How 35 Years of Body Image & Weight Issues Were Resolved through Rapid Transformational Therapy
While exploring new self-development tools to help her clients through the pandemic…
Christine Bilotti Peterson discovered Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT), tried it for herself and then immediately became certified due to the dramatic impact it had on her life.
In today’s episode, you’ll hear how RTT helped Christine breakthrough 35 years of body image and weight issues rooted in childhood trauma. Before then she was trying to solve the wrong problem through every diet imaginable, over exercising, and shaming her own body all those years.
Christine shares the difference between little t and big T trauma, ways to heal trauma and 3 questions to ask yourself if this is something you can work on. Plus, what high performers do in the morning that sets them apart from others. Let’s just say I can’t wait to incorporate a few of these into my life!
For Reinventing the Arena Listeners: Christine’s Take Your Power Back 90 day Program: “Transform your confidence, self love, and health and live your dream life.” Learn how to utilize RTT, theracoaching, and facilitated self discovery to transform the way you are feeling and living everyday. Heal trauma and learn your high performance habits to find self love. Use the code Power for 25% off this program!
Christine started Longview Consulting after a 30 year career in Human Resources. She leveraged her corporate experience in development and career management, her personal development journey on shifting mindset, and high-performance techniques focused on self-care to create programs for her clients to achieve transformational results in their life and careers.
Christine and her love of her life, Brady, call Simsbury, Connecticut home. They have four teenagers, including a set of triplets, and a family favorite Goldendoodle.
When she’s not coaching you can find her meditating in her sauna, in yoga or Pilates classes, embracing her spiritual awakening, or attending events with friends and family. Christine lives everyday helping people discover how to create the life of their dreams and conscious purpose.
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TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE
Molly Connolly (00:00.43)
Hey there, lady. Welcome back to another episode of reinventing the arena. Thank you so much for joining me and our guests today. Following a 30 year career in human resources and executive coaching, Christie Bellotti Peterson launched Longview Consulting. In 2020, while exploring new self -development tools to help her clients through the pandemic, Christine discovered rapid transformational therapy or RPT. Tried it for herself the first time and then immediately became certified due to the dramatic impact it had on her life.
Welcome to the podcast, Christine. I am so happy to have you. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. This has been one of those moments where I have just learned about RTT because of you and hearing your story that you shared with me prior. I was very intrigued on how it worked as well as the impact that it had on your life, as you mentioned. So
At one point, you told me that you were trying to solve the wrong problem. Can you share the story of behind how you figured that out for yourself? Yes, I will, because it took me 35 years to realize that I had an emotional eating disorder. And I am aging myself, but I grew up in a time where I didn't have access to social media through my high school years.
but once I did have access to so much information online and I saw all of the different components to what an emotional eating disorder looks like. I realized that I had been suffering from this disorder for 35 years. And so at 50, I said, obviously I need to do something different. I am unwilling to do this to myself any longer.
because I knew I could not help myself. I had been on every single diet since I was around 11 or 12 years old. And I realized that for 35 years, I've been trying to diet. And really, I was solving the wrong problem because what I really needed to do is the self -development and trauma healing from the root cause of where did it start that I would use food to make myself feel better.
Molly Connolly (02:24.462)
Yes, yes. And I love how a lot of us don't realize that connection of how, you know, things that happened maybe in our past affect even just our smallest behaviors. And when we were chatting earlier, you brought up how your body image and your weight issues were kind of, you know, started with the childhood experiences, specifically childhood trauma. Will you share more with the ladies on like how that is connected?
Yes, and this is why rapid transformation therapy was so effective because what rapid transformation therapy does is it uses cognitive behavioral therapy and neuro linguistic programming to get to the core of how do you shift your mindset? And then with hypnotherapy,
It goes back to the cause, the root and the reason of why you have this issue. So RTT is really very helpful when it comes to weight issues, motivation, self -care. For people that have imposter syndrome or low self -confidence, it can shift their mindset so they can really regain that self -confidence. It can help with things like physical issues like sleep or other.
emotional issues like anxiety or depression. Basically, there are five brain waves that we have, and you can get yourself into the theta stage. And in theta, your brain has the most neuroplasticity for change. So if you think about it, 95 % of what we think every day is already programmed in our brain.
doing is we're going back into the brain and reprogramming something different. Because what I had done and what most people do, which they don't even realize is they are living with these childhood trauma incidents that marked our brains in a certain way and did like brought ideas into our psychology because of the childhood trauma or how we experienced it.
