Why Changing Your Body Won’t Fix How You Feel About Yourself with Dr. Marisa Franco

So many women believe they’ll finally feel better about themselves when they lose the weight, change their body, or reach the goal. But changing the outside doesn’t always change how we feel on the inside. Psychologist and author Dr. Marisa G. Franco joins me to explore where our sense of self-worth actually comes from and how old experiences can continue shaping the way we see ourselves years later. We talk about body image as we age, menopause, insecurity, nervous system patterns, reparenting, vulnerability, and why learning to acknowledge the parts of ourselves we’d rather push away may be an important part of building genuine self-worth. In this episode: Self-worth vs. confidenceBody image and menopauseHow old memories shape the way we see ourselvesWhy insecurity can feel protectiveReparenting and Internal Family SystemsInterrupting negative thought spiralsVulnerability and deeper relationshipsLearning to value who you are now_ RESOURCES MENTIONED FREE Nervous System Questionnaire https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/nervous-system-reset?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=nervous_system_resetNEW! Book Worth https://drmarisagfranco.com/worth-the-book/Best Selling Book Platonic https://drmarisagfranco.com/platonic-the-book/_ MORE ON MARISA FRANCO Instagram:@drmarisagfranco https://www.instagram.com/drmarisagfrancoSubstack Newsletter:Attached by Dr. Marisa Franco https://drmarisagfranco.substack.com/LinkedIn:Dr. Marisa G Franco https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmarisagfranco/Website:https://drmarisagfranco.com/NEW! Book Worth https://drmarisagfranco.com/worth-the-book/Best Selling Book Platonic https://drmarisagfranco.com/platonic-the-book/For more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: drmindypelz.com/ep373 https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep373/ Connect with Dr. Mindy: Join Reset Academy https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/reset-academy?utm_source=libsyn&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=&utm_content=loc-description&utm_campaign=reset-academyWatch the episodes on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DrMindyPelz?sub_confirmation=1Follow Dr. Mindy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dr.mindypelz/Subscribe to Dr. Mindy’s newsletter https://www.drmindypelz.com/ Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Mindy Pelz?

  Hey, Dr. Mindy here and welcome to the Live Like a Girl podcast, where I bring you icons, disruptors, educators, scientists, and doctors that show you what can be possible when you love and celebrate the female body you are blessed to live in. Let's dive in.

• 0:26Mindy Pelz?

  A few years ago, I noticed something really uncomfortable about my own relationships. I go through something really difficult and I'd tell someone close to me, like a friend, my spouse, or another loved one, and they'd just jump right in to fixing it. "You'll get over it. You're amazing. You know how to handle this moment. Don't even worry about this." And instead of feeling better, I actually noticed that I felt more alone. Because what I actually needed in that moment wasn't to be cheered up. I needed to be heard.

• 1:07Mindy Pelz?

  I didn't have language for that at the time. I just knew that being told how great I was in that particular moment felt like the opposite of comfort. Well, turns out, there's research on this exact thing. Not everyone thrives with compliments specifically amongst a crisis. In fact, many don't thrive when given advice in the heat of a moment. Turns out that when people with low self-esteem receive compliments, positive feedback, even love, some of them get sicker in the months that follow.

• 1:51Mindy Pelz?

  Their blood pressure goes up after praise. They pull away from a spouse who adores them too openly, not because they're broken, but because being told you're wonderful when some part of you doesn't deeply believe it actually doesn't feel safe. It feels like being handed something you're terrified of dropping. This changed how I think about self-esteem entirely. Because self-esteem, the version most of us were taught to chase, how good you feel about yourself, isn't actually the goal.

• 2:34Mindy Pelz?

  There are people walking around with sky-high self-esteem who are also defensive, reactive, impossible to be close to. We all know some of these people. What we actually need specifically when we are feeling down is something completely different. We need the ability to sit with every part of ourselves, the parts that are beautiful and the parts that are messy, and treat all of it as if it matters. This, I know I am not alone in, and is exactly why I have brought you Dr. Marisa Franco.

• 3:21Mindy Pelz?

  Marisa is a psychologist and the author of the bestselling book Platonic, and now brings us her new book, Worth, which lays out the science of self-worth and secure attachment, the real alternative to a lifetime of chasing confidence that never quite sticks. In this conversation, we get into why positive feedback can backfire on someone with low self-esteem, why women in particular perform their highlight reels for each other instead of showing the real thing, and what it actually looks like to witness someone's pain

• 4:05Mindy Pelz?

  instead of rushing to fix it.

• 4:09Mindy Pelz?

  I promise you, if you have ever felt unheard by someone trying their hardest to help you, I think this conversation is going to change the way you show up for the people you love and the way you show up for yourself. And I know it's absolutely going to change your overall self-esteem. Let's dive in. Dr. Marisa Franco. Well, first, let me just welcome you to my podcast. I'm really excited to have you here, Marisa, so thank you for joining me. I know you're exhausted from doing 1,000 of these for your book, so I appreciate you taking the time to be here.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Dr. Mindy. I am happy to be here.

• 4:53Mindy Pelz?

  Awesome. So, something in your book that really stood out to me, and I can't rectify it in my mind, was this idea that if you have low self-esteem, that positive people, positive messaging, actually can make you sicker.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:17Mindy Pelz?

  Explain that to me.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Well, this is based on some surprising research that when positive events happen to people with low self-esteem, they're more sick months later. And for men, they're more likely to visit the doctor. That when they gave a speech and got positive feedback, their blood pressure was higher compared to negative feedback. That they report that when they get compliments, they feel very misunderstood, and they tend to reject compliments. And even if a spouse likes them too much, they tend to be less intimate with that spouse. And so, it was very confusing to me. Why does it seem like the very things that should improve your self-esteem if you have low self-esteem are actually only revealing how firmly entrenched your negative sense of self are?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  And in fact, these positive things are quite threatening. And you can kind of think about unworthiness as an inability to accept love.

