How Glennon Knew She Needed Help: Recovery Update

January 24, 2023

Glennon Doyle:

Welcome to, We Can Do Hard Things.

Abby Wambach:

Welcome back. You came back.

Glennon Doyle:

You came back.

Abby Wambach:

You’re back.

Glennon Doyle:

We came back.

Amanda Doyle:

I can’t believe you’re back. We are so excited today. We’re talking to one of our favorite people ever today, Glennon.

Glennon Doyle:

Oh my gosh. I know I do say that a lot. But I want to be clear, I usually am very excited because we always are talking to one of my favorite people because we only-

Amanda Doyle:

It is sincere.

Glennon Doyle:

We only-

Amanda Doyle:

You’re always very excited.

Glennon Doyle:

I am. Because we only talk to people that we’re obsessed with.

Abby Wambach:

That’s right.

Amanda Doyle:

Can you imagine talking to someone we were like, “Eh. It’s a little lackluster.”

Abby Wambach:

The beginning of that episode would be like “Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Our guest is…” It would be so boring. People would just switch. “Nope, not this one.” But they’re back. I can’t believe that they keep coming back. We’re so grateful.

Glennon Doyle:

We really are. So today our plan is to give you an update. When I recorded, when we recorded, you all were there too.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

And we recorded our episode-

Amanda Doyle:

Barely.

Glennon Doyle:

… where I talked for the first time about my diagnosis for anorexia. And then I said I would come back and talk to everybody about how it’s going and what recovery looks like so far and what I think other people could take from it. So we’re going to do some of that.

Glennon Doyle:

Now, what I want you to think about is I am speaking to you as someone who is freshly in recovery. So I might not have exactly the right language. A year from now I might have a more or differently evolved perspective on all of this.

Glennon Doyle:

Also, please know that my therapist will be listening to this as always to make sure it’s safe for people to listen to.

Abby Wambach:

But if this is a concern for you, pass on this podcast.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes, absolutely. There will be lots of talk about food and recovery and addiction and mental illness and all of the things. But when I was talking to my therapist and doctor about my need to talk about this on the podcast or stop doing the podcast because I could no longer show up and tell the full truth each week without sharing this part of my life.

Abby Wambach:

Oh, that’s interesting.

Glennon Doyle:

It started to feel… Well, yeah, because this is all I’m thinking about and all I’m doing, and my days are consumed with recovery. And so when I come on here and I can’t refer to it, I feel like I’m too cut off from the revolution that’s happening inside of me, and I can’t share any of it and it starts to feel very inauthentic.

Glennon Doyle:

But it’s weird because when we look at the world, we often see people talking about things after they feel done with them. And there’s lots of reasons for that. It’s not just because people are afraid to be vulnerable. It’s also because it can be safer for the person talking about it and safer for the person listening to it when the language and the perspective is safer because it’s healthier.

Glennon Doyle:

So, one thing that my doctor said to me was, “Oh, that’s interesting. So, you’re going to talk about it now. So you’re not doing the ta-da.” And I was like, “Exactly.”

Abby Wambach:

Damn it. I’m a ta-da-er.

Glennon Doyle:

I’m going to wait until I’m done, and then I’m going to tell you everything that happened now from this ta-da place, the before and after. Now, I will say that what I said to my doctor is, the reason I’m not waiting for the ta-da or the after moment is because I don’t ever remember being an after ever in my life.

Amanda Doyle:

Well, also don’t you think there’s a risk? It’s the service to the people that are around junior life when you’re speaking from the unfinished place that allows everyone else to speak from the unfinished place. But there’s also this risk to me when I think about that, where I’m like, okay, is my desire to speak from the ta-da actually driving me to an end point-

Glennon Doyle:

Yes.

Amanda Doyle:

… that might not be my natural end point. I’m like, this is what I want to speak from. So this is where I need to get. Instead of, I just need to get where my road takes me. If you have an end in mind, you’re going to figure out a way to get there, but that might not be the end you’re supposed to have. So when you start with that, it’s a pre-destined end that might be less beautiful and wild and interesting than you can imagine from your middle place.

Glennon Doyle:

The deciding that I have to have a destination might skew the journey in a way that it wouldn’t have been had I not had that false end goal.

Amanda Doyle:

It’s like with Love Warrior where you’re like, “Did I live it and then write it? Or did I write the ending in my heart and then I was like, I’ll live this so that can be the end.”

Glennon Doyle:

Exactly. Exactly. And also, I would say that demanding this idea that we all have to only speak from our ta-das or our afters is not fair to people like me. It’s certainly not fair to anyone with mental differences because there’s no after ever. So it would just silence people completely.

Abby Wambach:

And so few people talk about the middle, talk about the messy middle where things are not perfect, things are confusing. You don’t even know what the end result or where you’re going to be is. And I think it’s a service to show up as you are in the middle no matter what it looks like.

Glennon Doyle:

Thank you. It’s interesting because especially I think for women, we’re all trying to avoid the, “She’s crazy. She’s too much. She’s…” So it’s very understandable to not put yourself in that, to make yourself vulnerable, but that ship has sailed for me. So we’re fine.

Abby Wambach:

So here we are.

