Food isn’t the problem when food is the fastest way you know to feel safe. If you’ve ever sworn you were “done” with emotional eating or binge eating, only to find yourself right back in the pantry after a stressful day, you’re not broken and you’re not weak. You’re likely running an old protection pattern, powered by your autonomic nervous system.
We sit down with Sherry Shaban, the voice behind Make Peace With Food, to unpack how fight-or-flight-freeze can hijack cravings and decision-making, especially when perfectionism and diet rules create fear around eating. Sherry shares her personal journey from chronic pain and constant “science-based” diet hopping to realizing that the real driver wasn’t discipline, it was scarcity and threat inside her body. We also clarify what nervous system regulation actually means: not a life without fear or grief, but the ability to return to baseline and process what’s here without escaping it.
From there, we get practical. We walk through how beliefs form early, how they attach to identity, and how to challenge them with real evidence from your present life. Sherry breaks down a three-step approach to falsify old beliefs, trace where they came from, and understand the protective context that once made them feel true. We also talk modalities that help people go deeper, from hypnotherapy and EMDR to faith-based practices, and why there’s rarely just one right path for everyone.
If you’re ready to stop negotiating with cravings and start building real safety with food, press play, then subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation. What belief about yourself are you willing to question today?
To connect with Sherry Shaban visit her website at: Sherry Shaban’s Website
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
Sylvia Warship. Sylvia Sylvia Warsham.
Hey I’m gonna go, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release Dot Review Purpose. And today Sherry Chabet. I love that name. You can say it like that. It’s so awesome. And I wrote read her biography and I was blown away because this is the second interview I’ve done on emotional eating, on patterns of behaving as it comes to putting nutrition in our body. And you know, it comes from somewhere deep inside of us. There’s some brokenness that it that it originates from. It doesn’t just begin out of nothing, there’s always something. And and I know that Sherry’s going to be sharing some intimate details to this because it is an important topic to talk about, especially for women, uh, because we are emotional creatures and our feelings get big sometimes. And when they do, some of us turn to food, otherwise turn to other vices like Netflix, watching to avoid our pain. We don’t want to talk about it. But the problem with that is we don’t, if we don’t heal it, we project it. And when we project it, we attract more of it in our life. You know, as a certified life coach with the John Maxwell team, this is this is stuff that happens day in, day out, on at a very subconscious level. So it’s not something you’re doing on purpose, it’s just something that you programmed your mind to do for a long time. And now we need to deprogram that into a new set of belief systems that can start promoting this new identity, this new healthier identity with food. So without further ado, Sherry, thank you so much for joining us on release that reveal purpose.
Thank you so much, Sylvia. I feel like you could probably end the podcast like right here. You said all the things, and that was just so beautiful how you put that. And what came to mind as you were sharing is whatever we resist persists. Oh, yeah. And we numb through different devices, just like you said, through food. And and food is the gateway, in my opinion, because if you think about your access or your accessibility to certain things, the first thing that you had access to as a kid was food. It was cookies, it was candies, it was whatever mom gave you to feel better, or what she gave you when you needed a pick-me-up. And then as we get older, it can start to transform into other things. It can become smoking and alcohol and shopping, over anything. Anything that we overdo, it is a sign that we’re trying to make up for an underfeeling that we’re experiencing. Yeah, I totally agree. And everybody’s journey is different.
And I know you have a really powerful testimony to share. And I really want you to dive deep into it for the listeners that are on the other side of this interview. So would you honor us with your story, Sherry?
