Counseling for individuals and families.
For continuity of care as the Covid-19 pandemic continues, appointments are virtual only via a HIPAA-compliant Zoom platform.
Picture a quaint and lovely house.
Imagine a room within where you spend most of your time⎯you write your daily To Do list, work, read, phone friends, check email, and organize your thoughts. It’s an active place with forward movement. This is your conscious mind.
Imagine a room in the back of this house. Every memory and thought you ever had clings to the walls. Every bad experience is stuffed under the bed and dresser, and every moment of sadness, pain, embarrassment and humiliation spill out of the closet and litter the floor. Every scene you’ve seen, every story you’ve told and been told lives here. Like when you were five and awoke from a nap screaming in pain from a mindless game played while you tag-teamed sleep where you wove a rubber band tightly around your finger, then felt afraid and abandoned when you couldn’t find your mother. Or that time in high school when you were shamed with a “D” in algebra. When schoolmates called you names and sibs mercilessly poked and picked. Memories of being criticized for how you dressed. Remembering you were always last to be picked for recess games.
This back room holds fear of loss from moving every three years, humiliation when you forgot your lines in the play, embarrassment you weren’t good enough, concern you were taller than your classmates, and pain and sadness of dashed hopes and dreams. It holds every negative, self-critical and judgmental word you’ve said about yourself. This is your unconscious mind.
This back room is cluttered and filled to the brim with beliefs formed around childhood experiences. It is sometimes so full the door won’t shut no matter how hard you try. Bursting forth are terrors, worries, anxiety, and ideas that take you down fantastical trails filled with made up stories. Its din is orchestrated by childhood stories and informs present choices and actions.
As in:
It’s driving you crazy.
Guests in your home are completely unaware of the clutter and stink in that back room driving all this. But you know it’s there. You know that when it’s cleaned it out, you’ll feel better.
And that’s your work. By diving into that back room, you heal the unconscious focus informed by erroneous childhood beliefs that ghostwrite present storylines. Clutter begins to thin, old stories are refreshed to what makes sense now, and healing occurs within all those childhood experiences.
In working with Diana, I have found grace, encouragement and clarity as I explore my complicated journey with food and body. Her curious, kind and client focused style has inspired me to give myself permission to let go of shame and embrace compassion for myself. As a result I am able to experience freedom in ways I have only imagined.
I feel so lucky to have found Diana. For 17 years, I weighed myself every day. The number on the scale was how I felt that day, affecting what I ate and how much I exercised. I beat myself up every morning. I was disgusted with my body image. After asking me for a year to give up my scale, I handed it to Diana because I realized how toxic it was.
Once a month I weighed in with Diana without looking at the scale. Diana taught me that I could nourish myself appropriately and exercise for fun. In the process, my body found its natural weight. She has been such an important part of my personal progress, I can’t thank her enough.
My continued journey of working with Diana has taught me my health and wellness is something you not only can’t put a price on, but is the one thing that makes the rest of your life run smoothly! Thank you, Diana, for the gift of healthy living! You’re more than I could ask for!
I’ve personally worked with Diana and think she’s amazing. She’s smart, creative, practical, and one of the most positive people I know. Diana is a great nutritionist and had a profound impact on my eating habits. She easily connected with me and shaped my nutritional choices in a very beneficial way. Diana understands that there will be “good” days and “bad” days and builds those realities into an overall plan. Her skill, warmth, and humor make her exceptional.
Finding Diana made a tremendous difference to my life and health. Battling weight my whole life, I was sure that when I was ready to change my eating habits, I could rely on my education and didn’t need “help.” I was so wrong. Diana is the perfect nutritionist, cheerleader, partner in the endeavor, positive motivator and general life coach. It was important for me to look at food differently than just counting calories. It was important to have someone who could design a program for a pescetarian and address both practical food challenges and larger issues in a positive, warm, supportive environment. A year later I am a much smaller person and a happier, healthier and more grateful one! I highly recommend Diana to anyone interested in changing their eating habits and health for the better!
