Heather Russo on The Empowered Eating & Living Podcast

In this episode, Alsana’s chief clinical officer, Heather Russo, LMFT, CEDS-S, and The Empowered Eating & Living Podcast host, Sarah Speers, address the misconceptions about residential treatment programs and highlight the unique features of Alsana that are part of our Adaptive Care Model® for recovery.

Read The Transcript

SARAH SPEERS, HOST:
Welcome to the Empowered Eating and Living Podcast, where we dive into your inner world to explore all of the psychological, emotional, energetic, and spiritual components that may be influencing your struggle with food and eating. I’m your host Sarah Emily Speers, a trained psychotherapist and energy worker who recovered from my own eating disorder, and now I help women just like you do the inner work to address the real issues keeping you stuck in your problematic eating patterns because I assure you, your problem with food is about way more than food. So, join me and guest experts as we discuss the psychology of eating and healing, and empower you with tangible steps you can take today to begin to improve your relationship with food and yourself from a place of true nourishment and care.

Heather Russo is the Chief Clinical Officer at Alsana, which is a residential treatment program for eating disorder recovery. She’s responsible for nurturing the growth and success of clinical treatment teams and strengthening the therapeutic approaches used, which includes cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, dialectical behavioral therapy, and compassion-focused therapy, which is a method proven effective in shame reduction and trauma treatment. Heather holds a master’s in clinical psychology with an emphasis in marriage and family therapy and is certified as an eating disorder specialist supervisor. Today, Heather and I talk about Alsana’s treatment program, their treatment philosophy, and we address some of the misconceptions that people may have about residential treatment programs so that you can get informed and discover if this type of treatment may be right for you given where you’re at in your healing journey. Hi, Heather. Welcome.

HEATHER RUSSO:
Thank you so much, Sarah. I’m excited to chat with you today.

SPEERS:
Yeah, I’m so excited to have you here. So for everyone who’s meeting you for the first time, Heather is the chief clinical officer at Alsana, which is a holistic residential treatment center for eating disorders. And you guys have centers, I believe, in a few locations across the country, but also in southern California, which is how I first learned about Alsana and I’m excited to have you here because I really want to introduce my audience to the world of more residential treatment programs for eating disorders, and you are the perfect person to tell us all about it.

RUSSO:
Yeah, thank you for having me here. I love nothing more than to talk about eating disorder recovery and mental wellness, and so I’m pumped just to have the opportunity to chit chat with you about it and then also be hopefully somewhat informative to folks that are curious about what this all means and looks like.

SPEERS:
Yeah, because I’ve encountered that where a lot of people either don’t realize this sort of support is available or they have misperceptions around what the support looks like, so it’ll be nice to actually give them accurate information straight from you rather than have people either lost or confused.

RUSSO:
Yeah, and there are a lot of different, I mean just like anything else in healthcare, there are a lot of different kinds of options and there’s different sort of formats and feels to different kinds of treatment programs or residential centers. And so we can kind of talk through all that today.

SPEERS:
Sounds great. So before we do, I would love to just get a little bit more of an introduction for you and you can share as much as you want about either your professional experience or even how you got into this work.

RUSSO:
I’d be happy to. So my name is Heather Russo. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist here in California. I serve as Alsana’s chief clinical officer and have been in this position for a couple of years. Prior to joining Alsana, I’ve been with a few different treatment programs offering residential treatment, day treatment, and IOP. And so, yeah, I’ve been sort of in this industry for sixteen-plus years and I love it and never tire of being in this industry or talking about it. I got into the treatment of eating disorders in large part because I’ve sort of early in life, even sort of mid-early adulthood, saw a lot of folks who I found to be otherwise so inspirational, high-functioning, articulate, interesting, well-traveled or well-versed, really crippled by their relationship with food or the relationship with their body, people that are near and dear to me, people out sort of in the community. And I found that to be really curious, how could folks who I found to be so lovable and likable and want to be around, be so sort of shame ridden or conflicted or afflicted with their relationship with food and body? Thus began my career. There was a job opening in an inpatient unit, locked inpatient eating disorder unit relatively near my house and I called them up and just found a great fit there and loved every minute of that really, really challenging work. And so that kind of set me off in a trajectory that was my first eating disorder job that set me off in a really beautiful trajectory where I recognized that the folks that were working in the treatment field were my people. Being able to connect with the folks that we were serving really brought me a lot of joy, even though it’s really, really difficult work and doesn’t always turn out the way you want it to, but have really enjoyed my career with that and have really enjoyed being with Alsana and being able to grow this program clinically.