• 6:11Mindy Pelz?

  Hmm. So, okay, so, how do you know? Let's define self-esteem, because I think a lot of people don't even know what that is.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, I understand why it's confusing. Because when I'm reading all this research on self-esteem, I find that it's typically assessed as how good you feel about yourself. And people fill out this questionnaire, how worthy you feel, how much do you feel like a failure, questions like that. But when you read the research on people with high self-esteem, you see that there's two different types. One, that's quite awful to other people. They are defensive, they are antagonistic, they are reactive. And the other type of high self-esteem, that's kind, compassionate, they value themselves and they value everybody else. And so, I needed to develop a definition of this concept, which I call self-worth rather than self-esteem, that doesn't come at everyone else's expense. And here's what I realized is the difference

• 7:05Speaker 01

  between these two types of high self-esteem havers, the jerks and the nice ones. I talked to my colleague Beth about it, who seemed to have the more integrity, the type of high self-esteem that comes with more integrity. And she said, "I'm trying to think about when I feel defensive, and it's usually because I feel ashamed." And in that moment, I had this flash of insight that, oh, if you acknowledge that you feel antagonistic or defensive or reactive, you are no longer defensive or reactive, right? And that's the secret of these people that had this sort of healthy kind of high self-esteem, this relational kind. They were able to acknowledge their own emotions and feelings. And so, I really define self-worth for this book as being able to treat your internal world as if it matters,

• 7:50Speaker 01

  to treat your feelings, your preferences, as if they matter and as if they're important. And that culminates in you having a sense of self where you feel like you matter.

• 7:59Mindy Pelz?

  So, there was a quote, this brings up, because this was really interesting a little bit, because I know some people in my life that this is the truth, that if we don't feel, know who we really are, if we don't have a good sense of who we really are, then we actually don't have to feel all the emotions that come with that.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:23Mindy Pelz?

  It's like ignorance is bliss.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, or at least we think it is. You know, we often think if I push these emotions away, if I push my shame away, that it won't, it'll disappear. But in fact, that we find that people that push emotions away are actually the most emotional in moments of time when all of those emotions surge within them. And that's why you see the sort of jerk with, who says they feel good about themselves, why they're so reactive? Why are they so defensive? Because there's all this shame they've tried to compartmentalize. And when you remind them of it, because it's all unprocessed, they become very antagonistic towards you. And so, this is about being able to turn towards our feelings, acknowledge that they're happening, validate our own feelings, create a sense of internal safety

• 9:10Speaker 01

  that becomes a high sense of self-worth.

• 9:14Mindy Pelz?

  And self-esteem is different than confidence?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, the reason I struggle with self-esteem is that you feel good about yourself, because there's so many people that they would struggle to admit if they didn't, right? They have learned to never admit when they are wrong, to never admit when they're vulnerable, they're perfectionistic, they're, you know, again, they suppress all of their emotions. And so, that definition of you feel good about yourself, it's not enough. It's not enough for me. And then confidence is often about how you present to the external world, which can mean you feel secure in yourself, you feel you have a lot of safety within yourself. But it can also mean, you know, there's also the type of person who's compensating for their own insecurities by trying to go work a room and be impressive to everybody else, right?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  And so, that's kind of why I landed on self-worth for the book as this internal sense of being able to be with all of your feelings and emotions and be exactly where you are.

• 10:14Mindy Pelz?

  So, then how does it work? Because so many people in our society are, their self-worth comes from their external world being a certain way.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:26Mindy Pelz?

  And what I think you're offering us is the opportunity to feel good about yourself even when the external world is not okay.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:36Mindy Pelz?

  That, that would be an example. It's not conditional, so unconditional happiness.

• 10:44Mindy Pelz?

  Is it is a path to self-esteem? Would that be accurate?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think to a certain extent, absolutely. I don't, but I also want to acknowledge that as human beings, you know, you were kind of talking about bodies and how it can feel so hard to feel good about your, your body in this society. And, you know, I have a chapter in the book on stigma, and I talk about this book, Entangled Life, and it's about fungi, but I'll kind of come back after I go on a little tangent.

• 11:10Mindy Pelz?

  I love fungi. You can talk about fungi anytime. There's a lot to learn from that.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  There's so much to learn from them. So one of the things he says is that we think of ourselves as individuals, but we have microbes in our gut that we need to survive that are technically external to us, but are, we need to, we're sort of dependent on the outside of environment to exist in our form as a human being to be alive, right? And so in that way, we are simply vulnerable to our outside environment, like that's by design to survive, right? And so for people that internalize negative images, negative ideas about their body, because they've internalized them from society, right? That's not, that doesn't mean that something's wrong with you. That just means that you're a human being. I think this worth, this worth work that we do makes us less vulnerable to our environment.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Or when we are vulnerable to our environment, we're able to sit with, tolerate, explore that, so it doesn't hover over us in perpetuity as deeply as it might. Or, I mean, I think what self-worth does is it ultimately is what guides you to be in environments that treat you better, to curate your environment. So it's more of a more positive reflection, because again, you're treating your feelings like you matter. This makes me feel bad all the time. I'm changing the media that I consume. And so there's a tango that's happening there. I don't necessarily think we get to a place where it's like, I'm totally invincible to my environment, but we do get to a place that's like, I'm a little less vulnerable, and I'm willing to change my environment to take care of myself as needed.

• 12:37Mindy Pelz?

  Mm-hmm. I got that. Okay, so let me run a scenario by you that has baffled me for years. When I first started teaching women how to lose weight, I noticed that when they lost weight and they achieved that number on the scale, their happiness, their relationships, the way they looked at themselves didn't change.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yep. Yes.

• 13:01Mindy Pelz?

