Recovery from the Need to Be Perfect with Gabby Pritts

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Like so many of us, Change coach Gabby Pritts lived for a long time with a misunderstanding about where her experience came from. This led to her developing the unwanted habit of needing to be perfect so that she could be safe. And this focus on perfection led to some disordered eating.

Thankfully she came across the inside-out understanding and began to question her thoughts. She now helps her clients to see the innate wisdom within themselves.

 

You can find Gabby Pritts at GabbyPritts.com.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. 

Show Notes

• On the exhaustion created by trying to be perfect
• How disordered eating was an outward expression of that quest for perfection
• The power of questioning our negative thoughts about ourselves

Resources Related to this Episode

• My book, It’s Not About the Food
• The Little School of Big Change
• Angus and Rohini Ross

Transcript of Interview with Gabby Pritts

Alexandra: Gabby Pritts, welcome to Unbroken.

Gabby: It’s a pleasure to be here with you. 

Alexandra: It’s so great to have you here.

Tell us about a little bit about your journey, your background and how you came across the three principles.

Gabby: You can go in so many ways as far as someone’s background is concerned, but for the purpose of this podcast, and the people may be listening to it my background is your typical child that grew up with a certain set of ideas of how things should be and coming to realize that sometimes, a lot of times, things aren’t the way that you thought they were going to be. And just trying to figure it all out. 

I grew up in a not-so-typical home. I grew up with a couple of aunts, and my mom was there and a couple of brothers. My mom remarried eventually, and there was a lot of step-siblings. And that didn’t work out too well. So I went back with my aunt and was raised by them. My mom was still in the picture. But she wasn’t living with me. So at an early age, I didn’t have her. But I did have a lot of love. 

I will say that I still had my brothers and I had my aunts. Growing up practicing Roman Catholic, there was a lot of rule and regulation involved in the home. And so things were the way they need to be because that’s the way things were, and you don’t question things. 

Well, I questioned a lot of things early on, and I challenged ideas, I challenged everything I was the kid that always asked why and would not stop asking why. So eventually, still having that in me, that innate, regulated way of being I always strive to do the best, I always wanted to do the best, I always wanted to be as perfect as possible. And always falling short. Because once you reach that perfection,  you always want more, you want something different and you just use continue to fall short. 

Early on I always got praised for being a pretty girl and being good at sports so those are the things that I focused on. Okay, so if someone doesn’t say that I’m pretty or someone doesn’t say that I did well in this particular game or whatever, in I felt bad and I was I was always looking at how I could better myself or what I did wrong and should have could have would have been. That morphed into just trying to be perfect, like I just mentioned just all the time. 

One of the ways that I can be perfect dealt with controlling things. And one of the ways that I could be perfect was to control what I did with a rigid schedule and including exercise and what I ate. So that led to a lot of disordered eating. That just unraveled and began a journey of how to how to eat perfect, how to do things, how to have a perfect schedule, how to be perfectly organized. That was my jam. 

That’s what I that’s what I did day in and day out. I woke up, what is my schedule? What am I going to eat? That type of thing and rinse, repeat and do it again. So I got tired. I just I just got worn out and felt I’m so tired. I did not know what to do not to be tired. And then there was times I was tired and just dragging, and then I would kind of get a second wind and I was okay for a while, then I would just get tired again. Life is just happening while I’m trying to control this. 

And I went through a divorce, that was tumultuous. I was a single mom for a while, that I had financial hardships. So, all of this is going on, and I was still in my brain thinking, what am I going to eat? What’s my schedule look like? What am I going to do for exercise? How many calories is that? Was at the forefront and all these buildings were burning around me and things like that. 

And, and I was like, this is just weird. Why am I like this? Things were just out of control. So I had a lot of what I call disordered eating, and for a good while, and that didn’t happen until adulthood. I must have been in my 30s, or something, maybe my 40s I don’t even remember. There was always a tinge of it, or a theme of the disordered eating, but not really, but it really manifested itself, like, later in life for me, not your typical teenage eating disorder girl. So then I’m like, Man, I can’t even do that. Right?  I can’t even have like, disordered eating at the right age.

Like, what’s wrong with me? It was a constant beating myself up about this, that and the other. And that’s just been my journey. Like, there’s no specific thing. I’ve just always continuously beat myself up.

