ARE YOU IN YOUR OWN WAY?
Eating is a metaphor for the way we live and love. Excessive fantasizing, creating drama, the need to be in control, and wanting what is forbidden are some of the behaviors that block us from finding joy in food or relationships.
Guidelines that enable us to break free from compulsive behavior—learning to stay in the present, beginning to value ourselves NOW, giving the hungry child within us a voice, understanding our physical and emotional hungers, and teaching ourselves to receive pleasure—enable us to be intimate with ourselves and others.
• Diets don’t work because FOOD & WEIGHT are the SYMPTOMS, not the problems! The focus on weight provides a convenient and culturally reinforced distraction from the reasons why so many people use food when they are not hungry!
• Some of the reasons we experience failure have more to do with—neglect, lack of trust, lack of love, unexpressed rage, grief, protection from getting hurt…
• People abuse themselves with food because they haven’t learned deeply that they deserve better, and have not learned and implemented the skills and strategies that are necessary to remove the interference to living the truth.
It is important to now take responsibility for changing these archaic dysfunction and destructive patterns of reacting and perceiving ourselves. Because our patterns of eating were formed by early perceptions of loving, it is necessary to understand and work with beliefs around both food and love to feel satisfied with our relationship to either.
EATING AS A COMPULSION
Compulsion is despair on the emotional level…the feeling that there is no one home. We become compulsive to create what we believe is not there. All we ever wanted, or still want, is love.
• We didn’t want to become compulsive…we did it to survive, to keep from going crazy.
• Food becomes love—eating is a way of being loved. It is available when noone else is…it is always there…it tastes good…is warm when we are cold and cold when we are hot. It becomes the closest thing we know of love.
• This happens not because we are ignorant, but if we’ve never been “loved well”, we don’t know what love really feels like, and we haven’t learned to love ourselves well. We need to learn that now.
Compulsive behavior, at its most fundamental, is a lack of self-love; it is an expression of a belief that we are not good enough. When we are children, we have no resources, no power to make choices about our life situation. We are completely dependent on our caregivers for food, shelter and love. If we experience the pain as too uncomfortable and we have no power to change it or leave, we shut it off. We then switch our pain to something we can control: a compulsion. Food is just one of many possibilities. (Others are sex, television, work, alcohol, drugs, shopping, etc.)
Fortunately, as adults, we have free choice to revisit the decisions we made long ago before we had a real choice—about our self-worth, our capacity to love, and our willingness to be loved, for it is from these decisions that many of our old beliefs about compulsion and love took hold. Long ago we had no choice—now we do!
When food and love get mixed up with each other—we stop showing the places that hurt or need comfort. We stop expecting our needs will be met (sometimes we don’t even know what our real needs are!) and we begin to rely on ourselves and only ourselves to provide sustenance, comfort, and pleasure. So we begin to eat. And eat…but not to fuel and nourish our bodies.
THE COMFORT OF SUFFERING
Obsession with food gives us an easy container for all of our feelings of disappointment, rage, sorrow and shame. As long as we are obsessed with food, we always have a concrete excuse for our pain. The significance of giving up an obsession with food is not a thinner body, not a smaller size, but giving up a protection from pain. When you continue to protect yourself from pain, you protect yourself from intimacy. But when you allow yourself to experience what the real emotion is, sit with that very real emotion—and then ask yourself “Why am I feeling this way? Why now?”, we can then clearly identify that need. Once we do, we as adults must become Self Responsible for the steps to take to get that need met!!
Eating becomes a way to secretly give to yourself—any time we eat compulsively, we reinforce the belief that the only way we can have what we want is to give it to ourselves by means of the chosen compulsion. Moreover, it triggers old messages that we are bad for having needs, and especially bad if we satisfy them. No two objects can occupy the same space at the same time: it is not possible to be obsessed with food, or anything else, and be truly intimate with ourselves or another person; there is just no space for it. So giving up a compulsion makes room for self, and other, and love.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOVE AND COMPULSION
Love and compulsion cannot coexist…
• Compulsion is the act of wrapping ourselves around an activity, a substance, or a person to survive, to tolerate and numb our experience of the moment.
• Love is a state of connectedness, one that includes:
Vulnerability
Surrender
Self-valuing
Steadiness
A willingness to face, not run from, our fears
• Compulsion is a state of isolation—one that includes:
Self-absorption
Invulnerability
Low self-esteem
Unpredictability
Fear that if we faced pain—it would destroy us
Compulsion leaves no room for love—which is why many individuals started eating: as a result of past experiences when we were open to receiving love, but BURIED that need when the people around us did not offer it unconditionally. The existence of compulsion is to act as a shield from the pain associated with issues to do with love.
GETOUT OF YOUR OWN WAY
• Set a goal to have, rather than be, a healthy, fit body. To gain confidence on this path, you need to listen to yourself, both thoughts and feelings.
• Build a “Self” based on Esteem, Kindness, Patience and Forgiveness.
• Break free from Mindless Eating…. it asks you to stop being a victim, gives you choice, self-responsibility.
• Go against a culture that encourages us to define our self-worth as a comparison, against externals—what we look like, what we weigh, how much we possess.
• Mend the shattered, fractured self, hiding inside the compulsion. Seek help from professionals that can partner with you on this very important journey.
• Use the strong language of action:
I agree to
I pledge to
I am prepared to
I intend to
I am ready to
I vow to
I promise to
I will
Vow today to not stand in your own way.
Often it is easier to accomplish the difficult goals of transformation with the partnership of a experienced, compassionate professional. Dr. Sherri Edelman is a Licensed Counselor and Clinical Psychologist, and Co-Founder of Triune Wellness in Old City. With years of experience working with individuals to aid them in dramatic life transformations, you can feel confident in your choice. If you are interested, please contact her at sherriedelman@comcast.net or telephone 215 627 6279 to schedule a consultation. Please visit our website at www.tri-une.com to learn more about holistic health and wellness.
No comments:
Post a Comment