  And it was shocking to me. I mean, this is years ago. And, and so then I started to tie it to, when I would meet with a, a patient, I would say, okay, tell me what's going to change in your life when you are that weight? Is it your relationship? Is it how you feel when you put your clothes on in the morning? Because I was trying to tie an emotional connection to this journey they were going on.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:28Mindy Pelz?

  What, why do we get a result with our health? And we still, in our life, feel bad about ourselves?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  This is a great question, and I want to verify what you're saying. There's a study on weight loss interventions, and four of five of them did not, the more people lost weight, they didn't experience any higher self-esteem. So it's extremely, extremely common for us to reach our dreams or do the thing that we think would finally make us feel worthy, and it kind of backfires. I say backfires because often people feel worse when they're like, now I no longer have this dream or this idea that when I lose weight, I'm going to feel fulfilled. And so there's this kind of despair that can come with that, that, oh, it feels like there's no way out of my struggles with worth. And, and what I argue in the book, why it's not about reaching these external markers,

• 14:16Speaker 01

  is because, well, fundamentally, we have to ask ourselves the question, why do we feel unworthy, right? Why exactly do we feel unworthy? And what I argue in Worth is that it's actually about your memories. Researchers say memories are the database of self-esteem. And memories don't just record the past, but they predict the future. And so part of you thinks that this rejection, this harm is going to happen again, that has happened in your past. And in some ways, feeling unworthy is a way to protect yourself. Because if, if good things happen to you and they increase your sense of worth, then you get further crushed when that rejection happens again, right? And so the work of finding worth is to confront and explore some of your past,

• 14:59Speaker 01

  to in a way change the past, and I can get into how we do that. So it no longer predicts a future of harm. And, you know, even if we get all that we think we want in the present, if we still have an unprocessed past that tells us, I'm going to be rejected, scorned, abandoned, stigmatized, seen more negatively, then that's the reality that our brain keeps us in.

• 15:22Mindy Pelz?

  Right. Yeah, and that, that makes sense to me because I've, I've just watched so many women that their view of themselves is, was actually installed by other people.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:38Mindy Pelz?

  And so like whether it was a parent, I, you know, I have a, a membership group where we have these very open conversations and, God, like, I'm just blown away at how many women will tell me what a parent said to them about their bodies.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 15:54Mindy Pelz?

  And they carry that. That was maybe said to them at 10 years old, and now they're 50 years old, and they're budding up against, how do I lose weight? But they're also budding up against those messages. So I, I am curious how we start to change that, that memory of who we thought we were because other people told us we were that.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I came across this theory, this took me a year, of being like, how do we change this? What the heck? This is, feels like we're like sabotaged, sabotaging ourselves. And so I came across this theory called memory reconsolidation. And the theory indicates that when we revisit a memory, we can change more so the emotions associated with the memory.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  And what that means is that we can, in a way, change the past, or at least change the way that it lives inside of us. And so practically, this looks like probably what a lot of people do in therapy, or if people done like inner child work or reparenting work. If you go back to a memory and picture it having a better outcome, or you picture yourself as an adult intervening and maybe saying to that parent, this child, you as a child are beautiful just as you are, and you don't need to change your body to be loved and accepted by me, and I will always be here to love and accept you, to say exactly what we needed to hear at the time. And if we can conjure that up as vividly as we possibly can, because from a research perspective, remembering is reliving. The same parts of our brains are active when we remember something as when we actually live that thing.

• 17:29Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  That we can actually, when people do this, it's a transformative experience that improves their sense of self-esteem. And not only that, you see changes in the part of your brain that records memories, which is called the hippocampus, after people do these reconsolidating activities that I detail in the book.

• 17:48Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and I'm thinking, I'm thinking, how many times do you have to do it? You do it until it softens?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. You might have to make it a repeated practice. And honestly, it's, it's less about changing the memories again. It's more about changing the emotions that are unprocessed from the memories.

• 18:05Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  And that's why, you know, there's a study on therapy, for example, what predicts whether people's self-esteem improves by the end of therapy, and it's how much emotion they've expressed. And so all of us have these emotions that are caught in our previous memories, and they're stamping themselves onto the current reality, right? So if I was always rejected for my weight, even when I'm a different weight, if I haven't processed those memories, I'm still assuming that you see me negatively, that you look at my body and you judge me. Or, you know, a lot of women might struggle with feeling that they still look the same way they did when they were larger, even if they did lose weight, right? Because that's all a byproduct of your memories.

• 18:43Mindy Pelz?

  So let me run an example. I have, my YouTube audience had several questions for this conversation. And one of them, I thought, was a really interesting one, and it was, when women go through menopause, their body changes. And so their self-esteem goes down because their old techniques that used to work don't work anymore, and they just start gaining weight, and it feels very out of control. So could you do it in reverse and, and sort of go back to the memory when you were able to lose weight and try to bring that memory forward into this current moment?

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. That is an interesting idea. Yeah, I think what you're saying, so there's a sort of competing theory of self-esteem. So I looked at interventions that have been successful at improving self-esteem. The other one's called retrieval competition theory, which is the idea is that, it's not necessarily what memories exist, but which ones are most salient to you? Which ones that your brain goes to rather quickly, right? And I, I think when your body changes really rapidly, your comparison point is often you're thinking about, when my body looked differently before menopause, before menopause, before menopause. But the way that you try to work with retrieval competition is that you make Positive memories of a new body more salient to you, right? So what I would do is I would change my social media.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  I would maybe change what magazines I'm following so that I'm exposed to the nor- the normalization of bodies that look like mine in transition, right? And so then I'm no like, my comparison point is no longer who I was before menopause. It is now I'm exposed to so many more memories that that show the positivity of my body as it is now, as it continues to to function and and do what I need to do in my day to day.

• 20:31Mindy Pelz?

