’m worried about-

Chelsea (21:28):

Just in a journal?

Corinne Crabtree (21:30):

Just in a journal, I will do it when I’m not highly activated or my mind’s running wild so that the logical side of me can come in and say, “Here’s also things that are true.”

(21:42):

So just in that moment, I’ve already done all that work. I’m not trying to access my logical brain. I’m just reminding myself, “Girl, you have thought about this before. This is what you do. You sometimes just get so worried and so anxious, it’s normal for you.” And that right there calms me down enough to where I’m like, “Now I can breathe.” I don’t have to freak out. I don’t have to do a bunch of crap and be like, “Ooh, why’d I do all that later on?”

Chelsea (22:07):

Yeah, I mean just those two things like accessing, what is the truth here? Can it go really bad or will it go maybe good? And then normalizing it. I love that. Just, this is normal. The feelings are normal. The fear is normal. Asking yourself if this is true or not is normal. I love that. That is so great. I love those two questions. I’m going to write them down somewhere in my house. I love sticky notes. Do you like sticky notes?

Corinne Crabtree (22:38):

Oh my gosh, yes. I have them all over my house. I’ve got some right here right now.

Chelsea (22:43):

Yes, I put them on my mirror. I’m going to write those two questions. You’re going to be on my mirror, Corinne. I love it.

Corinne Crabtree (22:49):

That’s awesome.

Chelsea (22:51):

Okay, so I did want to for a minute relate this food freedom thing. So we’re trying to get our kids to food freedom, to reach their potential with their allergies, getting either where they feel safe and feel free, or actually beating their allergies.

(23:11):

And the moms that I talk to, so many of them are turning to food or binging food when the stressors of being a mom and raising their child become too overwhelming to them. So I want to ask you what food freedom even looks like to you. Just as a mom, someone who’s living life trying to navigate all of this, what is food freedom to you who are a master at teaching this?

Corinne Crabtree (23:46):

So one thing is especially my weight loss clients, I don’t teach them that any foods are good or bad. I always talk to them about when you’re eating things, there’s a lot of reasons behind why we eat lots of foods. Sometimes, it’s cultural for us, or we really like the taste. This is a moment that we want to be entertained, or this is a moment where we’re eating so that we can be fueled for later, or physically have more energy. There’s lots of reasons why we eat. So when you try to box foods into healthy, or not healthy, or whatever, you lose out on being intentional behind eating.

(24:28):

And one of the concepts that I teach really hard with my clients is you can have food freedom when you start learning how to remove the emotional ties to food. So there are three types of eating that most people do that causes weight gain. One is just habit eating. You just get used to eating at certain times, or you just get used to having… A lot of times people are like, “I’m just in the habit of dessert at night. I’ve been eating dessert for 20 something years,” and whether you’re hungry or not, you’re just doing it.

(25:00):

So habit eating is a lot of just, “I’m just doing it. I’ve not even questioned doing it in a long time, but I’m aware of the habit.” Mindless eating, a lot of us do, which is we don’t even realize we’re doing it anymore. It’s cleaning up. I always called myself the human garbage disposal. Whenever I cleaned up from dinner, I was like, whatever’s left in the pan went in my mouth. If Logan left a chicken tender on his plate, I pop that in my mouth. If we were in the car and he didn’t finish something, I ate the leftovers. There’s mindless eating, which is usually just you have to pay attention. You don’t even know you’re doing it.

(25:41):

Then there’s emotional eating, which is where most of us who are struggling with our children, this is where we are eating because we either want to feel something or we’re trying to escape something. And it is the one that every human does at some point, but it’s also the one that I like fixing the most with clients, because it changes their life.

(26:08):

When you clean up habit eating and mindless eating, you’ll lose weight, but your quality of life doesn’t really change. When you start addressing eating because it’s the only way you know how to give yourself a break, eating because you feel so terrible about your children, or for me, the guilt behind not enjoying my child as much. When you cut out all of that eating because you addressed the root cause problem, you learned how to talk to yourself, you learned how to take breaks without guilt, you learned how to put you back into everything. A lot of moms feel, “The only way I’m ever going to be able to do self-care is if I get selfish.” It’s like when you redefine what self-care looks like, what it is, and what it means, it doesn’t mean you’re selfish. It means that you’re now taking care of yourself in such a way that you have enough energy to stop giving everybody what’s left of you. You start giving everybody the best of you.

