Why do I keep carrying my clients' shame about food?
You are good at this. You can move almost anyone to change how they eat. But somewhere along the way you started taking home more than skill — you started taking home their shame, their self-judgment, their guilt about a body or a plate. That is not generosity. That is a confusion about whose weight it is. You do not do this alone, and that matters. If your pod or your partner also absorbs what clients hand them, you are reinforcing each other's bad habit without naming it. One tired practitioner becomes a tired team, each one quietly carrying a sack that was never theirs to lift. Here is what is actually in your power: the plan you give, the words you choose in the room, the boundary you hold after the session ends. Their shame is not in your power. Stop treating it as if it were.
You carry it because no one, including you, has drawn the line. Their shame is theirs. Your work is the plan, the structure, the next step — not the feeling beneath it. You did not sign on to absorb guilt. Choose, today, to hand it back where it belongs.
What changes unlock by starting
- You finish sessions with the same energy you started with, not less.
- Clients begin owning their own guilt instead of handing it to you.
- Your pod develops a shared, spoken way to name and return absorbed weight.
- You keep doing the work you're skilled at without quietly burning through yourself.