Yeah, absolutely. I say my story started in my early 20s, and that was when I got into the health and wellness space. And I always say I kind of stumbled across it by accident because actually at that time I was doing a master’s degree in chemistry of all things. And growing up, I was really involved in sports. Like that was my identity. I was a child athlete, I was a competitive swimmer, I was a varsity athlete. And when I was 16, I was hit by a car and I damaged my spine as a result, and was told by my doctor that I wasn’t ever allowed to do sports again. And I mean, that was the advice that they gave us back then because they thought that that was the best advice. So I did listen to that advice and slowly found myself drifting away from the athletes and the jock crowd, and then found myself having to feel connection. And so I started hanging out with the type of people that your parents tell you don’t do these things, don’t hang out with these people. These are the peers that you want to stay away from. And so I spent time in a social circle that I didn’t feel a connection with, and my life at that time was all about pain and managing my pain, and it revolved around my back, where I would sit, where I would go. If I would go to someone’s house, I’d always ask if there was a place that I could lie down because I knew my back would cause a problem after a couple hours. And it wasn’t until my early 20s where I just woke up one day after a night of partying, and I was like, okay, who is this person? Like, I can’t even believe that this is who I am. I never envisioned myself doing this as a kid. And against doctors’ orders, I decided to sign up at a gym. And I had no idea what I was doing. Again, at that time, I was a big science nerd, and I just started copying people in at the gym. Whatever movement they did, I did, whatever exercise they did, I just copied. And I did that consistently for months until I realized that my back pain was gone and I was able to get off of my pain medication. And I bought a treadmill and I started running on it five minutes at a time until eventually I was able to run a full hour outdoors. And that was the big shift in my career. I dropped out of my chemistry degree, I went back to school, and I learned everything I possibly could get my hands on when it came to nutrition, movement, biomechanics, anything that related to the human body, I wanted to learn because if I could do this, Sylvia, then I wanted to help other people do it too. And so along this journey, as I was learning how to help people, one of the things that I really felt like I needed to do was learn about nutrition. So I started taking nutrition certifications, and that was when I learned that back then it was all about calorie counting. So I started counting calories. And after a while, I heard that fats were very bad for us and you should eat low fats. So then I’m like, okay, sounds right because the science is there. So I started eating a low-fat diet. And then after a while, there was this guy named Atkins that came out to tell everybody that you know what, like, actually, carbs are very bad, and meat is very good, and fats are also very good. So I’m like, all right, the science is there. So then I started doing that. And then after a while, I opened a CrossFit gym, and then I learned that we were supposed to eat like a caveman, so I did that, and then there was the zone diet, and then I did that, and then there was paleo, and then there was keto, and I even was vegan for a while, all following the science and realizing that what was actually happening was I was getting very confused around food. Every single week my food rules would change, and so would be what I was eating, until eventually what I thought was a Friday night cheat meal started to look a lot like a week, weekend long annihilation of all the things that I was telling my members we don’t eat. And so that’s what led me to start looking at unwanted eating behavior because here I am. This girl with science degrees, this girl who’s an osteopath, who’s a certified athletic therapist, who knows all the things about nutrition, about every single diet, was also secretly struggling with lack of control around food. And it had nothing to do with willpower, it had nothing to do with lack of discipline, but everything to do with the fact that I had turned on this part of my brain, this primitive part of my brain, everyone’s brain, that helps us overcome famine. And it’s when our nervous system is in fight, fight, or freeze.
Yep, we’ve all been there, and I’ve I’ve seen that not work in our favor. We go into those modes. So I do want you to dive deep into the nervous system, what you discovered. Once you discovered this to be true to yourself, what are the steps that you started to take?
Well, first I I want to talk a little about the nervous system. So no, anytime we talk about the nervous system, and and you may be listening and already aware that the part of the nervous system that we’re referring to is the autonomic nervous system, that is the part of the nervous system that is on autopilot. It’s it’s basically working behind the scenes without your conscious command. And this part of the nervous system helps you physiologically get into fight, flight, or freeze. And the way that we measure that is through increased heart rate and blood pressure, and there’s adrenaline and there’s cortisol and all these things. However, what also happens when you are in fight, flight, or freeze, I call this, by the way, protection mode. I call this part of the nervous system protection mode. When we’re in that nervous system state, our thoughts and our emotions are also affected. And so when our thoughts are focused on things that bring up feelings of scarcity, lack, fear, shame, guilt, even perfectionism, when we get these thoughts and the associated emotions, we trigger our nervous system in response to gearing up for danger. And our nervous system doesn’t know if that danger is real and actually physically present, or if it’s an illusion. And the majority of the time, of course, especially because we live in this modern society where really, for the most of us, we don’t actually have a physical threat. The threat actually comes from our thoughts. So in my case, where I was like, oh my God, I’ve got hundreds of members, I better not screw this up, I gotta get this right, I’m a role model, everyone’s coming to me for advice. And on top of that, I had a lot of sense of perfectionism around my food. Like, oh my God, I can’t even eat a single gram more of this, or carbs are really bad, and I actually just had some carbs, and I’m not supposed to eat this, and I shouldn’t have that. And all of these can’ts and don’ts and shouldn’t also triggered my nervous system into that state. And so our problem is not that we actually get into fight, flight, or freeze. Our problem is that we don’t know how to regulate or get back into safety mode, which is parasympathetic, which is rest and digest. And I want to make this really clear because when we talk about nervous system regulation, and by the way, I find that this is now a buzzword, and everyone’s talking about their nervous systems, and unfortunately, doesn’t really understand what that means. Regulation is not you ever not feeling fear or feeling uncertainty or mourning the loss of someone or getting angry. It’s actually your ability to come back to baseline quickly. That loss or that shock in your life doesn’t last weeks and months and sometimes even years for some people, but that you’re able to process it. You don’t try to escape any of these emotions. If you’re feeling fear or you’re feeling any of those uncomfortable emotions, you’re not trying to escape them. You’re staying in them, you’re being with them, and then you’re able to regulate and come back using acceptance and gratitude and presence.
