You have reached your goal weight. You were thrilled for about a
second and a half. All that hard, consistent work, and now what? You did
not get the dreamy boyfriend, the fantastic job, the modeling contract,
or that shot at acting or singing you always wanted. You did not get
discovered, you know, like you hear sometimes: "I was just walking down
the street and I got discovered!"
So really, at this point you are thinking, "What was all this for?" Happiness? Peace of mind? To lose that loser feeling you had when you were fat? Did you hope to lose the anxiety of clothes shopping, dating, and doing job interviews? Did you think you'd reach a point where how much you weighed would not define how well you felt?
Oh God, I know! It all sounds so familiar! Do you realize that when I write in my journal, next to the date, I put my weight? Yes! Pathetic. Sad, really. For so long, my weight defined who I was. So I lost the weight, but then I had all those feelings you are having. My biggest fear was that I might gain it back. And, of course, when you focus on that, guess what happens? I had a big event in my life this past year, my wedding. Over eight months before the wedding, I embarked on a health regimen with a nutritionist and a private trainer. I lost 25 pounds in time for the wedding. Three months later, I had gained 10 pounds back. Fourteen months later, I was 10 pounds higher than when I embarked on my health regimen. I had thought that I had broken my yo-yo weight cycle. I had lost the weight in a healthy way, so why was it coming back?
Gaining the weight back was one thing, but my biggest annoyance was that I had not reached the peace of mind in my relationship with food that I thought I would have at a certain weight (or age!). I realized that whatever baggage (yes pun intended!), I carried around at my fattest, it was still with me at my thinnest. Unless I was able to put that baggage down, it was going to bring me right back there, to my fattest and most miserable.
I did not want that. I never wanted that. I was so tired of knowing how I was doing by how I was eating. So I decided to write this book. Why? Because I needed to find out, for real, what to do next. I just couldn't believe that after reaching my ideal weight before the wedding, my first impulse was to have a big meal as a celebration! It seemed that I did not believe for one second that I belonged at that weight. I am not giving you that weight number on purpose because that number is different for everyone. What is important is that I was at my goal weight. In retrospect, I felt like Oprah must have felt when she did that liquid diet and stayed at that weight for less than twenty-four hours, even if I had lost the weight in a healthy way.
I had my ups and downs in those eight months with the nutritionist and trainer. I always had to fight those inner (or outer) voices that told me that I could have that extra dessert." The problem with me is that I cannot have one dessert. I cannot have three potato chips; I need a big bag or at least two small bags. And I need two or three chocolate bars. I am an all-or-nothing kind of a girl. Those who binge know what I am talking about. As a side note, I don't purge (but I used to), and for those who do, you need to get professional help. It is damaging your body. In these moments, it felt like another part of me had taken over. That self was insecure, anxious, and hurt, and in order to avoid those feelings, we have to fill in the bucket with our escape mechanism, for me, through junk food. For others, it may be drugs or alcohol. A question that this raises is why it is so important to avoid those feelings. Do they really hurt that bad? Are they so painful? Today, my answer is "No!"
When I force myself to listen and feel, I find that these feelings aren't so bad. So why have I been avoiding them all my life? I believe that what I was afraid of was that those miserable feelings I was experiencing would last forever, so I ate. Well, I am not a therapist, but I have seen one for many years, so I assume that if you have these bad feelings you were probably young when you first experienced the pain, and it was earth shattering painful, and you relive that memory every time those emotions or feelings come around.
I have noticed that when I let those feelings go unchecked, meaning that I just eat tons of junk food to bury the feelings, I get numb. I disappear. Then I feel disgusted with myself. But, oh good news, when I don't allow myself to fall into the binging habit, I sit, I listen, and I feel. And it feels nice to have me listening to me for a change.
I enjoy food. I enjoy all the desserts and pasta dishes and croissants and Danishes and muffins and warm bread and butter. I love them. I probably should never move to France or Italy. Don't they have the best pastries and pasta dishes? But I have to be mature and choose the food that is best for my body and my overall health. I don't always do that. The internal fight has been going on forever, really. I cannot tell you exactly when it started. In my teens, I guess. I have just started to understand what the fight has been really about.
It is 14 months today that we got married. It has been amazing; we love calling each other husband and wife. Now we are back to reality and back to work, and I am back to worrying about my weight. I gained the 25 pounds back plus 10, and since I did not gain weight on the honeymoon, it is really after that, that it happened. Now I am back to square one.
I had not solved the problem that made me eat junk food. I was still anxious, nervous, frustrated, and dissatisfied with my life. I have been down lately. I have great moments of joy in my days, but also moments of feeling down. It is as if a part of me does not believe I deserve what I have, so I am trying to sabotage it. I was trying to figure out what occurred in my life in the past few months that activated a part of me that does not believe I deserve the best, and I think I figured out what it was. My father got sick, and he passed away not too long ago. I was in contact with people who knew me when I was young and insecure. Normally, I try to stay surrounded by people who belong in my present and not in my past, but sometimes, you know, the past catches up to you!