[NEW_PARAGRAPH]And so when you clean up emotional eating, I’m so passionate about it because it literally changes your life. You get your life back. And the way that I teach the weight loss is you clean that up on top of habit and mindless, you get food freedom. Because now you’re no longer cutting out foods that you love. We aren’t just villainizing food anymore. We’re actually working on ourselves.

Chelsea (27:41):

And that is so amazing, and I’ve seen this happen. I know people who have worked with you through your program, and I’ve seen every aspect of their life shift. And so I’m imagining my listeners like, “Okay, yeah, yeah I can do the whole… I can clean up the habit, I can clean up the mindless, but what the heck? How do I do the emotional part? Help me.” Because we don’t even know the first step because for 30, 40, 50 years, we’ve just been taught that’s how you do it. That’s how you feel better. Feel better with binging not just one nice yummy chocolate chip cookie, but 15 because they’re warm, and they make me stop feeling my overwhelm for a minute.

Corinne Crabtree (28:24):

Yes. Food, especially when we eat large volumes of it and when we’re overeating or binging, I always tell my clients, “You were never truly comforted.” We never really fixed an emotion. It’s whatever you were thinking, your brain just shifted gears to be like, “Delicious cookie.” It’s no longer thinking, “Crappy mom.” That’s literally all that happens.

(28:51):

But a lot of times we think, “Well, it was the cookie that did it or it was all the food.” It’s like the food never changed your emotions. The food, you started having different thoughts. And if that’s the case, what we want to do is we want to learn how to now have different thoughts. And then eventually, the food compulsions will go down.

(29:13):

Because one of the things I try to teach my clients is in the very beginning when you’re solving for this, you may not see a lot of the food change or the volumes change a lot in the beginning. They’re going to just start kind of dialing down.

(29:30):

Because the thing that diets screw us up on is if you’re an emotional eater in particular, a diet, when it has calories, or macros, or food lists that you’re approved to be able to eat does is it removes the thing that you have dealt with in your emotional life. If it’s your only emotional coping skill, you have now removed your only coping skill in life.

(29:59):

So you are not only, now I’m eating a certain amount of food and I’m eating these things, but I am left with I’m still thinking I’m a crappy mother. I’m just trying not to eat through it now.

(30:09):

So we are not solving the root problem, and that’s where diets screw us up so bad. It’s like the way I teach my clients is we’re going to start with, why are you eating to begin with? And we’re going to work on this crappy mother definition. We’re going to be doing all of that while you’re also just getting mindful about your eating again, seeing if you can eat a little bit less, dialing some of this stuff in. And then as the temperature comes down on, “I’m a crappy mother and maybe I’m not so bad, maybe this is just normal. I think other people are like me.”

(30:42):

As those things come in, and compassion and understanding comes in, you’re not having to solve an emotion with food anymore. And that’s how we end up losing weight. You got to lose that emotional mental weight in order for the physical weight to come along for the ride, especially permanently.

Chelsea (31:00):

Yes, I love that. It’s so interesting that right there, we’re talking about food now, and we jumped right back to those two questions. Is it the truth, and is this normal? It can boil down to that.

(31:15):

What other questions or things do you do to slow that brain chatter down, to not just make you rush to the food that you think is fixing these feelings? What else do you go to in your brain?

Corinne Crabtree (31:31):

So I teach a concept inside my membership that I can just share here, that I think will be really helpful for your listeners. It’s called the Four Ends. It’s the four ends to a new Belief, but literally these four ends work if you just need to calm yourself down or whatever.

(31:48):

And the first one is just the noticing. I think the first thing that we all have to do is we have to just notice the crappy thoughts we have about ourselves, the crappy thoughts we have about our children, their diagnoses, their future. You have to understand these stories that you’re telling yourself.

(32:07):

Our brains are story generating machine. I always tell my clients inside my program, “If someone knocked on my door right now and we all heard it, we would all have to create a story.” Nobody would just think door knocking. You would think, “I wonder who’s at her door.” I would be thinking, “Is that that Amazon package that I ordered two days ago, I’m hoping to get today?” Our brain automatically starts creating a story. Some people would say, “Oh my God, her mic is terrible if you can hear everything going on in her background.”