  So you, so let's use this stay on the same example. I used to be able to stay fit.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:36Mindy Pelz?

  I go through menopause. I can't stay, I'm, I'm gaining weight. I'm starting to feel horrible about myself.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:43Mindy Pelz?

  Um, and I'm losing that sense of confidence and it's an emotional state. So the first thing you would do is say, I address that you have this sadness. I look at it as grieving.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:55Mindy Pelz?

  This body that you no longer seem to be able to access.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:59Mindy Pelz?

  But then you could go and see other people at your age that are loving their bodies, that are in a, a healthy relationship with their body. And you could take an old emotional state that you used to have at 35 and map it to 55 because you're seeing it through the eyes of somebody else.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Mm hmm, mm hmm. Yes, exactly. You're, you're being, you're exposing yourself to a much different impression of your body, right? Because, you know, I talk about in the chapter on stigma for the book. This is again, going to sound like a tangent, right? But, you know, whether you're Christian or not, many of us are familiar with the story of Adam and Eve. And they, they knew that it wasn't, it was shameful to like be naked. So they put the, you know, they put the, the bush to, to cover themselves. But there's this philosopher who talks about how they never had to be taught that being naked was shameful. And so what we learn about shame from that seminal story is that shame is inherent to things. Like it's not culturally determined. It's just inherent and that I think a lot of women learn shame is inherent to certain types of bodies.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Shame is inherent to aging and looking older, right? But fundamentally, shame is not inherent to anything. Shame is socially constructed, right? There's different cultures, look at different bodies in different ways. Some cultures value bigger bodies, right? Some cultures respect elders a lot more. And so at first I want, you know, I hope that these women recognize that there's nothing inherently shameful about your different body. There's nothing inherently inferior about it. There's nothing inherently less attractive about it. It's simply that you've been exposed to a lifetime's worth of messages indicating as such. And it's time to expose ourselves to new messages about the type of body that we live in.

• 22:41Mindy Pelz?

  Uh, so well said. Thank you. I've spent a lot of time trying to unwind the patriarchal view of a female body from women's brains.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:51Mindy Pelz?

  Um, I did a YouTube video recently where I, I quoted a statistic that was saying that only, it was like, less than 5% of women will actually meet the media's ideal of what a healthy, attractive women, woman should look like. Only, so only 5% of us actually meet that. But yet nine, 100% of us are measuring ourselves against a visual of what only 5% of us will achieve.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Exactly. And here's the thing that after I read that, wrote that chapter, I was like, the things that we have been taught to be ashamed of, that we're ashamed of them because they threaten a social order that needs to be threatened.

• 23:38Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, ooh, bingo, bingo.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Right? Like who, you know, who is being ashamed in like our capitalistic patriarchal set? People that are poor, people that are disabled, people that don't match this existing system. But maybe it's that the system has to change rather than the people in it all need to ascribe to some sort of un, you know, unreachable standard of perfection. And so if you're violating the norm, like more power to you.

• 24:00Mindy Pelz?

  Right, good on you.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Because you are helping to create a new norm where everybody can feel more included.

• 24:06Mindy Pelz?

  Right, that is so beautiful. That's so well said. So, and what I'm hearing is if we, if we bring it back to this menopausal woman, is that perhaps the key to keeping your self-esteem high through this experience is honoring that your body changed.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:25Mindy Pelz?

  And feeling the sadness that it doesn't look or feel or function the way it used to function.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Exactly. And here's like what I learned from studying people with high self-worth is that, um, their sense of self is much more fluid. There's this researcher who says, why do we develop a rigid sense of self? Where I have to look a certain way to feel worthy, or I have to be the self-made man, or I have to, you know, I have to see myself in a way and I can't change that sense of my identity. I'm always attached to it and always comparing myself to it. And he says, when we experience something unpredictable or chaotic that makes us feel bad, we become predictable. We make our identity predictable, right? So it's like, oh, like I just, I felt so bad about my body and then I worked really hard to exercise all the time. And now so many of my, much of my identity is staked in having a certain type of body, right?

• 25:16Speaker 01

  And so, but what, you know, what he argues is that, you know, when we actually healing is not staying in that rigid sense of identity, but having high regard for ourselves as our identity changes. Because we are really, truly recreated in each moment. And, you know, when we, when we say like, you know, I'll, I'll give myself an example. I, I had a sprained ankle. I'm a very active person. I could be like, why can't I run the same way before and keep comparing myself to that? Or I can ask myself, what's my actual lived experience right now? Which is like, here's what I can do with this ankle, right? Here's, I don't always have to compare myself. I can let my identity be more fluid over time. I don't have to be who I was. That's part of life is that change.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  And so to welcome that and to be able to have high regard for you wherever you end up, that your own value is not contingent on any particular thing, but in you revealing yourself as you are to yourself at any particular stage, like who am I now? Let me get to know myself in this body, right? What does this body do for me?

• 26:15Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Right? Like that's, that's more what self-worth looks like over the long term.

• 26:20Mindy Pelz?

  So curiosity.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 26:23Mindy Pelz?

  Being curious, yeah. Which is, I, I, I think is important, especially as you go through menopause. It's, it's the only, it's the only parting line that you, that will keep you sane is wow, what's happening now?

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:36Mindy Pelz?

  So, okay, the, on the flip side, what I see a lot in my YouTube comments are women that can't release the weight and no matter what they do. And what I know from just my own knowledge and working with patients and interviewing people like you is that it's a protective mechanism. It's, it's like I'm, there's like an underlying, I'm not lovable. And so if I keep the extra weight, I confirm to myself that I'm not lovable. And so the weight not coming off isn't because you didn't do a, a long enough fast or you didn't count your macros or work out right.

• 27:19Mindy Pelz?

