March 7, 2024

Living the dream with self-love and mindfulness expert DR. Joy Bracey

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Discover the transformative power of self-love and mindfulness with Dr. Joy Bracey, a beacon of hope for New Orleans' most vulnerable. In this heartening episode, delve into Dr. Bracey's personal journey of shedding 173 pounds and her mission to heal from the inside out. Learn how she's reshaping lives through her work at an addiction and mental health treatment center, hosting life-altering retreats, and sharing her insights on her own podcast. Tune in to unravel the intertwined complexities of self-love, addiction, obesity, and the path to genuine peace and happiness.

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> Speaker A>Welcome, um, to the living the Dream podcast with curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve, cheat, cheat.

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> Speaker A>Welcome to the living the dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview you guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today we're going to be talking about self love and mindfulness, as I am joined by doctor and podcaster Joy, uh, Bracey. Joy is down there in New Orleans, Louisiana. She works with New Orleans most vulnerable women and children. She also is the CEO of, uh, an addiction and mental health treatment center. And she's a podcast host, and she is going to be talking about all that she's up to and doing to make the world a better place and the impact of self love and mindfulness. So, Dr.

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> Speaker A>Bracey, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Speaker B>Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be with you.

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> Speaker A>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Speaker B>Yeah. So I am, um, a licensed professional counselor and a national certified counselor.

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> Speaker B>Done that for a long time. I've worked in the addiction field as a nonprofit CEO and as a therapist, um, for many years.

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> Speaker B>I, uh, teach self love, inner critic, healing, mindfulness, self awareness on social media, and in workshops and retreats and speeches.

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> Speaker B>And, uh, newly as an adjunct assistant professor for Columbia University teachers college. Um, goodness. Let's see. Um, I'm a single mom with four kids. That's like the greatest accomplishment of my life, obviously, uh, raising the kiddos.

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> Speaker B>But, uh, yeah, um, my podcast is about my journey to self love and transforming mind, body and spirit. I've lost 173 pounds, fallen, um, in love with taking care of myself, and, um, really, it has taken a whole mind, body, spirit change.

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> Speaker B>Um, and it's been amazing.

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> Speaker A>Absolutely. And we'll definitely get more into that.

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> Speaker A>But tell us about the nonprofit addiction treatment and mental health place that you work for. Tell, uh, us all about that.

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> Speaker B>Yeah. So, uh, down here in New Orleans, it's a nonprofit, and we do, uh, addiction treatment and mental health counseling for our most vulnerable community members. People that are at risk for or, uh, recently incarcerated. People that are at risk for are living with HIV, people that are at risk for are experiencing homelessness, um, and people that can't afford the mental health services that they need. Um, it's been a big passion of mine throughout my career to work with people that are in the criminal justice system because there's so much injustice there. And, um, we really strive to help those people who are part of the system and being stepped on by the system to recover their lives and build, ah, from where they start, um, because so many people are vulnerable and they don't have the guidance and the tools that they need, and they, somewhere along the way, go astray. And then they become involved in the criminal justice system where they are punished and then released without any resources, help, or any guidance. And it becomes very difficult for them to get out of the cycle that they're in. Uh, so we work really hard to help those people preserve their dignity, to help them find their way out of the system and into jobs, education, homes, back reintegrated with their families, um, with new emotional skills, um, because, really, substance abuse treatment cannot be effective if you don't know where you're going to sleep or where your next meal is coming from or if you're completely alienated from your family. Um, so we try to address all those things so that a person has a chance to get their life where they want it.

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> Speaker A>Another great thing that you do is you host retreats for people. So tell us about the retreats that you host and what they do on those retreats.

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> Speaker B>Yeah, so that is one of my favorite things in life, and I'm so fortunate to have been called to do that and to be able to do it.