Inside of you is a whole, unbroken essence, a radiant authentic Self. When you seek, find and acknowledge that, you rediscover your self-love and the serenity that innately dwells within. Self-led eating takes active management through thoughtful intention, oversight, and attention to eat in an attuned way to what your body needs.
You and I partner on this journey using your rich history and experience to create a strong foundation of hope. We’ll rely on my weight-inclusive expertise in understanding the emotional pulsations involved in your relationship with food. We’ll check in voices that continue to believe in and rely on the old, outdated food “rules” of your past.
Your body innately understands your needs yet it’s been covered with rhetoric from diet culture. What your body needs will become clear as you move through healing and self-discovery. You’ll meet the parts of you involved in your relationship with food. You’ll accept who you are and know you can feed your body in a way that nourishes both biologically and psychologically. You’ll eat a hot fudge sundae with the same mindfulness as vegetables and beans.
As your nutrition therapist, I remain curious as you ask deeply within. This inquiry becomes a framework of connection and empowerment to shift in ways that align with your own authentic truth and deep longings.
You’ll discover your desires and establish realistic expectations and goals toward your most optimal self. You’ll eat food based on how you want to feel – alive, comforted, and joyful based on trust in yourself. You’ll begin to sense harmony and fluidity within as you integrate the core principles of compassion, clarity and creativity. As awareness grows, the change you seek begins to happen. I believe in you!
Bio: Diana Dugan Richards is a Level 3 Certified IFS practitioner with over a decade of experience using IFS with clients and groups. She has staffed a dozen Level 1 and Level 2 IFS Trainings as well as several IFS retreats with Dick Schwartz at Kripalu in western Massachusetts. She has completed both the Basic and Advanced IFIO courses (Intimacy From the Inside Out, IFS for couples work), and co-created with Jeanne Catanzaro a 4-month online continuity course for IFS titled “Using IFS to Heal Our Relationships with Food and Body.” She offers confidential individual and small group consultation for IFS colleagues seeking a supportive space for connection, validation for clinical challenges, and improved IFS fluency and competence.
Our first session is to get to know each other. I strongly believe in you and the connection we create through our work together. There is some preparation on your part (see forms below). Together, we’ll review what you feel is important for me to know and understand about your health and eating histories, and nutrition and psychological needs and where you could use support. It is immensely important to me that I get to know you and your expectations and hopes for our work together.
In subsequent sessions, we’ll pulse between nutrition science, if needed, and psychology using Internal Family Systems to move toward the shifts you’d like to see.
Please download, complete, and return the forms shown below before our first session. When our first appointment is confirmed, I’ll send you an encrypted email to return the completed forms. This insures confidentiality of your protected health and personal information.
As unplanned issues may arise that lead you to reschedule, a gentle reminder that Namaste Nutrition has a 24-hour cancellation policy. This allows me to offer availability to another client. If less than 24-hours notice is provided, a late fee of $100 will be assessed for that scheduled time. If availability is open in the same week for you to make up the missed session, there will be no fee assessed.
The monthly IFS-Informed Food and Body Freedom Group is one of a collection of folks learning what we can from each other and finding support and camaraderie in our connection and learning. These groups require a 3-month commitment. You’ll experience additional support via guided meditations, experiential exercises, and group discussion in a setting with others who share similar journeys and stories as you do. See the Events page for more info.
We meet virtually using a HIPAA-compliant Zoom platform. When appointments are scheduled using an online scheduling platform, you’ll receive a confirmation email along with 48-hr and 4-hr reminder emails. Please save one of these for easy access to the Zoom link and cancel/reschedule link.
Contact me to schedule a consultation or for more information.
Licenses: MA 1630; N.H. 1189; IL 164.008633
Story influenced by Ramdesh Kaur.
