Early in this episode, Isabel Chiara asks a question that opens the whole conversation: how do we get a greater sense of ourselves if we are always switching to whoever is in the room? If you have ever searched for how to stop people pleasing, this conversation starts earlier than most advice does. It starts with where the habit begins, and what it can quietly feed.
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Why I wanted this conversation
When I filmed my introduction for this episode, I put the feeling this way: somebody else’s opinion lands, and yours just quietly folds. For a lot of us with ADHD, that can run deep, after years of other people’s reactions telling us who we are before anyone gave us a reason why.
Isabel does not speak from an ADHD background. She comes to this as an author and coach, through food and through her own story, which gave us a different door into the same pattern.
Meet the guest
Isabel Chiara is an author and coach, and this is her second visit to the show. She first joined me in Season 6, and you can find that conversation in How to Nourish Your Life. She is not a clinician, and what she shares here is her own perspective, not medical or mental health advice.
Her book is built around a word she uses for the opposite of folding to other people: uncollapsibility.
Nourish by Isabel Chiara. See the book on her site.
Find Isabel at:
- Website: isabel-chiara.com
- Instagram: @nourish_isabelchiara
- A free month of her NOURISH App, her gift to Vibers: isabel-chiara.com/podcast-gift
How to stop people pleasing: what collapsing on yourself looks like
Isabel describes the moment in plain terms. You are on a path to something, someone offers their view, and yours stops mattering, even to you.
If I was on a path to something and somebody came in and gave me their opinion or gave me their point of view, I would collapse on myself. My opinion didn’t matter to me, to myself anymore.
Isabel Chiara
That is what she means by collapsing. It is not weakness. It is a habit of checking the room before you check yourself.
She ties it to a feeling she could not name for a long time. She did not feel fed by her own life. She was busy, but the busyness was not feeding her.
How to stop people pleasing: where it can start
Isabel’s view is that this pattern can begin very early. She describes a child deciding, at three or four years old, that it is safer to say nothing, because speaking up seemed to make a parent leave the room or raise their voice. That is her perspective, not a developmental finding, and she offers it as one way of understanding her own story.
Her own childhood had a rule for feelings.
If I felt sad and I wanted to cry, I’d be like, Stop it, get over it.
Isabel Chiara
She says it made her tougher, but it left little room for compassion. That is the part I wanted to stay with.
Self-compassion and the research
This is where I brought in a study. A 2012 meta-analysis by Angus MacBeth and Andrew Gumley, published in Clinical Psychology Review, looked at 20 samples from 14 studies that all used the same self-compassion scale. It found a strong relationship between higher self-compassion and lower anxiety, depression and stress.
It is a correlation. The review cannot tell us which comes first, so it does not show that self-compassion causes fewer symptoms. What it does show is that the two tend to travel together, which makes Isabel’s story worth hearing.
What shifted for her was small and specific. She started changing the words she used with herself, like saying she did well instead of saying it was terrible. That is her practice, not a prescription.
Why food enters the conversation
This is not a conversation about diets or rules, and Isabel is not handing out eating advice. Her point is about what sits underneath.
It’s really not about the food. It’s really about how we’re feeling inside.
Isabel Chiara
Her view is that food can step in when life is not feeding us, and that it did us a service when we needed one. In her words, the fact that we chose food is a gift to us. She is describing a pattern with kindness, not telling anyone what to eat.
The research is more mixed than the phrase “eating your feelings” suggests. A 2020 review in Proceedings of the Nutrition Society defines emotional eating as overeating in response to negative emotions. It notes that studies of healthy people in daily life disagree with each other, that the link is more consistent in people with binge eating, and that the concept itself is still debated.
If food is a hard subject for you, a licensed professional is the right person to bring it to.
Key takeaways
- Collapsing on yourself, in Isabel’s words, is when someone else’s opinion makes yours stop mattering, even to you.
- Isabel’s view is that the habit can start in early childhood, and that noticing it is a first step, not a quick fix.
- Self-compassion and lower anxiety, depression and stress tend to go together in research, though that does not show one causes the other.
- Food is not the villain in Isabel’s telling. She sees it as a signal about how we are feeling inside, and she is clear this is her perspective, not medical advice.
