Thanks for listening to The Fat Psychologist Podcast. Join me to decode wellbeing research so it can have a real impact in our lives. Let's make decisions based on information we understand, not based what others say we should think of ourselves. I will explore themes that have been important in my life, as I search for happiness and belonging. This is our journey, I would love you to contribute too!

The Fat Psychologist Podcast

Be your authentic self: courage, self-esteem and self-efficacy

"The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself as accepted"
Paul Tillich, 1952

Season 1 Episode 6

In this episode

In this heartfelt episode, Ninna Makrinov, The Fat Psychologist, delves into the complexities of embracing authenticity and the courage it takes to be oneself. Ninna shares her personal journey, exploring themes of self-acceptance, vulnerability, and the impact of societal expectations on our sense of self. She discusses the importance of inclusivity and how we can be happy at every size, backed by research and personal anecdotes.

Guests

Ninna Makrinov, aka The Fat Psychologist, is a teacher, trainer, coach and the author of The Fat Psychologist Podcast. A critical thinker by nature, Ninna is an activist who questions knowledge from a feminist, fat inclusive, disability informed, anti-racist perspective. By day, Ninna works as Assistant Professor (Research Methods) at the University of Warwick and Chair of Governors in two Birmingham Primary Schools. She has been an academic in Chile, Mexico and the UK. Ninna is passionate about the development and well-being of people and the organisations they are part of.

Ninna is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She holds a BSc Psychology and Professional Title in Organisational Psychology from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, an MSc in Occupational Health Psychology from The University of Nottingham and a Masters in Business Administration from Tecnológico de Monterrey. She has most recently completed the Postgraduate Award (PGA) Curriculum Design in Higher Education and the PGA Technology Enhanced Learning at The University of Warwick.

Show Notes

In this episode, I talked about:

Popular science
Brené Brown, her books Braving the Wilderness and Daring Greatly, and her TedTalk The Power of Vulnerability

Academic articles

Plain transcript available in the show notes

Transcript

[00:00:00] Introduction and Welcome

Hello, I am Ninna Makrinov. I'm a psychologist and yes, I am fat. I am The Fat Psychologist. I love who I am. In fact, I want everyone to embrace who they are. Saying this sounds easy. Doing it can be hard. That's where my podcast comes in.

So welcome then to the Fat Psychologist. Join me to decode wellbeing research so it can have a real impact in our lives.

In this series, I explore how we can be happy at every size.

Inclusivity is at the heart of everything I do. Every word is captured with care. You'll find precise transcripts on my website and human checked captions wherever you listen.

If you like my podcast, subscribe and share with your friends. You can also find me on Bluesky and Instagram @TheFatPsychologist.

Embracing Authenticity

I wonder, what do you [00:01:00] think about when people say be your authentic self? , I've also heard it as bring your whole self to work. I wish this was true, but I always wonder if it really is. I find it really confusing because I'm not sure if there's a code that I'm not getting of what parts of my authentic self it is okay to bring to work or it is okay to bring to the world.

in this episode, I will explore my personal story and some research that can help us potentially be truly ourselves.

What brought me to this theme this week?

It was actually two things. One is that, reading around, I found an academic article by Yang, Zhu, Wang, and Wang, called "Dare to be yourself: courage promotes self-authenticity [00:02:00] via sense of power", which was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology just in 2024.

As you are all aware, the other big thing that's been happening in my life is this podcast and. I've been loving doing it. I feel that I'm being completely me or partly me because there's still bits of me that are not coming across. Not because necessarily I'm hiding many of them, but just because we all wear different personas or different masks in different scenarios. I'm a very different person in this podcast than I might be when I'm lying in the sofa at home or being super tired or being very rational. Um, I mean, I suppose I'm very rational in the podcast too, but thinking about numbers and thinking about technology, when I do my day job as an academic.

That [00:03:00] same idea of building this podcast, building my website, and very recently writing my services page with fees made me think about that balance of what does it really mean when I think about being authentic and why it's important to me, and also why then did I actually go ahead and put this podcast out there?

These are things that are recurring in my life. I've been thinking about them on and off for a really long time. And it'll be really hard to summarize some of my key thoughts in half an hour. And obviously we will keep expanding these ideas as we're going on in different episodes.

let's think about authenticity. What do we mean? What do I mean by that? To me, authenticity is the willingness to explore and [00:04:00] show my current self to the world. Being in this state of vulnerability where I can actually learn and grow.