For six months, there was increased communications and visits with family. All the intensive face-to-face communications with some of the folks I had put behind me forced me to face some long hidden feelings. And I handled it by eating my way through it. This event totally reactivated a part of my self that I thought I had resolved-I guess life thought otherwise. It gave me a challenge and I failed! I am trying to be grateful when things like this happen because it forces me to face head on what I am trying to solve. And I know that if I don't solve it, it will keep coming back until I do.
So here I am getting down to the core of my problem, and my problem is not the chip or the chocolate bar; my problem is why do I need to eat so urgently when in distress? My reaction to stress is always the same. My adult self disappears to give all the space to my younger self. It annoys me that I let it happen. I let my world be run by an eight year old. Yes, I have determined that this part of my self that is hurt and frightened is eight years old. I have no scientific facts to base this on; it is a gut feeling. Also, the fact that starting my ninth year I had two major physical problems tends to tell me I am right that my eighth year was difficult.
When my younger self takes charge, my world becomes depressing and sad with no hope for escape. I have no doubt that this is how I felt when I was young. When my current self is in charge-the self who is more self-assured, more in control, feels more self-love, and who feels that I have choices-then my world is full of possibilities. I have found love with a great husband, good coworkers, and great friends. When I am centered in my core, I am master of my domain. I build my dream board, I plan my goals, I eat right, I exercise, and life is great. I am not trying to separate myself into multiple people, but I firmly believe that I have within me a small version of me who is stuck in time. She is still there in pain and afraid, and she feels stuck in her circumstances. Every once in a while, an event will occur to wake her up. I am fairly strong-minded and pig-headed so we inevitably end up wrestling.
To wake up my eight-year-old frame of mind, I have to activate a pattern, which is that I think very negatively. I build up the negative side of everything in my life. I build up the pain, the anger, the anxiety, and the feeling that I am a loser and will never accomplish anything worthy. I build all that up and then I act it as if my world were hopeless, with no way out, exactly like I thought it was back then. So instead of living in the present and being at my goal weight, happy and content, I suddenly act as if I were everything to the contrary. I knew about using "act-as-if" to improve your life, but I never in my dreams thought I was using it to bring my life down!
This makes so much sense. All these years, I was trying to figure out why I was disappearing so easily behind a part of my self that should not exist anymore. When I was saying I couldn't move on until I resolved this, I was right. As long as I play the role of the victim in my head, I cannot move on to be anything else. So all those goals and dreams will not happen until I let go and release this part of my self that insists on remaining stuck in time.
I never understood when people told me that I didn't have money or success because I didn't feel I deserved it. You see, I felt I did deserve it. One hundred percent of me at a given time believes in me. I did not understand when they said I didn't feel I deserved it because I did and I was doing all the right things. But then my young self kicks in. She is not "awake" or there 20-30% of the time at all times. That is not how it works. When she appears, she takes up 100% of the space. She wants the entire stage. And my adult self disappears.
I've also found that if one day my younger self takes over, then the next day it gets easier for her to do it and the next day even easier. And she stays for longer, too. Today is one hour, tomorrow will be two. The down feeling I have afterwards happens because when my adult self gets back in charge I am thinking, "What the heck just happened?" It is exactly the same as if I were looking at a child who did something stupid: I can't believe that kid just did that! Now, as an adult, I have to rebuild my hopes, trust, and faith. The thing is, my younger self now has momentum and strength; she had her moment of fame and space, and she wants more. That is when the internal fight begins between the two of us.
When I am not completely in charge, I feel my young hurt self, and I can see that when I focus on my goals and I associate negative feelings to them. For example, I imagine myself rich and living in a luxurious condo in San Diego. Then very quickly, I have the image of a relative showing up wanting money and fighting with me. I bring on a negative feeling and associate it to being rich. That is why I was not rich! Remember when I said I did not understand when people told me that I was not 100% committed to being rich? Well, here is the explanation.
My adult side could not understand the logic because she felt that I was 100% committed. However, the thing is, so is my younger self. She is a ball of pure, raw emotion. Anything she does is associated with emotion and makes her ten times stronger. I can repeat my affirmation to be rich 20 times a day, but as soon as negative emotions are linked to it via my younger self then it all goes down the drain. I unwillingly associated bad things to being rich. It would be easier not to be rich. Then, I wouldn't have to worry about fights over money. Very eight-year-old thinking, don't you agree? This is why I say, as long as you carry around these distorted emotions, you will never move on.