People also ask
How do I stop being a people pleaser?
There is no single fix, and Isabel is honest about that: it is not one and done. Her approach starts with noticing the moment you hand your view over, then changing the words you use with yourself afterward. If people pleasing feels heavy or tied to something painful, a licensed mental health professional can help in ways a podcast cannot.
Why do I care so much about what others think?
Isabel’s view is that the habit can begin in childhood, when staying quiet felt safer. Over time, she says, we get used to switching to whoever is in the room. That is one explanation, offered from her own experience, not a diagnosis.
What does seeking validation from others mean?
It means needing other people’s approval before you trust your own view. Isabel’s word for the opposite of that is uncollapsibility, the idea her book is built around.
Why do I eat when I am not hungry?
People eat for many reasons, and feelings can be one of them. Researchers describe emotional eating as overeating in response to negative emotions, but they also say the evidence is mixed. This episode is not about eating advice, so if it is a worry for you, a doctor or a registered dietitian is the place to start.
A last thought
Isabel’s takeaway is the one I am keeping.
That where you put your focus in your life becomes where you have your greatest abundance or greatest strength in your life.
Isabel Chiara
If you are the one who goes quiet to keep the peace, this was never your fault. It is something you learned along the way, and it can be unlearned at your own pace.
If you want more of Isabel, her website is isabel-chiara.com, and she is giving Vibers a free month of her NOURISH App.
If this conversation brought something up for you, the Mental Health Resources Hub is free, and there is no email required. New here? Start here for the best place to begin.
The best way to never miss an episode is to follow The Vibe With Ky Podcast on Apple Podcasts and leave a rating so more people can find the show. You can also find me at @TheVibeWithKy.
I am a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. I am not a clinician, and nothing here is medical advice.
Much love. Good vibes. ‐ Ky
Full transcript
Prefer to read it? The full conversation is below, with speakers and timestamps.
Read the full transcript
Isabel Chiara (00:00)
It doesn’t matter how much work you do on yourself. If that’s the pattern that we are trending to in our how we are doing, how we’re looking at ourselves and our relationships with other others, then we are always deferring to another person on who we are. And so how do we get a greater sense of ourselves if we’re always switching to whoever’s in the room?
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (00:24)
Hello, my friends. Welcome to The Vibe With Ky Podcast, the show where we talk openly and honestly about mental health and the beautiful mess of being an adult in today’s world. My name is Kyrus Keenan Westcott, and thank you so much for being here.
Today we’re talking about what happens when you hand your sense of who you are to whoever’s in the room. Somebody else’s opinion lands and yours just quietly folds. For a lot of us with ADHD, that can run deep.
Years of other people’s reactions. Telling us who we are long before anyone gave us a reason why. My guest today is Isabel Chiara, an author and a coach, and she’s back on the show for the second time.
Her new book, Nourish, is built around a word that she uses for the opposite of folding, and that is uncollapsibility. Her work starts with the way that we use food and and how we use it when our lives aren’t feeding us. And this conversation goes past the plate, I’ll tell you that.
And it goes into where the habit of folding comes from. We talk about that. And by the end of the episode, you’ll have a clear way to notice the moment that you start handing yourself away and a kinder way to talk yourself back.
Before we get started, if you want more mental health conversations and resources just like this, make sure you visit my website at thevibewithky.com or follow me at @TheVibeWithKy on your favorite social media platform. With that said, sit back, relax, and enjoy my chat with Isabel Chiara on The Vibe With Ky Podcast.
Isabel, welcome. Thanks for thanks for being here.
Isabel Chiara (01:55)
Hi Ky, what a great little intro you just gave me.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (01:58)
Yeah. I I gotta I gotta make sure people know know who who they’re talk who who they’re listening to today ’cause you
Isabel Chiara (02:04)
You set us up for an upbeat kind of conversation already.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:09)
Absolutely. That’s how that’s how we roll here. Now, the the last time that you were on, we talked about nourishment being a whole lot bigger than what is on your plate.
And since then, you’ve written an entire book and you have a fourth one coming. Now, books usually come out of something happening.
So I’m curious, like what happened in those months that made you feel like the last one maybe wasn’t finished? I thought you had more to say.