SPEERS:
Wow. Thank you so much for all of the work you’ve done supporting in this community over the years. And it is really interesting, isn’t it? I mean my experience was also the same on the outside, successful and achiever, and everyone thinks I’m happy and there’s no problem, and then behind closed doors, this is something I wrestled with for many years in my twenties. And so there is this shame and this secrecy that can really shadow eating disorders and a lot of people don’t realize how many other people are maybe also struggling. I’m curious if you ever, as you got curious about that, did you have any realizations as to why that was happening.

RUSSO:
It’s a really good question. So I still grapple with it. So there’s part of, at Alsana we use a compassion-focused therapy lens to make sense of our clinical work and our client’s struggles. And so what I know now is that there’s an evolutionary biopsychosocial lens that we can use to make sense of it all. Our socially comparing minds, we come by that honestly, that’s just part of evolution and our need to be accepted by others in our tribe – that’s really important evolutionarily too. I think at the time, my most striking revelation, I think early on in the early days of treatment was this notion, because I grew up in diet culture, that oh, thin doesn’t equal happy. That was the first time where it was very, very clear to me that some of the thin, I mean rail thin people that I would be seeing cachectic in nature obviously were not happy. Even the folks that were in what appeared to be sort of average BMI or average build bodies that won from the outside would think, well, gosh, they must be at least satisfied with their body. They weren’t. And so it was just this sort of like, well wait a second, diet, diet culture has permeated all that I know and believe, and yet maybe it’s time to start questioning the reality of all of that. And so that to me, as a young woman in my early twenties, mid-twenties, let’s be honest, that’s really, really impactful. And I think it sent me on a path of self-discovery with my own food and body issues and making sense of the world around me. Yeah, I really valued that early lesson.

SPEERS:
I want people to make sure they heard that thinner does not equal happier. And so many of us walk around comparing ourselves to everyone else, assuming they’re happy in their bodies and ‘oh, I would do anything to look like them’ and we don’t know what anyone’s dealing with internally or mentally. And so usually that’s not a fair assumption to make and it only hurts us when we think that way.

RUSSO:
Yeah, and I think the proliferation of social media gets a lot of criticism and I think for good reason in some respects. And also we’re seeing a lot of body positivity out there. We’re seeing a lot of the embrace of fat bodies and various body shapes and sizes and colors. And so, gosh, I love that there’s a movement right now to recognize that we can be happy in our bodies, we can be happy about our bodies, we can accept our bodies, even if it doesn’t look like the cover of In-Shape Magazine. There are multiple images that we can turn to that represent feeling healthy and strong and even what even questioning and looking at all just the variety of different human presentations that we can accept and cherish.

SPEERS:
Absolutely. I agree, there is exposure now to such diversity, which feels like a beautiful balance to maybe the more superficial body-edited images that we’ve seen historically. So, it does give me hope that we’re able to really empower everyone to truly learn to love and accept themselves. So with Alsana, you mentioned a bit about compassion is like a foundation and I’m curious if you could explain a bit more about what that means for people who have no idea what you’re talking about.

RUSSO:
Yeah, that would be my pleasure. So I’ll start really sort of macro and then get more granular. So mental health treatment really lags behind medical treatment. So we as an industry are still fairly new. And then when you get more specific to eating disorder treatment, that’s like a baby field in the grand scheme of things. So we have some pretty good treatments for eating disorders. Not perfect, they’re not going to work perfectly for everybody, but cognitive behavioral therapy is definitely an evidence-based treatment for eating disorders. Dialectical behavioral therapy does a lot of wonders with eating disorders. There are a few other therapies out there that we’ve shown to see some pretty decent efficacy for long-term treatment, long-term recovery from eating disorders, and disordered eating as well.