Glennon Doyle:

So here we are. And also the other reason is I want to mark throughout this conversation every time part of my recovery has cost a lot of money. Because the recovery process so far for me this time is something that I’m so grateful to be doing right now. And I would never at any other point in my life before now been able to have afforded the recovery that I’m doing right now, which is not the fault of the providers who are providing the services right now that I’m needing for my recovery. But it is a mega problem.

Glennon Doyle:

And so I just want to point it out to show that so far what I’ve noticed is that comprehensive healing or recovery in the eating disorder world is a shit ton of money and time that people don’t have. And so maybe there’s parts of this that I just feel like a call to somehow share what I’m learning.

Amanda Doyle:

It’s also bullshit-

Glennon Doyle:

It’s bullshit.

Amanda Doyle:

… that healing is a privilege for those who are not only emotionally resourced, but financially resourced.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah.

Amanda Doyle:

It’s insane.

Glennon Doyle:

It’s like this culture-

Amanda Doyle:

Sorry. That’s not a good use.

Glennon Doyle:

It’s insane-

Amanda Doyle:

See, we’re already doing it wrong.

Glennon Doyle:

… that only rich people can afford to not be crazy. It’s fucking insane. It is though, but it’s not insane. It’s very calculated. It’s like the culture that makes you that sick then charges you a shit load to-

Abby Wambach:

Keep you that sick.

Glennon Doyle:

… get the toxins out of your body that it put in your body.

Abby Wambach:

It’s a good system.

Glennon Doyle:

So, here I want to talk about the moment that I feel like I started recovery because this is so interesting. What my therapist and doctor calls it is sobriety from restriction. The first time my doctor said, “Okay, so you’ve been sober from restriction for 14 days or whatever.” I was like, “What did you just say?” And she said, “You’ve not been restricting. Restricting is what you’re addicted to.”

Glennon Doyle:

And so if you’ve gone 14 days without listening to that voice inside your head that’s saying, “Don’t eat, don’t eat.” Then that sobriety from restriction, which for somebody who had thought she’d been sober for 28 years, it’s very interesting that we’re now using that language again. But it makes very good sense to me now. Okay-

Amanda Doyle:

Which ironically, the way you got sober from alcohol is by restricting your alcohol use. So in a way, your eating disorder mind made you a superhero in overcoming that addiction because you’re like, “Oh, restrict? I can do that.”

Glennon Doyle:

I can do that shit. And then also, hello, the restricting voice is how I felt like I was curing my bulimia. As long as I don’t overeat and binge, then I’m safe.

Abby Wambach:

It’s very confusing up there.

Glennon Doyle:

It’s very confusing up here.

Abby Wambach:

Wow.

Glennon Doyle:

That is, thank you.

Abby Wambach:

That is really hard.

Glennon Doyle:

I actually feel-

Abby Wambach:

I just put my mind in there and I’m like, “This is confusing.”

Glennon Doyle:

It is confusing, babe, and thank you for saying that. So for all of the confusing up here siblings who are listening in the Pod Squad, I would like to, from my perspective, try to explain what the moment of recovery feels like, the surrender moment.

Glennon Doyle:

So one night, Abby was, we were talking about when I had purged. This was a while back. We were talking it through and Abby said to me, “So, in that moment when you went to purge, did you know it was wrong?” First of all, I was jarred by the wrong word. But what I realized in that when she asked me that was like, oh, no, no, no, no. In my mind, that was right.

Glennon Doyle:

I had eaten enough that I felt uncomfortable, and my mind was absolutely positive that the right thing to do, the responsible thing to do was to get that food out, other people might be able to eat and rest and accept themselves and yada, yada. But that is not my path. That is not what’s right for me.

Glennon Doyle:

It’s not that I was continuously choosing the wrong thing. I just couldn’t stop choosing the wrong thing. It’s that wrong and right, healthy and unhealthy, safe and unsafe were switched completely in my mind that I truly believed the truest voice in my head was saying, “No, no, no, for you, this is the right thing. This is the right thing. Don’t eat. Get it out. Don’t eat.”

Glennon Doyle:

So this is the deepest pain of mental illness. I’m like hoping to God I can explain this right because it’s a hijacking of your core self. For someone who relies so much on intuition, it’s this moment where you realize, “Oh my God, I actually cannot trust my intuition. I cannot trust myself. My guide inside is trying to kill me.” It’s like the call is coming from inside the house.

Glennon Doyle:

So the moment where you figure out that that is what’s happening, it’s like even when you’re talking to the people you love the most, the smartest people, the whomever, you’re nodding and agreeing, “Yes, yes, yes. I hear what you’re saying. That sounds sane. Yes, yes, yes.” But there’s a voice inside of us that’s saying, “Nope, that’s not for you.”

Abby Wambach:

So you would call that your intuition, or would you call that a part of your brain that wasn’t aligned with your intuition?

Glennon Doyle:

So that’s what it is. It’s a part of my brain that isn’t aligned with intuition, but it’s impossible to know that.

Abby Wambach:

The difference.

Glennon Doyle:

In the moment when your brain is playing tricks on you. It’s impossible to know that.

Abby Wambach:

I see.