Isabel Chiara (02:37)
God. Okay, it was what didn’t happen. And what didn’t happen is I was talking about food and the relationship with food.
Mine, and you know, I talked to a million people. And like where there wasn’t really a resolution because it wasn’t really about diet, it wasn’t really about you know what you need to do on a daily basis. It was I I was struggling because I didn’t even want to speak to it after had just wrote a couple of books.
One of the books was just my a story. And the second book became a lot of therapeutic modalities. Like for instance Havening to kind of go into what the what was what was I thinking, you know, what was what needed to shift.
And I was on a search and I have to say, a a newspaper reporter on what I can do to shift behaviors and not have a lot of emotional backlash on myself every time I had some kind of let’s say interaction with food. So I have a the second book became a whole list of here, this modality, this therapeutic modality and those weren’t necessarily the answers that worked and everything I always feel gets you to a certain point. So it’s all been got gotten me to this point here.
So I and I said I wasn’t really interested in speaking about it because of you know that I didn’t have a total resolution, but then one day it kind of came to me and I was like, What am I missing? Like, what didn’t I do? What what’s what is that?
And I realized that I didn’t simply didn’t feel fed in my life. It didn’t my life, I was doing all of these things, but it didn’t, it wasn’t feeding me totally. It was making me busy, right?
So it was distracting me. And I, but it wasn’t feeding me. And I and I I I came up with this word nourish.
Like I need to feel. Nourish and I was like, ding, ding, ding. When I started to use just the word nourish, I started to feel a little happier inside and a little a little appreciative inside, a little grateful inside.
And it wasn’t like I changed everything that I was doing. I didn’t go out and say, okay, I’m gonna do this, this, and this, and now I’m gonna feel nourished. It was that I owned everything I was doing.
And I owned it and I said, okay, you know what? This is nourishing to me. It’s like you have an underlying appreciation of who you are and what you’re thinking.
And your life just becomes that it becomes that word, it becomes that concept. So I like to think of it, Ky, as this big movement, you know, to, I mean, if you if one person thought their life was nourishing in all aspects, right? Then you it it almost like leads to like a greater abundance for people in their life.
Cause you’re like, you’re starting from this other, you know, you’re not starting down below. You’re kind of starting at a high on a higher note for yourself. And then you start to create this, wow, this is nourishing for me.
And then you know, you light up. Your world like kind of lights itself up.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:08)
Yeah.
Isabel Chiara (06:08)
So that’s what I came up with. And I have to say, on a scale of one to ten, my life has become super happy.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:18)
Good. Good. That’s great.
Isabel Chiara (06:20)
Yeah, super happy and it’s a feeling that you can’t take I don’t care what happens. You can’t take it away.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:29)
Yeah. I I wanna talk about something else that you came up with. And that’s the word uncollapsibility.
That’s an that’s a that’s a word in your new book that I I don’t know if I’ve heard anywhere else before. Un uncollapsibility.
Can you define it for for those of us who have never heard it before? And also tell me where did that word come from for you?
Isabel Chiara (06:50)
It’s it’s what I used to do to myself. If someone came in, if I was on a path to something and somebody came in and gave me their opinion or gave me their point of view, it’s it’s like I would collapse on myself. I would it was like my opinion didn’t matter to me, to myself anymore.
I would run with somebody else’s opinion and somebody else’s view of me, I would I would I would I would because I think sometimes when we’re really sensitive, we when another person looks at us in a certain way or another person is telling us something about ourselves and we we can see ourselves the way they’re looking at our us. And we do a big disservice to ourselves by owning another person’s perspective of us. It’s hurtful.
So it’s like I call it like collapsing on ourselves because. We’re not owning any kind of it doesn’t matter how much work you do on yourself.
If that’s the pattern that we are trending to in our how we are doing, how we’re looking at ourselves and our relationships with other others, then we are always deferring to another person on who we are. And so how do we get a greater sense of ourselves if we’re always switching to whoever’s in the room?
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:14)
Right. Right. You know you you
Isabel Chiara (08:15)
But a big that’s a big thing, I think. Yeah it’s a big thing.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:19)
Yeah, you you you said you said something before when you know that I saw when I was doing research for this that I keep coming back to. You said that you connect our relationship with food to our mental health. And that’s really about how how we feed everything else.
