EP 228: Overcoming Body Hatred and the Role Parents Can Play with Kathryn Holt

In this episode, Kimberly and Kathryn discuss Kathryn’s work in Jungian psychology, psychotherapy, embodiment, and body image. Kathryn walks us through her workbook which is designed to help women understand how much body image issues are distractions from feelings of anxiety and ambivalence about their lives. Instead, she describes how to create the capacity to unearth more deeply rooted thoughts, feelings, and sensations in our psyches and our bodies.

 

Bio

Kathryn Holt, PhD, LCSW, is a depth psychologist and writer. She completed her PhD in Jungian/Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute and has an extensive background in long-term psychotherapy, feminist psychoanalytic group therapy, community ritual, dance and movement practices, intentional psychedelic work, and more. Her latest workbook “Overcoming Body Hatred: A Woman’s Guide to Healing Negative Body Image & Nurturing Self-Worth Using CBT & Depth Psychology” helps women identify their purpose, manage stress, change cultural messaging, and cultivate embodied presence.

 

What She Shares:

–Body preoccupation as a defense

–Cultural obsession with young and beauty

–Building capacity for ambivalence 

–Fostering emotional intelligence for ourselves and others

–Approaches to our childrens’ body image issues

 

What You’ll Hear:

–Writing dissertation a baby during pandemic

–Publishing workbook from dissertation

–Why Kimberly avoided body image discussions

–Body preoccupation functioning as a defense

–Issue of projection onto women’s bodies and suffering

–Locating conditioning as inherited 

–Self-sensing our own bodies 

–Self-objectification and projection

–What is under the fantasy of our ideal body image?

–Body image work puts us into reality

–Culture’s obsession with youth

–Preparing for bodies changing and age

–Fantasy that bodies are fixed means problems are fixed

–Living with body dissatisfaction and preoccupation

–Parenting girls and young women around body image

–Listening, inhabiting, and growing with body changes

–Defensiveness of body image decreasing intimacy with self

–Distinguishing between thought versus physical sensation

–Foundational psychological work with body image

–Dialectical behavioral therapy and psycho-spiritual therapy

–Jungian and spiritual psychology

–Internal versus cultural 

–Ending our delusions to be our full selves

–Increasing tolerance for anxiety to get underneath it

–Body ambivalence as inevitable

–Accepting ambivalence in all areas of life

–Inundated with images

–Defenses keep us from the solutions

–Fostering emotional intelligence for us and our children

 

Resources

Website: https://www.kathryncholt.com/

IG: @dr.kathryncholt