Glennon Doyle:

Would I say that maybe somewhere there was a deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper self that was questioning that loud, loud voice? Probably. Which is why there’s a moment of surrender. There’s a moment where I’ve talked to the doctor, I’ve talked to the therapist, I’ve talked to my wife. I know what my kids think. I suddenly am like, “Oh, okay. I can’t trust this self.”

Glennon Doyle:

I have to actually align myself away from myself, if that makes any sense. If my core self is standing next to the eating disorder voice, who’s trying to keep me safe and is saying, “No, no, no, don’t do what they’re saying. Don’t do what they’re saying. You’re not going to be safe. Stay with me. Stay with me. Keep restricting,” I have to move myself away from that voice and align myself with the experts. And now it’s me and the experts versus the eating disorder voice.

Glennon Doyle:

Whereas it used to be me and the eating disorder voice versus everybody else, including the experts.

Abby Wambach:

Okay.

Glennon Doyle:

And that is a terrifying freaking moment, especially for someone who has been in fundamentalist religion, who is like, “No, no, no, I have saved myself by not listening to other voices more than my own.” For a person who has been in a therapist office before where the therapist told me when I was in love with you that I should just keep giving Craig blowjobs and that’s how I should get through my marriage, I have become very wary of that. I just have a very hard time surrendering to an expert.

Glennon Doyle:

First of all, can you check in with me? Is any of this making sense to you?

Abby Wambach:

Yeah. My question would be, when was this moment for you that you decided to align with your highest best self and the experts and not your eating disorder voice? Because I have an idea.

Glennon Doyle:

I think it was just, I was reading all the books, seeing myself in all the books. I felt like I was seeing myself through the doctor and therapists and your eyes, and I felt like I was seeing myself when my friends are telling me that the thing that is fucked up about their life is not a problem. Do you know what I mean?

Abby Wambach:

Yeah. Remember the night we got into bed and you said, “I’m feeling like I’m having an urge that I want to go maybe throw up or something.” Or I don’t know the exact words you used. And you shared with me the moment that you would normally keep to yourself and maybe go do it or not do it, but you put this moment outside of yourself.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah, and that was a betrayal of the eating disorder voice.

Abby Wambach:

That’s right.

Glennon Doyle:

I was like, “Oh, we’re not keeping this secret.” I’m betraying you.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah. And then I know what the other moment was. It was so simple. It was when my therapist said, “Okay, that voice inside of you, that eating disorder voice,” and we all have the shitty voices inside of ourselves. We all have the voices who say, you’re not good enough. You can’t trust anybody. You’re not safe. You’re…” blah, blah, blah. “So that voice tells you that you need to not eat that, that you need to restrict, that if you eat a whole meal, whatever. What if Tish came to you and told you that she was thinking in that way? What would you say to her?”

Glennon Doyle:

And I said, okay, well, I would say that… I immediately had a visceral reaction of thinking of my teenage baby girl… Teenage baby girl. My teenage halfway grown daughter coming to me and saying, “Well, I can’t eat that because of…” I mean, I had a visceral reaction to it. I said, I would say, “Baby, let’s get some help. That is not freedom.”

Glennon Doyle:

And so I’m saying that, this visceral reaction to what I would say to my girl, and that’s the moment where I was like, “Oh, I guess I do have a completely healthy self that knows that this shit is not true.” If my daughter was saying it, I would look at her and say, “Oh my God, she’s sick.” But I wasn’t saying to myself, “Oh my God, I’m sick.”

Glennon Doyle:

And so it was that moment of saying, I would say, “Oh my God, my baby’s sick and she needs help” that I had to intellectually admit that that meant that I was, needed to say myself “Oh my God, baby, we’re sick. We need help.” So that was the moment, which is so interesting. It’s like, I can never understand anything unless I put it in the perspective of my children. That’s how I decided to leave my marriage. Like, wait, would you want this marriage for your daughter? No. Okay, well then do we want this for us? So that was the moment when I realized, oh, okay.

Abby Wambach:

I find it really interesting, I’m a lot slower to process into, not right or wrong, but the intuition of assessing a situation and knowing the right thing to do. You are off the charts amazing at that, except when it comes to this, this one part of yourself. And I find it really interesting that, I don’t know, bringing the perspective of a child, it’s almost like you have to keep bringing the perspective of your child’s self.

Glennon Doyle:

When you think of a kid, you think they are blameless. Like they are-

Abby Wambach:

Pure, yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

You want the best for them. You can see all of their beauty and their freshness to the world, and you can see so clearly what you want for them. It’s a strategy to be like, “Wait, what would I want for her?” Okay, wait, I also should want that for myself.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah.

Amanda Doyle:

Right. If you personally don’t relate to this, maybe you can relate to the fact that if your dear friend makes one mistake, you would look at them and say, “Oh my gosh, shake it off. You’re awesome. You’re amazing. You do all these other things. You just made a mistake. Let it go.” You might make a mistake and spend the next three weeks berating the shit out of yourself and think that you are not worthy of the grace that you would give anyone else.

Amanda Doyle:

So that’s my question. What does it boil down to? At the end of the day, do you think that the peace that you would think your daughter deserved in that situation, at the end of the day, do you feel like you don’t deserve that? Like, “Yes, I get it. For everyone else that makes sense that they would deserve to have a life like that, but I don’t think that I qualify.”