Our thoughts, our behaviors, our relationships, our sense of who we are. I wanna unpack that for a second.
What is the connection that you see that you think that most people walk right past? How does food end up telling you something about somebody’s mental health?
Isabel Chiara (08:59)
Okay. So I think it depends on what food’s being used for, you know. So we don’t explore because we have to eat like a lot of people don’t explore this.
They just they want to have control over their food. But food is really kind of dignifying us on some level because what are what are the reasons we would eat without any thought? I mean, because we feel bad.
We don’t feel great. We wanna escape a situation. We wanna escape really our thoughts.
Or we want to eat even not think about what’s happening in our life. We we wanna, you know, so if you don’t want to think about what’s happening in your life, food is one of the greatest things that we can, you know, chew I’ll say chew on.
So it’s really not it’s really not about the food. It’s really about how we’re feeling inside.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:55)
Mm-hmm.
Isabel Chiara (09:55)
And when we finally understand that it’s really about, you know, what our emotional quotient is at that time, then we could start to at least just recognize that for ourselves. I think that’s a great starting point. You know, just saying, Okay, I you know, it must be this must be a traumatic time for me, or this must be a time, like what what was it that triggered me to and by the way, I have a podcast I have a an app that gets into, I don’t know if you remember this from last time.
It’s called the Nourishment App or NOURISH App. And you can go into it and it it has a whole list of you know, things sabotage it’s one of the one of the activations is called Sabotaging Self. And I have another one called Eating for Two, because what we have in front of us.
Is just not enough because we’re not feeding our we’re we’re we’re feeding our soul or our we’re feeding our our emotions on some level. So that’s the best thing to, you know, begin to look at also.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (11:03)
Yeah, yeah. And you are giving a month o of of your NOURISH App for free to everybody that’s listening to the to the pod today. So all of that information is going to be in the description of this podcast.
So all you have to do is go and check it out and go give it a shot because I think I think you can get something really good out of this. And it’s free.
Isabel Chiara (11:22)
It’s I go right back to your childhood of when you create when we created all of these all of these, you know, scenarios for ourselves. And we said, this means this. We weren’t old enough, right?
We were young. And we said, our parents saying this to us means this.
Or I sat at the dinner table and everybody’s angry at me. So I’m, you know, like
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (11:45)
Yeah.
Isabel Chiara (11:45)
Nervous at the dinner table. So how were how are we supposed to fill our bodies with nourishment if we were always in a situation that felt un you know, terrorizing or uncomfortable, you know.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:00)
Yeah. Your your whole message comes down to I think may pretty much one idea that we are the home that we’re looking for. And I think that’s a beautiful sentence.
It’s a beautiful sentiment. It’s also a hard one to to actually live in and and get to. So help help make it concrete for me.
Let’s just look at like a ordinary Tuesday. Wednesday, during the week, you don’t feel like home to yourself. What what do you actually do?
What does that look like on a bad day? And what do you do about it? Yeah, right?
Isabel Chiara (12:38)
What is that like? So messy, isn’t it? No.
I I think if we’re if we’re looking at it, we could feel it coming up, right? Because maybe we’re driving home and we just want something, right? We don’t know what it is.
We want something. And the easiest thing to do is let’s just say we stop at McDonald’s, we stop at whatever, burger, whatever, wherever we want us. We just need something.
It’s like we need a we need a fix. And so I think the first thing we could start to do, and I’m sure everybody said this, which is difficult, is to just you know, start to look at what like what happened and where did we go? And what are our what are the words?
It’s so important to know what the words are that we keep we’re telling ourselves in that moment. And don’t forget, we’re also dealing with a pattern that’s been going on for so long. Like, I feel.
Whatever. I feel angry. I feel criticized.
I feel whatever they however they’re feeling at that moment. And stop off. Stop somewhere.
I need something like right now. So that’s we’re battling that pattern that has made us feel okay. So I mean, don’t I never say that.
It’s not one and done. It’s not like you’re listening to this podcast and you’re gonna say, Okay, I got it now. I mean, we are gonna get it mentally we’re gonna get it mentally.
And then comes the I don’t wanna say work. Comes the the way we’re gonna start yeah. How we’re gonna
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (14:08)
The accountability, the personal accountability for it, yeah.
