Did you know I’m a children’s book author? To get your signed copy, go to https://imecommunity.com/empowering-books/ and I’ll send you an extra copy to donate to a child who needs the magical message, your school library, your pediatrician’s office, community library, etc.
It is my very favorite thing I have done in my career – writing “The Magical Everywhere!” I was inspired to write it by one of my patients, Magical Gigi!
Listen to me read “The Magical Everywhere” and “fly around the world with Magical Gigi on a journey to find the perfect word to describe someone like you! The book was written and illustrated to honor the life and spirit of Magical Gigi, an eternally full-of-life eight year-old girl, famous for her positivity through adversity.
I had no intention of becoming a TikTok doc. Since I coach teens, everyone said that TikTok would be the panacea to my successful digital entrepreneurship goals. Everything I do aligns with my vision, “creating community with compassionate connection” and so, luckily for my financial goals and ego, I viewed TikTok as a curious fun learning opportunity to show up as my true self.
TikTok has allowed me to fully own Dr. Karla, ActivistMD.
Funny/Unapologetic/Firestarter
Okay. Fine. I’ll do it. With some advice and technical support from my teens, I launched my TikTok adventure the day my website launched.
Now, here I am, 15 months later, all in, most famously known as the Doctor disrupting weight stigma and bias in healthcare, reversing insulin resistance, and helping everyone find self-love superpower.
I’m using #tiktokdocs with every post, currently have 63.5k followers (not that many according to most of the creators I follow) and growing (I hope to get to a Dr. Evil 1 million). I have over 800 videos that I recently put into a playlist of 10 different content topics.
I’ve spent nearly two decades of my career addressing the childhood obesity epidemic, but have learned so much more from TikTok about what patients experience than I ever did in medical school, residency, as a community pediatrician in a clinic, as a physician leader at a Children’s hospital or as the founder of a community non-profit.
Learning More About Patient Experiences Through TikTok
TikTok is a collective of shared individual patient experiences, so much so that my daughter and I did a qualitative study, published in KevinMD.com, on the harms of medical gaslighting due to weight stigma and bias after mining over 800 comments on my first viral TikTok post.
In medicine, we are often stuck in systems that are non-agile. Physicians are required to jump through the hoops of constructed QI maintenance of certification projects which, we all know, are not that useful in practice.
Physicians don’t often get the chance to show the different sides of ourselves within static healthcare systems.
Why TikTok Is the Best QI Project for Doctors
TikTok is the best QI because of the platform’s built-in PDSA cycles. First, start with your AIM statement which I suggest could be something like:
Disseminate the most up-to-date information on (insert content topic) on social media platform and measure analytics.
Plan: Do you want to share content based on a recent study, common trend or misinformation that’s out there?
Do: Make the video using a TikTok trend, duet a popular creator’s video, or create your own informative video.
Study: Measure your built-in TikTok analytics.
Act: Refine the change and act on what you’ve learned. Try making a response video.
I’m going to suggest to the American Board of Pediatrics that all my time on TikTok should count as MOC credit this cycle.
If you want to get on TikTok, decide ahead of time by asking yourself these powerful questions:
How do I want to show up?
What is the cause I am called to tend to?
Where do I want to put my attentional focus?
How will I measure my success?
Don’t try to predict the clock app’s algorithm, get obsessed with which hashtags to post, or constantly check your vanity metrics (total time suck and energy drain).
Ignore haters and trolls with my simple strategy:
Report/Delete/Block
Lather/Rinse/Repeat
Most of us went into medicine to connect with humanity and to make a difference. TikTok is a great platform if you’re a doctor who takes your work seriously, but not yourself.
If you’re feeling called to be a #tiktokdocs, click on that app and dive in. The water’s fine. Follow me @imecommunity and I’ll follow you right back.
You’re crossing an inappropriate boundary when you judge and comment on a child’s body.
Do better! Now! It’s time to stop weight bullying your kids and your kid’s friends.
Stop Weight Bullying – It’s Abusive and Toxic
Here’s the logic thread: If you bully, your kid will bully. If you are bullying, do a U-turn. You are bullying yourself. If you bully, you are stuck in diet culture and its toxic harms. All of it trickles to your kid. You are living a limited life and you’re putting cinder blocks on your kid’s potential growth as a human being and chance at happiness.
When I started TikTok over a year ago, I was shocked at the number of videos of body positive creators getting cyber-bullied based on their body size. Absolutely horrible! So, I started making videos talking about how you know nothing about anyone else’s health. Health and weight are not directly correlated and health information is private and protected. So, that was that. And, the cyber-bullying continues in full force.