You know, in this modality, we’ve heard this a lot in the nurture heart therapy that is used for ADHD children because their nervous systems are in this constant state of fight or flight. Right. Right? They’re constantly like surveying their environment for fear, right? Anybody with OCD understands this as well because it’s the what-ifs and the thoughts just start, and my goodness, it just and I suffer uh from anxiety, I have that in my uh genetics, but I also got modeled that with both my parents, and we know that anxiety can get triggered that way, and then an emotional event can trigger it. My emotional event of nearly dying triggered the anxiety, woke it up, woke up the OCD, and then it was like a constant thing, but you’re right. The the these concepts are all saying the same thing, come back to the present moment when you’re in presence, your thoughts don’t go, don’t get ahead of you, and there’s different modalities. And I I would love it if you could share with us the modalities you use that were successful for you to bring you back to that present moment.
Yeah, and and a lot of times when I get asked this question, people want to hear that things like breath work and journaling and things like that, and and while those tools can be effective, so you can do tapping, you can do breath work, you can do all these things, and and yes, it’ll give you temporary relief. I kind of look at them as advis, if you will, to any chronic pain where it’ll give you enough flexibility to manage what’s happening so that you can actually get to the root. But what I’ve actually found to be the most effective, and and for me, effect isn’t a temporary fix, it’s it is a complete transformation. It is it is something has shifted, something has changed. And in order for us to really get to that place, we have to look at a few things. So we have to understand that the nervous system, okay, it’s all the things that I just shared, which is the physiological response in the body, its thoughts and its emotions, but it’s also a big storage system. So everything that we’ve learned, and the majority of the patterns that we’ve learned that we actually still run until now are patterns that we’ve learned in childhood. So up until the age of six, you’ve already learned the majority of your patterns. Isn’t that crazy? Up until the age of six.
Yeah, it sucks. Actually, in the coaching environment, it’s seven years, it’s from zero to seven. Right. Because even as a baby, you’re learning these patterns. Absolutely. It’s nuts.
Yes. And and these patterns are exactly what you had mentioned earlier, Sylvia. It’s it’s also modeling, it’s modeling your environment. So up until that age, you’re learning so much. And then, of course, when you get into your teenage years, you’re learning more. And then by the time you become an adult, you’re now running all the patterns that you actually learned as a child. So I’m 45 and I’m still my nervous system is reacting like I’m four.
Right?
It’s that same pattern that I’ve learned. And why is that important? It’s important because when we look at the autonomic nervous system, or when we look at the unconscious mind, which is part of the autonomic nervous system, we have to understand that the way that this mind works is through associations, through logic. So our conscious mind, which is our thinking brain, it’s our rational mind, can say, Oh, if I touch this hot surface, then I will burn myself. Whereas the unconscious mind hears a sound, has smells something, sees something, experiences something that looks familiar, and then all of a sudden starts to associate it with an emotion, and then starts to associate it with a belief, and then starts to associate it with an identity.