  It's, it's this inner feeling of not feeling lovable. How do we help that woman?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I can speak to self-esteem in general rather than the intersections with, with weight as much here. But, you know, I will say that there's a theory called self-verification theory, which is the idea that we, we look for people to verify our sense of self back to us, even if that sense of self is negative, right? So I kind of touched on this with some of the research before that if you feel bad about yourself and you can interact with someone that sees you very positively or negatively, research finds you choose that person who sees you more negatively because

• 27:57Mindy Pelz?

  Crazy.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  if people see you more positively, you're like, I'm going to let them down. They're going to figure out who I really am. At least this person is prepared for me to be anxious and to be, to, to lack confidence, right? And so there's this way that often when we're seen more positively than we see ourselves, it's quite threatening because it's, at the end of the day, you're going to reject me. And then you're going to pull me in to feel better about myself so that I only fall further when this happens. And because of that, because of how our brains work, because our brains simply want to confirm the reality that we've experienced prior, it can be really hard to get out of that and to, to really finally feel lovable or really finally feel worthy.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  And that's also, I imagine for women who lose weight as well, but still they don't even see that their body has changed, right? Because they have those memories of what it's always looked like in the past.

• 28:51Mindy Pelz?

  So what it, we're, again, I'm, I love this idea that you're acknowledging all the feelings that come with this.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:56Mindy Pelz?

  So for that woman, would it be helpful to say, I'm acknowledged that I don't feel lovable?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:04Mindy Pelz?

  And if I lose weight and I become attractive, now I'm going to have to test that theory out in the dating world or, and I'm going to have to see, am I lovable or am I not lovable? But if I hold on to this weight, then I have an excuse.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:23Mindy Pelz?

  That, and, and this is all subconscious. So people listening to this, please, you know, this is not, uh, this is, these are the kind of things I hear in consultations with women.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:32Mindy Pelz?

  It's like, I'm going to have to now face that there's another reason I'm not lovable.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah, people feel very, like I think if you struggle with self-worth, you're basically very risk averse. So you don't want to put yourself out there. You don't want to initiate. You don't want to be vulnerable. You don't, you almost don't want to put yourself in a place to have someone perceive you positively. Because you assume that if you put yourself in that place, they're going to see you more negatively anyway, right? It's just too vulnerable because you're, you're convinced that it's going to go negatively. And so what I see, that's why, you know, people with self-esteem issues often struggle in relationships. Because in relationships, you have to initiate, you have to be vulnerable, you have to express affection, you have to put yourself out there. You have to see if the other person's going to like you back or not, right? That when you have low self-esteem, you're so convinced that they're going to nod.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  It's like, it's, it's not even worth it to try anymore.

• 30:25Mindy Pelz?

  Right, yeah, I see that so clearly. Another thing in the book that just lashed out at me, um, was this idea that insecurity is how the nervous system protects itself.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely.

• 30:39Mindy Pelz?

  And explain that because my audience, again, we've been talking a lot about nervous system regulation right now, and I think it's a key part of metabolic health. So insecurity being the nervous system reaction, talk about that.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so let's say I'm getting criticized at work. And what happens when I go through an experience in the present is there's a part of your brain, the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, that basically rummages through your past memories to recreate a past experience in the present. So if you, if you're getting criticized at work by a boss, you always got yelled at, maybe by your father, you're literally re-experiencing what it was like to get yelled at as a kid in this experience with your boss, if you have unprocessed memories around it, right? And so in that way, you're, you know, there's a psychoanalyst, Philip Bromberg, he says that we don't go to therapy to deal with what happened in the past,

• 31:36Speaker 01

  but what is still happening now, and we are convinced will continue to happen, right? And so that is, that is partially the reason why if I'm insecure, if I think you're gonna reject me, right? And I'm experiencing any sort of ambiguity in a relationship, like, oh, maybe you took longer to respond than before. My nervous system is convinced that that is gonna happen again, that you're just gonna reject me, right? Wouldn't it be adaptive for me to pull away first? Wouldn't it be adaptive for me to not assume that you like me? So that when you reject me, I'm not gonna feel prepared for it, right? And so there's

• 32:12Mindy Pelz?

  It's crazy.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  That, there's this way that our nervous system, our insecurities are trying to protect us from a reality that we are convinced will happen. And even that our bodies make us re-experience as happening, whether or not it's actually happening.

• 32:28Mindy Pelz?

  I mean, we're, this is, this is why I love conversations like this. I'm like, we are so complex.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  We are so complicated.

• 32:35Mindy Pelz?

  And when I think about women and walk the path of them trying to fall in love with their body, whether they're overcoming an autoimmune condition, or they're trying to lose weight, or they're dealing with menopause symptoms. It's like, I, I started my journey and my career as eat these foods, do this fast, detox this way. And I've now come to this place that these are the kind of conversations that we have to address first, before you even start to make the food changes. Because then you're gonna know yourself in the process of making the food changes. You can, and you're gonna understand yourself at a deeper level. So we just have so many women that specifically are trying to love their body from the outside

• 33:21Mindy Pelz?

  in, and they haven't, and it's scary to go in and actually see what's in there.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:27Mindy Pelz?

  So it's really, I hope everybody listening is, is catching this. My new, my new conversation that I'm having with my following is about nervous system regulation. I think it is probably one of the most important health tools we can exhibit. And I've come up with a questionnaire, so those of you listening, you can go into the notes and take the questionnaire. But here is my question for you, because it was a statement in your book that shot out at me too, which is you cannot regulate what you don't acknowledge.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, exactly.