Molly Connolly (04:44.334)
And then it holds on tight to that idea. So people are holding onto this for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, sometimes all of their lives without even knowing it. Yeah. When you say it that way, I even think back to my mom, like there's certain things that she has personally worked on, but she knows that she's stuck in certain areas, but she's not willing to take that leap and work through it because she's also scared of what that might bring up.
Yes, I understand. And RTT is also safe in that respect because the way I facilitate the session, we are adults in a safe place going back and reviewing the memories. And even when people are not, it's really interesting because almost every person I have will start with me saying, I can't be hypnotized. I don't even know what happened in my childhood. I can't remember. And then under,
In theta state, when I asked them a question, they know the answer in 10 seconds. So it's really fascinating as a child. Times where you might've been bullied on the playground, made fun of, maybe your parents worked a lot, so you felt lonely or abandoned when you were a child or you were a latchkey kid. All of these things can make an impression on why are we in this situation? Why do I feel lonely at this time?
and every child blames themselves. I'm not good enough. So those are little T traumas that over time continue to put these things in place, these limiting beliefs in our head that we are constantly trying to overcome, even subconsciously. Like the low body image, you can go back in time, somewhere between the ages of three and eight,
you came up with the idea that you have this issue. And so then there's big T trauma and big T trauma is what everybody thinks of when they think of trauma. When you are physically unsafe, someone might be hurting you, you might be experiencing some kind of abuse. And obviously that has a tremendous impact on how we feel about ourselves.
Molly Connolly (07:05.646)
because once again, it's a very complicated and confusing message for a child and they blame themselves. Yeah. And that blame sticks around for so long. And of course we would find other ways to cover up that trauma that we feel like we have control over because we don't want to feel that shame still if we're blaming ourselves or guilt even. When you talk about even your personal experience with the body issues, what
would you say was the, if you want to talk about it, the childhood experience that you had that made you think, you know, I have to watch my weight or I have to look a certain way and you know, cause this 35 years of disordered eating. Yes, I would tell you that when I was three, I didn't know this beforehand. I only could tell you this after RTT, after the hypnotherapy, because I went back to this. Basically your memory goes back to the issue of what caused it.
when we facilitate these sessions. So I saw myself as a three -year -old. I saw where I was, how I felt that day. Basically, I moved from a home where I was with my grandparents and my aunts and my mom. My dad was away at college. When he came home from college, and by the way, when I lived with all of those relatives, I was treated like a queen.
A lot of attention, a lot of attention. I had a wonderful three years. And then my dad came home from college and we relocated to a new apartment. I left this like family unit that I felt so loved and comforted by. And we moved into this apartment. My parents both worked. I started going to nursery school as a really young child. And although no one wanted it to be traumatic for me,
It was very traumatic. And so I went back to that time. Then what happened was I had gone to a fair and I had, this is a lot of information, but I had these cashews and I over ate the cashews and got a stomach ache. My mom called all of the people over to our house that we used to live with. And they played with me all day because I had this stomach ache.
Molly Connolly (09:25.326)
And it was that moment that I connected food and love together. wow. That numbing experience of feeling like comforted by the food. And even under RTT, I felt that stomach ache in my stomach is really fascinating. So yeah, I would never have put those two things together. Weight loss issues, body image, and a three -year -old experience of
you know, being comforted after eating too many cashews. Like it doesn't seem logical, I know, but this was the core and root issue. And really everyone has this in their mind because when you're a baby and you need to be soothed, what happens? We give you a bottle with very creamy milk and it satiates you. And so we already have these ideas and we just decide, we just decide as a young person,
Either emotional eating is going to make me feel better and protect me from this feeling or anxiety or depression, or sometimes it moves into alcoholism or drugs or other things, right? So I think people really underestimate what is underneath this. Why am I not feeling confident in my body? Why am I putting myself last? Why am I not
taking better care of myself and like, why do I self -sabotage? You know, all of these things really at the core are underlying issues triggered by trauma. And I think it's kind of crazy that it took me 50 years to understand this, but I'm so glad. Like now my purpose is helping people with this. So I'm an executive coach that happens to heal childhood trauma. So it's been, it's been
pretty amazing because everyone that is going through my program, similar to me, they've been on every diet, yodo dieting, they have all of these like old toxic beliefs about eating or about dieting or about their body. And, you know, it's a diet after a diet after a diet, but they may have binge eating disorder.
