I've been saying this!  I watched my husband stomp his foot and deliver a verbatim quote from an after school special about anorexia or bulimia in the late 80/early 90s.  I deserve the body I see in my head, blah blah blah....  

It's this and also it's kink, it's autism, it's trauma response, it's social conditioning,  it's homophobia, it's parental showboating, it's narcissistic behavior....

You therapists are so patient. I couldn’t do it

I strongly feel we need to stop talking about a person 'transitioning'. When we use that word we give credence to the notion that change from one sex/gender to another is actually happening when it's not.

Isnt part of anorexIa the  avoidance of having an adult sexed female body? Like female trans or NB try to avoid this.

Mia Hughes is such an amazing communicator. I love listening to her.

When I started seeing this gender crap pop off in 2015, my first thought was, “this is just this generation’s version of Wicca.” Maybe a weird comparison, but Wicca blew up the way it did in the 90s due to The Craft and later Charmed, both hugely popular amongst girls. And a big part of the appeal was the illusion of control it afforded its adherents, what with the whole “Magick” angle. It was immensely popular amongst the weird teen girl crowd, and you could always tell which girls were the wiccans, as they all dressed similarly - not unlike the gender goblins of today i.e. pink/blue/green hair, facial piercings, etc. Hell, the way these girls speak is almost the same as the teen witch crowd back in the day. Hearing junk like “men can be lesbians,” “you can be transmasc and still look like a girl,” and all this other nonsensical stuff, reminds me of the girls in my high school who’d claim you don’t actually have to worship the god and goddess to be Wiccan or the rule of three doesn’t apply to her specifically and yada yada. Basically just a load of made up rules created and altered as they went along. Where these two scenes differ however, is when it inevitably got old and the girls were no longer interested. The wiccans could just chuck their pentagrams in the trash, take out the piercings and move on with their lives. The gender goofballs don’t have the same luxury, as some of them have gotten surgery or medications that permanently altered their bodies, not to mention the potential enemies they may end up with as a result of leaving. Like Az Hakeem says, it’s just Goth Mach 5. But unfortunately, sunk cost fallacy has set in for a lot of them and leaving is not easy.

Wonderful episode

Superb conversation. Laid out so clearly, and it's staggering that there are still 'gender affirming 'therapists out there.

I am a detransitioner and in my case, this realization of what am I doing to myself after being sick and feeling weak and depressed for so long-  it was my turning point in life too. Sadly, it took me so many years to realize that this "trans journey" was worsening my quality of life. This fixation could definitely make you ignore your symptoms. Like my body was telling me that all this is hurting myself and I did ignore that - I put that feelings and thoughts mostly away. But at some point, you cannot ignore them anymore cause all this avoidance will make them grow stronger & stronger. I even think that it would have killed me slowly.

I had a friend in my teen years that was anorexic she was also autistic (we called Asperger’s back then) and she had turrets. She attempted to end her life when we were 14 and that’s when we learned all these things about her. She was also the smartest girl in our grade. I wonder if we had been part of a different generation how she could have ended up.

Thank you for this fascinating discussion.
What a lovely psychologist!

33:05 This same type of realization happened to me. I was 20 years old and in an intensive psychodynamic group therapy program (not for eating disorders specifically, but for personality disorders). Prior to this all I had been exposed to in treatment were other teenagers or young adults. The thought of still having these behaviours and thought processes at 40 or even 60 years old like some of the other patients horrified me. Reflecting back, I believe it was one helpful component in motivating me in my recovery.

This is a brilliant interview, so many interesting points raised. I had a choking scare as a child and thereafter I avoided 'pointy and sharp' food, even though it was a piece of fatty ham! I self-navigated out of that restriction but goes to show not everyone has the personality inclination or self reflection to recognize their own disorder/obsession

There's a movie from the late '80s or early '90s. Called For Keeps with Molly Ringwald. She plays a high school student with a boyfriend and ends up getting pregnant. There's a teacher in the school who informs her she must go to night school because if she stays on campus pregnant, other girls who look up to her will follow suit. She had seen it before and she'll see it again and they do not need a new wave of pregnant teens. They compared it to rashes of suicide and honestly it's just like anorexia. This is the new fad.

Listening with much interest. I've been waiting for this conversation for years. My daughter is in AN recovery.

Fascinating! I've a NB daughter who has a difficult relationship with food, a new diagnosis of ADHD and autism (she's 31) and I'm thinking that it's all related...

What a wonderful guest! Really enjoyed this episode.

Fascinating discussion, ive struggled on and off with anorexia, bulimia, excess medications such as laxatives or supplements and  self harm but I pendulum between complete control with eating and complete lack of control and therefore seesawing significantly for 35 years from 11yrs old , ive never known why. It's only in the last 2 years ive recognised both ends as eating disorders. Shit not knowing why but I keep trying so thanks for a Fascinating conversation

That was so helpful. Thank you

Wow, this was so good. Especially when she described how gaining weight would feel like losing instead of progress/recovery, and how celebrating that could sometimes make it worse, it makes me think of the trans youth who keep murdering their parents who "misgender" them 😢 its sad that we ever tried affirming the trans identity without extreme caution 😢