• 34:04Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, explain that to me.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So in the book, I talk about these, you know, like I said, these people that have high self-esteem or high self-worth, because they're trying to ignore the parts of, and this was me too. I mean, I think a lot of high achieving people, women can relate to this, that, you know, you feel good about yourself, but the parts of you, yourself that you don't, that don't feel good, you're not really looking at, or you're not really welcoming, or you're not really embracing, you're just trying to push away. And so for me, like, parts of myself that felt shame, dependent, needy, if a lot of me felt good, I could kind of just ignore them, try my best to ignore them. But then finding that, and moments, I could really be hit by these parts of me.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  It feels like they can take over and my, you know, your self-worth, if you're trying to compartmentalize parts of yourself, you can find it swing suddenly and madly. It jerks wildly, right? And now realizing that actual self-worth is about embracing everything you are, embracing the parts of yourself that feel ashamed, embracing the parts of yourself that feel too much, too needy, too dependent, and welcoming them back. And this is the paradox of self-esteem or self-worth. The people that feel truly worthy are the ones that can acknowledge when they don't, because they have high regard for themselves, even in their moments of lowness, in their moments of pain. And so practically speaking, in my own therapy, this has looked like, you know, I was working

• 35:32Speaker 01

  with my therapist, we kind of use this idea of the divine, of the divine force, the divine light, energy, whatever that means to your listeners, could be light, love, God, whatever that means. And I was struggling, when I was struggling with the part of myself that felt shameful, needy, dependent, my therapist asked me to give that part up to the divine. And I, and when I did, what I heard was like, this part of you is perfect too. This part of you is perfect too. And that was so powerful for me, Dr. Mindy. I was so used to trying to change and do better and, you know, and that's what I've learned about insecurity. Insecure, the problem is not that you're insecure. The problem is that you're ashamed of your insecurities.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  And the more that you can accept your insecurities, the no, they no longer haunt and hijack you. And so that's what I'm welcoming people to do in this journey of work.

• 36:26Mindy Pelz?

  So if somebody, to use the polyvagal language, if somebody's stuck in a freeze state, where, and this happens with overeating, where now they're numbing themselves with food, you can't get yourself out of that freeze state until you acknowledge even the, the dark side of what you're feeling about yourself in that, and why you're numbing it.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yes, slow down, slow down and learn to feel and tolerate those feelings. And, you know, I have like a three-step framework I do in my speaking events, which is to, to first feel, like, when you notice yourself about to go, go all out and eat a lot perhaps, what are you feeling that's driving you there? Can you label that? Can you pause? Can you tolerate that? Can you allow that emotion to be there? And then heal, what do you need to hear? And it's, maybe it's, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay, I love you, I love you, I love you. And then do, is there something that you need to change in your environment to help you work through this feeling or this emotion, right?

• 37:33Speaker 01

  And, you know, maybe if you have problems with, with binging, that's giving yourself less access to the, the kind of foods that you'll binge, right? But it is, we can't keep trying to escape ourselves and assuming that that's the pathway to feel better. We have to confront these hard, thorny parts of ourselves. And I do this now every day, an everyday practice of, what am I feeling in my body? What do I need to hear? How can I feel that? How can I breathe with that part of me? How can I show that part of me more care?

• 38:02Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's interesting, I just saw a study this morning that on chronic pain and self-talk. And they noticed that if you talk kindly to your body, if you actually went into a conversation, and, and the study was actually done with you verbally talk to your body, like, instead of cursing the chronic pain, you embrace it and you say, what are you trying to tell me? Thank you for giving me a signal. That those people moved through and healed from the chronic pain quicker than people who didn't talk to themselves.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Exactly, yes. I think like, when you think, what I'm saying, these are memories, right?

• 38:39Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  This could be a memory of when you were five years old, that is triggering you now. Imagine telling a five-year-old, you suck, you should be ashamed of yourself, I'm gonna ignore you, right? Like, but we're doing that all the time internally. And so it's time to instead provide ourselves with the care we never received, to be able to say, it's okay, however you feel is okay, I'm right here with you.

• 39:05Mindy Pelz?

  Right. And what, how do we help the woman who maybe is hearing this for the first time? And the thought of really looking at shame, or really looking at what holds us back from loving our body, is opening up a can of worms of maybe sexual abuse, or of, you know, 50 years of criticisms, criticizing themselves. Like, where's the door in? Because I really want to be sensitive, that some people may actually be in tears right now, listening to this conversation, because it, it's a crack, is what I've found, when we have this depth of conversation, there's just like a crack that opens and somebody goes, oh, God, that's it.

• 39:49Mindy Pelz?

  But then they'll put this podcast down and then they'll shut down, that, they'll seal the crack up, because it's too painful to look at.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Too painful, yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm glad that you're thinking about those listeners. And it's understandable, because, like, what I'm kind of saying here is that when you feel a feeling, you kind of feel the history of all of your feelings, right? It's like, when I'm sad now, I'm experiencing all the unprocessed sadness. Like, why, why is it so hard for me to grieve if I have all of these losses in the past that I haven't grieved? And so it just makes sense why it would feel really overwhelming and really scary. Because it's like, I'm not just reacting to whatever conflict I got in in the moment, but what this has meant to me my entire life. And so I understand why that's hard. I teach classes on why we're so lonely, and we, we do lessons on being more compassionate to ourselves.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  And I always have a student who's like, I am, they almost experience internal anger at the idea of being compassionate for themselves. Like, it's like, threatening to be compassionate for them. I don't deserve this, I'm gonna be weak. If you, if you're giving me compassion, then you're seeing me as someone who needs compassion. And I don't ever want to be someone who comes off as weak, right? And so it might be, it might be too hard to get to that place of like, what do I need to hear? How can I be compare, caring to myself? And maybe we just start with acknowledging a feeling in a moment, right? Just start with, what am I feeling? What does that feel like in my body? How would I label it? You don't even have to change it.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  But starting this practice of tuning inward, when I feel something, what is that I'm feeling? Is it tightness in my chest? Is it tightness in my throat? And just spend some time with that sensation, spend some time with that sensation. I think that's opening the crack of the door. And often, in the research realm, there's something called titrating, where you focus on your body when you feel very safe, what does that feel like in your body? And then you move to the discomfort, and then you move back to safety, and you move back to discomfort. And so what do you feel like when you're in really safe? And then switching to the discomfort emotion. And of course, you know, some of these exercises I write in the book, if it's, if it feels better to do with a therapist, I absolutely suggest that.