When I teach, I talk a lot about a theme that I have borrowed from anti-racist pedagogies, and that's the idea of brave spaces. So a place where I can be brave because by sharing and discussing I am vulnerable. Learning is never easy. Presenting myself fully is never easy. However, it's the only path I know to thinking that I am worth.

And that brings me back to writing my services page in the website. I've decided I know my worth. It's there. It's out there in the world. I value myself and I know others value me too.

I'm really thankful to have some fantastic friends who [00:05:00] both challenge me and support me. That has allowed me to be me, more authentic, more me. There's still things I won't share, 'cause again, there's that balance between authenticity and oversharing. I can always overshare, but maybe there are things that are not needed in a specific space. And it doesn't mean that I'm not being authentic. I'm just choosing parts of me to share in that context, but I'm not faking it.

Accepting myself as accepted

So I like to start with quotes, don't I? And in this case, I'm going to pick a quote that I just read in the article by Ying Yang, by Paul Tillich written in 1952: the courage to be is the courage to accept oneself as accepted.

I think that has been the really hard process for me. when I was young, I always felt I did not really fit in. I was too loud. I [00:06:00] was commonly told that I shouldn't want to be the center of attention so much, and I loved it. I still love it. Uh, that's why I do what I do. This probably why I do this podcast as well, or one of the many reasons. I was really obsessed with rules, so when I was, I still remember being really, really young, um, kind of primary school. Year one or two, like super young and being super upset because someone in class was copying, and telling the teacher. It took me a really long time to understand that rules and laws are not necessarily things we need to follow, but we can also challenge. And again, that I suppose that's coming to this podcast where I'm thinking, okay, what are the things that we've learned or I have learned through life, and should I challenge them rather than following them blindly?

I was also a very precocious child, so when I started school I could already read and write fluently and it [00:07:00] really annoyed me that the teachers wouldn't let me do that. They were expecting of me to hide what I knew.

I think the message I get through life is that I was showing off. And, and that's never been my intention. It's not the point showing off, but I wanna help others. I wanna share what I know 'cause what's the point in knowing or exploring or being passionate about things if I just keep them to myself.

Through my life, I have both felt accepted and not felt accepted. And in that trying to fit in in a world where I was too big in personality and to be in size to fit in properly. Then rather than accepting that I could be accepted or I was accepted for who I was, I [00:08:00] rather tried to fit in. So not belong, but be who I thought others wanted me to be.

But the real problem with that is that I never knew what people wanted me to be other than they wanted me to be thin. The whole world wanted me to be thin. I mean, there's a huge diet culture around the world, so not surprising. And that was never really me. I mean, I wasn't fat as a child at all. If you look back at pictures, I'll put some on the website. But for my group and for what was expected in the media, I was always big. And that was unacceptable. So, although I personally am not sure I had that a problem with it, I don't know. I mean, I clearly did 'cause I was on a diet constantly, but I think it was more the fact that I wanted to [00:09:00] be accepted than I was bothered about me and my size.

And I remember even as a teen, I was very much involved in the Catholic church in Chile. One of the themes I've grappled with throughout is this call by Jesus on love others as you love yourself. And it's never been the love others that I've had an issue with, it's the love yourself. And it was a big thing for me to think about how could I love myself as I loved others. And that's something that I still continuously think about when I'm being over critical, when I am judging myself too harshly. I go back to, okay, what would I do if it was someone else?

If someone else was telling me this, what would I think? What would I tell them? And I would normally be much more compassionate than I am to myself, and I am really thankful that I am learning self-compassion as I'm going on. Really interestingly, that kind of same idea comes round in loads of religions [00:10:00] and I love talking to people who have different faiths and different views.

So again, if you'd like to share your views, your perspectives, send me a message and I'd love to have you on the podcast.

Exploring Courage and Vulnerability

That then leads me to the themes that we'll unpack today, let's go back to the title of the article: Dare to Be Yourself. And that leads me to many readings that I've come across on vulnerability. I particularly love some of the books and some of the presentations by Brené Brown.