Glennon Doyle:

Well, I don’t think it’s that intellectualized. I think the best way I could describe it at the risk of this being a little bit dangerous, but I’m going to say it anyway because it feels very true to me, is that with this particular kind of thing, it feels a little bit like I understand being in an abusive relationship is, but it’s like being in an abusive relationship with self.

Glennon Doyle:

So it’s like when you think about the markers of an abusive relationship, you get gaslit constantly. You get isolated. You aren’t allowed to talk to anybody else about it. The thing tells you, “I’m just keeping you safe. I’m keeping you safe. I’m keeping you safe. You’re different. You’re different. This is special. That might be what they have, but you don’t get that. This is…”

Amanda Doyle:

We are the only ones we can count on. You and me and me and you.

Glennon Doyle:

We’re the only ones. Yes.

Amanda Doyle:

Yes.

Glennon Doyle:

And you can just keep putting the face on the outside because you know that what you have at home, nobody will understand. And all I can tell you is it’s not like I’m intellectually thinking “Everybody else should have body freedom, except for me.” It feels like the fuzziness of coming out of an abusive relationship where you’re like, “Oh my God, what happened?”

Amanda Doyle:

That feels exactly right to me. An eating disorder, it feels like it’s an abusive relationship with yourself.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes.

Amanda Doyle:

And in the same way that when you’re in an abusive relationship, anyone that approaches you to say, “Are you sure? Do you deserve… Is everything okay?” You are immediately defensive and say, “You don’t understand us. They don’t get us. They’ll never understand.” And that is in a way what you’re doing with yourself.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes.

Amanda Doyle:

You don’t understand how we’re keeping me safe.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes. And then somebody you’ve let in just a little bit says, “Okay, so what if your baby girl was in a relationship with somebody who was saying those things to them? What would you do?” And your whole body explodes and you have visions of tearing to shreds the other person and taking your baby, and running away with her. And then you’re like, “Wait, oh, I’m thinking that because I would know that that other person had bad intentions, not good intentions. So maybe that abusive voice in my head does not have our right intention.” That’s the best way I can explain it.

Amanda Doyle:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

Abusive relationship with self.

Abby Wambach:

I would like to dig in more to the unfolding of this because I think it’s really important that you have a few moments where you’re starting to consider at least, maybe surrender, I don’t know if that’s the word, turning down the volume of your eating disorder voice, maybe once and for all, or you’re considering this option. How does that play out in a day for you? So, in terms of the thoughts that you would have before and after.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah, that’s so good. Okay. So what I want to say about the eating disorder voice is it doesn’t work or hasn’t worked for me to then continue to understand it as an abusive relationship. The eating disorder voice will always be there. So, you know that saying like when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail?

Glennon Doyle:

So what my therapist said early on, which blew my mind, was, “The eating disorder voice will eventually just become the voice that tells you when you need something, just become the voice inside of you that will guide you towards what you need.” What that means is, I forever, every time anything happens, every time something’s out of control, every time I’m exhausted, every time I’m angry, every time whatever, my only tool is a hammer.

Glennon Doyle:

So, my voice says to me, “Stop eating. Everything’s out of control. We can control this one thing.” The whole world is “Woo, woo, woo, but you’ve got it. You’ve got this, we’ve got this.” No matter what the problem is, my reaction is body food.

Glennon Doyle:

So, the idea is not to banish this eating disorder voice. It’s too, and I’m putting some of this in my own words, so this is just what I’m doing. My goal is to educate and love and give the eating disorder voice some more options, and also help the eating disorder order voice to trust me. For example, when my voice says, We’re tired,” I want that voice to know I will say, “Okay, we’re going to rest.”

Amanda Doyle:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

Or everything’s out of control, “Okay, you must be really scared and we’re just going to take it really easy for a little while, and we’re going to just do some more breathing and we’re just going to treat ourselves like a little teeny baby, and we’re going to like… Or plant and we’re going to water ourselves and we’re going to sun ourselves.”

Glennon Doyle:

I think that I also have a responsibility to this other voice to say to it, “If you tell me what we need, I will get it for us.” And we don’t always have to resort to this one tool that we thought we had to deal with every emotion or happening or being human on earth.

Amanda Doyle:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

Is that making sense?

Amanda Doyle:

That makes a lot of sense to me. That’s really helpful. It’s a toolbox and a feeling. It’s like though you say fat is not a feeling. If you’re feeling lonely, or you’re feeling sad, or you’re feeling stressed, or you’re feeling overwhelmed, or you’re feeling betrayed, or you’re feeling hopeless, all of that might come in. Your output might be, “Fat. I feel fat.”

Glennon Doyle:

Exactly.

Amanda Doyle:

That’s not accurate. You can have any number of needs, but if your only move is either deprivation or binging to process whatever emotion, then that makes sense that is what you would naturally do because you do, whether you’re recognizing it or not, have a shit ton of emotions and a shit ton of things to process through. So, if that’s your only move, you are sure as shit going to be doing that move every day.