• 42:05Mindy Pelz?

  Of course.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:08Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and I know in the book you have a bit on internal family systems.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:13Mindy Pelz?

  And I can tell you, I decided about four years ago to dive into myself and get to understand what was causing the thoughts and who I was and heal traumas. And IFS was really helpful.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:26Mindy Pelz?

  And one of the things that was helpful for me was to go back and think about reparenting my little girl. And you know, my, my whole brand is like a girl. And so parts of that for me was really important that I had to go back and actually, I like in the morning, when I do my morning time, I think about her sitting next to me.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:47Mindy Pelz?

  And I've had so many conversations with her. And I feel like I have, I have this relationship with her that I'm now mothering her.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:58Mindy Pelz?

  Is it, could we do that again, we're going, could we, could we pull some version of ourselves that we don't want to look at and actually start to love and nurture like a mother would?

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, in the book, because when I, you know, why I wrote about internal family systems in the book is because here's the thing about healing from your past. Let's say your pain comes from a difficult childhood, right? Or a parent that was very dysregulated and would take their emotions out on you, or put you down, or constantly be critical. And then you tried to tell someone and get help. And then it got worse and people were like, you make a big deal out of nothing, like you, you don't respect your parents, or whatever they said. Then part of you thinks that if you go back and access the original memory of pain, it's only going to get worse, right? And so it's almost like a part of you is blocking you from being able to access the

• 43:54Speaker 01

  memory that you need to heal. And so sometimes our memories can kind of be layered in that way. And that's why I really like internal family systems, because you get to know the part of you that's blocking, the part of you that's like, hey.

• 44:07Mindy Pelz?

  Not all of you, not all of you, it's a part of you.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. It's a part of you. And you can say, let me explore the part of me that's resistant to going back into this memory. Let me explore the part of me that's so critical of my own pain, that has a hard time having compassion, right? And you listen to how that part of you is trying to keep you safe, because it's trying to criticize you to prepare you for, before someone else does, right? And you, you allow, you spend time with that and you, you make that part of you heard so that you can get access to the deeper pain that that part of you is guarding. It's so complicated, Dr. Mindy, this healing work is so intense.

• 44:43Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's so complicated. And it's not for the faint at heart, but what I find is so interesting is that the results people want live in going into the depth of what, what, what is motivating them or not motivating them.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  And yeah.

• 45:01Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  And here's why I think people should do it, because if you feel unworthy or you struggle with self of self, sense of self, you can have it all. You can have the body you want. You could have the relationship, you could have the success you want. It's going to slip off of you. It's going to slip off your sense of self. And to actually be able to internalize all the beauties of life, you have to work on your sense of self so it no longer filters those beauties out.

• 45:27Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah. I hope everybody heard that. That was so well said. Like, everything you want is on the other side of that.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 45:35Mindy Pelz?

  And so I think that's beautiful. A question from my YouTube audience on this topic was, and I think this one I see a lot is, what are practical steps to stop the daily mood and self-worth that gets attached to the scale or external beauty standards? This is like in the day.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:56Mindy Pelz?

  I maybe got on the scale that morning, I didn't like the number, I look in the mirror, I say something critical to myself, and then I go to Instagram and I see everybody else is beautiful and now my day sucks.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  I'm feeling worse and worse and worse. Yeah.

• 46:11Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:13Mindy Pelz?

  Is there a in the moment kind of thing?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, there is. I mean, we, I think you've been alluding to this discussion on something called implicit memory. Implicit memory are things, memories that affect us, but we don't know that's happening, right? When you're reacting very strongly, right? You're getting triggered, you, all of a sudden you hate the other person, or you hate yourself, you're, you know, you're getting enraged out of nowhere. That's often because a memory got triggered, right? It's, it's what's hysterical is historical, as Freud said. And so how do you work with these implicit memories, which I would say the trigger of the scale in the moment is perhaps an implicit memory of all the times in your life where your worth has been attached to how your body looks? And how you work with implicit memories, you use a glitch of your brain where basically

• 46:59Speaker 01

  we only have a limited working memory, that's our ability to think of things in the moment. And so when you focus on a trigger and you simultaneously multitask, you focus on a trigger simultaneously focus on something else, it's almost too much for your brain. So your brain begins to degrade the trigger. It doesn't have enough bandwidth to fully access the trigger and the vividness of the trigger and the emotions associated with that. So this can sound a bit wonky or wacky, but this is why if people are familiar with EMDR, where you're focusing on a trigger and you're watching a ball move back and forth, or tapping different parts of your body, right? That those could be really effective of simultaneously focusing on how bad you're feeling and doing something else.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  And so you can tap different parts of your body and tell yourself, you know, tapping involves statements like, I belong, or I'm worthy, or whatever you believe.

• 47:48Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I've had Jessica, Jessica Ortner has been on here several times. She's such a, so beautiful at describing it.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Or even playing Tetris, there's research on that while people focus on a trigger. Or I, if I think what's very accessible is like counting one plus two, two plus three, three plus four, while focused on that trigger sensation. And you'll surprisingly find that, oh, I feel a little less heated or charged after you do that, after you focus on how bad or unworthy you feel. And you simultaneously focus on something else and then you note how you feel afterward.

• 48:21Mindy Pelz?

  Wow, I, I hope everybody heard that. And these are the kind of things that are in your book. Do you have like exercises like this?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yes, I have.

• 48:28Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  The best research-backed exercises I could find for improving our sense of self-worth.

• 48:32Mindy Pelz?