Last year, I went on a mini holiday, just one night away with a very good friend of mine. We had a three hour drive to get there and we decided to play an audio book by  Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness. Chapter one really, really touched me and I was crying on my way there. And the issue is that in that book,  Brené summarizes some of the things that I've been grappling with, that [00:11:00] to truly belong I need to stop trying to belong. I need to know that I dare to be myself.

It doesn't matter what I think others want from me. I can still challenge my ideas. I don't mean that I'm perfect 'cause I'm not. No one is, I suppose. I can still speak up I can stand on those values and share them with the world.

And that to me is really vulnerable. It's really daring as well. And I love, again, her titles: "Daring Greatly" or "The power of vulnerability". I need to confess something , before I started this podcast, when I was starting to think about it, I started listening to  Brené's podcast. I got through a period where it's like, oh, I don't like her anymore. Um, for various reasons, but they were all fake. I realized that I was just super envious because she does what I did in Dare Do I. So thank you  Brené. I'm now doing some of that that I now want to do.

Being [00:12:00] who I thought someone else wanted to me to be, like in my family or then at work sometimes, or when I married... That led me to deep, deep sadness. I'm still terrified that when I start being me and showing me people will hate me. However, the evidence shows that many people love me and even if they didn't, I love myself, so it's fine. It's okay. I can survive it. Even if people hate me, I can survive this... she says, after having a mini fight led me last week to have my whole body hurting and just taking me a whole week to get over a discussion with someone I love.

When I think about that courage of showing myself and what the alternative is, which is masking, protecting. Then I know that for me [00:13:00] and my mental health, the best I can do is to show myself to the world.

If you'd like to read something that kind of shows this in a very simple way. when I was in Mexico, so I lived in Mexico for eight years. During that period I went to a human development center quite a lot. I volunteered there and it has meant a lot to me. And during that time, my very good friend, Patricia, who I mention a lot in my life, recommended that I read The Knight in the Rusty Armor by Robert Fisher. I would super recommend that. So it tells the story of, um, spoiler alert, of a knight who wanted to be very strong, so he decided it is a great idea to sleep on his armor, and the armor gets rusty, and then he just can't access the world anymore. Because he cannot touch his family. He cannot feel love, and he goes on this journey [00:14:00] to get rid of the armor, and maybe that's exactly what I'm doing by doing this podcast too.

Yin Yang and their colleagues conducted various studies, they tested what courage meant. I really like the fact that they thought about courage both as a trait. So some people say you are courageous. A trait means that it's something we have, whatever it is, we are always there.

And actually people would say that I am courageous. I'm not sure if I am courageous or not. For some things, yeah, for others, no way. But also courage as a state. So rather than something we always have. Something that changes over time and in different situations. And to put a very silly example, I think it's courageous for me to be doing this podcast I'm completely not courageous about going in a high place and standing there. I'm terrified of heights and that doesn't make me not [00:15:00] courageous. They link courage as a trait to authenticity as a trait, and also courage as a state to authenticity as a state. What this means is that when people believed themselves to be more courageous, they were also more authentic, or they reported that they were more authentic. And when people thought about themselves in a specific scenario as being courageous, so I was courageous when I did this, for example, then their authenticity also changed in relation to other people who were in a different condition, thinking that they were not courageous. And this study was conducted in China, which is another reason I liked it. 'cause I've said before that a lot of this work is generally done in the West.

Top tip there. If this is the case, then we can [00:16:00] make ourselves courageous or make ourself authentic by picking specific thoughts. So if you're ever feeling or if I am ever feeling I'm saying this to myself too, that I am not feeling courageous... Think back to a time when you have been.

When have you stood for your values and it has worked out? Have you helped others, gone out of your way to do that and it has worked out? When have you shown courage? And I'm sure you have many times in your life ' cause we all have, just think of it. It can be something small. It can be, I killed a spider, if you're scared of spiders, or it can be something huge.

I think some of the most courageous things I've done, the most daring things I've done. Have also been things that I think back to, how on earth did I actually think that was a good idea?

So for [00:17:00] example, a biggie. I moved from Mexico to the UK with my two children who were six and eight at the time on my own, on a six month contract. it was tough. It was so tough, but it was also exactly what I wanted to do. it's led me through really difficult paths to where I'm now. So was it worth it? Yes, it was.

Might I have been happy staying in Mexico? Maybe I could have been. I don't know, but I chose to come here. And the reason I chose to come here, if anyone's wondering, is because here I felt more accepted as a fat person than I did in Mexico, and most definitely more than I did in Chile, where fatphobia is everywhere, at least in my experience.