Yes. Absolutely true. The the way they explain it in therapy, at the moment of trauma, it’s the belief that forms, and the feeling you felt in that trauma gets attached to these patterns of behavior and these habits that you’re forming, and that’s all in the subconscious part of the mind. So, from the coaching perspective, that’s how we explain it. And so the big clue is the emotion you feel because every time that emotion shows up, all of this programming, the way you’ve programmed it, will kick into gear, like subconscious. You don’t even know you’re doing it. It’s kind of like driving the car and you don’t even know how you got there. You go your subconscious mind does know because it knows like the certain processes it takes every single time you do something in a certain way, it already has a programming to it. And that’s what you’ll you try to explain it. I I was at a career day for my daughter’s class, and instead of telling them what a coach did, I showed them. So I had them come up, like understand like the coaching tree, what I call the coaching tree, and just saying, okay, just think of a good or a bad event in your life, and that’s gonna be the soil that feeds that tree. And the root is the belief systems, right? Because it that belief is gonna be promoting the thought and the feeling, and then the feeling is gonna be promoting the pattern and the habit and the trigger. All these things are all intertwined one with the other, and then, of course, that’s that’s what leads to our circumstances in life and what’s happening, right? So the mind gives us clues throughout, and it’s just sitting, like you said, you don’t try to avoid the feelings, you sit with them, you try to understand what they’re trying to teach you. They’re trying to show you something, like patterns, they don’t like to be seen, but when they do get seen, pay attention, stay curious to them, ask them like, why am I wanting to control this circumstance? Like, what what belief could be triggering this control, you know, like this need to control by doing X, Y, or Z? And that’s how you start to understand your mind a little bit better and use the conscious ability of your mind to then start to shift some of these beliefs over because it’s just a matter of shifting them, it’s not a big to-do. I think what most people feel afraid of, Sherry, in all honesty, is the work they think they’re gonna be doing. You know, how long it’s gonna take, like they’re gonna uh you know, rehash some trauma that they don’t want to think about. But then I always ask people, I say, Oh, so you’d rather have it care like carried inside of you and and have it project. And are you happy right now? And they’re like, Well, no. And I said, Well, what do you think is attribute, you know, like contributing to that unhappiness is all this stuff you’re carrying that’s not yours. Right. You they were yours when you were four, but they’re not yours now.
Right.
And you’re just you’re still believing it as your truth, it’s a lie.
Right.
That your mind has accepted as truth, as an identity, because you’re identifying with this right now. So yeah, and I I’m in total agreement with you. I think it’s uh it’s fascinating to me how much the nervous system is all these therapeutic, all these therapies that I’ve learned about in recent years, the nurtured heart approach, she’s trying to help us uh help our daughter identify the feelings in her body, where it’s showing up, like where she’s feeling fear. Is it showing up in her heart space, in her head, behind her eyes, like to be totally aware of where it’s showing up in her body, so that she then starts to retrain the mind? I think it’s fascinating. I really do. I think it’s it’s amazing. So, so take us with eating, because we know that this is your story, this is how you started to re-engage in a healthy way. How did you get out of the whole funk of I’m not gonna be eating like all these crazy things and be like keto diet and vegan? And what was that breaking point for you?
It it’s exactly what we’re talking about, which is shifting our belief system. So, so something that you said that was was really on point was these patterns that are running. And and so it is step number one, identifying the pattern and and becoming aware of the pattern. And then step number two is starting to interrupt the pattern, break apart that pattern. And and one thing that I I like to say, especially around trauma, trauma isn’t that event that happened to us. The event is the event. Trauma is actually how our body stored the information after the experience. And and this becomes a lot more empowering. Why? Because when we look at a particular experience in our life that did create a traumatic event in our body or trauma response in our body, we can’t go back and change what happened. But what we can change is how our body’s responding to it. And so, trauma, again, is it’s not just that one experience, but it’s how our body’s reacting to it. And in my case, the trauma was around perfectionism when it came to food, it was around getting it right, it was around really food scarcity and fearing food itself. And what I had created in my body is food scarcity, which is something that we can either experience because we’re really going through it. So we are going to bed every night hungry because there just is no food to eat. And we see this with a lot of people who have struggled with unwanted eating behavior, that they’ve actually endured real food scarcity. For me, my food scarcity was imposed. It was not allowed to eat this, it was not allowed to have this, or this was too much food, or when I would fast for days and days to make up for a big binge, or because I ate something that I had deemed. Bad. So all of that created fear around food. And so the emotion of fear started to couple with beliefs about my self-worth, about my body, about the food system itself. And the way that I was able to overcome that was not through, again, things like journaling or breath work, it was through changing beliefs. And the belief that I had to change was that my body feels safe no matter what I eat. That there is no one way to eat, that there are many ways to eat, that for each person that looks very different. That one day I, you know, one day of the week, maybe I’ll eat more carbs, and another day of the week, maybe it’ll be less carbs. So it’s really undoing all those beliefs around food that brought about my healing. And something that I also want to say to what you were sharing earlier, especially about emotions. Our emotions are our indicators. So it’s like the litmus paper. It tells us what’s happening in our nervous system. Anytime we have fear or that feeling of not enoughness or that feeling of lack of worth or lack of safety, then generally what we do is we find a way to numb. So if we haven’t sat in this emotion long enough, if we’ve never really experienced this emotion, or we were never taught how to regulate this emotion, what we generally do is we look for an escape. And by the way, we all do this. Even boredom. So think about what we normally do when we’re sitting in a waiting room at the doctor’s office. We can’t even sit in our boredom. We got to grab our phones, we got to look busy, we got to scroll. So this is actually something that we all do. And so when we learn to escape these emotions, what we also deny ourselves from actually doing is learning the patterns. And the pattern is associated again with your thoughts, it’s with your belief system, it’s with your identity, and it’s the experience that is associated with all of these chunked together.