Then, shockingly, I started noticing videos made by young adults whose parents have weight bullied them. Totally disgusting and abusive! So, I made duets and called it out on my go-to platform, TikTok.
Okay then, what will I discover next after putting on my scuba gear and diving into the clock app?
I won’t change the world. I’m here to learn. Listen. Listen. Listen.
Just the other day, I ran across a video while scrolling, where @powerlove2855, who I follow and you should too, talked about when she was little, her friend’s mom weight bullied her. Unbelievably toxic!
Studies show young children experience weight-based victimization from parents, friends, peers, doctors, and teachers.
“On more than one occasion in elementary school I would have a friend tell me that her Mom said I was fat and I needed to lose weight. That Mom was secretly hoping that that little girl would stop being my friend. Because she wanted her little girl to have the social capital of being friends with all the pretty, tiny, little Limited 2 girls back in my time.”
“It is so absolutely petty. The part of this conversation of growing up fat that we don’t talk about enough is that adults that are not your family, not your parents consistently comment on your body. Friends of parents, teachers, lunch ladies, school librarians, neighbors, unhinged women at the grocery store who tell your Mom to stop feeding you.”
“The absolutely disgusting commentary around a child’s body must end. Must end.”
The comments on my video are rolling in and it’s not looking good, folks! Grandparents weight bully, Parents, friends’ parents, teachers, doctors, neighbors. It’s a toxic entitlement to comment on children’s bodies. As a pediatrician and mandatory reporter, these comments strike me as inappropriate on the level of verbal and emotional abuse. Let’s disrupt the toxicity by calling it out!
Weight Shouldn’t Be Weaponized
Research and studies have been out for quite a while of parental perceptions of weight-based victimization, its harms for their children and listing weight bullying as the number one health concern for parents of teens with overweight.
It’s unfortunately, not a surprise that children in larger bodies are ostracized and their weight is weaponized as a weakness, just as they are growing and developing.
Parents, we can help our children and teens create bully bans or boundary setting statements, but, if you are a weight bully stuck in diet culture and your internalized biases, you’ve got some work to do.
Make a Commitment to Stop Weight Bullying Your Kids or Teens
Commit today to stop weight bullying your child or teen. What are your future parent guide words? Envision you showing up as the kind of parent you want to be. Nobody’s watching but you, and your kid. If you are a parent who is a weight bully, you’re most likely weight bullying yourself and it’s not a simple flip of a switch to cancel diet culture. Your children and teens are worth the work you have to do to do better.
May 2022 Is Mental Health Awareness Month
It’s Mental Health Awareness Month. Teens are in a Mental Health Crisis as another wave of COVID hits. We simply don’t have time or tolerance for adults who bully children.
Go to imecommunity.com and get on my email list, read and share my blogs! Follow @imecommunity on TikTok!
This blog and video come with a trauma warning. If you or your teen are experiencing depression and need to talk to someone, please call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.
“Sometimes I feel like I want to give it up, but it’s such a big part of teenage life, I just don’t.” (Teen on Childhood 2.0 Life in the Digital Age)
Do You Know How to Help Protect Your Kids and Teens from Cyberbullying and Sextortion?
Do you feel like you can protect your kids from the dangers online?
Do you feel like your kids need to learn to navigate the digital world on their own?
After all, they live in the Information Age which surely comes with some benefits. Us Parents grew up with all of the physical dangers and there’s only so much fear we can take on.
Parents, we need to adapt and it needs to happen quickly.
The COVID pandemic has exacerbated process addictions like screen time.
Statistics show that violent crimes, physical dangers, are not as much of a risk to our children as the harms online, including cyberbullying, sextortion, digital marketing that uses highly successful and strategic neuro-marketing tactics.
An Important Documentary About Sextortion and Cyberbullying
You and your teen need to watch Childhood 2.0 The Living Experiment to really see what it’s like for our children and teens growing up in the digital age. Parents, we do hard things and it’s time to stop burying our heads in the sand when it comes to our teens and social media and the scariness of what’s out there on the internet.
If you are the kind of parent who believes “This will never happen to my son or my daughter,” you are living in an alternate reality. Process addictions like screen time addictions are real. Youth suicide rates are up and in younger children.
If you or your teen are experiencing depression and need to talk to someone, please call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.
We can’t control all of the internet, but we also can’t throw our hands up in the air and not do anything and be totally helpless.
What is Self-Coaching?
When it comes to helping our teens there’s nothing us parents won’t do.
It’s just that we don’t cause and we don’t control a lot. Recognizing the reality that we can’t prevent suffering for our teens or ourselves is powerful awareness.
In this YouTube I am doing the hard work, putting in the time, to coach myself (aka being curious and creating thought awareness) on the topic of sextortion on the internet and our teens.
