I’m Karla

Who I am, where I come from, and how I can help you

My background is that my childhood was filled with violence and abuse and I was ordered to be silent at all times.  I didn’t understand my intense feelings like anger and sadness, and I had nowhere to go with these feelings either, so I swallowed them, along with my food, and pushed them back down.

Each day simply meant “survival.”  I functioned like a robot; I lived in fear and I was frozen in panic.  Feelings of humiliation and shame were very familiar to me.

At 15, the violence escalated further and I left school and began full time work.  In order to cope with the stress, I started binge eating.  Binge eating worked on one level - as soon as I put food in my mouth, I felt calmer.  But then I had the problem of gaining a lot of weight, and the stress that caused the weight gain still didn’t go away.

Disrespectful comments from others drove me to find a solution to fix this problem.  My solution was to diet all the fat off my body to ‘prove that I was worth something’.  And then the next 13 years were spent with extreme eating disorders, body image issues and general feelings of helplessness.

I consider myself lucky…

I am one of millions of survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse.  There is nothing unique in my story: I found a way out of my pain, I am free of all eating disorders and I feel about a million times better about myself than I ever did.

Now, I am in the position of being able to share the skills, tools, resources and strategies that worked to make a difference in my recovery.  I have polished and refined them over the years, so that they are easier to understand and use.

Initially, I found a way out of the darkness by giving birth naturally to two gorgeous, healthy babies, which overnight gave me a new respect for my body.  During my first pregnancy, to ward off nausea, I accidentally discovered that eating plenty of healthy foods regularly and consistently throughout the day was what stopped me from binge eating.  There was no need to overeat, if I already felt satisfied and nourished to begin with.

Our eating issues are coping mechanisms - symptoms of larger problems

I realised all my overeating and my eating disorders were only ever coping mechanisms and symptoms of a much bigger problem.  Yes, they helped me survive my life and my difficult feelings in the moment, but then I was left with two sets of problems.

One problem was that I continually gained weight and felt trapped in the overeating cycle: starving myself first, then losing control of my natural hunger and satiety cues and ending up overeating, then hating myself for my loss of control, then starving myself again to make up for all the extra food I just ate.  And the cycle continued.

The other problem is that I would never allow myself to feel my feelings.  The moment I thought I was going to feel a difficult feeling, I would smother it with food and numb myself out, so I didn’t have to feel it.

This is how all addictions work.  We, with eating issues, are Food People and we chose food as our substance.  We could have chosen any other addiction to escape from our pain - they all “work” every time we use them.  This whole process is about suppressing and denying our true feelings, so we don’t have to feel them.

Working for Eating Disorders Queensland

In 1999, I began volunteering with Eating Disorders Queensland.  I started contributing by writing for their monthly newsletter “Through the Looking Glass”.  I was completely shocked when I opened my letterbox the next month and found the EDQ had printed my letter in its entirety, with no editing!  That was the first time in my life that I had been valued for my experience instead of feeling ashamed, and it felt amazing.

In my 14 years of working at EDQ, I enjoyed contributing in many different roles, including facilitating quite a few of their 10 week recovery groups.

My first client

I’ll always remember my first client.  A lady contacted me and said “I know you don’t do counselling, but I just wanted to talk to you because I know you’ll understand what I’m going through.”  She came over to my house and we sat on the back deck and we talked for three hours. Before she left, she told me she found our conversation very helpful and she wanted to give me something for my time.  She gave me $20.  It was the most satisfying three hours I had ever spent and it never once felt like work.

After that, I knew that I could use my experience to help other people.  There was now a real reason why I needed to have all of my experiences - however horrible I deemed them to be at the time - because without them, I couldn’t relate to what anyone else was going through.

Working with people with eating issues, and writing books

From 2004 to 2019, I presented workshops on eating issues at the Relaxation Centre of Queensland to help people understand why they eat the way they do.  From 2004 to 2020, I ran an office where I had a consultation room and worked one on one with my clients in a very private space.