RUSSO:
The issue that we run up against in eating disorder treatment is that oftentimes our clients present with, and your listeners might recognize this, pretty intense levels of shame and self-criticism. They often struggle to take compassion in from others or to offer it to themselves. Those become really significant barriers to taking in all of that great evidence-based treatment. So if we know that there’s some pretty good treatment out there, but folks are going to generally struggle to take it in, then it’s really incumbent on providers to navigate ‘how do we get folks to take this in to buy in?’ And so Alsana, we adopted compassion-focused therapy as a way to do that. And compassion-focused therapy was developed by a cognitive behavioral therapist guy in psychologists in the UK who said, Hey, our clients might, or folks using CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, might be able to have different thoughts than they originally had or engage in different behaviors than they originally had, or even best case now feel a little bit better than they did previously. But are they able to do so in a way that is self-compassionate or is it a more berating, self-critical, shameful kind of process they’re engaged in? So for example, I am not great at remembering to pick up dry cleaning. I’m just not good at it. It’s one of those adulting things that I’ve just never done a good job with. Leave it there for too long, it’s not good. So, I put a system in place, put a little notice in my phone to say, remember Saturday morning, pick up the dry cleaning because they’re closed on Sundays. I have bypassed that message to myself many, many times. And so one option would be to say, ‘Oh my God, Heather, you can’t get this straight for the life of you. Grow up, pick up your damn dry cleaning, be an adult, and do what you need to do – preposterous you can’t do this. You’re a fully functioning human.’ So that’s one way to self-correct.

SPEERS:
I’m sure we all know that voice.

RUSSO:
Another way to self-correct would be to say, ‘Hey, you have really busy Saturdays. There’s a lot going on. Picking up your dry cleaning’s, not going to be your most enjoyable thing to do, and you typically tend to procrastinate on that. What’s another way that we can make it a point to go pick up your damn dry cleaning?’ So the same impact in that it’s getting me to pick up the dry cleaning, not slack on this, and make sure I’m ready for my next work trip or whatever I’m doing, but in a much different way. And so we want for our clients, and it’s sort of a silly example, but we want for our clients to be able to self-correct, but in a way that’s going to feel more compassionate and more soothing than maybe they would have previously. And so that’s a little bit, I mean, compassion-focus therapy, I could do a whole, I actually did a whole presentation this morning on it, but that’s sort of the gist of what we’re aiming for along with some of the more evidence-based practices, traditionally evidence-based practices for eating disorders.

SPEERS:
I love that. I mean, I’ve definitely agree that what I’ve seen among many of my clients and the women I’ve worked with over the years and myself is that that shame is super strong and is like a bully. That inner voice really does continue to beat you down, and it feels absolutely imperative to work on shifting that internal narrative to be way more compassionate and supportive because I know most people don’t talk that way to the ones they love, and yet for some reason, we justify talking that way to ourselves and it’s absolutely not helpful. So making that shift is, it makes sense that that’s going to be an important part of their recovery.

SPEERS:
I’m curious because that is the clinical side, but there’s also, you know, you kind of have this Adaptive Care Model, which includes more than just the therapy. Can you speak to the holistic approach that Alsana offers?