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> Speaker B>Um, but I hold space for people to heal the inner critic, which develops in almost everyone right around second grade. Um, children just naturally think that everything going on around them that's not good is their fault. Just developmentally, that's what we do. And this, um, turns us into people that think we have to people please, that think we have to be perfect, that we criticize ourselves, and we have this internal dialogue going that makes us feel a lack of worthiness. And then we behave in certain ways that support that. And it's like this never ending cycle of self criticism and holding ourselves back from our potential, not understanding our oneness with the universe and with all the living things on the planet. Um, and we feel isolated and alone.

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> Speaker B>And, um, all of this is going on in our brains and a lot of times without realizing it, because in our society, when we're uncomfortable, we just look for, in my case, it was donuts and ice cream, or some people will turn to alcohol, or some people will use relationships or distract themselves with their phone or overworking or over shopping or gambling, all these things that we do to distract ourselves from that terrible internal dialogue we want to escape. Um, so that's where I get to work with people to identify that inner voice that's causing turmoil and, um, get aligned with who we really are. In our.

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> Speaker B>Inside our soul, um, so that we can be free and live in harmony and peace and learning to accept the things that we cannot change.

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> Speaker B>Um, so this is such a wonderful gift, um, in these retreats, doing the self love piece, because we hear about self love and we think we have it, but no one is teaching us how to do that, especially as kids. So we grow up without it. Um, and really, self love is a daily practice, um, that requires a lot of tending, uh, just like any relationship in our lives. You can't just say, oh, I love you. You marry a person and say, I love you, and then your work is done. You've got love in that person for the rest of your life, and you don't have to do any work to maintain the relationship. We know that's not true. And self love works the same way. So in my retreats, we do a lot of focus on that inner dialogue and the, uh, piece about the daily practice of taking care of yourself and loving yourself.

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> Speaker A>Well, I know you've accomplished so much in your life, but in your bio, you say that you feel like you failed at weight loss over and over again. So why do you feel that way?

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> Speaker A>And what makes you think that? Why do you feel like you failed over and over again?

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> Speaker B>Yeah, it really stumped me so much, Curtis, because here I am raising four kids by myself, um, doing all the things that you're supposed to do, like all the things and I say supposed to do in quotation marks, the things I felt that society wanted from me, that, um, the people that love me were expecting, trying to please everyone and doing all the so called right things, um, getting my doctorate, going as far as I can with my education. I'm a CEO when I was a kid, it was like straight A's and president of this and captain of that and all of that. Um, but I never got peace.

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> Speaker B>At the end of the day, no matter how much pleasing I would try to do, it wasn't getting me anywhere. And with the weight loss, I would lose weight. I would white knuckle it with some diet or exercise plan or both, lose some weight. And then it's like this crazy internal dialogue about food would just make it nearly impossible to keep the weight off, which is why 95% of people with obesity that lose a significant amount of weight regain all of it and then some. Um, so your chances of success with weight loss without medical intervention are really slim once you're, um, like, I was 337 pounds. Um, had lost weight many times, and I felt like such a failure I thought it was because I was a bad person or that I was weak, but it was like, in every other area of my life, the evidence showed that I was hardworking and that I was persistent and resilient and strong and smart.

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> Speaker B>So why was I still eating milkshakes and, um, failing at exercise and diet plans? And so I set out to figure this out because I felt like, okay, I'm a licensed therapist. I'm a smart lady. I'm determined. So if I'm going to figure out why I have failed at this over and over again, then I need to share the story, which is why I made the podcast. I feel like if I'm going to finally do this, I better share, because so many people are in this situation. Um, I feel like people don't understand what it's like to live in a body that's severely overweight, like I was. You have to be strong, you have to be determined to even get out of bed, because the world was not made for people my size. And there's so many judgments, and also, it's really hard to carry on.

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> Speaker B>I mean, I was carrying around, I've lost 173 pounds, and that's a pretty large person on my back. Like, that's a lot of extra weight. To get up out of bed and move throughout the earth, I had to be super strong. And so why couldn't I be successful? So, at the end of the day, I did this podcast and went through this whole journey with my family members, with a therapist, with obesity medicine experts, to figure out the medical reasons for obesity and also the emotional underpinnings. Like, where did it develop that I turned to food for emotional comfort? And the answer to that was in childhood. Um, and then how was being 337 pounds serving me? Because somewhere in my subconscious, I had to have wanted that if I stayed that way, because I knew that anything else in my life that I really wanted, that I set out to do, I did it. I was able to do it. So there had to be some combination of medical and emotional reasons why I was staying at this high weight and climbing.