Alexandra: I always think it’s so interesting; you were doing this behavior, controlling your schedule, controlling your food, in order to be safe, would be a good way to encapsulate it. And then there is a part of you that’s aware that there’s another way to experience life, and that that awareness is just innate within you. 

The words you used was, “This is weird”. So there’s part of you that just knows that there’s another, perhaps more free way to go about living your life. I think that’s fascinating.

Gabby: That is so true from even as a child and questioning why. So even from that point in time, just questioning why already at that point in time I knew something wasn’t necessarily true. For others, that was true for me. So I questioned why so right there, that I was bucking the, is this true? Why is this true? Or what’s going on? 

I was curious, that a young age, and that curiosity did stay with a lot. And then I became aware of the curiosity. I became aware of that curiosity. And I became aware that that curiosity is my friend. And what I mean by friend is that, that curiosity is a safe place. It’s not it’s not a bad place. 

So controlling my eating in my exercise, I was always group fitness classes, I taught group fitness classes. At one point in time in my life I was always a gym rat, most of my life. So I always came across ladies that were asking me Hey, have you heard about this diet? Or what do you do for this? And they were asking me for my opinion or my advice, and they sent me other. So I would always try like the fad diets just to see how I would do and naturally I would fast. I just got into, like I said, a very rigid schedule. 

I was planning my meals, and then I would fast until the next point in time of my day that I could eat no, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And I was going to need at this time, if I was hungry and not hungry, whatever,  it was at this time. So the keto diet. I shouldn’t even say keto diet, that a diet, whatever, an idea, any it could be any diet came along. And I was like, Yeah, I think I could do this one because it’s I naturally fast and fits right into my lifestyle, blah, blah, blah. 

I got into the keto diet and started looking at people who did this diet, I became part of a group. And mind you at this time I was plant based. So with the keto diet, if some of you familiar with it, it’s all animal fat, and mostly animal fat and animal protein. I wasn’t eating any animal at all at that point in time, and I was plant based because of health reasons. And not a vegan. But anyway, so there wasn’t really too much option for me to eat.

I ended up losing a lot, a lot of weight, where there was a big concern in my family where they intervened. And they said you needed me to stop. Mind you before that point in time, I had already been in therapy a few years before, to gain some weight. I was in an outpatient at a rehab center. And I did that for a couple of months. I did gain some weight, and then I just lost it again. So I just went back to what I was used to doing. 

I’ll touch on that, because in that rehab center, I did meet a therapist who was very, I should say New Age, for lack of a better word. He tried therapy that was non traditional and he did Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle, he recommended a lot of people that authors that, that come from this understanding, he was just short of Sydney Banks.

That happened right before the whole, when I really lost a lot of weight. And there was a family intervention. I realized I was just very weak. And I realized my family really, really was, there was a big concern there. And I just wanted to I wanted to live, as like, I just, this is done, I can’t be doing this. And that’s when I started to really realize like, like, I’ve got this pro for, I mean, going on over here, but then I have something over here telling me, No, you want to live so you need to stop that programming over there. 

You need to get another program or you something needs to shift something has to be different. Well, it was this this girl that I was following the who did the keto diet, and she kind of had a breakdown, and she said, I’m done. She had this one guest on her show where she the guest talked about binging and it’s normal to binge and I was wait, what? It’s normal to binge. Wait, what? Like, she was talking about how you can binge and it’s okay. It’s not a big deal. Your body’s perfectly built for binging. Like you can do it. 

I was just so confused. I would just I was like, Okay, I’m trying to gain weight. I don’t want to be binging. Although I do want to binge because I did have binging tendencies. I did have a type of tendencies, whether it was I would overeat. And I would exercise it all off, or I would throw it up, off or whatever,  both, or I would just starve it off. I was just a little bit the spectrum of the disordered eating. 

So I was like, This is no, that’s not true. And so I’m like, But wait a minute, she’s saying that it is true. So then that little girl with a curiosity as to why, why is she saying this? And why is this? Why might this be true? So I started following her and through her I listened to one of her podcasts where she had Dr. Amy Johnson on. I bought her book. I didn’t really get it. I was like, okay, whatever but I really understood, I think she on her website, she has some videos as standard introduction, and she touches on the three principles of it. So the three principles I kind of came to on a back end from Dr. Amy Johnson. I really haven’t gotten too involved with three principles. But it’s not mind and consciousness. It’s all the same. It’s all the same understanding. 

