If you self soothe with food to manage anxiety, care for unresolved trauma, or to lower stress, and you want to care for your needs without overeating, I can help.
At Growing Humankindness I weave together the worlds of relational neuroscience, self compassion, and presence so you can gently let go of overeating – and gently soften the shame you feel about your complex relationship with food.
There’s a way to soften overeating or a sugar fixation without white knuckling it or being harsh with yourself, and I love teaching and sharing this path.
I don’t offer food plans, menus, or nutritional guidance about what to eat – there are others who offer this good work. My home study courses, group classes and support groups are here to help you understand the roots of food compulsions, change how you relate to the wounds that feed them, and gently outgrow a painful attachment to food.
Loving relationship is the womb that unravels painful habits with food and that softens self judgment. I help you nurture this relationship and find rest.
As you heal painful attachments to food, you’re also softening the shame and negative identification of addiction. This helps you live from a place of self trust, forgiveness, and strength: what we yearn for, for all of us. Learn more about my approach here.
How to begin working with me
Nurture Love by Eddy Sara, used by kind permission of the artist
If you’re new to Growing Humankindness, I’d love for you to get to know me. You can learn more about my Karly’s, journey here and the foundations of Growing Humankindness here.
You’ll also want to sign up for the newsletter so you can receive regular nourishment and learn about upcoming classes and events. And I invite you into our free welcome room in the Growing Humankindness Mighty Network where you’ll get access to helpful resources like The Binge Rescue Worksheet, our most popular tool for binge eating, along with talks, webinars, and more.
When you’re ready to go deeper and want more help
If I’m the right fit for you and you want to work with me, I offer these kinds of support:
- Companioning, 1 on 1 support – you can work with me 1 on 1 to receive coaching, support and companioning, usually twice per month. Learn more about 1 on 1 support here.
- Gathering Ourselves, creativity and writing circles to nurture self compassion and connection. I also offer these for 1 on 1 companioning.
- Home study courses – courses that you can take at home, at any time
- And small group classes – take a class with a group. I currently offer 1-2 group classes throughout the year.
Home study courses have the same course materials as small group classes. Small group classes also include weekly webinars and a forum to connect and share with others. All my courses are hosted on the Growing Humankindness Mighty Network, an ad free, private, beautifully cultivated space where you have unlimited online access.
Where to start
Soften a Sugar Habit with Presence, Compassion and Grief
The first place to begin is by taking Soften a Sugar Habit with Presence, Compassion and Grief. This class offers four foundational tools – presence, compassion, grief, and loving limits – that we explore in all our classes and that can help you transform your patterns with food.
This class will help you understand the ‘how’ of how you change your relationship with food and relate to cravings. Soften is offered as a home study course ($200 USD) that you can begin at any time.
When Food Is Your Mother
After taking the Soften class, you want to take When Food is Your Mother. Relational neuroscience has helped us understand that our addictions – including food addictions – are emotional bonds – places of safety, warmth and ‘holding’ that we turn to when we’re overwhelmed by pain, alarm, or distress.
In moments of overwhelm, this emotional bond with food – and the needs that drive it – can override other needs, such as a need for health or nurturing limits. In When Food is Your Mother, you’ll learn more about this new understanding of addiction and ways you can nurture the healing process.
When Food is Your Mother is offered as a home study course that you can begin at any time ($200 USD) and is often on my group class schedule.
Where to go next
After taking Soften and When Food is Your Mother, the garden path opens to my other offerings, and where you go next is a matter of which course speaks to you and where you need support.
As for pacing, I recommend doing one class at a time. While I understand the desire to move forward, doing too much can overwhelm your nervous system and frustrate you.
Align: Heal the Battle with Your Inner Rebel
Align is for you if you reactively push against help and support and get stuck in feelings of resistance – “No, you can’t make me!” – when you try to set limits with food.
You’ll learn how to soften the inner conflict between the part of you that wants to change and the part of you that pushes back. Defusing this conflict will help you follow through on the changes you want to make with food, set limits, and express a greater sense of power and agency in your life. This home study course is $200 USD.
Emerge – Create a New Habit
Emerge: Create a New Habit is for you if you want gentle yet powerful emotional support to navigate the transition into a low or no sugar diet. You’ll receive daily emotional support and learn how to apply self compassion to the process of habit change with sugar, so you can create more nourishing self talk and build resilience, that internal sense of, “I trust myself to move through this.” This home study course is $200 USD.
