81: Overcoming Mental Health, Body Shaming & Loss With Dr. Morgan Francis

Dr. Morgan Francis is a Licensed Professional Counsellor with a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology, a licensed Mental Health Therapist and the owner of Scottsdale Premier Counselling. Her mission is to end the stigma of mental health and cultural body image. Dr. Francis is an expert in her field and she has a compassionate approach to help you get to the bottom of what is creating havoc in your life. She has overcome the loss of her brother when she was a young girl as well as her own personal mental health struggles and eating disorders. She has educated herself and conducted extensive research on therapeutic methods to help others. She has an online course called, Bye Bye Body Blame, to help people love their bodies without having to lose weight. She breaks down your negative thoughts and feelings towards your body and builds up body respect and appreciation with practical and therapeutic support and guidance. When Dr. Morgan Francis was 16, her older brother was killed in a car crash. Mental Health is very important to her because it’s a personal way for her to connect as a result of what has happened in her life. Shortly after the loss of her brother, she was put into therapy. This was a very positive experience for her and allowed her to have a relationship with her brother on a different level.She began to understand that there is suffering and there is pain. She knew she couldn’t suffer for the rest of her life, so she had to move into the pain in order to continue to live. She shares that when you lose someone so close to you, you learn to appreciate life in a different way because you learn how short life really is. She shares that there are certainly still seasons where she has fallen back into a depression or the suffering would come back and she would try to avoid pain. This showed up in the forms of an emotional eating disorder on all spectrums. She worked with a therapist to move through this because she knew she wanted to live a quality of life that she needed to have to really connect with her Brother on a spiritual level. She had to move through suffering and pain to live in her faith because faith and fear can’t walk in the same line.Once her eating disorder was healed, she noticed that she was still feeling shame towards her body through her mind. She decided to distance herself from diet culture and recognized that we are so marginalized as a society as far as the types of bodies and the types of people that are shown to us. She realized that there are so many people struggling with their body image that did not have an eating disorder; an epidemic that she wanted to tackle head-on. She wanted to change that people stop living because of their body image. She shares the, “It’s the deprivation, the obsessive thinking that continues to bring people down. Some thoughts come from fear and some thoughts come from grace. We don’t want your self-worth attached to your body size. Your body image heals from the inside out, not the outside in. You can lose all of the weight, but still not be happy. It’s about learning to do the healing from the inside out to be in alignment with our bodies.”Dr. Francis wraps up with this message: You’re not alone. Everyone struggles with their body image on some degree of the spectrum. There are resources out there that can help you understand more about your body and your relationship with your body. Whether you’ve experienced trauma, or whether it’s from culture or something someones said to you - there are so many reasons we could be at war with our body. There are valid reasons for your feelings. Educate yourself with health at every size. Appreciate your body and use the resources out there for you. Get in touch with Dr. Morgan FrancisInstagram: @drmorganfrancisWebsite: https://www.scottsdalepremiercounseling.comBye Bye Body Blame course: https://drmorganfrancis.teachable.com/p/bye-bye-body-blame