Molly Connolly (11:50.158)
or they may emotionally, or they may feel like they have no control. Or one of the things that I really suffered from is like the food noise. So I used to think about either food or my body or what I shouldn't eat or when I have to go work out. Like this was a constant loop of like toxic thoughts in my head. And I didn't know that you can change that.
I didn't know that I could have a higher self -worth if I had done this self -development work. And that's really the message that I have to your listeners today is if you are feeling low, if you are feeling in, let's just say scarcity mode versus abundance. Like I think about it as, you know, there's above the line living and below the line living.
And people, sometimes it's like an up and down thing because people's emotions are all over the place. Yeah. Like a roller coaster. Yeah. Sometimes people are really living above the line. They're pretty optimistic. They feel like things are working out for me. They feel pretty good about themselves. They're doing good things for their body and positive self care. And they're, they're really living positively. And then other people.
just find themselves trying to survive the week. And everything is hard. Dating might be hard, relationships might be hard, getting up every day might be hard, staying positive might be hard. So again, the message I want to send to people is if it is hard, there are so many opportunities to help yourself through this self -development, healing trauma.
And there's a lot of different things. There's different ways of doing it. For example, you know, a lot of self care tips that are amazing at healing trauma, besides RTT, hypnotherapy, meditation, there's breath work, there's EMDR and other somatic therapies. Of course there's talk therapy. So, you know,
Molly Connolly (14:15.118)
self -development and you know, it's really interesting because social media with all the negative press it gets, there are so many positive, you know, as a self -development, you know, person myself, if you actually go into the magnifying glass, whether it's on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, and you put in there healing trauma, you'll find a lot of positive nuggets.
Like you can scroll through and like 10 % will be relevant, but there might be some really quick nuggets of self -development. And that's the other message I have is like starting to build little by little on these healthy habits. You know, I have four teenagers and we are in constant search of phone chargers in my house.
And everyone's always looking for the fast charger. Mom, can you help me find the fast charger? Where's the fast charger? And that's what I have my clients do for themselves. Let's talk about all of the different self -care mechanisms. What are your fast chargers? If you were really taking care of yourself, you know, some of the things that work really well are things like RTT and meditation, other things like yoga, hiking, or being in the woods.
reading, spending time with friends, like being really intentional about your self -care plan makes an incredible difference. yeah, definitely. There was so much in there that you said that I was like, Ooh, I love that nugget and I love this nugget. And you highlighted, especially just how we care for ourselves and different ways to do that. And some of the things that you mentioned also, like I have done EMDR therapy.
And that was really helpful for me to figure out why one memory and one behavior was still connected. It's obviously a lot different than, RTT, but I didn't go back as far as you did to be like, this is why I do this. And when we talk about emotional eating too, what I love this, all the different ways that you said that people can really break through that negative thought pattern. all the different ways of self -development that you could just look for your fast chargers.
Molly Connolly (16:36.046)
as well as like even going above and beyond once you do those fast charters of if you need extra help to find someone who is certified in RTT, EMDR, all those things to really amp up the release of these traumas and provide a sense of healing. Yeah, I have a couple of questions that your listeners can ask themselves to really say, is this something that maybe I should work on?
The first one is, are you numbing your feelings or avoiding your feelings with anything like food, alcohol or drugs? And you know, the fourth one that people don't really talk about so much is work. Yes. As a recovering perfectionist and workaholic, I will tell you that sometimes people just never stop.
because they are anxious about slowing down and taking a break. And I know that I found myself in that position before. yeah. As a former college athlete, we were kind of always taught one more rep because you never know what your competition is doing. And having that sort of mindset.
