Hair can be one of the first visible losses during cancer treatment, but the deeper experience is often one of identity, grief, and learning to recognize yourself through profound change.

In this deeply personal episode of The Original Self Podcast: Lessons from Behind the Chair, Evet shares two unforgettable stories from nearly forty years as a hairstylist. One begins with shaving her sister-in-law's head before chemotherapy. The other follows a woman whose hair grew back—but no longer felt like her own. Through these experiences, Evet explores the psychology of identity, transition, and human connection, revealing why the most meaningful thing we can offer another person isn't always advice or answers—it's our presence. Topics include: • Anticipatory grief • Rites of passage and transitions • Disenfranchised grief • Identity continuity • The power of presence over fixing • Coaching through uncertainty Psychology & Research Referenced: • Pauline Boss — Ambiguous Loss • Arnold van Gennep — The Rites of Passage • Nancy Schlossberg — Transition Theory • Kenneth Doka — Disenfranchised Grief • Erik Erikson — Identity development and continuity Website: decotalifecoaching.com Email: decotalifecoaching@gmail.com Listen wherever you enjoy your favorite podcasts.

This episode begins a new chapter of The Original Self Podcast.

Topics include:

• Stress responses

• Expectation violations

• Attachment and belonging

• Identity threat

• Nervous system regulation

• Reacting vs. responding

• Curiosity over judgment

The real question isn't, 'What's wrong with this person?' It's, 'What might this person be trying to protect?'

Website: decotalifecoaching.com

Email: decotalifecoaching@gmail.com

Listen wherever you enjoy podcasts.

Research Referenced

Lazarus & Folkman – Stress Appraisal Theory

Daniel Kahneman – Fast and Slow Thinking

Carl Rogers – Curiosity

Dan Siegel – Window of Tolerance

Stephen Porges – Polyvagal Theory

Identity Threat Theory

Social Identity Theory

Attachment Theory

Evet DeCota is the owner of DeCota Life Coaching and a psychology-informed life coach exploring resilience, mindset, and the courage to become your authentic self. Between the salon chair and the coaching session, she's spent years watching people move through life in patterns they rarely notice.

This is it, the final episode of A Psychology of Food. Eight episodes ago, this series opened with a question: what happened to us around food? Episode 22 turns that question around and asks it the other way. Who were you before you were taught how to be around food? This episode is about the practice of finding out, and about learning to trust the answer.

In this episode, you'll learn:

● The practical difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger, and where each one tends to register in the body

● Why undereating during the day can produce something that feels exactly like emotional hunger by evening, and why that isn't a willpower problem

● What interoceptive awareness is, and why researchers Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch describe it as something close to a superpower

● Kristin Neff's three components of self-compassion, and why self-compassion is the actual condition that makes listening to your body possible

● Why comfort eating was never the enemy this series was describing, and where the real concern actually lies

● Evet's own closing reflection, including her experience with a GLP-1 medication, what it did and didn't do, and what coming home to herself has looked like

This episode marks the final chapter of A Psychology of Food, an eight-episode series exploring the systems, biology, and psychology that shape our relationship with food. Thank you for listening to the whole arc.

Contact Evet / DeCota Life Coaching

Website: decotalifecoaching.com

Email: decotalifecoaching@gmail.com

Phone: 415-548-1964