RUSSO:
Yeah, Alsana is unique in that we really are focused on five dimensions of treatment all being equally important with one another. So historically, admittedly, the therapeutic dimension of any company sort of takes the reins, which is great for therapists, we get a lot of say in things, but it’s not really a complete picture. And so what Alsana has done is says, look, the five dimensions of treatment, so in our mind, so therapeutic, medical, relational movement and nutrition, those are the five sort of pillars or dimensions of somebody’s eating disorder, recovery. No one of those is more important than the other. And if that’s the case, then we ought to be attending to, monitoring, tracking, and intervening on all five of those dimensions equally and as frequently as sort of in-depth and with much fervor and passion as we can. So this shows up in a myriad of ways. One of the ways is let’s say through movement. So a lot of treatment programs will restrict clients from engaging in movement and they will sort of have to earn it back, show that they’re worthy of moving their bodies, they can be trusted to move their bodies. We really flip that around and say, look, all bodies need to be in movement regardless of their health, size, wellness, or condition. We’re going to start everybody moving. Some folks will be averse to that. They struggle with moving their bodies, whether it be because of physical limitations or because of the psychological correlates of moving their bodies. Some clients will have come from an overexercise standpoint and they will want to move their bodies to an excess. And we’re saying, Hey, let’s learn how to do this in a, let’s learn how to move our bodies in a way that is social and affiliative, that is self-additive rather than degrading, in a way that is measured and seen and lacks the shame and the self-criticism that maybe it previously had. And we’re really intentional about that, just as intentional as we are about somebody’s meal plan or somebody’s therapeutic work or somebody’s engagement in self-acceptance and relationality and connection. So all of those have to be sort of stirred into the pot because we are multi-dimensional humans and we need a multi-dimensional recovery process as well.

SPEERS:
Yeah, I fully agree. And that’s one reason why I loved Alsana when I first learned of you and the work that you guys were doing because I felt like you were hitting all of the facets of being a human that are so important. The relational piece is so important and the movement piece is so important, and we can’t omit those really on the healing journey. I’m curious how the relational piece shows up in the work that you guys do.

RUSSO:
So it shows up in a few different ways. So some of the more traditional ways in which we’re engaging families and supportive others in our client’s treatment and involving them, we offer a lot of support services for those folks. The other sort of characteristic of our relational dimension is to kind of, again, think really macro. We all come from unique cultures and we all are embedded within those cultures and bring that to the table. It is vitally important that we can acknowledge the influence of our own culture on our way of relating to others and vice versa. So we as clinicians will not necessarily share the same culture and often don’t as our clients. There are there’s, there’s just such a myriad of different ways that people have lived their lives and what they’ve come by. So we need to be able to be intentional about connection and relationships even when we come from different cultures, and especially to be able to be accountable for what we bring to the table and respect what other folks bring to the table. So we want to honor that our clients are all also returning back to different cultures and different relationships and different social groups. So the relational dimension really helps us anchor into this idea that we’re all in a relationship with each other at all times, and we have to be accountable for what we bring and also make room for what other folks bring and make sure that we’re able to incorporate that into our relationships with them and into their treatment trajectory.

SPEERS:
Which sounds so important as well, because if they’re coming to residential, you’re sort of plucking someone out of that environment, and so going back into that environment and those relationships and that culture really being prepared and understanding how that impacts somebody and either developing the tools or a plan to be able to really succeed when you go back into that environment would be an essential piece of maintaining the recovery and healing that somebody’s experiencing when they’re with you.

RUSSO:
Absolutely. That even shows up in the foods that we serve. We can’t serve a homogenous sort of menu because our clients are going back into homes or communities where a variety of different foods are being served, and so we really work to help our clients influence the meals that they’re making or that our chefs are making get involved with that, and then certainly when our clients are in lower levels of care, we’re really encouraging them to prepare and consume the foods that they’re going to be eating when they’re in engaging in a relationship with other folks once they get home.

SPEERS:
So let’s talk more about the food piece because I know that’s usually for people, maybe one of the biggest misconceptions that they may have. And obviously, when you have disordered eating, everything about food could be a trigger or there’s fear and there are beliefs, and I think some of the misperceptions are maybe if I go to residential treatment, they’re going to control my food or how that’s going to be that experience. And you’ve already named that on the exercise side of things, there’s this permission of allowing all bodies to move. So when it comes to how you guys approach food and eating, what is your approach or philosophy that Alsana upholds?