Glennon Doyle:

Exactly. And that’s the thing is that I offer my story as an example of this, but I know… I have a friend who is in an abusive relationship in her mind with shopping. And every time she feels anything, her go-to move is scroll, scroll, scroll, cart, cart, cart. And by the way, I’ve got a little of that too. It’s a little bit abusive with herself because it’s not going well.

Amanda Doyle:

Oh, and it’s secrets, and it breaks up relationships, and you’re hiding the thing, and you’re feeling guilty for the thing. And also, by the way, there’s a direct corollary to the purging because there’s often like, “I’ll buy it all. I got the buzz. Okay, now I’m going to return it all.” There’s a whole thing there.

Glennon Doyle:

But that’s the same. I do that too. I do that too. I buy and return. Yeah.

Abby Wambach:

I have a question. What are some of the specific tools that you feel like you’re employing right now in your life?

Glennon Doyle:

So, some specifics… Disclaimer, everybody’s is different. Everybody’s recovery is different. Through my doctor, my therapist, both of which cost money, I have someone helping me with food now, which also costs a lot of money. So, I have to eat three meals a day and snacks without any talking about it or negotiating about it. That’s like has to be done.

Glennon Doyle:

I could talk for hours about that situation. I wake up every day trying to figure out if it’s the most amazing jackpot situation of my life that I get to eat again. Like, “What? I get to eat again? I’m going to eat again, three times a day? What?” Or waking up like it’s groundhog day like, “I cannot believe that I’m going to do this again.” It depends on which voice is louder, I guess-

Abby Wambach:

On a certain day?

Glennon Doyle:

On a certain day, yeah.

Abby Wambach:

So, it’s still, not necessarily a negotiation, but still a chore or a joy.

Glennon Doyle:

It’s both at this moment. And I’m not even ready to like… I think, eventually, I’ll figure that out, the food thing. But I’m just doing it, doing it. So, what I’m doing is I am surrendering also to the kind of program thing that I’m in with my therapist.

Glennon Doyle:

Now, one of the things I tend to do with any sort of improvement or therapy or whatever, is to get in there, read what’s going on, read what they’re trying to teach me, read their books, listen to their things-

Abby Wambach:

Get smarter than them.

Glennon Doyle:

… and be like, “I got it, I got it.” And I’m saying that that is truly what I do. I see your resources and your wisdom and I’m not going to do it all. I’m not going to go through your writing prompts and do your exercises because I’ve got it. I’ve intellectualized what you’re trying to give. And I just feel like I’m taking an advanced level class. And so, I am not doing that.

Glennon Doyle:

I am doing the journals, and the writing prompts, and the exploration of the past. And I’m just going to say, I do understand why we do those things, why we should. And I understand why perhaps it hasn’t worked for me in the past. It reminds me very much of Cole Arthur Riley and how she talks about liberation being experienced in the body. You can’t intellectualize this shit. It all has to be experienced, this sort of recovery.

Glennon Doyle:

I also have a scale that I have to weigh myself on, but there’s no numbers on the scale. So, the scale sends my numbers to my therapist. It’s so wild. And the idea behind that is that the goal will be no scales ever, ever again in my entire life, but that my recovery does need to be monitored at this moment in terms of weight gain.

Abby Wambach:

Or loss.

Glennon Doyle:

Also, what’s another reason for that is that when you are recovering from an eating disorder, you don’t have any actual take on what’s happening. You can feel like you’ve gained 25 pounds and you have gained three pounds. So, your therapist can kind of give you reality checks too. So, our deal between each other is we have a certain number amount that she promised me if I go over, she will tell me, and before that, we won’t discuss it. So, it kind of gives me this safety net for this period.

Amanda Doyle:

So, do you feel, in the back of your mind, nervous every time you meet? Like, “Oh, is she going to tell me today that we’re at that number?”

Glennon Doyle:

I have recently thought that a few times. Yeah, I have recently thought that a few times. I have gained weight, like just factually I have gained weight. She’s told me that, I know that. I had this amazing day that I want to talk about now that I went to get dressed and I tried to put on one of my pairs of jeans and they wouldn’t fit. And I looked at my closet and I just had this moment of, “Oh my God, everything in my closet is so fucking tight. All of my jeans are so tight.” At this point, I’d probably gained five pounds or something, and I couldn’t wear any of my clothes.

Amanda Doyle:

That’s not right.

Glennon Doyle:

I gained five pounds and I couldn’t wear any of my clothes. Why? I looked at my closet and suddenly it turned into this nefarious line. My jeans were lined up. I was like, “They’re like a line of fucking police people.” I have created my closet in a way that reminds me every single damn day don’t you step out of line.

Amanda Doyle:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

I have spent money on clothes that are policing my body. So, the next day, I went in my closet and packed up every single tight thing. I own no more tight clothes. And PS, another thing that costs money, I had to go buy bigger pants and pants that… I decided I don’t want clothes that give me any feedback about my body. I don’t want fucking feedback from my fucking inanimate clothes.

Amanda Doyle:

Taking feedback from the shit that I buy.