(32:40):

So we have to just realize our brains are story making machine, and that’s where number two comes in, which is first we’re going to notice the stories, and then you have to normalize the stories. Because it’s real easy to hear the crap that you think and then be like, “Oh my God, I’m broken. I shouldn’t think those things. Only a horrible person thinks this stuff.” If you do that, if you go into judgment land, you will stop listening, but they’ll be running in the background running your life. You will still feel them. You will now be eating over them and you’ll be like, “I just don’t understand why I can’t get my crap together.” It’s like, because there’s something going on in your brain that you haven’t heard yet.

(33:20):

But if you normalize it and you think, “Okay, I’ve heard this chick on this podcast, and she said that all crazy thoughts are normal, that’s just what brains do, is a story making machine.” Or you think, “Of course I think this. When I was a kid, my mom over worried about everything, so it would make sense that I’m freaking out because I actually have a diagnosis of something.”

(33:44):

So we use that next end to just take the pressure off of hearing what our thoughts are. When you can be like, “This is normal to think this. All mothers feel guilty at times. All mothers blow things out of proportion sometimes. Sometimes I just think I don’t have control. That’s normal.” You feel better than you do just letting your thoughts run wild.

Chelsea (34:10):

Yeah, that speaks to me just in every aspect of my life. Not just with my kids. When I feel like I’m falling short or judging myself constantly, bringing in that. I love the second end. Awesome.

Corinne Crabtree (34:24):

The third one is neutralize, and that’s literally where we just get back to the facts. So our brains, because it is a story making machine, you want to figure out what are those thoughts, and then you just say like, “All right, but at the end of the day, what’s the actual facts here?” There’s me and my runaway freight train dumpster fire rolling down the tracks, and then there’s just the facts of what just happened right now. When we do that, when we strip away all of that emotion and stuff, it’s like okay, now we have clean slated it to where we can open up to the last end, which is next best thought or action.

(35:01):

Which is kind of like what I was talking about in the beginning. We’re not looking for rainbows and daisies here. We’re not looking for you to believe something completely polar opposite, but what else is true here? When I used to think of that Logan would never be able to live without us… And then sometimes I still think that. I’m like, “This kid could live with me for the rest of my life.” What else is true is I’m not a fortune-teller. I have no crystal balls. He could surprise me. There could be medications that come out. There’s thousands of things that could happen. He could live with me for the rest of my life and I not care. I just don’t know.

(35:45):

But right now I just need to know, what is something a little bit better than what I’ve been thinking? And when I think that, what is the best action that I could take from that? Sometimes that’s just putting your hand over your heart. Sometimes it’s actually going out and doing something, who knows.

(36:02):

But that’s that four ends. It’s like every level gives you some relief from that emotion and all of that story, that our brain just automatically likes to just churn up for us.

Chelsea (36:18):

Yeah. And you go from that place of complete chaos, and just walking yourself through them. You could do that in 30 seconds.

Corinne Crabtree (36:29):

Oh yeah.

Chelsea (36:30):

Sometimes it might take a day or seven days, but-

Corinne Crabtree (36:34):

I usually have my clients find their most recurrent painful thoughts and do those on paper. It’s like what we were talking about earlier. In the moment, when you are in the throes of your emotions in your tired, played out stories that come all the time, it is so hard to apply logic in those moments, unless you’ve applied logic at a different time. It is a wicked ninja skill to be somebody who has a brand new thought that’s just hairy, and thorny, and crazy, and fully charged with emotion and be like, “Now let me sit here and ponder for a moment, and what are those four ends?” Most of us are never doing that.

Chelsea (36:34):

No.

Corinne Crabtree (37:17):

But when you spend time just working on some of this on a piece of paper or in your journal, then in the moments when it comes up, it’s like your brain has something to access, and so you’re not having to lift so hard in the moment.

Chelsea (37:33):

Yeah, and we do that. We make ourselves lift so hard. But with just a little bit of preparation along the way, or reflection… I freak out all the time, all the time.

Corinne Crabtree (37:47):

I do too. My husband cracks up because it’s like I get paid to do it.

Chelsea (37:52):

I just sometimes can’t grasp a hold of it until later. And having those moments and having a coach helped me reflect on it. And walking through those four steps you just gave gets you to a totally different place of action. Like you said, that last step, you move to action. So what does that do for them when they are turning towards these buffers that aren’t producing anything for them? Walk me through this process. Then what, what do they get? What’s the good part?