Isabel Chiara (14:11)
Start to work, or how we’re gonna start to notice, be in the notice of.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (14:15)
Yeah.
Isabel Chiara (14:16)
And that’s like a really big deal that if we if we say to ourselves, okay, let’s let me just be in the notice of this pattern. Okay. And let me be in the notice of what feelings triggered it.
If we can break it down for ourselves, and that’s why my app is really helpful. If we could just break that down, food did us such a service, right? It’s like it’s like one side, okay, it’s maybe not as great for us right now how we’re doing food.
But in the past, it’s really saved us. We have to appreciate that whole pattern that we were able to come up with that particular thing in order to protect our our inner child, our our little our little person.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:03)
Mm-hmm.
Isabel Chiara (15:03)
Because what if we didn’t have anything? Right? It’s that’s even scarier to me.
So that the fact that we chose food is a gift to us, right, to ourselves. So, I don’t did I answer the question? Okay.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:22)
Yeah. Yeah, absolut no, absolutely. Absolutely and I wanna I wanna talk about a a specific habit or pattern that that you that you talk about and you might even be alluding to and that’s the the the habit about about collapsing our our our sense of power into what other people might think.
And I I w I wanna know like when does that start? Is that something that we learn young?
Is it something that builds up over I guess years of of small moments. What does it actually feel like from the inside while it’s happening?
Isabel Chiara (15:55)
Well, I think our body knows things before we realize them. Like sometimes we don’t even get to the point of realizing them. So let’s just say you know that you’re you did something or you said something and you know your parents are gonna be pissed off at you, right?
And so you can almost feel that ’cause you know how kids are like, uh-oh, we’re in trouble now, right? That’s a real thing. So we and we get to the point where now we’re confused about what am I doing that’s gonna create an anger inside of my parents or you know, sometimes there’s just no sometimes there’s just no reason and we don’t know what’s gonna happen to us.
So we, you know, it just might be an anger angry parent. But what we did was we are we’re owning that we are affecting our parents, right? We’re we’re the ones that are triggering them.
But in reality, we’re not, because you could do you we could all do one behavior in front of another person and they might not at react angrily or they might not, you know, how many people ignore their child like could ignore their children or you know, if their pr children say something, they just, you know, walk out of the room. And then the tr child child starts to develop a concept of their self. So when I speak, people don’t listen to me.
So then what happens? Then the child decides, and he’s deciding at a three or four-year-old age, I’m not gonna say anything because every time I say something, my mommy or daddy leaves the room, you know, or every time I say something, my mommy or daddy’s yelling at me. So we are we integrate that it’s almost also not only that, it’s also visual visual that we’re holding inside of ourselves.
Right. So now we go out in the world and we expect another person to walk away from us, or we expect another person to be pissed off at us when we say something. That’s a big that’s like a big thing to hold on to in your in our life.
So what we don’t most of us don’t even know that that’s what we keep creating because I do believe that the visual of what we see that has happened in our childhood, that’s why I did all of those apps, the visual that we saw. Is the visual that we’re carrying out in the real world without even we don’t even know it most of the time, you know.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:19)
Yeah. I I I wanna I did some research. I was I was looking up some things and I found something interesting.
I there was this study done in twenty twelve by two two researchers, Angus MacBeth and Andrew Gumley and they published this meta analysis in the the Clinical Psychology Review. And in this analysis they pulled 20 samples from about 14 different studies, all using the same self-compassion scale. And they they measured how self-compassion tracked against anxiety and depression and stress.
And they found a pretty strong relationship. More self-compassion, fewer symptoms. Now, that obviously is a correlation, so nobody can tell you which direction it runs, but.
I think it’s the best evidence that I could find sitting underneath of what you teach, right? So in your experience, when when somebody who has been brutal to themselves for years, when it starts to soften, what moves first?
Like in other words, you know, the research links being kinder to yourself with less anxiety and depression. What do you see shift first?
Isabel Chiara (19:32)
My God, Ky, I can’t believe he brought this whole thing up. That was the first thing I started to notice when that happened. When I started to shift my words to myself.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (19:42)
Yeah.
