When we struggle with an eating disorder, it can become all-consuming. Not just for the person with the disorder, but for their family and loved ones as well.



Rebecca Perkins struggled for years to help her daughter, Bea, get well from anorexia. In this podcast episode, Rebecca shares how all-consuming the issue was. And then, when Rebecca stumbled across the Three Principles, which point toward our innate health, wellness, and well-being it was a game-changer for her and ultimately also for her daughter.



Bea is now fully recovered from anorexia and together mother and daughter have written a book about their experience and their new understanding that knowing where our thoughts and experience of life are coming from can release us from the self-imposed prisons we sometimes find ourselves in.

In the introduction I mention the exploration I’ve had in the last week about habitual thought storms and their persuasive but predictable nature. You can read more detail in the blog post.

You can listen to the podcast by pressing play above, or listen on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, or watch the video here. Below are the show highlights and full transcript.

Show Notes

You can find Rebecca at RecoveryFromWithin.life

Transcript of Interview with Rebecca Perkins

Alexandra: Hi everyone I’m Alexandra Amor from
StopSufferingAbout.com and I’m here today with Rebecca Perkins. Hi Rebecca.

Rebecca: Hi.

Alexandra: How are you today?

Rebecca: Really good. Thank you. Looking
forward to this conversation.

Alexandra: Oh good.
Me too. I’m excited. So let me introduce you to our listeners.

Rebecca Perkins has worked as a
professional wellbeing and resilience coach for 12 years with both individuals
and in groups and across all ages and sectors. More recently she has focused
her work with young people who are struggling with anxiety, panic attacks,
addictions and eating disorders.

She has seen firsthand profound changes in
herself and her family as well as deep transformation for her clients as she
has deepened your understanding of how well-being and resilience are innate in
all of us.

Rebecca is the published author of highly
rated titles including Best Knickers Always: 50 Lessons for Midlife, and Recovery
From Within: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey Through Anorexia, which is mostly
what we’re going to focus on today.

Rebecca why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about your background and about how the journey with Bea your daughter started.

Rebecca: I’ve
always been interested in what I would have called years ago personal
development or personal growth. I suffered on and off with bouts of depression
in my life and always found reading something or having a conversation with
somebody always seemed to help. So it’s always been a deep interest of mine.

About thirteen years ago twelve thirteen
years ago I decided my kids were growing up and I wanted to do something a bit
different, so I decided to try coaching, which I did and loved and found that I
was going through a lot of transformational change at the time.

Transitional change around divorce, kids
leaving home and my daughter had an eating disorder. So that was eleven years,
twelve years ago now that she was diagnosed.

I found a lot of help at the time pre the
understanding of the principles that the I guess if I put it this way there was
lots that was unhelpful and there was a lot that was helpful and it’s in
hindsight that I now see the helpful stuff was what we share in the book that
we wrote.

I’d always been looking. I’d studied NLP
and coaching and it always felt like it was effortful. I’m not even sure I’d
say actively looking for something but I just knew there was something missing.

And then about three years ago someone I’d done
my coaching with said hey you should take a look at this. She struggled to find
words to describe it. Funny that. And yet there was something about how she was
saying that grabbed me. So I explored and it was like Oh this is it. This is
what I’ve been looking for. And very quickly it made so much sense to me and
very quickly I saw a shift in my own coaching style.  And that what I was doing, the impact that I
had with clients, the shifts were quicker. And they were long lasting.

And I began speaking to my children about
it. But they were teenagers and it was like Oh Mom stop it. And in a way I saw
it more as a way to support them with anxiety and stress going through exams or
work and things like that.

And I guess the whole thing around the
eating disorder was that it was so a part of our life in that Bea was in
recovery. She’d been signed off from doctors etc. but it was a managing of the
eating disorder.

I was very much on eggshells a lot of the
time without even knowing that’s what I was doing. And it took a conversation
with a friend who has an understanding of the principles and who works with
people with eating disorders that literally it was like … Bea talks about it
like a mirage. The seeing that this was thought created and that she didn’t
have to believe that thinking anymore. That’s unbelievably profound and and
utterly transformative.

We’d always wanted to write a book but
clearly the time was never right because there was always this. Being in
recovery rather than recovered. So we then decided very quickly after that it’s
time and sat down. We live in different parts of the UK but sat down and it
just all came together.

Alexandra: I’m going to come back to that
because as an author myself I want to ask you what that was like writing a book
with your daughter.

How long had Bea been dealing with anorexia
before you came across this understanding?

Rebecca:She was diagnosed in
January 2008. So I guess we’re looking at nine years. That’s not nine years
seeing doctors and therapists and dieticians. That was that was a couple of
years but it had just become a way of life. It was all, I don’t eat this, I
don’t eat that. And she would she would say I’m okay with that. But that was
part of me as a mom that was asking, “How can you be okay with that?”

So it was very much a way of being. And
that was hard because if she was coming home for weekends I’d be thinking, Oh I
can’t cook that and I can’t cook that, and we can not do that and not have
those kinds of conversations.

What I believed then was that if I said
something to her that maybe challenged her she might go back to a full blown
eating disorder. That’s the way life looks, doesn’t it? That stuff I might say
might impact her. And then that would be my fault.

That’s why so many people don’t have real