Corinne Crabtree (38:27):

The good part is… So I have a whole module inside my program. This is the urges module. It’s like all we’re going to do is talk about every angle of I want to eat because, and it’s never because I’m hungry. It’s like, “I want to eat because I had a bad day. I want to eat because it’s 8:00 at night. Oh, I want to eat because I deserve a treat. I want to eat because my kid had a bad day.” Whatever it is, we have a whole module just dedicated to basically I want to eat because, of any other reason than physical hunger.

(38:59):

And when you do the four ends and when you do that stuff, the nice thing that happens is that in the moments when you want something… Because I just don’t think you can take desire away. I think it’s just socialized and in the water now that emotional eating is a thing, and everyone emotionally eats. Even thin people emotionally eat at times.

(39:25):

We’re not taking that desire away. What we’re doing is we’re finally giving ourself a choice so that when it comes up, it’s like, “I knew this was coming. This is what I turn to in moments when I feel.” When I’ve worked on it outside of in the moment, I now have a crossroads. I have choice now. Before, we just didn’t have a choice. It’s like, “When I have a bad day, I just eat because I’m a loser and I know nothing else.” If that’s your story, you’re just always going to go down the same path. But when you’ve offered up a different story, now it’s like now I have a fork in the road. Which path do I want to go down?

(40:04):

And then sometimes we still go down the old one. That’s okay. Now we’re just going to work on, “All right, so the next time this happens and the next time it happens, what do I need?” That kind of stuff. But we actually get that choice. We have that moment.

(40:18):

One of my favorite clients, her name was Shavonne. She had been diagnosed with diabetes, and she came into my program because she wanted to lose 45 pounds or 40 pounds, something like that. But she was really hoping that it would help her with the diabetes. When she came into the program, she was like, “I didn’t realize there’s going to be all this mental work. Good lord, all we do is talk about emotional eating and stuff.” She was like, “I just wanted help with diabetes.”

(40:46):

And she ended up losing her weight and she told me, she was like, “It really made sense to me.” Why? Because there was this one day she said, “Corrine, I’d been listening to the course, been doing my stuff, and I’d just been eating, even though I had had that diagnosis and stuff.” She said, “I could see some of my overreating going down. I was cutting out the habit, I was cutting out the mindless stuff.”

[NEW_PARAGRAPH]And she said, “I don’t know what happened, but one day I was standing there and had the fridge opened, and I was just looking.” And she said, “I had wrote about this moment so many times that all of a sudden instead of grabbing something, a voice came in my head that said, ‘Shavonne, the answers you’re looking for are not in there. They are inside you.’” And she said, “Girl, I closed that door. I went and sat down, and started asking myself what I really needed. And she said, “It took me months of hearing you talk about it, but that moment I finally had the choice.” And she said, “And after that I made better and better choices and that was when my emotional eating started coming online, and it started making sense to me that I didn’t need to… It wasn’t that I was trying to solve the diabetes, I was literally trying to solve the emotional eating that I was doing that was driving my diabetes.”

Chelsea (42:00):

That is so amazing. I think that is so powerful. And it’s every aspect of our lives. It’s not just standing there in front of the fridge, right? Choosing if we want the cookie or the broccoli, whichever. It is choosing how we want to feel, how we want to normalize all of these thoughts that come into our heads all of the time. And we give those thoughts and that food so much power, so much control over our entire lives. Instead of just reminding ourselves, “What if there is a choice here?”

Corinne Crabtree (42:39):

Yeah. And it just takes time. I just want all your moms out there to realize we didn’t get into this emotional eating boat overnight. Especially when you’re talking about your kids… I was just on another podcast. We were just talking about basic prioritizing in life. And with our kids, they are usually our highest priority. We can’t help but…

(43:08):

I think about Logan, and as much as I love me and take time for me and stuff, I often think about how much I think about him, and he’s 20 years old. And how I may not be a mom who’s doing all the things. But my God, if that kid needs something, I would drop everything in a heartbeat. And I have often done that, just been like… There’s a part of me that’s like I am self-sacrificing. I’ve just learned how to not self-sacrifice all the time. I’ve learned how to prioritize those moments.

(43:39):

And when we think about emotional eating, we have to prioritize. There are going to be times where some of the emotional eating’s easier to clean up. And then this, we got to make it a priority. Because if you’re eating over your kids, it’s probably one of those things that’s going to take some time to unwind. It’s one of those things that I think moms are just built out of the box to come with anxiety and worry. I think mother nature does it on purpose. It’s like mother nature wants your kid to survive. And for humans especially, mama, you are in charge.