It was very frustrating because it was also the same thing with school. Well, I need to stay up an extra hour because I want to make sure I ace this test. I want to be an academic all -American or whatnot. And then those behaviors, just those little habits or sayings filter in them to work. And you start to attie your value, your self -worth to how productive you are. And I've talked about that a little bit with a past client that sabotaging behavior can also be busyness.
And it doesn't always have to be work, but just busy all in general, because they're afraid to sit and relax because they never have had that experience with their body. So completely agree. That is totally a trauma response as well. And it's cloaked under ambition. Yes. You know, because I was just taught like, keep going, work hard. And, you know, you're not going to get anywhere just doing the bare minimum.
Molly Connolly (18:50.03)
So it's really a balance. And yes, the second question is, are you struggling with your body image or weight issues? And so if that is something you want to improve, then that's a sign that you may have some trauma to deal with or some emotions, or should I focus this on my personal development plan? And the third one is,
would you say you are happy? Right? And that I think, obviously there's a definition of happiness, but I think that's very personal. Right. And happiness sometimes is a combination of things. One of the things that I love to do with clients is really talk about what their purpose is in life. Right? And so there's like this, this methodology of healing the trauma,
getting focused on your goals and removing those limiting beliefs, focusing on self -care and then connecting yourself with your purpose. And that really gets people to that place of abundance or that abundant mindset. And that, as you know, is kind of the best time to be looking for partnerships or relationships or someone to share that with. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, there's a lot of benefit being able to do the personal development, even though it's going to take a while, it's going to bring up some feelings and thoughts that you might have forgotten about or don't necessarily want to deal with, but it accelerates the process of finding what happiness means to you and finding that purpose. And when you do that, you also attract different people into your life that are also supportive and caring and have similar goals and ambitions.
And when you're surrounded by these sort of other people, you actually might find someone off of a dating app because you have now taken all the work and done it yourself. And even if you're on a dating app, you now have the clarity and the confidence to say, these 10 people that I would have gone on dates on before, I don't even like any of them because I have finally found the worth in myself that I don't need a numbers game. I can just.
Molly Connolly (21:11.022)
slowly have the patience and knowing that this person is out there for me because I have that abundant mindset, switching from the scarcity one that you previously mentioned. Yeah. And just to add to that a little bit, because I agree with everything you just said, this like idea of finding your authentic self in that abundance mindset. And like, then when you're meeting people and you're really being yourself,
you can really then truly assess is this person a good fit in a relationship, right? Because now, you know, you may have gone from people pleasing or trying to be something to people to now like being yourself and being comfortable in your own skin and in your own body and really feeling content with yourself because you're in that self -love phase. And then
adding someone to that from a relationship is just like whipped cream on it. Yeah. Cherry on top. Exactly. It's not like you're, you're not looking for your worth in someone else. Exactly. And you know, one thing that you brought up actually earlier and talking about even how the physical body feels. If someone is like, we've discussed about busy -ness and work.
and having our body constantly in a state of anxiety. And when we have those moments where we gain the clarity and we start to figure out ourselves, the wonderful thing that I did not expect when I was working on myself was the physical feeling of calm, rest, contentment, and how that can, eventually as you get used to it, also gives you signals.
to who you have clarity and competence around as well as the connection with. So you get to in tune with your body and physical feeling and have the clarity of knowing after working on yourself so much that your body also can tell you, I feel safe with this person. Absolutely. Yeah, because to go back to the brain waves a little bit and then how your brain connects with your body. So beta mode.
