Secret #81: The Help You Won't Ask For with Dr. Jill Stoddard
episode
Life's Dirty Little Secrets Podcast | Breaking Silence Around the Secrets We All Carry
47 min
2 speakers
6 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why is asking for help often seen as a weakness?
We are all very human and fallible, and yet we live in a society that rewards pretending we're not fallible, or the range of acceptable fallibility is narrow.
We are constantly comparing our insides to other people's outsides and feeling inadequate and guilty, even ashamed.
Trying to blend in means parts of ourselves will disappear, and we must then live in fear that we will be found out.
Here, together, we will create a space where we can laugh, cry, and carry our suffering and hurts lightly. In the service of being deeply human. This is Life's Dirty Little Secrets.
Welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets. I'm Emma Waddington.
And I'm Chris McCurry. And today we are absolutely delighted to welcome Dr. Jill Stoddard. Jill is a clinical psychologist, TEDx speaker, three-time book author, and the host of Psychologist Off the Clock, which, for those of you who don't know, is the number one clinical psychology podcast in the world, if not the universe. Her books include The Big Book of Act, Metaphors, Be Mighty, and Impostor No More. They've been translated into more than a dozen languages. She lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts, with her husband, two kids, and a disobedient French bulldog. Jill's work centers on a radical idea. The psychological discomfort isn't a sign something's gone wrong, but it's a sign that you're right where you're meant to be, at the intersection of caring and challenge.
Almost five years ago, Jill had gastric bypass surgery. She lost 90 pounds. She has kept that weight off, which the data tell us is the hardest part. She's accomplished that using the same psychological flexibility tools that she teaches her clients. So this conversation is about weight, but more than that. It's a conversation about what it means to ask for help with your body or any problem for that matter. in a culture that treats asking for help as cheating or a sign of weakness or dependence. Jill, welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets.
Thank you, Chris. Thanks, Emma. Thanks for having me. It's so nice to be back with you two.
It's a pleasure. So, you know, we've been told our whole lives that asking for help is the easy way out. And you didn't shrink from that. You asked for help. You got the help and it was very successful for you. So can you tell us about coming to terms with that? Did you struggle with that at all? Or was it a fairly easy decision to get the treatment that you found to be helpful to you?
Once I discovered that it was appropriate for me, it was fairly easy. So I grew up with parents who called me Tubby, Little Tubbet, Tubby Tubby 2x4 who couldn't fit through the kitchen door. So no surprise, I went on to develop, you know, a lifetime of food and body image issues. And I remember, you know, sneaking food when my parents weren't home because if I ate in front of them... You know, they would sort of shame me. They would say tubby, you know, if I was eating a snack. And so I wouldn't eat in front of them. And, you know, it just led to really unhealthy eating behaviors. And I did the typical, you know, yo-yo dieting my whole entire life. I would lose weight and then gain it all back and then some and then lose weight and gain it all back and then some.
And I was working with a client, not on anything related to weight loss. He was depressed and anxious. And he had gone to a medical doctor and was very upset because that doctor suggested he should get gastric bypass surgery and as the therapy session he was just kind of venting about how it offended him that the doctor said this but I sort of tuned out for a second I'll admit I did I came right back but for a second because I thought you're not fat enough to have gastric bypass surgery that doesn't make any sense and in that next
How did Dr. Jill Stoddard’s childhood shape her relationship with food and body image?
beat, I thought, oh my gosh, like if he's an appropriate candidate for this surgery, maybe I am too because I always thought it was something that only like very, very morbidly obese people did. So I just started doing a deep dive. I read, I think, three books in three weeks, looked up research articles, just got as much information as I possibly could.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why is asking for help often seen as a weakness?
0:02–4:00
2
How did Dr. Jill Stoddard’s childhood shape her relationship with food and body image?
4:00–12:03
3
What led Jill to decide on gastric bypass surgery and how did she make that choice?
12:03–21:46
4
Why do many people view weight‑loss tools and surgery as “cheating”?
21:46–33:29
5
How can values‑based decision‑making replace willpower in weight‑loss journeys?
33:29–42:11
6
What role does the scale play in maintaining weight loss and how can we change our relationship to it?
42:11–47:07
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Life's Dirty Little Secrets Podcast | Breaking Silence Around the Secrets We All Carry
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Secret #83: Sleep Myths with Dr. Sue McCurry
Secret #82: Why We're So Mean to Ourselves with Holly Yates & Shawn Costello Woolley