Isabel Chiara (19:42)
I started to notice, and believe you me, compassion was one of not one of my things, right? Because I actually came from a pretty tough family that, you know, if you felt sad or hurt, you know, get over it. And I used to say that to myself.
As little kid, I like if I felt sad and I wanted to cry, I’d be like, Stop it, get over it. Those that was what I was running my life with, you know. I mean, it did help to make me tougher, but it also ne never left a little room for any kind of compassion.
So, you know, everything was right or wrong, everything was black and white, and you know, I had to keep moving. I had to keep moving in order to, you know, f be in the world.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:25)
Yeah.
Isabel Chiara (20:25)
And I look and not only that, you look at the world like that also. That’s the landscape of the of your world, but it’s the landscape of what you think is out there, but it’s not really out there. It’s really inside of you.
So I think that as soon as we start to develop the you know, those words for ourselves and say, I had to say, I saw how to I had to choose words first. So I had to choose, ways of thinking first and then apply them to every situation. So I would say, it’s okay.
I have I would have to say, you know, to myself, it’s okay. What’s the what’s the what’s the inner real meaning of this situation? Okay, you did I would have to say I did well instead of saying that sucked.
Right? I would have to tell myself, it’s okay, maybe. I I would come up with a, you know, like a more spiritual connotation to s to things.
I would say, all right, so I think this is good. I just don’t see it yet. Right?
I think I took the wrong step, I I took the right steps, but I just can’t see what the result is. But I would so now I’d walk in with a knowing that, okay, what I did was great or what I said was good. It took me to another, it pivoted me or it turned me around and I just didn’t see it.
So I would do those. I would say those kinds of things to myself. And that would start to change.
And then I would see it out in the world as me being right on some level. You know, I would say something in advance of what and they would people would be, that’s not true. You know what I mean?
And so my old self would have like, my God, they’re like criticizing me. And but then I started when I started to say, I I started to say, I know I’m right. On some level about this, because it came from inside.
So I allowed that for myself. And then let me see. And then I would ask spirit, higher power, I would say, give me some evidence.
You know, so I started setting my world up with evidence that what I what I was saying was accurate and right, even though people weren’t receiving me right at that moment. Because I was in the middle of shifting patterns, that particular pattern. So I started having more compassion for what I said.
I was like, I don’t know why I’m saying this. Now I said, I don’t know why I’m saying this, but I think it’s accurate.
You know, so I leave room for that. Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (22:50)
Yeah. Yeah. I wanna dive deep into into your your own mindset here because you you write about taking back parts of you of ourselves that we once dismissed or silenced.
And like I wanna I wanna ask you, like a personal one for you, which which part did you silence? Who and what what did it take to let
Isabel Chiara (23:13)
Voice.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:14)
It back in? Yeah.
Isabel Chiara (23:15)
My voice, and here I am writing now. I was like, I can’t write about this, but I felt like I had so much to say to everybody because I actually did the work. I actually was analyzing my moves.
I was out in the world, like looking underneath everything, you know, like you know, really digging, like what’s it gonna take, or what what what what am I thinking? What am I doing? You know, so if I was doing all that kind all that work for myself, what was I gonna do?
Not share it with anybody because I spent so much time and money. I mean, it’s not easy to go through everything like that. And I did it with a lot of really good people along the way.
And I always wanted to share everything, but I but it wasn’t received, you know, it wasn’t received by people. People don’t want to work on them. I don’t think a lot of people want to work on themselves.
I think maybe your audience is really looking, in inside. But it’s easier to go outside of yourself, which is the pe which is what most people do, or I have d I have done, to say it’s not me, it’s them. You know, it’s not you know, but and some level the common denominator is ourselves.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (24:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
Isabel Chiara (24:31)
Right. So that was where I was that was my whole like thing that I knew at the end of the day I had to get to the point where I loved everything I said, everything I was doing in my life.
I need to get to I need to get to that point for myself because otherwise what was my life what was my life about? You know, what all the work I’ve done, what was that gonna do for me if I, you know, ended up with nothing?
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (24:57)
Yeah.
Isabel Chiara (24:57)
And yeah, it’s not like I ha people were saying, Let’s listen to what she has to say. So yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (25:03)
Sure, sure. But but but but I’m glad that you’re speaking up about it now because I mean you’re helping so many people. You know, I there’s a lot of people that are listening or watching right now that feel validated, you know, because they might have felt like they were the only person in this journey.