You heard me, you saw me nodding, and that people are not seeing this because it’s audio, right? But all that you said was true. It’s spot on because the mind gives us a lot of clues. We just have to be aware of the clues as it’s giving it to us. The belief is the root of why you are identifying with certain belief. Like I am, the I am statements is an identity. You are identifying with I am whatever. And your mind’s always listening, just for the record. It has no filter. That big subconscious mind, it matters what you listen to, it matters who speaks into you, it matters what you secretly believe about yourself. It matters, and it’s the experiences are are just all of it plays a role in it. So once you start to make that shift, then you start seeing a shift in that identity. But until you make that shift in the belief, the belief is key. That’s right. The belief is the key that you need to identify. And it’s it’s not a hard thing because you’ve told yourself these things over the years. If you if you think, if you just sit back on a daily basis and reflect, what have I believed to be true about myself? You ask it at night, you go to bed, and the next morning, believe me, there’s times you will have downloads like you cannot imagine. I started to write down all the beliefs on paper. Once I looked at it, I was like, okay, now my training kicks in. Here’s how we do this. When we coach people out of these things, I’m going to share with the audience. We’re going to take that thought or that belief system, and we’re going to provide the evidence in our present moment that that is true. If you can’t come up with evidence, then that’s a lie that your mind is feeding you. And this is first, it’s the identification of the lie, the awareness piece, right? It has to come up from the subconscious part of your mind to the conscious. Now that you have it in the conscious, now you need to start doing these new habits. Like before you even so that the pattern, the pattern is there to educate you on how you’ve been programming your mind. You don’t have to be a security. Like I had seven that I identified in my book in Faith, I thrive. The biggest one for me was Security Seeker. That one, like when I felt doubt, that sucker showed up big time. And it showed up differently, like in my finances to give some perspective. When I felt doubt and I felt like I didn’t trust myself to make the right decision in my life, the way it showed up in my finance, that I would keep my money in a bank account. I wouldn’t invest it. I was terrified because I had to I had to have control. That came from the trauma when I was seven. That actually got identified as an issue early, early on in the book. And it just shares with people just how powerful that mind is and why it’s important to sit with these things, get the help you need, identify these belief systems and shift them.