I did The Little School of Big Change. I enrolled in maybe 2017. I think it was, I enrolled in the program, I did the six week course. And then I really understood Oh, my gosh, I was so right when I was a little girl. When I was a kid, I was just so spot on. I was so curious. And I asked why. And I took things very light. I just took things as they were. It brought me full circle back to when I was a kid. I’ve pretty much not every single moment of every single day but I’ve pretty much been that way. I’ve had that already. And that curiosity, like I said, has just been a place where I just, I find I find to be safe.

I’m back home. So I don’t know if that answers the question that was that. But it’s just questioning. It’s questioning things. And if you question something, it might not be true. And what is true? I did a lot of that with when I was in therapy when I was in the outpatient therapy. We did Byron Katie, at Byron Katie’s The Work. So we would pull up worksheets and everything, unbeknownst to me, what I was doing, I was going through the motions, and I was understanding it. 

But now later on, I can go back to it and I can say, Oh, wow, like now I see it so differently. It’s like with the saying that nothing’s changed, but everything’s different. 

Alexandra: As you gradually begin to lean into your curiosity, and when you were enrolled in The Little School of Big Change.

Is there anything you can point to that you started to see that you hadn’t seen clearly before?

Gabby: As an adult I had layers of different filters, just mucked up, what I had already been seen as a kid. The awareness of where my mind goes, and where my thoughts go. And that’s just perfectly natural, to have different types of thoughts and to have different thinking and it’s perfectly natural. It was the conditioning, it was a conditioning that I had. Things had to be a certain way because I already had a few strikes, quote, unquote, against me, coming from somewhat of a broken family.

I really don’t want to say broken family because like I said, I had a lot of love growing up. But I didn’t have the traditional mom and dad and I had my aunts and I had my brothers and that was it. We were making our way and doing what we need to do. My aunts did have a lot of structure on how things should be and how things should go. So that’s what I went by and  good girls do this and I need to be proper about things and, and I tried to be as perfect as I could with anything and everything I could, came my way that I just had a lot of filter. 

Like I said, that mucked up my natural state, my natural curiosity and that awareness of, Hey, it’s okay to have to be different and to have different thoughts and life is not going to be so perfect. Or what you think would you consider to be perfect. Like what is perfection? 

Alexandra: Angus and Rohini Ross use the term rewilding, bringing something back to its natural state. I’m being reminded of that as you speak.

Gabby: I love that. I did listen to their podcast. I don’t think they’re still doing the rewilding podcast, I’m not too sure. But I really enjoyed them. I’ve been on a phone call with Rohini. She’s wonderful. And yes, just being in that natural state, because that’s all there really is. Simple, simple, simple, simple. We just tend to pick up that simplicity. And we tend to run with it and try to go somewhere with it. And it’s like, no, you know. 

What’s fun now, I have to say, is that when I do have thoughts that run wild, and then just go off, I can come back and say, Wow, isn’t that wild? That’s just crazy. That was like, wow, it’s kind of like, you’ve had a night where you’ve had these wake up, and you’re remembering your dreams. And like, random people have come and talked into your, your dreams. And then you wake up and you’re like, Well, that was weird. Why did that happen? 

I consider my day dreaming the same thing as my night dreaming and my thoughts is the same thing as my dreams. And so, yeah, that’s way I see them now. I see them as, as just running wild, and just being okay with it. And just coming back and saying, wow, that’s interesting.

Alexandra: I loved what you said about how you had filters over the innately well and wild part of yourself. I see this little stack of dirty filters, and you pulling them back one at a time. I love that visual. 

It was all that thinking about what the filters are about trying to be perfect. And trying to control everything in a way.

Gabby: Yeah, and maybe you want to put a filter on and there’s nothing wrong filters. They are like the tool, see your thoughts in your mind? 

When I say mind I don’t mean it universal mind. I think the three principles is Universal Mind is like the isness. But for me, the mind is I can kind of consider, like the thought, the little mind or something,  these thoughts are like filters, you can put in a filter. And if it’s a tool that you can use, great, use it, have fun with it, and then you know that you can take it out, throw it away. 

If it kind of lingers and stays just know that it’s a remnant, and it’s eventually going to fall off on its own that filter. Some people equate it to clouds going by, or the weather going by, and then you’ve got some filters that you put on, you’re like, Oh, this is so uncomfortable. Or I don’t like this, I don’t want to be here. I don’t like it. 

Sometimes these thoughts, these filters can manifest themselves physically. And boy, do you feel them? I mean, like, or do you feel them, it feels like a, like a tornado, or, or major hurricane is going on. You can feel it physically, physiologically in your body. 