Listen: Gentle Ways to Support Your Healing with Food
Listen: Gentle Ways to Support Your Healing with Food covers seven core areas where nearly everyone struggles in their healing journey. These core areas are caring for neediness, befriending cravings, caring for places of collapse and powerlessness, becoming more comfortable with the ebb and flow of emptiness and satiation, limits, receiving care rather than caretaking, and softening perfectionism. This home study course is $200 USD.
Nurturing Your Inner Mother
Nurturing Your Inner Mother is a year long intensive to transform your inner world from shame, judgment, and criticism into a warm, welcoming inner refuge where self soothing with food, isolation, and self judgment can gently fall away.
Each month has a theme – like blessing the body or befriending the outcast – to help you soften shame, rest in your wholeness, and deepen your courage and compassion. This home study course is $200 USD.
My best value – the home study bundle
If several of our courses appeal to you, I offer a home study bundle where you get my most popular home study courses Align: Heal the Battle with Your Inner Rebel; Emerge: Create a New Habit, Soften a Sugar Habit with Presence, Compassion and Grief and When Food is Your Mother for one price, a savings of $400.
Here are the payment options for the home study bundle:
Learn more about the home study bundle here.
Group cohort classes
I currently offer 1-2 group cohort classes throughout the year from my library of courses where you can join others for weekly webinars and connect on an online forum. This is helpful if you want a place where you can ask questions, listen to others’ stories, share your experience, and learn with a group.
Group classes have the same materials as our home study classes but bring this extra layer of interactivity and connection. We get a lot of positive feedback about our classes and enjoy creating a warm, welcoming, safe space to learn, grow and explore. Group classes are especially helpful in softening shame, isolation and the feeling of being all alone.
Group classes range from $200 USD to $400 USD, depending on their length. You can see a list of upcoming classes on the calendar here.
Individual companioning
I love working with people on a 1 on 1 basis who want extra companioning, coaching and support. To inquire about individual companioning, please reach out to me here. Companioning calls are $150, although discounts are available if you become a long term client.
How this approach fits in with therapy
I get lots of questions about how my work fits in with therapy and nutritional counseling and how to find a therapist who understands attachment. If you resonate with my approach, you want to look for a therapist who’s versed in attachment and relational psychology.
Go to this page to learn more about healing trauma and finding an attachment trained therapist.
A nutritionist can also be a good complement to my classes as I don’t cover the ‘what to eat’ topic. Many people pair our classes with a therapist and find this combination to be complementary, powerful, and helpful. You can bring the insights that you discover in class to your therapist, who can support you in processing, validating, grieving, and making sense of your experience.
A therapist can also help you care for any trauma that’s underneath the addiction. The key is not overwhelming the healing process by doing too many things at once or rushing the healing process. When we face an addiction, we can feel alarmed, frustrated, ashamed, and pressured to ‘make our healing happen.’ This can create feelings of urgency where we feel like we need to hurry up, micro manage our healing, or cover every base. I encourage you to slow down, take one step at a time, and trust the healing and unwinding process that’s carrying you. Your nervous system, body and psyche have wisdom within them and will guide you.
How long does it take to heal?
Which brings us to a question I hear often: How long does it take to heal?
While each person’s journey is unique – filled with its own timing, heart, and wisdom – I’ve found it takes a couple years to nurture and support the healing process that softens protectors like food. It’s a developmental process, and it needs patience, safety, support, and time.
You may feel frightened or frustrated by this number. But facing the truth helps us orient ourselves to the process, accept the unwinding journey with all its ups and downs, and relax into it.
During this window, several important things are happening. You’re supporting your body, nervous system, heart and mind in:
- feeling safe, the foundational need for healing
- reclaiming and feeling your feelings
- moving frustration, which softens self attack, shame and self blame
- moving alarm and other primal emotions, which softens perfectionism, alarm based overeating, and other protectors like overdoing
- cultivating the compassion, patience, and curiosity that supports healing
- moving out of isolation and into connection
- pruning out what doesn’t work
- and grieving the losses that live underneath overeating
You also may be healing trauma. If you want trauma support, I highly recommend working with a trained therapist alongside my offerings. You can learn more about getting trauma support here.
Closing blessing and questions
A collage I made on rising, emerging, and healing.
I yearn to respect your time, money, energy, and dreams of healing, and I want you to get the support you need. If you have any questions about any of my offerings, and if they’re the right fit for you, please reach out. I’m here to help, whether you choose my services or another’s.
Please go here to read my refund policy, privacy policy, terms and conditions, and more.
I bow my heart, bend my knee, and tune my ears to the beauty in your journey, to the longings in your heart, and to the mercy that holds us all. As many have said, “the work of one is the work of all.” Your desire to ease your suffering eases the suffering of all of us. For that, I thank you.
With warmth and sincerity, Karly and the Growing Humankindness team