Understanding Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy

Thinking about this idea of states and traits, I also, when I think about courage, when I think about [00:18:00] confidence, I always think about two key terms in psychology, and those are self-esteem and self-efficacy. These are terms have been around for a really, really long time. So before the seventies.

Self-esteeem

Let's first think about self-esteem. So self-esteem is this evaluation we make of ourselves, of our worth as a person. So me as a human, I'm worth something. I mean, I believe strongly in my head that all humans are worth everything because we're humans. There's nothing we need to do to prove ourselves. Now, do I feel that really deep down about myself? Sometimes, most of the time nowadays maybe, not always.

It is really important that when we think about self-esteem, we're thinking of acceptance and self-respect. It's not about I'm the best in the world and narcissism or [00:19:00] feeling, oh, I am great and I am better than the rest of the world. That's not the point at all. It's this, I'm good enough, I have value because I am. That's it. If I'm ill, I have value. If I'm sad, I have value. It doesn't matter. If I'm jobless, I have value. And I strongly believe we all do. Now, it's a bit harder for me sometimes to think about it for myself.

I read a review that I thought was really interesting called the Development of Self-Esteem, written in 2014, so this is a bit older, but I thought it was really interesting and worth sharing. In this review, Ulrich Orth and Richard Robbins define what self-esteem is and also talk about one study by Ulrich Orth and other colleagues in 2012 that shows that self-esteem increases from age 16 and it peaked [00:20:00] at around 51 and then decreases until age 87.

However, most of the research in self-esteem shows that it's also quite stable through life. So although it does peak and go down, that change is not huge. And I believe that there are environmental aspects that define this.

Although psychologists tend to focus on the individual, and I think that's a key problem in psychology because we never, never, never exist in a vacuum. We're always part of bigger systems that also affect how we feel, how we accept ourselves or not. Hence, changing the world is so important to me.

Self-efficacy

The next term is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy was proposed by Albert Bandura in 1977, so [00:21:00] just before I was born. And I love the fact that Bandura was still writing about self-efficacy almost until he passed away in 2021 when he was 95. in the show notes, I've put two references that I read recently, although I learned about Bandura when I went to uni 30 years ago. One is from 1982 and the other one from 2023.

What self-efficacy means is this belief that we can achieve something, hence it's context specific. So, for example, I believe that I can present a podcast. I don't believe that I could climb a mountain.

And when we think about those beliefs, some of them might be rational, some of them might be true, but we can challenge them and change them much more easily than we can change our self-esteem.

They're also not all important, [00:22:00] so there might be things that I know I can do that are important for me in my life. There might be things I know I cannot do that might be important for me in my life, but there are others that genuinely I don't care. So for example, the fact that I cannot climb a huge mountain, both because I don't have the physical ability and because I'm terrified of heights, it doesn't bother me at all because it's not something I want to achieve.

If there's something I believe I cannot do, oh, my marking, I hate marking. I can do it, but I find it so hard. So my self-efficacy in terms of achieving marking in time when I'm doing my work is not that good, and that affects then what I decide to do.

So in Bandura's model we would think of self-efficacy as defining the goals we set because we tend to give ourselves goals we think we can achieve, and then also what we actually do or our behavior, [00:23:00] because we also tend to do the things that we believe we can do.

And that's really important when we're learning or when we are trialing something new or if we're wanting to be authentic and we have never been before. If I don't think I can be authentic, if I don't think I can put myself out there, will I have that as a goal or will I decide to continue hiding?

And when I go out to the world and I behave in a specific way, will I behave in the way that makes sense to me? My values, my views of the world, or will I behave as others? Expect me to behave?

We are part of a bigger whole

the other thing I really like about Bandura's model is that Bandura did not forget that we are part of a system. So there's also a very important aspect in the model he calls social structural factors. So what's happening around us that facilitates or impedes us [00:24:00] reaching goals or showing certain behaviors.

So it might be that we are told: "oh, no, you can't be a teacher because you're fat." I was told that in Mexico. Or you might be told as I was also told... when I grew up, I really, really wanted to be a pilot like my dad. And back then in Chile, women were not pilots, so that sociocultural factor definitely stopped me. I wasn't challenging enough. I was people pleasing. And then some things might facilitate. So it might be that I have support to be part of a club or to do something and that has an impact.