RUSSO:
Yeah, let me just first validate that this is the scary part. This is the scary part. In fact, I just sort of anecdotally, I’ve worked in substance abuse recovery and folks are way more protective over addressing their relationship with food than they are even with substances, right? It’s like, I’ll get sober but don’t mess with my food. There’s just something more inherently sort of internalized and personal about it. So our nutrition dimension is characterized by a few different sorts of concepts I would say. One is that we really do want to be, in general for all of our dimensions, but this shows up for nutrition deeply, we want to be a soft landing for folks. Our clients come to us with so much harshness in their own, in their souls. There’s just been such harshness and an edge that Alsana really wants to be a soft landing for our clients.

Some of the ways that show up in our nutrition dimension, we believe in all-inclusive nutrition. Now, a lot of treatment programs or providers have used the tagline, “All foods fit.” That’s sort of a tagline in our industry or maybe folks have heard it that are listening, and I think the intention there was good. What that kind of has come to represent though is that there are diet foods and recovery foods. There are foods that one should or ought to be eating in recovery versus foods that maybe are forbidden or that represent some other thing, anti-recovery in some way. It’s begun to mimic good foods and bad foods. So we really want to step outside of all of that. We really want to say, gosh, we really do believe that all foods are neutral. So that means you want to eat cauliflower crust pizza, eat cauliflower crust pizza. That’s okay. All the restaurants have it out here in LA. If you want to eat, go for it. Also, have a bread roll or have a dessert. Let’s normalize all foods. If you want an acai bowl, have an acai bowl. It doesn’t mean that just because it’s considered a health food, it’s an anti-recovery food. Now we also believe in Oreos and we believe in broccoli, and we believe in all of the foods. I always sort of joke, I have pretty constantly some level of a hundred-calorie pack of food in my house. I don’t have disordered eating. I am a very normal eater, and yet this is how Target sells snacks sometimes, and they’re easy to go. So for our clients, I think for us to say, well, because you’re in eating disorder recovery, you can’t have this, that, and the other food, it does then sort of lead one to believe that there are good foods and bad foods.

Our clients who need weight restoration for their health and long-term recovery are absolutely encouraged and supported in doing so. So we still believe in weight restoration as being such a fundamental piece for folks who need it. We still believe that atypical anorexia exists. Just because somebody’s in a larger body doesn’t mean that they get to restrict. So we believe in all of those things. Of course, that food needs to be democratized though, and that food needs to be neutralized. So that’s a pretty significant aspect of our nutrition dimension. We are able to take vegan clients because we believe that vegan folks can recover. There’s just a lot of grace, I think, and latitude for understanding that there are many, many paths to eating disorder recovery.

SPEERS:
I can feel so many people taking a sigh of relief listening to you explain that because, to me, that is just the balanced approach, which is that all foods are neutral and we don’t need to label or condemn any foods or put any foods on this pedestal as the healthy gold standard and if we’re not eating that way, then we’re humanly flawed or not good enough. So to be able to just erase all of that energy and conditioning around foods and help people really begin to feel comfortable eating what they like or learning how to nourish themselves in new ways is such an important piece of this healing journey.

RUSSO:
It has to be the direction this field moves in. We have to be more inclusive. We have to be more open-minded and question, gosh, are we carrying on these traditions in treatment because they make sense and they’re scientifically sound or are we carrying them on because that’s just what we were taught as new clinicians? And so, I feel really, really passionate and invested in being curious and using new science, new research, and new observations about how our clients are changing over time to inform best practices. It’s really important to me and Alsana.

SPEERS:
I love that so much. You mentioned a few of the types of eating disorders that you would support, and I’d love if you could elaborate for people who are wondering, is this potentially a place that’s right for me? I know that you guys work with a spectrum of eating disorders, but what’s and who specifically do you support?