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> Speaker B>And, uh, just to give you a little taste of my discoveries, because there were several. But one thing was that being 337 pounds, I was safer in the world. I felt this, albeit false sense of safety.

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> Speaker B>Um, being larger, I felt like I was more invisible, that I was safe from attention, that I didn't want, particularly from men, which wasn't true. Um, on the podcast, my daughter and I joke that we felt safer from things like kidnapping, like good luck if you're going to try to haul me off in your van. That's a two man job. Because all I have to do is drop dead weight and you're not lifting me and bringing me anywhere. Um, and the truth is, now that I'm in a much smaller body, I do have people invade my space and feel entitled to touch me more. I've had a man touch me, like, try to physically move my body just because he didn't like the direction I was moving in, in the aisle that we were in at theater. And so I'm having to navigate that. But I was really afraid of that. I felt like being larger kept me safe. But what I know now is that I gave up that sense of safety. But now I feel safer in other ways. Like, now I'm safer from heart attacks. Now I can move a lot faster. So I'm safer from things in the way that if someone was trying to hurt me, I could run faster, if I could get away.

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> Speaker B>So it's a trade off. Um, but it's not like all bad being that size. There were definite benefits to being 337 pounds, and I had to get to the bottom of all that so that I could make a conscious choice to let it go.

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> Speaker A>Is there a connection between obesity and addiction? If so, can you explain it?

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> Speaker B>Absolutely. So, obesity, just like any other addiction, is a chronic, relapsing brain disease. Science is just starting to figure this out, but obesity is recognized as a disease in and of itself. Um, and there are definite correlations. When people have addiction, whether it to be to food or shopping or a highly addictive chemical substance, the brain withholds the dopamine that it needs for you to feel good. For example, if you are a regular, healthy person without an addiction, and you get home at the end of the day and you get greeted by your puppy, and then your spouse gives you a hug, and you get to sit down and relax in your cozy robe, those things give you a healthy dose of dopamine, the feel good reward chemicals. When you have addiction, your brain is not giving you enough dopamine from the day to day. Things that should make us happy. So it learns to depend on whatever that substance or behavior is. That, uh, is a maladaptive coping. In my case, food. Because when I was a little kid and my household was a bit chaotic or things weren't happy, my parents weren't happy. I took that as my fault. I felt a lot of shame. Their shame was my shame.

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> Speaker B>I had a teenage mom, um, with addiction, and so I took all of that in as mine, right in my little kid's self. I thought I was annoying and bad, and food was a comfort to me, and it was the only thing that I had to comfort me because I wasn't allowed to express my feelings. My mom was so young, and she loved me, but she didn't know how to help me express my feelings. And she also didn't even know how to deal with her own feelings, much less cope with my feelings. And so for me, food was a major comfort. So my brain, at three, four years older, maybe even as a baby, um, my teeth were all blacked out. My baby teeth were all rotten, uh, because of falling asleep with a baby bottle in my mouth. So I imagined that as a tiny, tiny baby, I was getting comfort from the bottle. That should have been coming from human connection. But because the humans that were taking care of me were so traumatized themselves and immature, um, I wasn't getting what I needed. So food became the focus. And so my whole brain was wired around rewarding me and giving me those feel good chemicals from food, from meals, from a full tummy, from sugar. Um, and so that cannot be separated. You cannot separate. I have obesity runs in my family, so I had the genetic predisposition for this and then enter the behavioral things that were happening and the emotional dependence on food. And then you have a whole person whose brain is wired to reward eating. And then once you have obesity, the hormones that regulate how hungry you are, what foods you crave, how much you eat, how often you eat, how much you think about food, those get all out of whack and become wired to make you fat. So for me, right now, although I am a size six pants and my BMI is healthy, I have obesity, and I will always have to manage obesity for the rest of my life. My brain is wired to make me fat because it has the disease of obesity. So it works very much like addiction. When you are an alcoholic and you're in recovery, that does not mean that you are not an alcoholic anymore. You have to be mindful of how you're coping, stay aware of taking care of yourself and your feelings. And for the rest of my life, I'm going to have to do that. Keep an eye on what food I'm eating, what I'm craving. It's always going to have to be a management thing. And I have found that if my mind, body, and spirit and taking care of myself and my self love are all in place, then it's much easier to do that.

