A new resource for you and what not to say to girls selling you Girl Scout cookies

Because, yeah, these kids deserve better than unsolicited diet talk.

Hi!

I’m super excited, first, to tell you about a new offering that’s now available on my website. It’s called Recognizing and Understanding Emotions: A Guide For Befriending and Becoming Curious About Your Emotions and the Messages They Deliver.

This 13-page digital download is a roadmap for better understanding your emotions, and I created this resource because very few humans actually know how to healthily deal with their very human (and sometimes also very complex) emotions. This document started as a very boring/ugly Microsoft Word document. Despite its basic aesthetic, I found myself handing it out to clients all the time, clients with varying DSM-5 diagnoses, trauma histories, and unique personalities, clients who consistently gave me feedback about how helpful they found the resource.

This is because emotion dysregulation - which essentially just means difficulty naming, sensing, processing, and dealing with emotions - lies at the root of so many of our mental health struggles. I won’t go into the why behind that here (I speak to it in the guide) but despite there being good reasons for why this is, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a better relationship with your emotions now. You CAN, you just need a roadmap. And that is exactly what I’ve created for you - hooray!

I often talk with my therapy clients about how emotions are like postmen. They deliver important messages about what’s going on both externally and internally, and they give you both the wisdom and energy to do something (or to know when not to do something). For example, Anger often tells us that we’ve been harmed, ignored, or disrespected, or that someone has done something that violates our boundaries or values. Sadness has a lot to tell us about loss, both physical and emotional, and often urges us to seek soothing, comfort, or connection.

When we learn to welcome our emotions - all of them, even the “bad ones” - with openness, non-judgment, and curiosity, there is so much we start to learn and this enables us to respond mindfully and act with integrity.

I’m so grateful for those of you who have already purchased my guide (and I know there are several of you)! If you haven’t purchased yet and you’re interested, head on over to my website and clickety-click-click that purchase button. I can’t really promise anyone anything, but I *think* that I can confidently say it will be a good use of $12 and you will become more emotionally aware and intelligent because of it (and if you’re a parent, your kids might too!) And, gosh, the world needs emotionally healthy humans!

And since we’re talking about emotions, I felt it appropriate to offer my thoughts on Girl Scout Cookie rhetoric because tis’ the season. I often feel angry and sad whenever I see older humans projecting their insecurities and disordered eating thoughts and behaviors on precious young women who are simply trying to sell some cookies. Let the ladies sell in peace!

If you’ve followed me or read any of my older-ish writings, you know that I do a lot of educating around eating disorder prevention and a big part of that is shedding light on the sea that we all swim in (and do so mostly unconsciously) which is called “diet culture”. If this is a new term for you, I really do encourage you to learn more about it (because it’s majorly problematic and does a lot of harm). Here is a great place to start. I also flesh it out a little bit more in an older blog post which you can find here.

Anyways because diet culture is everywhere, it can very easily show up in our conversations with Girl Scouts selling cookies and it can do so much damage to young women— young women who are on the heels of puberty, whose bodies are likely changing (and that’s a GOOD thing), and who are trying to figure out how to be kind to themselves in the thick of these changes within the context of a culture that is obsessed with physical appearances and thinness no matter the cost.

Do you know how girls learn about what is and isn’t acceptable about certain bodies? Sure, it’s social media, and yes, it’s from the other kids at school. But it’s mostly from the adults they converse with. So when a kid selling cookies hears older women say, “Oh, I don’t eat that trash” or “I’m on a diet”, or “Those are too many calories”, what they learn is: eating cookies is “bad”, I need to diet too, I need to be afraid of calories. Whether you mean to or not (and whether you’re aware of it or not), what you’re saying is / what they hear is: this is how you should be and this is what it means to be a woman.

And these are NOT the messages our girls, our children, need to hear. The idealization of thinness (paired with the inaccuracy of many of our most prominent cultural messages about “health”) is the number one social predictor of eating disorders and eating disorders aren’t “cute” or a “fad”, they’re the second mostly deadly of any mental health condition, second to opioid use. Eating disorders are not to be admired, they’re to be prevented and treated.

One of the ways we can use our words to help and not harm in response to Girl Scout Cookies is actually really simple. If you’re not a big Girl Scout Cookie fan or you don’t want to purchase them for whatever reason, you literally can just say, “No thank you!” or “I already purchased them from another friend.” (even if you haven’t)!! Leave the diet talk out of the conversation - it’s not needed.

To be transparent, I don’t love Girl Scout cookies. Maybe because I’m a cookie snob (?) or maybe because of my personal taste/texture preferences… I think they’re just “okay”. But I would never say that to someone selling me Girl Scout cookies, and it’s not because I’m just a super nice person, it’s because young minds are formidable, they don’t need to hear about my nuanced ideas and thoughts about their cookies, and it’s simply easier for me to say, “No, thank you!”. ((**Though, I do buy Thin Mints every year without fail - my husband and I put them in the freezer and they get crumbled on ice cream).

Our words matter, especially when it comes to words about food in the context of our relationships with the younger people in our lives. They need our words to breathe freedom, not rigidity and disorder. I’m tempted to digress and flesh this out more…but I’m also really tired and need to go to sleep.

So long, farewell, good night!

With love,