RUSSO:
Yeah, so Alsana treats adults only, but we treat individuals of all genders and ages above 18. We treat individuals suffering from binge eating disorder, atypical anorexia, anorexia, bulimia, ARFID, which is I’d say more anxiety or neurodiverse kind of eating disorder, and that other wastebasket category of eating disorders is called OSFED that’s an acronym. So essentially the litmus test for folks that Alsana serves is, gosh, is your relationship with your food or body keeping you from living the life that you want to be living? If it is, even if you’re able to check all the boxes like we kind of alluded to earlier in the recording that even if you’re able to check boxes, are you doing it in a way that feels congruent with your values, with the relationships that you want, with the self-identity that you want? Those are the kinds of folks that we help.
So we have various levels of care we kind of talked about a little bit earlier, but we offer residential treatment, so where folks are staying at our recovery homes in order to do the work, the therapeutic and nutrition, all of that medical, that work that they need to do in order to recover. We also offer day treatment where folks are coming for six or seven hours a day and then intensive outpatient, which is like three hours a day, a few days a week. And I think it’s important probably for listeners to understand there are two different types of residential treatment programs and there’s no one that’s better than the other, but just depending on what somebody needs and where they feel comfortable, there are residential treatment programs that are more clinically based, so they look more like a hospital. They typically are in medical buildings or office buildings, and they have maybe a more medical sort of slant to them.

There are other residential facilities, Alsana being one of them, that are built out of homes. So when you walk in it, it looks like a regular home, but it’s outfitted with all of the things that one would need in order to get the support that they need for their recovery. So nursing staff, a chef typically, bedrooms, privacy therapy rooms, that kind of thing. It’s a home environment, which can feel really nice to some folks. Again, not a fit for everybody, but that home life environment, Alsana believes really helps to dial down some of the intensity of the work from an environmental perspective and helps just from a more sort of comfortable experience while in treatment.

SPEERS:
It sounds just a little bit more cozy and warm and maybe a place that you can settle into without being as nervous or on edge. If somebody was coming into a more medical setting, I can see how that might be a little intense at times.

RUSSO:
Yeah. I love our facilities. They’re decorated beautifully. They’re soft colors and warm tones and textures and fabrics, and if anybody wants to go to our website, they can see images of what these facilities look like. They’re really beautiful and really intentionally laid out and decorated for that sort of soft landing that we talked about earlier.

SPEERS:
And the length of time that people could expect to be there for, I’m assuming ranges, but in general, what does the length look like?

RUSSO:
So folks who are choosing to go into a residential treatment program for eating disorders should expect to be there for probably about four to five weeks, typically around five weeks, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. The reason that we want to do that is severalfold to set aside a month or so to be able to do this. One is because it takes a while to get comfortable and to trust your environment and to get the flow of things and to allow for feelings and experiences to surface when one is not using, they’re eating disorder behaviors to tamp that all down. Another is because we really want to get into the habit of being able to take care of our bodies, whether it’s meal plan experience, sleep hygiene, detoxing from some social media, and that sort of plugged-in nature of folks these days. So a whole host of different reasons. And then we really recommend that clients step down from residential treatment programs into day treatment either in-person, there are some virtual programs, Alsana does offer virtual PHP as well, but it’s really important that that continuity exists so that there’s a slightly increased amount of responsibility and sort of autonomy in growing one’s own recovery, that it doesn’t happen overnight. You’re not going from residential treatment back into your day-to-day life routines, but you have the opportunity to step down and then from a day treatment program into an intensive outpatient program, again, virtual or in-person, Alsana offers both, and to be able to take that on gradually in a really, again self-compassionate way, not to sort of go with that instinct that a lot of eating disorder clients have, which is to just tough it out or white knuckle it or just power through and to do it in a slower fashion.

SPEERS:
Slowing down is always helpful and pacing the speed at which we’re trying to fix ourselves. And this does take time, especially if people have been struggling for years and years and years. I’m sure many of the people who come to you, it has for some been a lifelong struggle. And so to, on average, say for four to five weeks in the grand scheme of how long you’ve been struggling is really a very small amount of time that could potentially change your life. So it really can be worth it to carve out the time to participate in something like that. In terms of misperceptions that people may have, I’m sure you encounter many, and I’m curious what some of the most common ones are that might keep people judging Alsana and the treatment programs or just keep them from ever considering it as something that would be right for them.