Now, can you speak a little bit more about how you shifted those beliefs for you, Sherry? Yeah. So I actually have a something similar that I do, and this is a three-step process. So first to identify the belief, right? And I’m actually going to use another example. So for a very, very long time, I had this belief that men are assholes, excuse my language. And when they, you know, when they say they love you, they’re really only after one thing. So this was a belief that I I had used again, like and and I had lived by for a very long time. And the reason why we actually have these beliefs is because we set up set them up in our mind as a way to protect ourselves. So even though sometimes it can look like sabotage or sometimes it can look like this belief doesn’t serve us, on some level, the reason why we formulate this belief is for protection. And so if you think about all of the beliefs that we have, the things that we’re still holding on to, oftentimes it came after a traumatic experience, and then we create this belief, and that’s what’s still protecting us. So that was my belief. So step number one obviously is identifying the belief, and then you start to look for well, how can I actually prove otherwise? So I have this belief that okay, men are only after one thing. All right, so have I actually seen this belief actually be the contrary? Like, is there is the contrary actually there? And so step number one is then looking for ways that you can actually falsify or see the contradiction of your belief. Step number two is asking yourself, well, where did this belief come from? Like whose belief is this? Who told me this and when did I learn it? So going back into time. So I go back into time and I’m thinking about this belief, and where does it come from? It comes from my dad. Actually, my dad used to tell me this, and he used to tell me my sister as well when we were growing up that watch out for guys when they say they love you, they only want one thing. All right. Finally, number three is what is the context? So when I formulated this belief, what was the context in which I formulated this belief? Well, the reason why my dad told us this, my sister and I, as kids, was because he was trying to protect us and he didn’t want us to get taken advantage of. So even though I was a young girl learning this and hearing this, as an adult now who’s dating, I’m still holding on to this belief and it’s sabotaging my relationships. And the way that I was able to overcome that was by identifying the contrary, figuring out where I learned it, and then the context in which it was learned. And so once you start to actually falsify this belief, and you’re like, oh, wait a minute, like I actually see proof of otherwise, and I see proof of otherwise here, and there’s proof of otherwise there. So this isn’t true. I think that’s the lie that you were talking about is identifying how this is a lie. And then putting that belief in context, understanding that the reason why it was formulated in your mind was likely because of a protective mechanism. And could have very, very well be that it wasn’t even your belief. It could have been something that somebody told you that you’re still running on autopilot and still unaware that it’s no longer serving you. And a belief is generally any thought that we have that’s been on repeat, that is charged with an emotion that we have validated through proof or through experience over time, essentially. But whatever we validated as proof can also be unvalidated if we find the contrary to that belief.
Exactly. Yes, I totally agree. Because we’re essentially saying the same thing. We just we’re using different vocabulary words, but it’s gonna land with someone, you know, on the other side of this interview. I love what we’ve shared so far because I think we’ve broken it down in relatable examples and also in what we would do to move forward, like the relatable tips on the show. Do you think this is your divine purpose? This what you’re doing right now? Are you like getting on podcasts and having your own podcast show? Because I see Make Peace with Food is your podcast. Uh and I’m have you written books on the on the matter show?
Are you is there a book on the horizon? There’s there’s several books on the horizons, but what I’m doing now is I am teaching the practitioners how to do that. So I’ve actually started a certification program where I help people become a certified Make Peace with Food practitioner and a certified hypnotherapist so that they can actually start to apply the Make Peace with Food method with their clients and not only to address unwanted eating behavior, but any other behavior that is sabotaging a person’s results.
And there’s so many. But I mean, because really it’s like so vast, and everybody’s experience is different, it’s all based on their own journeys, and so it’s not a cookie-cutter thing for anyone listening. And and that’s what’s so amazing about it. I love the different uh therapies you’re you’re you’re discussing. Hypnotherapy, I think, is something that really has helped some people. I actually considered hypnotherapy because there came a point where regular EMDR was taking a little bit too long for me and it just kept rehashing certain things, right? But I didn’t consider it hypnotherapy. Uh, but somewhere along the way, I didn’t need it anymore. Like I got to a place where I did identify what was happening and and and mine was more of a spiritual journey. Mine was more faith-based, very faith-based. And so in my case, the breakthrough came in Thanksgiving of this past year. And I sat in silence, and he was silent with me for weeks, and I craved his his presence, and I didn’t have it. And in that darkness and in that silence came a voice that said, Why are you still achieving my love? You have my love. What are you doing? And and I was a former high achiever because that’s how my father was. So it all starts off with the father, you know, like the the male, you know, role model in our life. If we have issues with men, that’s likely because we had something to do with our father, some trauma. And I my father was a doctor, he didn’t have time, you know, to be with us, and so subconsciously kind of created this competition between the siblings for his attention through our achievements. Right. And when I saw that, when I sat there, my father’s been gone almost two years in our father’s day. He passed away in 2024, and I was still achieving even God’s love. I was doing stuff just to check off the box, and I caught myself doing that. And so then for 2026, he said, I need you to pause for presents. I need I need your heart. I I’m not interested in anything else. And so when I started to see that, when I started to slow down, that that’s hard for someone like me whose mind is always racing because I’ve got ADHD, and the thought of just like jumping off the page to sit back and to have the self-discipline. I went back into his word, and there’s a scripture that’s just been like my mantra, and it comes from 2 Timothy. And he basically says this I did not give you a spirit of timidness, but a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline. And when I saw the word self-discipline, I started to dispel the lie that I told myself and I believed that I didn’t have the discipline to pause for presence, and I had believed that for a long time, and I just started to dispel it. With the evidence of my present moment, I could not come up with evidence that proved that at all. And once I saw that and he sat with me, and once I started to get back into relationship with him, then all of these things started to dispel themselves. So in my case, it’s more of a spiritual perspective and journey part. But other people will use hypnotherapy, other people will use EMDR. There’s different ways of skinning the cat. It’s not gonna be the same for you. And if you ever feel your soul will guide you, believe me. You will know when you’re in the right therapy and modality for you. Uh, but Sherry and I have different journeys, and this is how we’ve landed in our spaces. So I’m just happy that I got you on the show, finally. And um, if I wanted to work with you, Sherry, how do I find you and and any links that you want to share with us right now? And and last words of encouragement you want to leave our our listeners.