  Cause that was gold, what you just gave us right there. Cause I've noticed if one, if I let one negative, if something triggers me and there's a negative thought and it doesn't get addressed.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:43Mindy Pelz?

  Then it leads to another negative thought, which leads to another. And then next thing you know, you're down a rabbit hole and you're like, how did I get here?

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like being able to interrupt and do something and to treat your pain as a request for your attention and care, right? It's, it's a request for you to go inward and give yourself some care. And there's this great like disability activist who says like, we treat illness as temporary in our society when it's not for some people. And for many of us who have been struggling with self-worth our entire lives, illness is not temporary. But that means we also treat care as temporary, that it's something we give ourselves in these special moments, rather than something we need to continuously give ourselves throughout a day even, to, to turn towards ourselves and offer ourselves care.

• 49:29Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. What do you think as women, we can do to support each other in a more authentic approach to our lives? Because I think unfortunately, as I'm thinking through this whole conversation, I'm like, as women, we always show our highlight reels.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:46Mindy Pelz?

  Um, especially in a patriarchal culture that is like not, doesn't want us to show anything else.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:53Mindy Pelz?

  But we do it, we do it to each other.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:56Mindy Pelz?

  And is there something, as somebody leaves this conversation, where does authenticity free when you are living and expressing, these are all the parts of me and some of them are beautiful and some of them are ugly? What does that do to your friendships? How does that liberate people around you?

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so much research on vulnerability that I went into in my first book, Platonic, that people like us more when we intimately self-disclose, not less, that, you know, there's actually a study called the beautiful mess effect that looked at when people disclose insecurities about their body, they see it more negatively, but when other people hear them, when they think about it in someone else, they see it more positively. So we.

• 50:38Mindy Pelz?

  Fascinating.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so people see us a lot more positively than we think when we disclose our insecurities, because they see us as honest, authentic, they see themselves as liked and trustworthy because we disclosed it to them. And so that, reminding myself of that helps me be more vulnerable, that, oh, I think people will judge me, but that doesn't tend to play out as much.

• 50:58Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Um, but when we're on the receiving end, Dr. Mindy, something I've learned, friends would often share their insecurities and I might go into, oh, of course not, you're beautiful, you're amazing, right?

• 51:11Mindy Pelz?

  Right, right.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  And that does not work, right? Cause I just told you how it can be so threatening to see yourself positively when you see yourself negatively. It's like, oh, you're trying to manipulate me into seeing myself better. So then ultimately, when I get rejected, I'm just going to feel worse, right? And so we need to start witnessing each other instead of trying to change each other. And so for me, it's being able to say to my friends, oh, okay, like all of us feel insecure sometimes, like it makes sense that you would feel that way in that situation. Tell me more about what that's like for you, or tell me more about where those feelings are coming from. And expressing curiosity and being alongside people as they express their vulnerability, rather than trying to get them to fundamentally change a part of themselves that they don't

• 51:56Speaker 01

  feel good about. Cause again, the problem is not that the insecurity exists, the problem is the shame around it. And so when we say, I don't see this as shameful, let's explore it, I'm curious about it, I'm right here with you, it's valid, then we are helping them with the shame.

• 52:10Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, that, that was so well said. One of the things I realized in my own journey inward over the last couple of years has been that once, when I'm going through something and I say it to a close friend or to my spouse, what ends up happening is I feel unheard when they're like, oh, you'll get over that. Yeah, but you're amazing. You're this. And they try, and it's like, no, I need you to hear my pain right now.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 52:38Mindy Pelz?

  And where the relationships I feel the most connected to is when they're like, thank you, I, thank you for just letting me be vulnerable.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 52:47Mindy Pelz?

  And we don't live in a society where vulnerability is really applauded.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:52Mindy Pelz?

  So, yeah, that was really beautifully said.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 52:56Mindy Pelz?

  So, thank you for that. So the name of this podcast is Live Like a Girl. And I recently named it because I'm really trying to take back this idea that living like a girl is a beautiful thing. It's not a derogatory statement. When you hear that statement, what does it mean to you? What does it stir up in your mind?

• 53:15Speaker 01

  I think it stirs up like freedom, creativity, being authentic, living in the moment, going for what you want, deprioritizing external perception or expectation and prioritizing your own needs or desires in each moment, perhaps being a little quirky, a little bit weird. I think we need to look back to who we were as children to figure out who we really are before we internalize everything. So I see it, you know, there Abraham Maslow, he's a psychologist who created that hierarchy of needs, if people are familiar with it. But he says that healing is about achieving a second naivete, that now we feel that we can go back to not expecting harm again, not seeing, not predicting the worst.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  And in a way, we're naive, but we feel instead of bracing and making ourselves smaller, we feel that we can tolerate it if things go wrong. We can trust ourselves in that.

• 54:09Mindy Pelz?

  It's really true. Like I know we all have different childhoods, but my early years, I was just authentically me. And then somewhere along the line, the world tells you to be different. So I think that's really beautiful. Where do people find your book?

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Worth, the new science of self-esteem and secure attachment is available wherever books are sold. You can get it signed copy if you order it from Lost City Books in DC.

• 54:33Mindy Pelz?

  Nice.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  I'm available on Instagram at DrMarisaGFranco. That's D R M A R I S A G F R A N C O. And if you go on my website, DrMarisaGFranco.com, you can reach out for speaking events on Self Worth or get a list of practices to improve self-worth.

• 54:48Mindy Pelz?

  Amazing. Well, thank you for what you do, and I hope you recover from your book launch.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Thank you, Dr. Mindy. You get it.

• 54:55Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I really enjoyed this. I totally get it. So I hope you're gonna go into some self-love once this book is released into the world. But thank you for this.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  I really appreciate it.

• 55:04Mindy Pelz?

  This was really beautiful.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  My pleasure.

• 55:06Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.