RUSSO:
Yeah. Gosh, I think there’s a lot. I think folks generally will believe that they don’t have or they won’t have the support that they will need in order to check out of life for a month or so. We have found amazing, amazing support for our clients from all kinds of places when they’ve needed to say, Hey, I got to skip town to go take care of myself for a little bit, I’ll be back. So I think allowing for other people to support us is, it can be hard for all of us, but I think by in large, our clients have found that when they do tap into their support systems, that their support systems are able to show up for them and really hold things down so they can go take care of themselves. Another, I think, is that the experience of being at a residential facility will feel confined or it will feel like one is trapped or that sort of general feel. And at Alsana facilities, we have beautiful yards and lots of windows in our homes. We have many of our facilities decorated beautifully with West Elm furniture. Really beautiful.

SPEERS:
It’s stepping into a resort, not a prison.

RUSSO:
Exactly. So just the feel of these homes is just really warm and friendly. Autonomy is not taken. There’s freedom. Folks can obviously leave whenever they want, if they say, gosh, this is just not for me. It’s just not the right time. I’m not ready.

SPEERS:
So they’re not going to be locked up. Yeah. It’s like ‘I’m going to be trapped forever and they’re going to have me behind bars’. It’s not at all what this is like.

RUSSO:
Not at all. No, no, not at all. We are all voluntary facilities and homes, and we want to help clients walk through the discomfort with them. I would say the other thing is around food. We’re not standing over people demanding that they eat food. We serve food. It’s beautiful food. If you don’t follow us on social media, you should because you can see all the beautiful meals that our clients and chefs put together. But again, we want to be a soft landing and so there’s nothing that’s going to be punitive or shaming around somebody’s interaction with food, whether they are struggling through restricting or binge eating or any of the myriad of symptoms that our clients show up with. It’s, it’s a non-shaming environment, and it’s an environment where we get it, our staff get it, our clients get it. This is an environment that is pro-recovery. We have an agenda, but it is not at the sacrifice, not at the detriment of making somebody feel othered or less than. Those are just not, we’re not going there.

SPEERS:
And I mean, I really appreciate it because historically mental health conditions were viewed as you’re crazy and people would get locked up. And so I think sometimes people have these fears that stem from what at one point in time was reality in terms of how we as a society approach mental health. But we’ve really evolved just leaps and bounds, and you’re really highlighting the total transformation that’s happening in the mental health field. How now it’s, I mean, I feel it as you talk, you care so much about helping people, and Alsana’s an environment where it’s safe and it’s warm and it’s welcoming, and there’s freedom and permission and compassion, and it’s like, oh yeah, that is what healing is supposed to look and feel like. And I’m so grateful that we have centers like yours that are really prioritizing not only creating that space, but also continuing to evolve how you offer the treatment so that you’re not just replicating what’s been done historically, but you’re continuing to advance the field. And that’s a really important responsibility that I think we have as mental health professionals.

RUSSO:
Great, thank you, Sarah.

SPEERS:
Yeah, thank you. It’s just like I want any person who’s really been struggling and feeling like they need more support to not be afraid to at least reach out to Alsana if this conversation is really speaking to them. And at the very least, have a conversation with your team. And so how would people move forward with learning if they are a good fit or if this might be a space that’s right for them?

RUSSO:
Give us a call.

SPEERS:
I’ll include their contact information in the show notes, so people can just click the link to do that.

RUSSO:
Perfect. Yeah, there’s a self-assessment on our website, and there’s a chat function feature if that feels more comfortable than a phone call. We really want folks to be able to engage with us in the way that they feel most comfortable. We have a social media presence if you just want to see some images or some testimonies of other folks that have gone through our treatment programs. But go to our website first and foremost, our phone number’s there too, and thanks for putting it in the note. Give us a call. We can talk to you about your specific needs and what are some of the challenges that you’re facing and talk about, gosh, if we’re going to be of service to you, then let’s talk about how and if you’re not the right fit for us or that it’s just not the right time for you, then we can talk about that and that’s okay too. But we want to be in a relationship with folks who are struggling so that when the time comes that folks are ready if that time comes, then they have all of the options in front of them. They know what they’re to expect, and we can be really clear about the services that we offer.

