I Didn't Think I Belonged in the Room

A woman comes into one of my groups and tells us she doesn’t have a win to share that week. It’s been a hard week. Really hard. She can’t think of anything she did well, and she’s already starting to beat herself up about all the things she thinks she did wrong.

Then another woman in the group reminds her, “But you’re here.”

She’s right. She’s here. Maybe the old version of her would have skipped group after a week like this. Maybe she would have disappeared until she felt like she had gotten herself “back on track” and had something better to report. But this time she showed up anyway, and another woman helped her recognize something she couldn’t see for herself: showing up was the win.

I’ve been leading groups for women in weight management for more than two decades, and moments like this still get me. I can teach women about the importance of support and community all day long. I can put it in a Google Slides deck and tell them they need people around them who understand this work. But there is a big difference between hearing about community and actually experiencing it.

And I get to watch women experience it all the time, even in a little Zoom square.

Women often come into my groups wondering if they can trust the people in the room. Will anyone really get me? Am I the only person struggling with this? What if I say what I’m really thinking? Everyone else probably has this figured out except me.

Then, eventually, someone gets brave. I call this courage in action.

Sometimes it’s a woman telling the truth about an emotional eating episode from the night before—the kind she’s embarrassed about, the kind that made her wake up thinking, I can’t believe I did that again. She takes the risk of telling the group, and instead of judgment, she sees heads nodding. Someone unmutes and says, I’ve been there. Me too.

Sometimes the courageous thing a woman admits isn’t even about food. It’s simply, I’m tired. I don’t want to have to work this hard at this for the rest of my life. You mean there isn’t a finish line? I have to keep doing this? And again, she looks around the room and realizes she isn’t the only one who has thought it.

There’s something powerful that happens when the thing you were most afraid to say out loud is met with nodding heads instead of judgment. You feel seen. You feel validated. And shame starts to loosen its grip.

When that happens, something else usually follows. Women get braver. They share more honestly. They take more risks in what they’re willing to reveal. They stop spending quite so much energy trying to convince everyone—including themselves—that they’re doing fine.

And that’s when we can really do some Headwork™.

Shame Wants Us Alone

I’ve learned so much from Brené Brown’s work on shame over the years. In her TED talk Listening to Shame, she describes shame as the gremlin that drives those painfully familiar messages of “never good enough” and, if we can get past that one, “who do you think you are?”

Oh, how I know those two messages.

Last fall, I applied to be part of something called The Circle. I looked at the women involved and immediately thought, These women are so out of my league. There is no way I belong with them.

There was that first shame message: Never good enough.

Applying anyway was a huge step of faith for me. Then I got accepted, and you’d think that would have settled it, right?

Nope.

When we all met in person for the first time, comparison started creeping in again. At the end of our weekend together, we were sitting around a small, intimate table, and I admitted to these women, “I don’t think I belong here.”

The shame gremlin had simply changed messages: Who do you think you are?

But something happened over the months that followed. These women let me be fully myself with them. I’ve shared some incredibly vulnerable parts of myself, and some of the very women I once thought were so far “out of my league” have trusted me with their own insecurities, questions and self-doubt.

Imagine that. The women I was comparing myself to were human too.

Over these past months, my Circle has helped me grow in my confidence, but even more than that, they’ve helped me step into it. Today I can say something I couldn’t quite say around that table when we first met:

I absolutely belong there.

And I’ve realized something important about how that happened. My Circle doesn’t necessarily give me answers. They walk alongside me and help me see that sometimes the answer was already within me. They ask questions. They reflect things back to me. They help pull out what can be very difficult for me to see when I’m standing right in the middle of my own story.

Sound familiar?

It’s exactly what I’ve watched women do for one another in my groups for years.

Community Is Treatment™

This is what I mean when I say Community Is Treatment.

Community isn’t treatment because another woman fixes you or because someone else has all the answers. It’s treatment because shame thrives in hiding, and something changes when we’re truly seen.

In fact, that’s another reason Brené Brown’s work has stayed with me for so many years. She teaches that shame grows in secrecy, silence and judgment—and that empathy is one of its most powerful antidotes. Sometimes two of the most powerful words we can hear when we’re struggling are simply, me too.

I have watched that happen over and over again.

The woman who was convinced she had no wins borrows another woman’s eyes for a moment and realizes, Wait. Showing up was a win. The woman convinced she’s the only one emotionally eating at night discovers other women nodding along. The woman who thinks everyone else has happily figured out how to maintain a healthier lifestyle forever finally admits, Sometimes I don’t want to have to do all of this anymore, and hears another woman say, Oh my gosh, me too.

And the woman sitting at a table thinking, I don’t belong with these women, eventually discovers that maybe she belonged all along.

That’s community

.It’s also one of the reasons I launched the After the Food Noise Substack community. I want women to have a place where we can talk honestly about what happens after some of the noise gets quieter—not only what we’re eating or what the scale is doing, but all of the emotional work underneath it.

And lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to take that idea even deeper.

One of the most meaningful experiences I’ve had in my own Circle involved sitting in what we call the Clarity Chair and bringing some of my self-doubt into the middle of the room. I had been comparing myself to another expert in my space, and I couldn’t seem to get out of my own head about it. The women around me didn’t tell me what to do or give me the answer. Through their questions and reflections, they helped me uncover what I couldn’t quite see on my own.

That experience has stayed with me. In fact, it has inspired part of something new I’m creating for this fall—a small, intimate experience where women won’t simply learn Headwork™, but will get to practice it together.

I’ll tell you more about that very soon.

And there’s something especially fitting about writing this essay right now. As you’re reading this on Monday, I’m actually with my treasured friend Jeanne, one of the women from my Circle, enjoying a few days at her beautiful lake house in Wisconsin. I’m sure there will be plenty of fun, plenty of talking and probably plenty of reflecting, because that’s what we do.

I find myself thinking about the version of me who sat around that table when our Circle first gathered and told these women I wasn’t sure I belonged there. I wish I could tell her what I know now.

The Circle didn’t make me worthy of belonging. I belonged before I ever walked into the room. I just needed some other women to walk alongside me long enough to help me see it.

Maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts we can give one another. We don’t have to have the answers. We don’t have to fix each other. Sometimes we simply need to create enough safety for another woman to tell the truth and then stay beside her long enough for her to realize, I’m not the only one. I’m not crazy. I belong here. And I don’t have to figure all of this out alone.

That’s why, after more than two decades of watching what happens when women truly show up for one another, I keep coming back to the same belief:

Community Is Treatment.