Yeah, and and I’ll start with the last words of encouragement um first, but after after I say to you, Sylvia, this is this has been such an amazing conversation, and I love what you’re doing. I love the message and the energy in which you’re sharing this, the message that you’re putting out there. So please don’t ever stop and continue to show your light because this is this is powerful. We’re having we’re having conversations, and and what I love about being on the show with you is like really connecting with so much vulnerability. And I find that this is becoming more and more rare and more and more needed, especially now with AI writing all your content or even creating videos, like a lot of the content that you’re watching and listening to is AI generated. So it’s so beautiful to be in this real space with you. Um final words is is it’s never too late. And as choosy as that sounds, it’s really, really never too late. And especially for us women who who get into midlife and then we start blaming it on hormones, and then we’re focused on our kids, and perhaps we’re even in that sandwich generation where we’re really thinking about serving other people. It’s never too late, no matter how far gone you think you are or how long you’ve been struggling with something, just start. And I truly do believe that there’s not just one modality per person. So I think you mentioned hypnotherapy, and then I think something else worked for you, but I actually think there’s everything gives you something. And don’t give up on yourself, continue to explore because it’s almost like every single thing that you explore peels away one layer of that onion until you really get to the root cause. And don’t listen to people saying that things are normal and like this is normal and that you’re just supposed to live with it. And and no, it’s not true. Get to the root of it, and just know that there are certain modalities that really work to help with the symptom of what you’re feeling, but then there are other ones that really get into the depth and and the core of what’s really going on. And I couldn’t agree more that spirituality is is one of those avenues for those who are listening and who resonate with that. Um, I think to reach out and and to learn how I work, I think the best thing to do is just get onto the podcast, make peace with food, and start listening and seeing if there is alignment there in the conversation. And I also have the channel on YouTube, so make peace with food on YouTube. And then there’s tons of free resource links that I have there. I have lots of ebooks, how to calm cravings and seven steps to overcome emotional eating and binge eating. So get started there, access that free information. And if ever you wanted to take it another step, there is group coaching options, and there’s other options, but the free resources are are really, really beneficial. So start there.
I love that you you’re giving heart. Really, I think more people need to be like you, giving the the resources because what the gifts we have are are not ours to keep, but ours to give away to help humanity out. Because we’re all uniquely gifted in in what we’re doing and how we’re uh really living out our purpose in life. And when we co-collaborate with each other, we win. We’re unstoppable. I just think that there’s so many people out there just competing and because of scarcity, you know, and there is so much out there, so much abundance to be had for everyone. I I grew up believing that actually. My father showed us that he was one of two urologists in in the town that they worked. He would actually have lunch with the other urologists. He never competed with them. He always said, Sylvia, there’s enough business for everybody. Yes, and we are all very talented individuals, and everybody knows how I sign off my shows to remember Matthew 5:14 to be the light, step into your light. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You have the most amazing light inside of you. You just have to believe it. And it starts with your belief. And Sherry, I just want to thank you for for everything you’re doing in the world because this is a hot topic, and it’s there’s a reason for it. There’s just so many people out there suffering alone, thinking they’re in it alone. You’re not alone. First of all, the Lord is always with you, and second, you’ve got people like us that are speaking life and light back into you. Believe in yourself and your capacity. You have it within you. If she can do it, Sherry can do it, and if I can do it, so can you.
That’s right.
You can get out of that darkness. You have people around you, ask for help. You’re never ever alone. Uh, Sherry, thank you so much for joining us on Believe Style Reveal Purpose, and everybody have a wonderful and blessed and loving day. Bye bye now.
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Down Reveal Purpose. Head on over iTunes or wherever you listen, then subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.