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> Speaker A>Well, you talked about your mom, so let's talk about giving some advice or tips to parents with overweight kids so they could hopefully handle it better and not make it worse.

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> Speaker B>Yes. So I was not an overweight child, but my children were. I became obese at about 18 or 19 years old is when it began for me, because, uh, I did not have access to money, transportation, my own food. But as soon as I did, then the obesity kicked in. My children were overweight, though. My two older children, who are now adults, were like, and I say in quotation marks, chubby kids. And I thought I was doing all the right things. I didn't criticize them, I didn't talk about their weight. I didn't tell them that they needed to lose weight. I didn't shame them for their bodies or about what they ate. So I thought I was doing great because I grew up in the, where it was real common for moms to like, oh, you need to exercise, or she can't eat cupcakes, or, this one needs to be on a diet. I didn't do any of that. So I thought I was doing great. And my kids and I had never talked about what it was like for them to grow up because I was really overweight. They were overweight, their dad was overweight. What was it like for them to grow up in a so called fat family, how it was for them, what was their experience of my parenting around their weight? What was that like for them? And it was a little bit scary to have that m conversation, and we did it on the podcast. It was literally a, uh, three and a half hour conversation with my two older children, who are now 22 and 24, where it was the first time we ever talked about these things. And I have never heard any families talk about this.

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> Speaker B>And I edited it down to about 41 impactful minutes. I mean, really impactful minutes of talking about these things. What was it like for them and where I could have done better? They were really honest with me about how, for example, my on and off dieting, frequent weight loss and weight gain, how that impacted their self esteem. Um, and what I did was I would be like, oh, kids, now we're all going to get healthy. We're going to go to the park more, we're going to go for walks, we're going to get healthy.

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> Speaker B>Um, we're going to eat healthy. We're not going to buy this junk food. And I thought that was the right way to do it. But what they heard was that their bodies were a problem that we needed to fix.

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> Speaker B>Um, and I had completely forgotten that. My daughter, when she was ten years old, I guess she was beginning to feel self conscious about her size and her shape.

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> Speaker B>And when she came to me with that, I taught her the diet system that we all know, that I won't name where you keep points for the foods, and you have to only eat a certain number of points. I taught her how to do that at ten years old. She kept a journal, and she could only have a certain number of calories or points for each day. And that was devastating to hear the impact that had on her. And my brilliant, bright daughter, who's on the podcast and who's so amazing, taught me that what kids really need to hear is that their body is okay and it's theirs. And however their bodies look, it's okay. Like, some bodies are skinny, some bodies are tall, some bodies are muscular, some bodies, uh, need wheelchairs to move around. So however your body is, it's okay, because it's really not about our bodies. Yes, we want to teach children healthy habits around nutrition, healthy habits around moving their bodies and feeling good about themselves.

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> Speaker B>But all of that is made so much easier if a person feels good about themselves. So if you're teaching your child to love their body and embrace how they look, and that they're entitled to look however they look and feel good about it, the rest can kind of take care of itself. It's so much easier. But if you feel terrible about yourself and you grow up feeling like your body is a problem, then you are set up for failure to have a dysfunctional relationship with your body, a dysfunctional relationship with food and exercise, which is something that I passed on to my children. And it was very hard to hear that from them. But I thought really important for people to hear that conversation and hoping that parents can adjust, because we feel so much pressure from society that our kids cannot be chubby, right? That it's not okay. But the truth is, skinny does not equal healthy and fat does not equal unhealthy. That our bodies can look all different kinds of ways as we age, our bodies change. Uh, there's not just one way a body has to look, and that's the only way we can be satisfied with ourselves. But that is the message that we get, and that is the message as parents. And this is what I told my kids. I felt so much pressure from even loving family members that my kids needed to lose weight, that I needed to lose weight for them. But none of that is really true.