How does that resonate with your experience?

Changing our Beliefs

And can we then challenge that as well? Because our beliefs can change, so I've seen this, for example, often working with students in maths learning. I had one student once [00:25:00] who I was working one-on-one at university because they had failed a maths subject three times and they were on the path to fail their degree. They were brilliant. However, that strong belief that they could not do this task, they could not pass their maths, was completely blinding that path. We worked together for a term and he did pass math. So it was super exciting. And I think many times I can also challenge what I believe I can achieve because I can achieve something that I never thought I could.

So if there's something that's important to us, self-efficacy is not stable. It changes over time. And we need to get the courage, be brave, to try new things, to put ourselves out in the world to be able to change our beliefs about our self-efficacy, to achieve something. So if there's something you really wanna [00:26:00] do, or you would like to try, or you would like to achieve, you probably can with practice.

Obviously it depends on what, so it's very unlikely at this stage of my life. I mean, I think impossible that I would become an athletic swimmer. I mean, I love swimming, but that's not my path. I should have probably started much earlier in life, like go and win the Olympics. Not going to happen. However, being a good swimmer is something that I definitely am or could be, and I could be better at swimming if I practice more.

Adding social support

And then finally, if we put these themes together, an article by Daniel Rippon and colleagues I thought was really helpful. . They looked at self-efficacy and self-esteem, and social support -which is very much an aspect that can help us all, so having social support can be really important - [00:27:00] in wellbeing in people with a mental health diagnosis. So probably not everyone, but I think this continues to make sense. What do you think? Do you think this makes sense? What they found in this group was that people who had high self-efficacy had better wellbeing. Those who did not have high self-efficacy but have high self-esteem also had better wellbeing than those who didn't. And then for those who were having both low self-esteem and low self-efficacy, social support was really important.

When we are down

Now, my question here to all of us is what happens when we have none of those? What happens when we are in that stage in life or that place in time, or maybe always there?

I don't know where you are, but I have been in very dark periods in my life where I have had strong depressions, where I have generally felt I've none of those [00:28:00] because I strongly believed that people didn't like me as I was. I had to change. I had to be thinner to be loved. I strongly believed I didn't have value and I strongly believed I couldn't do anything about it.

even then, I remember knowing that my life was okay, but couldn't feel it. I could not feel it. So I understand if that's where you are, that is okay. And we can find support hopefully to get out of that. Not always sadly, but hopefully you can go talk to doctors, find a counselor. There's no shame on asking for help, and that's a big learning point to me as well.

I take medication, I take serline because of my depression and anxiety. I go to counseling, I share with friends, and I've developed a social support network to allow me to be who I am, that [00:29:00] loves me for who I am. And I'm strong enough, I hope, and I hope I continue to be, because again, I don't know where life will take me, but I hope that I'm currently strong enough that if someone I love or a place where I am does not suit me, it's not helping me, it's harming me, I can hopefully get away from that. And I know it's not easy. So it might be that I can't, because again, I have been in situations where I have been abused. So I'm not saying that if you are in that situation, you are not good, 'cause your value is exactly the same.

Conclusion and Call to Action

I think that's more than enough for today. Actually, I think that's a great place to end.

Tell me about your stories. How have you dared to be yourself? Please share with me. [00:30:00] Come to the podcast if you want to know more. Come as a guest. I mean, I'm super excited because I, vulnerability. I went online. I always have really good experiences of online places. Weird. But I went online and I put a note of I want podcast guests please. And I told what I was doing and I have a whole list of fantastic people coming to the podcast. So we have fantastic guests coming through. I would also really like to know if you have a preference in terms of my guest episodes or my solo episodes, or do I keep combining them? So, so far I've been doing one guest episode and one solo episode each time. I might keep that pattern or I might not. So let me know what you think, because I'm just learning as I go along. I'm just putting this out there.

And if you do like the podcast, [00:31:00] follow me. Find me on Bluesky or Instagram @TheFatPsychologist. Visit my webpage thefatpsychologist.com.

I am actively looking for a sponsor or sponsors. So if you would like to sponsor the podcast, do please get in touch. I would love to have you on board so we can continue this journey together.

Bye-bye.

This episode was recorded, edited, and created by Nin