Glennon Doyle:

I buy the shit, and then you have an opinion about my lunch? And by the way, there is a lot of baffling rage that goes on with this process, I have noticed. That day in my closet, I was full of rage. I had a day where I was walking from my car to my, I don’t know, some store, and I was walking down the street and we do live in LA, but every single store, every single window, every single one of those little placards that sit outside said something about, come in here and get your fat frozen off. Come in here and get your forehead straightened. Come in here and get your cryo shit taken off your thighs. Everything. It just felt like, “Oh my God, we don’t stand a fucking chance. We do not stand a fucking chance.” And like-

Abby Wambach:

It’s a whole closet outside.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah, it’s a whole closet outside. We don’t even notice it. It’s like that speech about we can’t see the water, we’re the fish. We don’t even know we live in water because the water is our whole world. When you start to wake up to what we would call diet culture or beauty culture, which I don’t even think any of that is strong enough-

Amanda Doyle:

Or culture.

Glennon Doyle:

Or culture. Just culture.

Abby Wambach:

Sickness.

Glennon Doyle:

It is like a cult. And then you start seeing it like, “Oh my God. If I saw this on a TV show, I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, that’s not real.'” It’s real.

Amanda Doyle:

You’d be like “A little heavy handed on this set there, guys.”

Glennon Doyle:

It’s a little on the nose. We’re going to melt our asses off. Okay. “Oh, no, no, no. You’re going to melt your ass off.”

Amanda Doyle:

Nobody’s going to buy that.

Abby Wambach:

So, I have a question. Is there any part of your self that is having a revolution? So first, is it the revelation and then comes the revolution. So, now, you are wearing, I would say, more comfortable clothes.

Glennon Doyle:

I sure as hell am.

Abby Wambach:

You just were uncomfortable for a long time. When you’re putting those clothes on, are you thinking, “Gosh, this is how I’ve been made to feel. I was supposed to be feeling this way all along,” or are you not there yet?

Glennon Doyle:

No, I am definitely there yet. You know I’m just having a clothes’ confusion. I cannot speak to clothes right now. I’m so confused about clothes.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah, but your energy feels more comfortable.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes, I would agree with that.

Abby Wambach:

You might be confused because you’re working it out, but just even the way that you’re walking around the house and the way that you lay. Clothes restrict you from movement when they’re too tight. So, when you’re reading your books on the couch, you’re not forced to sit in a specific way. You’re just laying there as your body should.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah.

Abby Wambach:

And I see a little bit of loosening of you in that way.

Glennon Doyle:

So, I want to talk then about mentally what’s happening, because I feel like in some ways this has been the most interesting part. I know what I was doing. Ironically, I was walking from my car to the hairdresser to get all the gray taken out of my hair because I’m so revolutionized. 

Amanda Doyle:

Baby steps, assholes. 

Glennon Doyle:

Baby steps. So, I went in there and my hairdresser, who I love, said, “What’s going on with you? Are you taking supplements? Your hair is different. Your hair’s growing. There’s all this new growth.” And I was like, “I think I’m trying this new wellness trend that’s called eating food.”

Glennon Doyle:

So, anyway, these interesting things started happening and the hardest part, the most confusing part of the beginning, now I will try to explain this, which because the rest has made so much sense, I’m sure that this one will be completely understandable.

Glennon Doyle:

So, the way that I felt in the beginning… In the beginning when I was starting to eat three meals a day and snacks, when I was starting to do all the therapy, when I was starting to re-understand my own narrative of my life, when I was starting to understand that so much of what I thought was unfixable anxiety was actually that I was hungry. I was really hungry. I’ve been very hungry for a very long time, and being very hungry has changed my brain.

Glennon Doyle:

When I started doing all that, reprogramming my brain, living in my body, do you remember when I was talking about… In the landing episode, when I was talking about sitting with my family in the car and I said I feel like all of them just trust gravity to hold them down, and I’m just flying away constantly.

Amanda Doyle:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

What I will say about the first month of recovery from anorexia is that I felt like gravity applied to me for the first time and I actually had those thoughts. “Oh my God.” And I did not mean that in a good way. I felt like I was, every day, and Abby, you remember all of this, I felt like I was walking through molasses. I felt like somebody had poured honey all over my brain. Nothing was clear, I was exhausted. It was like walking through split pea soup, just like-

Abby Wambach:

Split pea soup, what?

Glennon Doyle:

Like thick and green and you can’t see through it, and it’s opaque and I couldn’t talk.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah, you were slow in your brain and I think that there was a grieving process because it was like, I don’t know, maybe for the first time it looked like you were realizing you were human.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

It was horrific. I was like, “Is this how people feel? What is this shit?” Anxiety is high and buzzing. Anxiety is nervous, and it’s in your mind, and it’s buzzy, and it’s up high, and it’s quick, and it’s performing.

Amanda Doyle:

It’s ready. It’s ready.

Glennon Doyle:

It’s ready. It’s fight or flight constantly. And this settling from my brain into my body was very highly uncomfortable. I had moments on the podcast I couldn’t recall words. I would look at Abby like, “What the hell.” You said to me one time, “It feels like you’re a human being, you’re more human,” and you meant that as a compliment, and I was so offended by it.