And and you’ve spent your life talking about this And and here’s what I what I what I want to understand of everywhere in a person’s life that all of this could show up. You you found it at the table. Why is that the place the self-talk gets loud first for so many people?
Why what what is it about? That particular moment. Why does food end up being where all of this shows up?
Isabel Chiara (25:49)
Right. It’s because I think we used food to cover our feelings, mask our feelings. We used food as a way to be in relationship with other people.
You know, if you’re eating, then you can eat and you don’t have to converse with another person. So it kind of breaks up the tension with other people. So it’s what a lot of us choose.
Again, it’s acceptable too. Like no one’s really gonna say. To us, well, you can’t eat.
No one will ever say that to us. So it’s like a behavior that’s an acceptable behavior. So we’re trying to f we’re finding that one point of acceptance between us and the other person.
And it’s always like food or you know, coffee or you know, something like that, right? Now it’s coffee, so we could do coffee.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:41)
Yes. Your your your your next book is called Nourish 365, which it sounds like it sounds like it’s a daily thing. And I have to I have to ask this is I have to ask this one on behalf of of my audience because a lot of people hear the word daily and they just immediately feel like they’ve failed because you know there’s so many people that are, moms and, work a full time job and at the end of the day they feel as though Yeah, they have no capacity.
Yeah. So
Isabel Chiara (27:10)
And I can’t put another thing on my plate. Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (27:15)
So what what does that look like for somebody running on empty? Yeah.
Isabel Chiara (27:18)
Even like that. Right. It’s not even like that.
It’s like I like to look at books. Let me get one of my books. So here’s the Nourish book.
So it’s kind of like you could just take the book. You’re not, you’re not gonna do one, two, three, four. I got I don’t even think like that in my life.
I just wanted to write down something that you know people can refer to and just do a flippy like this, right? And say, this is relevant to me, you know, this week. You know, so now they look at it and they’re they’re reading it and they say, I’m I can look at this whole thing.
So it’s kind of like a reminder of in your life, you get to go look at what’s what this particular behavior is. So it’s reminding you to look inside and just see what the behavior is. And probably if you flip to it, I always think that, you know, your energy.
In in relationship to a book, interacts with the book. The book becomes your s a storytelling device for you. And you can write I have a place where you could write down your feelings and things like that.
And then it gives you room to like contemplate, okay, yeah, yeah, you know, I have that going on. Let me look at that. And then it’s just another, you know, internal view of how you might be thinking of a situation.
And then you can expand on that situation and look at it in a full spectrum as opposed to right here, very, very narrow way to look at it. So it’s not a my God, let me go do it. I mean, there will be some people that do like do it like that because that’s how they that’s how they do things.
And they might be, you know, I think I think like some books activate us. Do you agree?
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:06)
Yes. Mm-hmm.
Isabel Chiara (29:07)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:08)
I I agree I do agree with that. Yes. Absolutely.
Isabel Chiara (29:10)
Yeah. So maybe the book will be calling them forward in a good way.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:15)
Yeah. I wanna play a little game with you. This is called This or That.
And what’s gonna happen is I’m going to give you two choices of things. You can either choose one or the either or neither or both. Doesn’t matter.
It is not deep, I promise you. You could just go with whatever whatever first pops up into your head and and we go from there. Sound good?
All right, here we go. First one.
Isabel Chiara (29:34)
Uh-huh. Yeah.
Me, the big game player. I never play games.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:40)
It’s really easy. I made it really, really easy for you.
I promise. Here
Isabel Chiara (29:42)
Okay, go ahead.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:43)
We go. First one. Going for a morning walk or reading in the morning?
Isabel Chiara (29:49)
Morning walk. Going for a morning walk.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:50)
Morning walk. Yeah, yeah, I’m the same way. I I like like like right after this I’m gonna go for a walk and that’s I’m like looking for it.
So that’s gonna be lot of fun. Next one. Would you rather follow the recipe or go off script in the kitchen?