After Covid, I continued to provide support to people with eating issues, but this time with phone support, as I now appreciated the flexibility this option provided for both the caller and the receiver.

In 2020, I wrote and published my first book, “Eating Out of Control: 7 Steps to Understanding why you do it, so you can stop.” In 2025, I wrote and published “Feeling Calm and Safe: When you feel safe, the world looks different”, followed by the “Eating Out of Control Companion Workbook.”

Nonviolent Communication - a language of life

In 2022, I committed to completing a degree to become a Certified Trainer in Nonviolent Communication.  I initially approached Nonviolent Communication as a way to help me deal with my anger, so I could be in charge of it and learn to express myself in a healthy way, rather than allowing my anger to control me in an unhealthy way.

Dr Marshall Rosenberg’s creation, the Centre for Nonviolent Communication, gives us a whole new language, and a full vocabulary of feelings and needs to help us express ourselves in words - so we won’t need food to do the job.  Of shame, Dr Rosenberg says: “Shame is a form of self-hatred… NVC offers a framework to unpack shame, move away from self-criticism, and focus on the needs that are not being met, ultimately fostering self-compassion.”

I have also completed Level 1 and Level 2 Mediation Training with the Queensland Department of Justice’s Dispute Resolution Branch in 2024.  I passed the exams and I was recommended for Certification.

Rock and Water - feeling calm, safe and strong inside our own bodies

Rock and Water is a series of stances, postures and simple physical movements that can help us feel strong, safe and grounded inside our bodies.  I attended 6 days of training in two different states, and on one of my trainings I got to meet the founder of the program, Freerk Ykema, direct from the Netherlands.  He called me out onto the mat to spar with him a few times and told me I was a “Warrior” (or maybe, with his accent, he actually called me a “Worrier”!).  I am now a Facilitator of Rock and Water, qualified to teach the basics.

This whole experience of physical re-training reminded me of my years of panic attacks and how scared I felt inside myself all the time.  So I recorded a podcast titled “Feeling Calm and Safe,” and I followed it with “9 Ideas to Ground Yourself,” and then turned this information into a book - “Feeling Calm and Safe - When you feel safe, the world looks different.”

Self-compassion as the antidote to shame

In the last 20 years, much scientific research has proven that effective healing for our “chronic shame” is learning self-compassion - being able to regard ourselves highly and speak to ourselves consistently with genuine kindness, tenderness and warmth.

I have completed a number of workshops with Professor Paul Gilbert’s Compassionate Mind Foundation, and it was through these courses that I got a full handle on just how central our experience of shame is in maintaining our eating issues.  Our shame also keeps all our self-sabotaging and self-punishing behaviours in place too.

Dr Gabor Maté, world-leading trauma expert, speaks about how a child develops shame.

The essence of trauma is the loss of contact with ourselves.

Nobody is born with shame.  No infant is born ashamed of themselves.  How infants get shamed is when they’re not seen or if they’re mistreated.  Let’s say a child is not seen, or worse is being hurt, they can make 2 assumptions, one is “These adults are incapable, they’re stupid, they’re incompetent, I’m all alone in the world” or, the child can believe “There’s something wrong with me - and maybe if I can work hard enough, I can fix it.”

Now which belief do you think is more acceptable?  The second one.

So then they develop this deep sense that “There is something wrong with me and I just have to work hard enough or look good enough or something and maybe I can fix it.”

So even that shame, it comes from being cut off from human contact, the way we need it.

It has a kind of protective value because it makes us think there is at least something I can do to fix it.

My approach - and the bottom line in healing

I have discovered through decades of therapy and all my own trial and error that the bottom line in what I do when I work with you is attempt to help you understand your internal experience of shame, to know yourself better, and to make friends with your inner children.

Beyond that, the real journey this work will take you on is one of self-acceptance - and I sincerely hope my work will help you to find yours.  I believe that’s why I’m here.