SPEERS:
And you’re very inclusive. So if somebody’s thinking, oh I, given how they identify in terms of sexual orientation or being a diverse community, sort of speaking for you. But I’m curious and assuming that this is a space that’s inclusive for any being and body to be.

RUSSO:
Yeah, that’s been at the foundation of Alsana since our inception, we really believe in recovery for everybody, and we educate ourselves tirelessly on how best to show up for the widest variety of humans that we possibly can. We’re not perfect, and just like we talked about earlier, we all come with our own cultural identities, but it’s really, really at our core, one of our core values is to be an inclusive environment. And so we’re constantly learning and constantly challenging ourselves to think more about, gosh, what does it feel like to be coming to Alsana from this particular life experience or from this particular belief system, or to celebrate these particular holidays? These are endless questions that we need to be asking ourselves and that we do.
SPEERS:
So when I’m saying any person anybody who feels called for support, you know, really truly are welcome to reach out and are invited into that space, or at least that conversation. And I can also feel people who right now are saying, oh, well, I wouldn’t be able to afford it. That can be a barrier to also reaching out. And so in terms of affordability or using insurance, what does that piece look like?

RUSSO:
Yeah, so y’all don’t need to be insurance experts to navigate. We do that. So give us a call. We’ll take down your insurance information. We can run it right on the spot to see exactly what you’ll be accountable for in terms of finances, and what your insurance will cover. If you don’t have insurance, we can talk about what options there are available. I also want to give a shout-out to Project Heal. Project Heal is a really amazing organization that Alsana does a lot of work with and has a great relationship with.

SPEERS:
I did a podcast episode with Project Heal. You guys can go back in the archives and listen about Project Heal and how they will support you through many ways in being able to attend a place like Alsana.

RUSSO:
Excellent. Good Cross branding there.

SPEERS:
Right.

RUSSO:
Yeah. So there are other organizations like Project Heal too that can help. But yeah, give us a call, and we’ll walk you through the insurance part. You don’t need to be an expert. We’ll help you navigate all that.

SPEERS:
Yeah, amazing. Is there anything else on your heart that you would want anyone listening to know or take away?

RUSSO:
Yeah, I think, I imagine the folks that are listening to this and who might be drawn to listening to a conversation like this, and I would imagine that there is a streak of curiosity in these folks that there is some level of contemplation, can I think about potentially living a different kind of life. And I just, in so many years of working in this field, I’ve seen folks transform their lives and their bodies and themselves and seen people recover with my own eyes and folks that thought that they couldn’t or wouldn’t, or that had very nonlinear paths to get there. I want everybody to know I have all people believe in recovery. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve walked with folks through those really, really dark valleys and high highs, and I want everybody to know that even when they can’t hold hope for themselves, there are clinicians like myself, like you, Sarah, that hold hope for them because we know.

SPEERS:
Yeah, we do. We know it’s possible, which is why it’s so empowering and powerful when you can, to me, show up in a space where somebody holds that knowing for you when you don’t believe it yourself. And I know when I was kind of at rock bottom with my own eating disorder, I had sort of just accepted like, well, this is just going to be the rest of my life. I’m just going to have to learn how to live with this. Because it just felt impossible for it to ever change. And yet here I am, totally a believer now in knowing with every cell of my body that’s possible, and I know you know the same. And so for those people who just can’t imagine or have really given up on themselves or any possibility of things improving, this is the sendoff message of hope that isn’t some propaganda and fluff. It’s based in truth and what we’ve witnessed and what we’ve experienced. So I love leaving off on that message.

RUSSO:
Thank you so much for this conversation, Sarah, and all that you’re doing to promote wellness and mental health. It’s just a remarkable contribution.

SPEERS:
Thank you. Yeah, it was so wonderful having you. I’m really happy that I got to showcase Alsana because I believe in this program, and I hope that people are able to overcome their own fears and make that connection with you guys if they really need it.

RUSSO:
Thank you.

SPEERS:
Thanks for tuning in to the Empowered Eating and Living podcast. If you liked today’s episode, make sure to follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. And if you loved it, then please share this episode on your social media or send it to loved ones who may benefit from listening too.