Abby Wambach:

You’re no longer slower in your mind. You’ve come through that. But I just remember feeling like, “Oh my gosh, thank God she is human. “

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah. And then I went on the road during this mucky in my body human time to do my work and stand on stages and talk, and I was sitting on a stage in front of 1,500 people, and I looked out at the crowd and I was like, “What the fuck am I doing?” I’ve been doing this job for 15 years. I’ve been standing on stages in front of those fricking stadiums. I think I just buzzed it out in my brain, performed it, performed it, left my body, and then came backstage and was like, “Whoa, what the fuck was that?” For the first time, I was in my body staring at these people and I was like, “Oh, this is ridiculous.”

Amanda Doyle:

This is not responsible, who approved this?

Glennon Doyle:

Who would do this? But tragically, I had that thought 25% into this speech that I was in my body for the first time. I made it through, left the stage, soon after, called our team and said, “I’m done with this.” I still am at the point where I have to abandon myself and go to my anxiety self to do it. So, I’m not going to do it until I have more of this shit figured out because I want to be able to speak, but I have to do it from a different energy, from a different place. I have to figure out how to do it while I’m still in my body.

Glennon Doyle:

And then, I do want to end with this. After I had made that decision to never leave, then Jane Fonda’s people called and said, “Will you please come do her toast?” And I wasn’t going to say to Jane Fonda, “No, because I’m working on embodiment, so I can’t go talk to Jane Fonda who taught me about embodiment.”

Glennon Doyle:

So, I said, “Shit. All right.” Abby and I went together. If you’ve listened to the Jane Fonda episode, that is the day I stood up, I stood on stage, I read the toast, which is very unlike me. Usually I’d have it memorized, perfected, nailed it. I read it and I started crying on stage.

And then when I came off stage, Emily’s wife Tristan, she had tears in her eyes and she said, “You just seemed so embodied up there.” I was like, “What the fuck is going on?”

Abby Wambach:

Halfway through the toast, you looked at me-

Glennon Doyle:

Because I was crying.

Abby Wambach:

… you’re crying. And you pull the mic away and you go, “What is happening?”

Glennon Doyle:

The second time I’ve said, “What is happening to you?”

Abby Wambach:

I’m like, “You’re doing great. Keep going.”

Glennon Doyle:

Because tears were coming out of my eyeballs-

Amanda Doyle:

As if you are actually experiencing something as opposed to observing yourself experiencing something.

Abby Wambach:

That’s right.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes. As if I was a human being having a human experience instead of a performing being impersonating a human being. I felt like so, “Oh my God,” I felt like I was being myself and it was going okay. I don’t know how else to explain it. I felt like, “Oh my God, I just was myself and it wasn’t a disappointment to everyone. In fact, the opposite.” And honestly, that’s how I feel in the pod. That’s why I can do this and not other things yet.

Amanda Doyle:

Is that the indicia, when you say I was being myself and it wasn’t a disappointment to people? Because you can’t often tell that. That’s not-

Glennon Doyle:

That’s right.

Amanda Doyle:

… that can’t be a clarity of that’s the test because this podcast right now, people could be like, “That’s amazing. She expressed exactly what I’ve been feeling,” or “I don’t understand a damn word she just said.” So, that can’t be the indicia of whether it’s working. Doesn’t it have to be like, “I can be myself and it’s not effortful,” or “It doesn’t require a certain thing of me,” or-

Glennon Doyle:

Yes. But eventually. If I were in the ta-da part, if I were coming to you and saying, “I’ve got this figured out,” that maybe that’s where I would be. But for me, that step was about, “Wait, I just surrendered and was myself, and the whole world didn’t fall apart.” I don’t know. What you’re saying sounds like the goal for me, and once I get to that, I’ll be able to speak on stages.

Abby Wambach:

The pot of gold at the end of that rainbow is what Tristan said to you. That affirmation of seeing and feeling and being in that moment and seeing somebody else seeing you being embodied, that affirmation will get you down the road of just being yourself all the time everywhere. And no matter what happens, that’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes. And also, that was the moment where I figured out this is the magic. I would rather be average and embodied than amazing, and buzzy, and shiny, and disembodied. And I think that fully embodied or fully present people are a revolution and a miracle.

Glennon Doyle:

And so, I’m saying all of this, and one narrative, this is holy shit, this is batshit crazy and she’s just trying to get to normal, but I actually think that what is normal is disembodied, and I’m trying to get to a miracle which is embodied. I don’t think there’s a lot of embodied people walking around. I think that you are one, Abby.

Glennon Doyle:

But I do not think the people that we have to listen to constantly and compare ourselves to, I don’t think many of them are embodied, meaning being real in the moment. And so, I’m not trying to just get to a baseline. I’m trying to get to the miracle of that.

Amanda Doyle:

I also think when you’re saying, “I would rather be embodied and normal than be amazing and buzzy,” I just want to hang on that for a second because I think that’s what your voices are saying. Your voices are saying when you are the other thing, you’re amazing. And when you are this thing, you’re normal.

Abby Wambach:

That’s right. That’s good.

Amanda Doyle:

Because some people might see you on stage and be like, “That’s not amazing.”

Glennon Doyle:

Totally.

