We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lisa Schlosberg a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Lisa, thanks for joining us today. Can you share an anecdote or story from your schooling/training that you feel illustrates what the overall experience was like?
I often think about an impactful educational experience I had while studying for my Master’s Degree in Social Work at New York University. In one of my advanced human behavior classes, the professor would occasionally split the class into small groups and present case studies for us to discuss together. Following a few minutes of deliberation, the first group would share their perspective on the situation (what they concluded to be the potential problems and solutions as well as any specific modalities or theories they would use to work with that client or family). Then the next group would present their opinions, and so on. While I always sat there wondering which analysis the professor would deem most “correct,” she challenged and transformed my way of viewing clinical work by validating every individual share. They were each unique and different, and she taught us how to see the value in all of them. Perhaps this was the case, maybe that was it. It taught me about how, especially as therapists and coaches, it’s not about thinking in terms of right and wrong or perpetuating the consciousness of assuming we know “the answer,” but that we can best support others when allowing ourselves to speculate (not draw conclusions), stay open-minded, try things on, and work together with our clients to navigate their challenges. This way of thinking and operating with people was enlightening to me and continues to serve me in my work to this day.
Lisa, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I always thought of myself as the “strong one” growing up. I was proud of my ultra-independence from a young age; my ability to “keep it together” when things were tough, to “power through” the difficult times, and to “not need anything from anyone.” If there were thoughts or feelings — about anything or anyone — that I didn’t like or want to feel, I denied, avoided, distracted, and pretended my way out of them.
I didn’t think my mindless habit of over-eating or my “morbid obesity” had anything to do with it. If you asked me, I just ate however much I wanted, of whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. I didn’t understand why I was being forced to go to Weight Watchers at nine years old, why I had to see so many specialists and nutritionists, or why my doctors and parents couldn’t just leave me alone about my “weight issue.” I definitely did not understand why I had to start seeing a therapist when I started high school.
When I felt intrinsically motivated to to pursue weight loss at 17 years old, I began with the prepackaged meals from Jenny Craig and eventually took the process into my own hands, rigidly following the instructions I received my entire childhood: eat less, exercise more. During my sophomore year of college and while living in my sorority house, I rapidly lost 150 pounds. I was just shy of my “goal weight” when a nutritionist caught that my body was now in “starvation mode” as a result of severe malnourishment. Unbeknownst to me, my diet had grown dangerously extreme and my lifestyle became destructive. I had swung the pendulum to the other extreme, and now my instructions were the opposite: eat more, exercise less.
With weekly support from my nutritionist AND my therapist, I slowly released the “eating disorder tendencies” that helped me feel safe and in control of my body and life. I restored my body back to a healthy place AND learned how to feel and manage the incredible emotional upheaval that came with the process of healing my relationship with food. In order for me to give up the coping mechanisms of overeating/obesity as well as dieting/weight loss, I had to admit my vulnerability and make space in my life for feelings, emotions, and embodying my messy, complicated, multidimensional, human truth (that is sometimes uncomfortable, uncontrollable, and inconvenient). It was not the journey I expected, and it has been the ride of a lifetime.
I have since become a Certified Personal Trainer (2015), an Integrative Nutrition Holistic Health Coach (2017), a Licensed Master of Social Work (2019), and Registered Yoga Instructor (2020). I am the Founder & CEO of Out of the Cave, LLC., a health coaching business that helps emotional eaters (or anyone struggling with “disordered eating”) heal their relationship with food, let go of dieting & diet culture, and come back to mind-body-soul balance and health. I use a Trauma-Informed and mind-body approach to establishing overall wellness and am passionate about helping people use their relationship/struggle with food as a pathway back to themselves.
Out of the Cave, LLC. is a health coaching business dedicated to serving anyone who struggles with a “disordered” relationship with food. This includes but is not limited to: overeating, under-eating, mindless eating, emotional eating, stress eating, compulsive/addictive eating, as well as compulsive/addictive dieting. At Out of the Cave, we understand these eating habits to be symptoms of deeper bio-psycho-social root causes, so we take a holistic, trauma-informed, and mind-body approach to helping people reconnect with themselves. In many ways, our approach flips the mainstream eating disorder treatment model on its head: rather than framing the “food issue” as a problem that needs to be solved, we see it as an attempt at a solution that is worth exploring.