Isabel Chiara (30:04)
Never, ever, ever do I follow a recipe and everybody gets pissed off at me because if they like something, they’re like, can you give us a re and I go, No, I don’t do recipes, da da da I just kind of follow ingredients, you know, what kind of ingredients and then I read three or four recipes and mix it together.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (30:24)
Yeah, that’s fair. Here we go.
Next one. Do you prefer a loud bustling kitchen or a quiet kitchen?
Isabel Chiara (30:30)
Loud bustling.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (30:32)
Yeah. Yeah.
Interesting. Why’s that?
Isabel Chiara (30:33)
Well, because they’re usually I I so I I set my house up where I have this big counter in the center and a big stove, you know, that and so I like to cook three or four things at the same time and mix stuff together. And I have set up chairs on the other side, like I’m setting up a cooking demonstration.
So people come over, they’re I’m talking and I’m cooking and they’re you know, handing food out as we’re speaking. So it’s like kind of a fun
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:03)
Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Would you would you rather host or be hosted? Yeah, I’m the same way. I’m the I’m the same way.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Yes. Yes.
Isabel Chiara (31:08)
Host. Yeah. Right.
‘Cause I’m comforta because you’re comfortable in your kitchen, right? Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:16)
And you know where everything is and like you can yes, I’m with you.
Isabel Chiara (31:19)
Right. I love to host, yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:22)
Would you when you’re writing, do you prefer to write things by hand or type it out?
Isabel Chiara (31:26)
Mm r by hand. Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:30)
The amount of notebooks that I have, just in general, I just always have it with me because I don’t always have the ability to to write things or to type things out. So like I I have
Isabel Chiara (31:40)
All right.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:40)
Tons of notebooks and notepads and oof, too many.
Isabel Chiara (31:43)
I like to talk I like to talk into the phone and then
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:47)
Yeah, sure. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Isabel Chiara (31:49)
Bring it back out and then like go through it and say, that’s what I said and I like to do it when I’m driving. I think most a lot of inspiration comes from driving. Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (32:02)
And then last one, do you prefer the ocean or the mountains?
Isabel Chiara (32:06)
The ocean. Must always be around water. Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (32:07)
Yeah, yeah, good choice. Yes, yes. As a as a Jersey boy, the I’ll I will always choose the ocean over the mountains.
I feel like it’s it’s a requirement for us Jersey folk. I love it.
Isabel Chiara (32:22)
Yeah. It’s funny. I think there’s certain personalities that need to be around water.
Water’s soothing and water’s you know, let’s it just feels safe. Water feels safe.
I think that we’re our bodies crave that. Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (32:40)
Absolutely. I have one more question for you.
Before I let you go, and I asked this of all my guests before I release them from my grasp. And that is, what is if there’s one thing that you want the audience to take away from our conversation today, what is that one thing?
Isabel Chiara (32:55)
That where you put your focus in your life becomes where you have your greatest abundance or greatest strength in your life. You know, like so when you start to focus on something, like you want to want to be abundant in your life, you wanna feel nourished in your life, when you start to walk that path, the whole path opens up for you. And you start to feel nourish, you start to be nourished, you start to look at everything as that, and you become this really abundant human being.
You resonate with everything around you. It’s so much bigger than a it’s almost like bigger than life. I I don’t know how to say it.
So big, you know, that it’s captivating. Right. So I think the path for nourish that we start to take.
You’re never in the wrong spot at the wrong time, right? You’re not getting anywhere. You’re just being, we’re just being nourished.
So it’s a really big breathe into it, see it, like love it, you know, envelop it. It’s kind of you know an amazing place to be in life. Like it almost feels like you’ve arrived.
Right? Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:10)
Yeah. Thank you so much to Isabel Chiara for being a guest on The Vibe With Ky Podcast today. If you enjoyed Isabel, be sure to check out her website at isabel-chiara.com and on Instagram at Nourish underscore Isabel Chiara.
Her latest book is called Nourish, and she’s giving you a whole month of her NOURISH App for free. All of those links are in the show notes of this episode. If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you visit my website at thevibewithky.com or follow me at @TheVibeWithKy on your favorite social media platform for even more conversations and content just like this episode.
And if you haven’t already, please subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a review so people can find The Vibe With Ky Podcast just like you did. Thank you so much for watching and for listening. As always, my friend, much love, good vibes.
Catch you next time. Bye.
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