Amanda Doyle:

Some people might hear you now and be like, “That’s amazing.” So, it isn’t objective. It’s not like someone’s an A and someone’s about a C. I think the distinction is when you’re performing and when you’re not performing. And so I agree with you that it is a miracle to walk through life not performing. Because most of us don’t even know when we’re performing and when we’re not, because we’re so good at it.

Glennon Doyle:

Right, exactly.

Amanda Doyle:

So, for you, it happens to be a literal stage. For many people, it’s at the pickup line at school, it’s at their office when you’re going to the coffee machine and you’re like, “Yeah, yeah,” saying whatever you think you’re supposed to say, trying to put on the face or react the way you’re supposed to react.

Amanda Doyle:

So, you just happen to have a very literal sense of that. But I don’t think it’s amazing or not. It’s like that click you get when you feel yourself not being effortful.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes. Because it’s not just stages. It’s like how I am with the family when they come home and I’m like, “Everything has to be perfect. Everything has to be…” Or Why do I not want to have people over? “Because I have to be on.” What does that mean?

Amanda Doyle:

Exactly.

Glennon Doyle:

I have one friend literally, but also, I have one friend, Alex. I have figured out when she comes over, I don’t dread it because I’m not.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah. I think that was a really good point that you made about you’d rather be embodied and normal, like that’s your eating disorder brain maybe talking. You just want to be embodied.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah.

Abby Wambach:

Because that’s not normal or perfect. I just think that’s a really important point.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah. There’s just something about, and everyone has their own version of this. Lots of people are in offices and are performing, are mothers of young children are performing, are whatever. For me, there’s something about this job that I have read as I have to be this, and I think that what I’ve noticed is the more embodied I am, the more quiet I am. And so I don’t know how to make that work. I’m on stage and I’m like-

Amanda Doyle:

“I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah.

Amanda Doyle:

I’m a speaker who’s interested in what you think.

Glennon Doyle:

Anybody have any ideas? Yeah.

Abby Wambach:

I don’t think that that’s totally true. I don’t think that you’re more quiet. I think that the things that you’re thinking about and the things that come out of your mouth aren’t going through an exhaustive neurology of buzzy vibration. Interestingly enough, you make far fewer metaphors now.

Glennon Doyle:

That’s so interesting.

Abby Wambach:

You’re not-

Amanda Doyle:

That’s fascinating.

Abby Wambach:

Isn’t it?

Amanda Doyle:

It’s like how many meals did you have today and how many metaphors did you make today?

Abby Wambach:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah.

Amanda Doyle:

I think I know what it is. I think it’s the responsibility we take for the energy in the room, for what happens in the room. I think that is the thread that goes through everything. It’s the thread between why it’s exhausting to think about having people come over to your house.

Amanda Doyle:

It’s not the having them over, it’s the ensuring that you are maintaining an ecosystem of energy in this space and that requires you to do what? To buzz, to make sure that person’s saying, to make sure that person’s not talking over that person, that’s the energy.

Amanda Doyle:

It’s the same thing with the speaking, going into the room and being like, not “I’m showing up for your event that you had me come in.” You’re like, “I am here at your event and I will ensure every one of these 6,000 people has the time of their lives. I’m connected with you and you and you.” When you say quiet, I think that’s what you mean. Where you’re like, I’m responsible for me and my energy and I am not ensuring that I pour out to make sure everybody’s experience is what it should be.

Abby Wambach:

Yes.

Glennon Doyle:

That’s what my therapist keeps saying. That’s so interesting. She keeps saying, “I don’t think you have to give all of yourself.” And I’m like, “What do you mean?” She’s like, “I don’t think you have to keep giving away. I think you can do these things without giving your whole self away every time.” And I think that I never understand what she’s saying, but I think that’s what she said.

Abby Wambach:

That is. It’s the-

Amanda Doyle:

You owe me $250.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah. Another thing that costs money.

Abby Wambach:

And the other thing that I’ll just say, one thing that has been so impressive and important for me is that through your therapy, I have been looking at you less. I have been concerned less because your nervous system and your vibration has lowered, and your energy has been more grounded that I am more trusting that you’ve got you.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah.

Abby Wambach:

And this has been really revolutionary for me because now I’ve got to figure out my shit.

Amanda Doyle:

Oh, boss Abby.

Glennon Doyle:

No such thing-

Abby Wambach:

Now, I got to figure out my shit.

Glennon Doyle:

… as one-way liberation. That’s the good news and bad news.

Glennon Doyle:

Pod Squad, if you are still with us, God bless you and keep you and we are forever grateful for you riding this ride with us.

Abby Wambach:

Glennon, thank you for being so honest and open about this. You’re just a dream.

Glennon Doyle:

I’m so grateful for you too because the reason why I am able to surrender to this process is because I know I have people who will… It’s like this safety net of, I love talking about it because I feel like that keeps me safe. Because then if I’m saying all the things out loud, one of you will be like, “Well, that shit doesn’t sound right.” And then I’ll know if I’m in a cult again.

Abby Wambach:

Yes.

Glennon Doyle:

So thank you very much. I love you both so much. Love you Pod Squad. We’ll catch you back next time and maybe we’ll try to talk about some easier things. Bye.

Amanda Doyle:

Bye.

Glennon Doyle:

We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.