Molly Connolly (23:28.686)
is when we're awake and working and action and we might be stressed. Alpha, one brain level down, is when we're very present and we're awake, but we're very mindful at the time. And all of the research shows that people that move from beta to alpha often throughout the day are the happiest and the healthiest. Because again, they're recharging their brain.
right? And they're becoming more mindful. Theta zone, where I bring people in RTT is that neuroplasticity level where your brain's very adaptable to picking up new ideas and releasing old ideas and old protections. And then gamma and delta are your sleep waves. So the interesting thing is, if you really take advantage
of theta mode, which is when you're going to sleep at night, you know, that moment between being awake and asleep, that's when meditation, and I make everyone a customized meditation after their RTT session, the customized meditation of changing your mindset to, you know, if it's a health transformation, changing your mindset from scarcity mode to abundance,
and all of the wording that goes into that, that's when we do it. I have people listen for 28 days after our RTT session to this particular mindset shift when they're going to bed. And then the other thing that I highly recommend is taking advantage of the morning zone. You know, so many high performance and high performing people really take advantage of that morning and their
They're holding back on looking at anything on their phone or social media or work. They're doing meditation before they even get out of bed because they're taking advantage of ThetaZone as they're coming out of sleep into like Alpha and Beta. And they're really setting their intention for the day. Like, how do I want to show up today? Talking about what they're grateful for. So they're getting themselves into a mindful
Molly Connolly (25:53.838)
positive place and adding in like a 30 minute to 45 minute workout there, like that just sets you up for a phenomenal day. And so when you, when you heal this trauma and you get that out of your system, because trauma, but people don't realize is trauma stays in your body. Right. I mean, half, half of the weight issues is the trauma weight that people are still carrying around with them. It's like in
in their hips, in their knees, you know, is in their neck. So that's why these somatic healing therapies really kind of help you get that out of your body, get that out of your mind. Then you're resetting your brain and then you're incorporating these healthy habits. So that's really how your body image starts to change because you actually start feeling so much lighter. Yeah.
You just now gave me inspiration because I do it the opposite way. Like I get up and I work out and then I get ready for my day and then I meditate. Now I'm very interested to see if I can meditate without waking up my husband and then getting to our workout. Yeah. I don't, I don't love keeping my phone next to my bed, but I have so many great meditations on them. What I do is I have my phone and my earbuds and at night I
pop them in and I go to sleep. And then in the morning I pop them in and I wake up with another meditation. So yeah, it's really changed my life actually. This healing has changed my life. This self -development has. And for what I didn't realize, the other thing I learned through RTT and this self -development work is that I had been
really running from a depression that I was pushing down, numbing all those sad feelings from my past. And I was just running from them. So like out of fear my whole life, I was just working so hard and running like a gerbil on the wheel.
Molly Connolly (28:10.126)
In 2020, like I always, the visual I have is like a gerbil hanging onto the wheel for dealer life because it really wasn't working for me anymore. You know, it works for a while and that's why people usually find me in midlife. All of the things that they put in their head to protect them for all of a sudden isn't working anymore. And they have to do something different. They find themselves unhappy, unfulfilled.
with all these limiting beliefs, maybe living in scarcity mindset. And what I do is help people work through that, get that out of their system and, you know, create a career, a life, and a connection to purpose that they're really happy with. Yeah. I can only, like I've been saying, I can only imagine because I haven't had RTT. But as you keep explaining it,
The people that come to you and have these aha moments through RTT, can you maybe share a recent client experience that just was a, you know, I mean, shifting takes a while, but with RTT, it sounds so it's 28 days after, you know, cause they listened to meditation. So what's a recent transformation you can just like share with all of us. Absolutely. Yes. I have a 90 day program now.
that I've created that incorporates self -development, RTT, and some Thera coaching. And so a recent one, and this is where I want people to help take their power back, right? Regain confidence, feel light and happy and excited about getting up every day. So someone came to me and there was actually a combination of issues. So she came to me, a lot of people come to me for career.
And then all of a sudden we do a couple of different assessments and what was under the actions of the career is a mindset that was really in a very scarcity place, worried about money, you know, not feeling good about themselves, unhappy with body image, basically just lost all hope that she could ever, you know, either be healthy or be like,
Molly Connolly (30:32.654)
thinner or, you know, the body of health and freedom that she wanted. She wanted to be able to do anything, any time and actually like the body that she was in. And this low self -confidence was impacting every single area of her life. It was impacting her at work as a leader. You know, she wasn't showing up as strong or when she needed to make difficult decisions. She was really holding herself back.