Out of the Cave was created to help people from a place of love, compassion, and empathy. We meet the client where they are and support them in embodying more safety, peace, freedom, and power in their lives. Independent from both diet and anti-diet culture, our intention is to help guide people back home to themselves and their body’s internal wisdom. We believe each person is the expert on themselves and that every individual has the power to heal their mind-body-soul system. We are passionate about assisting people in taking their power back from the struggle around food to live the fulfilling and vibrant life they desire and deserve. For us, healing the relationship with food and body image is the beginning, rather than the end, of a lifelong journey of self-love, self-care, and self-awareness.
The Out of the Cave Group Program is a transformational 14-week coaching experience designed to empower participants with the skills, tools, education, and support they need to use the struggle with food & body as a path to mind-body-soul alignment so they can embody a life of freedom. Designed for anyone struggling with “disordered” eating habits (over-eating, under-eating, mindless eating, stress eating, emotional eating, yoyo-dieting, compulsive dieting, etc.), this holistic, trauma-informed curriculum is designed to support participants in understanding how they got “here” (where exactly did the mind and body become disconnected in the first place and why has “intuitive eating” become so elusive), how to get “out” (reconnect to themselves, embody authenticity, and feel safe honoring their body’s needs), and how to maintain it (design a lifestyle supportive to a regulated nervous system and sustainable mental, emotional, spiritual, social, and physical well-being moving forward). This strengths-based program is rooted in the belief that using food to cope is a normal, human, and valid method of managing stress, coping with emotion, and regulating energy, AND that it is possible to heal from the inside out.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I think we all have internalized stories around what it looks like to do things the “right” way. I find this to be abundantly true when it comes to career paths, and this is the lesson that I personally had to unlearn in order to get to where I am and do the work that I love. When I graduated from college with student loans and decided to work as a personal trainer at my local gym, I felt really lost and confused about whether I was doing the “right” thing or not. It wasn’t the conventional path and there were definitely times I thought I was doing something wrong or “not good enough“ compared to my peers who opted for 9-5 office jobs. Years later, I decided to become a Health Coach, take on my own clients, and eventually get my Master’s in Social Work to deepen the work I did with clients 1-1 and build my own business. The whole time my journey was evolving and I was learning, practicing, and growing, but I didn’t yet have any evidence or proof that I was headed somewhere fulfilling. I had an internal knowing that it was all going to come together and “make sense” eventually if I just kept following my heart. And it did. I am now combining mental, emotional, and physical health in an even deeper and more profound way than I could’ve ever imagined when it all began, and I am so grateful to this day that I didn’t let the illusion or the internalized belief that I should follow someone else’s path be louder than my own internal wisdom and guidance. I’m passionate about connecting with and inspiring people who have an idea of what they want to do, but don’t see it being done out there in the world yet; I know what that feels like and I also know that if you can see it, and you believe in it, then you can absolutely achieve it. I often let this quote be a guiding light: “If you feel like you don’t fit into the world you inherited it is because you were born to help create a new one.”
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
I think the most helpful thing for any helping professional who works directly with people, especially in the healthcare field (social workers, therapists, coaches, nurses, doctors, etc.) is to shift their perspective from “what’s wrong with the person” to “what happened to the person.” As we know from the research and modern mind-body medicine, when people are acting compulsively, adopting “health-risk behaviors” (including but not limited to drugs and alcohol or emotional eating), acting out of alignment with their well-being, and making choices that don’t serve them in the long run, there can be a tendency to judge, shame, criticize, and ridicule patients. This only exacerbates the fear-based response inside the individual and jeopardizes their sense of safety (which is counterproductive to creating any sustainable behavior change). In order to succeed in this field, I believe wholeheartedly in the important skill to leave our personal biases, opinions, beliefs, and judgments at the door (as much as possible) so we can see the person in front of us from a place of unconditional love and acceptance. We can always remember that these behaviors (however “disordered” or “dysfunctional” we may have been taught to judge them to be) are operating to keep the person feeling comfortable and protected. This energy and shared dynamic of love creates a sense of safety, ultimately contributing to lasting transformation and liberation.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.outofthecave.health/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisa.schlosberg/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/outofthecavellc
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisaschlosberg/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/lees325
- Other: Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lisa-schlosberg Apply to work with me: https://www.outofthecave.health/work-with-me
Image Credits
(Some) of those pictures were done by Alyssa Teuton (63 Moons Photography)