I’ve gone through some, since last year, I’ve had quite a few surgeries. Some were planned, and some were not planned, and having discomfort physically, and some people call it pain. And, yes, I mean, some things were very painful. Some were very uncomfortable. Either way, I knew that these were things that were that my body had to go through and that eventually, they were going to dissipate. And if they didn’t dissipate, then I knew that I my body was going to take care of itself in a sense in the sense of I was going to end up getting more help with this problem. Or they were going to go they were going to go on their own type of thing. 

I don’t know how to explain it, but to kind of lean into it and to be with it and to continue. That’s the physical pain that I had. And the thoughts are the same way to, I think is that you kind of lean into them if you can and they continue to go. And sometimes they get lost. And sometimes they come back and  they get you they get you, then they go away. Yeah, very fickle. 

Alexandra: When you finished the Little School of Big Change, then you were drawn into the facilitator training with Amy Johnson.

Gabby: I went to The Little School a Big Change. And I was a wallflower. I didn’t really actively participate in the conversations there were so many of us. I wasn’t the only one. But I remember right before we would have the group calls, I would get ready. And I would do my hair and this, that and the other. And I’d be like, Okay, maybe I’ll say something and I wouldn’t say anything. 

Finally, I started speaking up a little bit. And then sometimes I find myself like in this conversation I’m having with you right now, sometimes I find myself word tripping, and not knowing how do I say this, or I really want them to understand this. But you know what I mean, the person hearing is going to get whatever they get out of what you say, that’s not on the person speaking. So I really want to try to express myself better with this understanding. So I can tell my family and my friends about it. 

So when I heard about Amy’s coaching program, I decided to join. And I thought this would just be a different perspective of what was going on in middle school, a big change, besides the community group calls. It’s like a spin off community. The coaching community is a spin off community of the graduates of the other community that we had going on. So it was more intimate. We had intensives, which I really enjoyed. 

I was starstruck with Amy Johnson. She’s just so giving and just listening to her over and over and in her group calls for a few years, and then having her ear was just like, oh my gosh, it’s just amazing. So yes, I did the course last year in 2022. And I graduated in June, we had a gathering in Chicago, which I went to and got to meet the other, some other coaches live. And that was a treat. I don’t have too many friends here. I don’t have any friends physically, that are physically with me, that have that. I shouldn’t say have this understanding. But when we talk about this understanding, it’s usually friends and now I consider you my friend. 

It’s usually through zoom, or it’s just online or on the phone. It was really nice connecting with them live. So after the program, I decided to create an LLC and put myself out there as a change coach do website and everything. I’ve been doing free coaching and that’s a given just to get to know people and to see if I’m a good fit for them. I do coaching, I have packages, things like that. I also do other types of coaching, where I go out for walks with some people around here, especially the elderly. I help out with a program, where we help with at the senior assistance program that helps with running errands for them and driving them to medical appointments and grocery shopping. So I get to know a lot of the seniors intimately and what’s going on with them. And I get to practice a little coaching with them. So it’s really nice. 

Alexandra: When you’re working with someone who has experienced disordered eating, where would you begin to if they’ve never heard of this understanding?

Where would you begin to try to introduce it to them?  

Gabby: It depends on the person. It totally depends on where their mind is, for lack of a better word, at that point in time. My job, when I do any coaching with anyone, whether it’s a senior or someone that’s struggling, because I did work with some that were that were having issues with eating disordered eating, it’s just having a place to hold them. It’s just having a place to say tell me what was that been like? Tell me about the binge. 

That’s the same place that I was held when I started listening to Amy Johnson. And the other girl’s name, I think, was Stephanie. I think your program was called beyond the food or something like that. I know you have something similar to that? Or you had a book or something like that.

Alexandra: It’s Not About the Food.

Gabby: And hers was beyond the food. And I don’t know to be on. I don’t know, if she’s still around with her podcasts. Yeah. But anyway, it was that place to hold and say, just be curious about them, and what they’re thinking and what they’re going through, and just holding them and saying let’s explore this, let’s be curious about it. Let’s question it. Is it true?  is it really true? Is it really true that you’re no good? Because you ate an extra doughnut? Or is it really true that you’re not perfect? Because you had a whole large pizza by yourself?