Chelsea (44:18):

For sure, for sure. And what kind of stood out to me is I think we think these things aren’t possible for us. We think they’re possible for Corinne, we think they’re possible for Chelsea, but easy for them to say. So hearing it is possible for you. It’s possible for you to have your kids, and prioritize them, and also prioritize you. It’s possible.

Corinne Crabtree (44:45):

Yeah. I always like to tell people, we’re not going to… The first thing I always tell people is, “Please don’t call taking care of you selfish.” Who woke up today and be like, “I just can’t wait to be selfish today. I hope everyone thinks I’m a selfish bee.” We’re not doing that, and yet we’ll say, “Well, the only way I’m going to be able to take care of myself is just to get selfish.” It’s like, well, no wonder you repel it. No wonder in the moments if you decide to take a bath, if you decide to shave your legs, if you decide to do anything for yourself, you feel gross as hell when you’re doing it, if you’ve labeled it as selfishness. So I always tell people, first of all, we have to number… I think there’s three levels of self-care.

(45:36):

Level one is what I just call, it is the basic version of self-care, that no one in the world ever sees. But it’s the one that is the most needed, and that’s inner self-care. It’s how you talk to yourself. It is that everything that we’ve been talking about. It is the relationship you have with you inside your mind about your children, about your mothering, about your life, about your weight, whatever it is.

(46:05):

If you’re literally snowed in life, so busy, you’ve got so much you got to do for your kids and stuff, and you don’t have time for external self-care, then don’t crap out on the inner, because it takes no time. For you at best to squirrel away… If you are sitting on a toilet and you are going to potty, you can do the four ends on your phone during that time. It can happen. And once you start unraveling a little bit what’s going on with your story with those four ends, no one sees. No one’s suffering. Because you’re giving yourself compassion, understanding, and a new way to think about things.

(46:52):

Then the second level of self-care is what I call micro moments self-care, which is just if you can stand in your shower an extra two minutes, if you’re on your way home, and before you go in, if you can just sit in your driveway for two minutes and do some deep breathing. There’s so many opportunities for micro moment self-care in the world, and yet we don’t take it because our definition of self-care usually is weekends away, babysitters, pedicures. It’s always these big, grandiose things. I’m like, “Oh my God. So many of you would feel better if you just did inner self-care and micro moment self-care.” You’d feel 1000% better just with that.

(47:35):

Then we have what we call what everybody else sees, which is, “Mama’s taking a minute, mama’s going out for a walk.” Mama now has to ask for support. Mama has to do some things that maybe some of you would be like, “But I want you here,” and it’s like, “Angel, will be okay if I’m not.” That’s third level. I’m like, “Most women try to start with third level, call that selfish and then wonder why they don’t do it.” It’s like, let’s just start at level one. Then we can move to level two. And then you’re probably going to find that doing level three, you’ll work it in, and you will feel better about it, and you won’t feel gross, and it will actually be restorative.

Chelsea (48:22):

Yeah. And just starting, we can all do level one and level two. Everybody can do it, so there’s no excuse there. We all go to the bathroom. We all brush our teeth, we all drive our car. I am so glad that we could talk today, Corinne. I am really just excited for all of my listeners, and my clients, and everyone to hear all of these beautiful things. And not just about food, but about actually just having a little compassion for me, for us, and everything that’ll create in their lives. Thank you so much. Do you have any send off sentence, favorite quote, anything that you want to send us off with?

Corinne Crabtree (49:09):

Just for everyone, the most powerful thing that happened for me with my mothering was just that whole, no matter what’s going on, no matter how I feel in that moment, that that’s mothering too. It gave me so much relief to know that mothering wasn’t just one way or some perfect thing. It was, this moment’s mothering too. It’s all mothering.

Chelsea (49:36):

For sure, awesome. Thank you so much, Corinne. We’re so glad that you could come today.

Corinne Crabtree (49:42):

Thank you.

Chelsea (49:47):

If you are learning from and enjoying this podcast, go to my website and book a mini consultation session at winterhollercoaching.com. You can also give me a shout out on your favorite podcast app or simply recommend this to a friend. Find me on Instagram @winterhollercoaching. Thanks for joining me today. I’ll see you next week.