This is very hard work, but it’s the most important work us parents need to do for ourselves to truly help our teens.
You may have heard the tragic news of the high school student who was a victim of sextortion by internet trolls who sent a compromised photo of a girl he knew, or he thought was her, and then asked him to send a photo of himself. Once he did, he received an email asking for $300 or the photo would be spread on the internet. He sent the money and then received another email asking for $1,000 or the photo would be shared. He didn’t have the money and panicked and within six hours of receiving the first email he ended his life.
Why It’s Wrong to Think “This Can’t Happen to My Teen”
If you believe this can’t be your teen, you are wrong.
I was panicked with the worst fear possible when I heard this tragic story. Thoughts create feelings and feelings drive actions. I felt panic and froze. In other words, I froze in my steps and wasn’t doing anything to help my teens at all. With self-coaching, I was able to get curious and create thought awareness. Current thoughts create current reality and current result. If I wanted to get unstuck from freeze mode, I needed to create awareness of my thoughts that were creating the feeling of panic.
Once I created powerful awareness of my current thoughts and feelings and actions, then I can do some self-discovery to figure out why I keep choosing to stay stuck and then create some powerful thought shift to a thought that creates a feeling of intentional.
Positive Actions to Take Against Sextortion and Cyberbullying
Here’s what I found out.
The most powerful current thought coming up for me that was creating a feeling of panic and sending me into a stress response freeze mode was:
“I haven’t done enough to protect my kids.”
This thought created panic, the action of freezing and the result: “I’m not doing anything.”
Then, I created a thought shift to something that is believable to me and will create a feeling of intentional, which is how I decided I want to feel.
Here’s my new thought:
“I trust myself to show up even when it’s a hard issue, topic or conversation.”
Feeling: Intentional
Action: Self-coaching, check out documentary and resources and write opening to conversation script with my teen
Result: I’m showing up to help my teens through difficult times.
See how that self-coaching works? It’s important work and our teens are worth it. Make sure you check out imecommunity.com and Join for Dr. Karla coaching.
A selfie is worth a thousand words, or at least a thousand Instagram comments.
There’s More to Selfies Than Pose and Click
I’m horrible at taking selfies. Like, really bad. I never know where to look, so I always look like I’m staring off to the side. My kids make relentless fun of my selfie ineptitude. In fact, one time, my oldest daughter, Katherine, got on my phone and got all my selfies together and posted them on Instagram with the caption, “My Mom’s a Savage.”
I actually took this as a compliment!
The other day I was life coaching a teen in IME Community on pictures, social media and all the things.
I always learn so much from life coaching. It’s my all-time favorite.
I don’t really find that teens are obsessed with taking selfies and posting them on social media.
Teens are much more nuanced than us parents when it comes to social media platforms.
Self-Judging About Selfies
Teens are obsessed with self-judging before posting said selfies. It makes total sense, especially if you read my recent blog on Cyberbullying and Teens.
It’s a part of perfectionism, which is a harmful thought habit that keeps us from showing up as our true authentic selves ready to live our fun magical lives!
More on perfectionism reset and Make It Fun to Get It Done coming up in IME Community!
There’s so much pressure, not to post necessarily, but if you want to post, teens feel the pressure to get ahead of their post and make it “perfect” to avoid criticism.
Stop Bullying Yourself – Perfect Doesn’t Exist
Let’s repeat that: Perfect. Doesn’t Exist.
“I look bad in that pic.”
“Let’s take another one.”
“That’s a bad angle.”
“I hate what I’m wearing.”
“Why does everyone else look good, but I look horrible?”
You’re judging yourself before it even goes out into the world.
“It’s permanent once I post it.”
That’s a thought. Thoughts create feelings. “It’s permanent” creates fear which will drive the action to get stuck in self-judging perfectionism.
Not challenging thoughts means you stay stuck in current patterns, results and reality.
Sure, that selfie becomes part of the manufactured digital universe, but it never has to permanently affect you in your mind.
Going to Post a Selfie? Try Thinking About It This Way
Try these thoughts instead:
This is a random selfie and I’m having fun.
I’m willing to let people judge me.
I like my reasons for posting this selfie.
I have my own back.
Once you post from a place of self-love, you create self-trust which is a huge self-confidence build. You start taking more action which perpetuates more action and so on and so on.
If your teen is indulging in selfie overwhelm, offer up one of the Dr. Karla thought challenges as a new perspective and then let it go.
Trust your teen to create selfie self-trust and figure it out on their own.
Make sure you join IME Community if you’re a teen, 12 to 18 or parent of a teen who is ready to cancel diet culture and co-create a body positive community in a body negative world!