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> Speaker B>It's not about the weight. It's about, uh, am I taking care of myself? Do I love myself? Am I nourishing my body? Am I loving my body? Am I appreciating my body? So it's like our focus is in the wrong place and it's creating more problems where we're already just all of us are set up for failure because the food supply that we have is so filled with sugar and salt and addictive things and things that are meant to make us addicted to the food. So we're kind of fighting a losing battle as it is. But if we are, at least we can have a fighting chance if we start out with this very healthy sense of self love and appreciation for what our bodies do for us, rather than focusing on how it's wrong and how we need to fix it.

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> Speaker A>Tell us about any current upcoming projects that you're working on that the listeners need to know about.

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> Speaker B>Yeah. So, well, at any time, anyone can find me on, uh, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, at Dr.

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> Speaker B>J-O-Y-B-R-A-C-E-Y.

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> Speaker B>Dr. Joy Bracey. That's where I teach.

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> Speaker B>Um, self love, inner critic, healing, mindfulness, self awareness, lots of emotional skills and content around that, and some about body image and weight loss. Um, and then my podcast, the easy way out, which is, uh, weigh the easy way out with Dr. Joy Bracey. That's a six episode podcast, a really easy listen where I feel like anyone who has trouble coping or getting in touch with their feelings or uncovering why things are the way they are in their lives, the things that they wish they could change, I feel like that podcast is helpful, um, because I really went deep and gave it all. It was a passion project, for sure.

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> Speaker B>I am in the process of writing a book, which is yet untitled, but I'll certainly let you know when that's out. Um, yeah, lots of good things, but anyone can reach out to me on social media and, uh, keep in touch and see what's going on in that world of self love.

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> Speaker A>Closes out with some final thoughts. Maybe if there was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

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> Speaker B>I would say to the listeners that if you want to have a life where there is peace and freedom and where you're happy and all the things that we're taught to want for ourselves, but you're not experiencing that. The very first step is to tune in to your thoughts. What are you saying to yourself? What messages are you giving yourself on a day to day basis? Tune into those and really start to think about what messages you're sending yourself. So, for example, my inner critic loved to tell me, who do you think you are? Um, if ever I had big dreams or had any good thoughts about myself, my ego mind, my animal brain would be like, wait a minute. Who do you think you are?

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> Speaker B>It would try to pull me down and make me smaller. And as soon as I tuned into that and realized what was happening, I was able to say, whoa, whoa. I am a child of the universe. I am, uh, equal and a part of all living things. And this is ridiculous. So you can start to challenge those thoughts, and then the rest unfolds. Once you have this awareness of this brain of yours that's on overdrive, trying to get you to overthink everything and feel bad about yourself, um, then the rest can unfold. Then there's all these other tools that can come on board to help you discover peace. And the other thing is, um, getting in touch with your breath.

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> Speaker B>People are afraid to meditate. They think they don't know how to do it. But all you have to do is take a few moments of a deep breath and really feel the air going in and out of your lungs. I would say those two things are the path to peace.

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> Speaker B>And I would love to share that with anyone who wants peace in their life.

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> Speaker A>There you go, ladies and gentlemen. If you know of anybody who wants peace in their life, follow rate review share this episode get in touch with Dr. Bracey. If you have any guests or suggestion topics, Cjackson 102 at Cox. Net is the place to send them.

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> Speaker A>As always, thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the show. And Dr. Bracey, thank you for joining us and sharing your story.

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> Speaker B>Thank you so much for having me.

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> Speaker A>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

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> Speaker A>Until next time, stay focused on living the dream. Dream.