Is that true? And so just questioning and exploring themselves back to home, I call home and back to their pure essence. And having that connection with them, believe I truly believe that we all have it in us. And it’s just a matter of uncovering it. Is that really so much? It’s not it’s not a discovery, you’re not discovering it. Because it’s not new. It’s there with you already. You’re just uncovering it. 

We all have that in us. It’s that common thread. I find that common thread with people in this understanding, like with you, and people in The Little School of Big Change, and Byron Katie’s people, wherever. I find it with people that have this understanding three principles, etc. Those that come questioning, and with grief and not knowing that they have it. I feel like I’m here to help them point. The way to uncovering that in them. 

That’s just the best thing ever to see someone uncover it and say, Oh, my gosh. Wow. This was just all a story. Like they woke up from a dream like, Oh, wow. You remember back in was it the 80s that primetime show called Dallas. The whole thing was for the last couple of seasons, I think it was who shot JR? And they played out the scenarios and whatever was a big drama for a couple of seasons. And then at the end, what was it was a dream.

I think with our lives it’s just a big dream. And we wake up, it’s like, oh, that didn’t happen. 

Alexandra: Going back to your filter metaphor, it’s helping people to first see that the filters even exist.  When we’re not aware that they’re even there we think that what we’re seeing and experiencing is real.

Then when we discover that there’s something in front of my understanding,  this filter that’s all dirty, and we begin to pull them away. 

Gabby: And we begin pulling them away and even having fun with them. Because even though I don’t I still – going back to the disordered eating – I still kind of eat the same in the same sense but without any.  I like to eat, I like good food, I like to make my own food. I am picky, I don’t like going to just any restaurant.

Before I used to tell myself, well, you should be able to just go into a restaurant and, and eat like everybody else. Why not? And it’s like, no, I like to take care of myself. And there’s nothing wrong with saying I don’t want to eat that. That was a thing, trying to get over in my recovery, trying to be normal, and eat like everybody else. I just couldn’t sometimes bring myself to do it. And then I would beat myself up for that. 

And it’s like, no, well, that’s okay. You’re just trying to take care of yourself. And that’s okay. So I’m not saying that that. Gosh, I don’t want to say rigid eating is okay or not okay, or whatever. What I’m trying to say is if that if that filter, that tool is working for you use it. But that’s all it is. It’s a tool.

Alexandra: I really like hearing too, that you’re just giving yourself permission to be who you are.

You’re letting the rules fall by the wayside, as though there’s some right way to be. Letting that fall away and doing what feels good to you.

Gabby: Right? The rules are that there are no rules. That’s the rule. The rules are that there are no rules, because what’s working for me right now, as my body ages, and as I change may not work for me later on. I was plant based for six, seven years. No animal body, or anything like that. Because I was afraid that I was going to have a cardiac arrest or something was going to happen to because it runs in my family, high cholesterol, there’s so many other so that’s why I was plant based. 

And then when I went to different cardiologist and I started the keto diet. I started eating all this meat and my body went like haywire and this at the other end, and so it’s just my body reacting to what it is that I’m putting in it. And that’s just the way I see it now. What works right now may not work later on, and that’s okay.

Alexandra: Exactly.

As we’re just about to wrap up here, is there anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on today?

Gabby: Um, there’s always something to share. I think that the thing is there. There is such a thing, right to take away from this conversation is to always be curious. And always question. And always know that. That if, if it if there’s a question involved, it’s probably not true. Question about that. There’s curiosity involved. It’s probably not true. And that’s okay.

Alexandra: I love that. That’s so great. Well, this has been lovely, Gabby.

Why don’t you let everyone know where they can find out more about you and your work?

Gabby: Sure. My website is GabbyPritts.com. And there there’s a tab where you can send me an email. And you can schedule a conversation with me if you’d like. And it’s always for free. I love being in this conversation. I do practice coaching. But like I said, I love being in this conversation with anyone anytime. 

So if anything that I talked about today interested you and you want to talk more about the three principles, this understanding or The Work by Byron Katie,  anything that has to do with you being curious about whatever’s going on with you. Whatever habit or thought may be bothering you. I’d love to talk to you and so you can definitely schedule something with me on my website.

Alexandra: Perfect. I will put a link in the show notes to your website so people can find that easily. And thank you for being here with me today. It was lovely chatting with you.

Gabby: It was it was a true joy just chatting I love talking about this stuff.

Alexandra: Take care Gabby. Bye.

Featured image photo by craig kerwien on Unsplash