It was showing up in her life because her negative body image was really impacting her relationships. She didn't want to go out anymore. You know, she actually stopped going out and being with other people because she started establishing kind of a social anxiety associated with this low self -confidence. So that's what we worked on. We worked on these issues and she was able to go to the root.
of where this low self -confidence came from. And it was really back in her elementary ages when she was like five or six, things that were going on with a divorce that happened in her family and then with a really difficult teacher and some friends that she had a negative experience with. And she would never have connected
six year old child memories with what was going on in her life now. And it was amazing having gone through RTT and then doing some of this work and regaining the confidence to actually like, like I love the definition that self care is really keeping the commitments to yourself. Right.
And so she really, her and I put together like her high performance habits, like what does her week consist of? How can we help her find her authentic self again? And really she established hope. She began to realize, my gosh, I can achieve an abundant mindset because really she had lost all hope. And so I was so proud of her for taking the first step. And that's what I encourage everyone to do is just take the first step.
Molly Connolly (32:54.062)
to either contact someone to help you or start reading about self -development or more information about healing trauma so that you can work on this self -development and you can feel good and excited about life again. Yeah. Just what a fantastic example of how much your life can change with just choosing yourself and taking that first step.
Yes, I mean, she had been depressed for years and she could not believe that in 90 days without any medication, she was able to heal things that had been, you know, hurting her. This is over 40 years. 40? She was carrying around this trauma and this feeling of negative self beliefs. So, yeah, I love I love stories like that because
When that happens, it really is an amazing transformation. And I mean, we are in a mental health crisis right now. People really have focused so much on physical health, right? Like how many people go to the gym every day or try to get an exercise in when they don't do things to help their mental and mindset health. And really that is the core.
That is the game changer. Yeah. And then when you put those two together, even, it's amazing. Yes. And it really, it really doesn't take that much. You know, it takes a couple of adjustments in each of those categories to really start feeling better. Yeah. my gosh. So I would love it if you would tell everyone where they can find out more information about you and RTT because
I bet I have some listeners right now that are like, I want to do this. I want to make a drastic shift in my life. 90 days sounds doable. Yes, absolutely. So my company is called Longview Consulting. So www .whatsyourlongview .com. And also I'm going to be having a group RTT hypnotherapy session.
Molly Connolly (35:18.958)
in mid -October. And so anyone that uses the code power for either a RTT program or a group hypnotherapy session, I'd be happy to honor your listeners. fantastic. Ladies, you need to take advantage of this. This is such an amazing opportunity to see Christine in action and also have transformation for yourself.
Yeah, my goal is to teach people how to heal themselves, give them the tools, the capabilities, the space to talk through it. And I have workbooks for everything from emotional eating to anxiety, depression. And these are all 90 day programs that can help them really transition their life to another level. Yes, that's exactly why everyone's here.
listening to this right now to make changes in their life. So then they can take the next step to be in the next level. Well, thank you. I love all the information you bring. I love listening to your podcast. Thank you so much. Can you tell me where people can find you also on social? You mentioned Instagram, tick tock. Yeah. So, I'm at Christine Bellotti Peterson. I am on Instagram. I'm on tick tock. I'm on Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn.
So contact me and our first step could be a complimentary consult. Really just talking about what's going on in your life, what your limiting beliefs are. Do you want help on the career side? Are you looking for goals on the personal side? Is this about self -development, mindset change? And then we can really put a plan together. Fantastic.
Well, thank you, Christine, for joining me today and sharing all this information with the ladies. I can't wait to hear other success stories from my listeners as well as maybe you. So, yeah, I want your listeners to know we can get them into an abundant mindset and then they can go find someone that really is in their authentic, secure connection place that's going to treat them as.
Molly Connolly (37:32.11)
their self love as they treat themselves, you know, somebody that's really able to show them all that they deserve. And that's the best part. When you are really treating yourself with respect and kindness and love, then you're putting that energy out there and you're going to attract somebody that wants to do the same. Exactly. You attract a healthy partner. All right. Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed having you. Maybe we'll have to do this again, even maybe.
Who knows, maybe in a few months. Awesome. Thank you so much, Molly. Thank you.