Now, I mentioned being rich, but what about being fat? Could it be that I associate more pain with being thin then with being fat? Is that why I regained the weight? I picked my brains again and again to get at that truth. I kept telling myself there was no way I felt being thin was painful. But yes, I did. It is binary; it is a yes and no thing. I associated being thin and beautiful to being an easy target for abusive guys. I needed the junk food because it rid myself of that bad feeling in that specific moment: it was more painful to remain thin and not have the junk food then to have it.
Well, now that we know that, what do we do? Think about the times when your adult self succeeded in not letting your younger self take over. How did you do that? Find out and do it again and again. I find that as you grow older and slowly get stronger (through therapy or self-help books or self-analysis), you begin to enjoy who you are. You feel stronger, happier, believe more in yourself, and have hopes and dreams that become more and more daring. You come to have bigger and bigger goals. When you grow stronger, you have no patience for your younger side who is sad, anxious, and angry. You become intolerant with your self.
That is where I am; I have no patience for my younger self anymore. She no longer belongs to who I am today. I want to let her go. And if you are reading this, I think you are ready to let your younger self go, too.
Now, how do you do that?
With love and tenderness. First of all, it is a part of me that suffered. I was scared, hurt and had huge anxiety. I had a hard time falling asleep all my life, until I met my husband. The anxiety level in me has always been huge, and now I am starting to understand why. My younger self was trying to speak out, to let me know that a part of myself was still there and still existed.
So step one is to acknowledge her. It is important to acknowledge that she is part of me and still exists, and that she still hurts and my adult self needs to take care of her and love her.
Then I needed to find out what wakes her up. Why is she manifesting herself one day and not the next? The answer I found was feelings! Simple feelings. In my case, it may be a feeling of hurt, a feeling of being stuck in a bad situation, a feeling of desperation or hopelessness or being unloved, feeling like a loser, or even feeling general anxiety. Any feelings that I felt when I was in that place that is stuck in time will bring me back to that time. And the amazing thing with feelings? No matter how many years have passed since then, they communicate with each other (past and present) faster than the speed of light.
Having to be in close contact again with all members of my family brought back my younger self in full force. I could not control her anymore. For weeks, she took over, and I ate junk food and pushed away exercise. Every day I would wake up with the hope that I was back in charge. But I wasn't. I was not able to take charge of myself. So how did I finally do it?
The next step is to cut the cord that tied me to that time because it was not my reality anymore. I am not saying I will never feel hurt or hopelessness again. What I am saying is when I do, it does not have to send me into a tailspin of the awfulness I felt back then. I wanted to retrieve those feelings into my present, and experience it now with my current reality.
I sat and talked to my younger self who was trying to take over and explained that the past did not exist anymore. Have moments of love and understanding for what she was trying to grasp. She was only trying to do what she knows. Slowly and surely with soft discipline, I explained that it was time for her to let go of that pain. The poor, hurt sweetie needed to rest. Can you imagine the years of pain she has suffered through that clouded reality, reliving those awful feelings over and over again every year since they initially happened?
Wasn't it time to let go? I wanted to let go of the pain, the anxiety, the hurt, the anger, the sadness, the feeling of pure fear grabbing at your throat and your stomach like there was no way out. Yes, I said it was time. I let it go. I am not saying I let her go; I am saying I let go of her pain.
Another lesson I learned was to change my physiology. It is known that when you are about to get depressed, down, or feel victimized, your body takes on a certain position: hunched over, head down, frowning, hands by your side and not smiling. The fastest way to change that is to stand up, shake yourself, put your shoulders back, stand tall, and put a big smile on your face as if you could take on the world. This will affect your mental focus. Because they are aligned, if you change your physiology, you mind has no other option but to follow.
Now, before you do anything, you need to understand why you keep this part of yourself around. You know it is not helping you grow to be a better person, you know it drags you down, so why carry it with you all these years? The answer is fear and habit. You are afraid to let go of that pain. It is familiar, and releasing it will make you lose an important part of yourself. You have been living with that side of yourself for so many years, how do you live without it? That is the fear of the unknown and the fear of change talking. So how do you address those fears? How do you change? That is what this book is about, and all the tricks and tools are coming up.
First, I believe you need to understand where your pain comes from, and second, you need to decide that staying in that victimized mode is more painful for you then changing. It took years to get to where you are. You now feel you have reached a point where you are strong enough to do it, so let's do it. One step at a time. Don't forget that your goal is to let go of the pain that you have associated with a part of you that is stuck in time; that part that makes you live today's events through the hurt of the past.
In order to release this part of you properly, you have to do it with love, forgiveness, and tenderness, but also strength: leave no option but to let go. That part of you will fight to stay. You have to be 100% committed to succeed in letting go of the pain.
Your goal of being at peace with food, to no longer binge out your emotions, and to succeed at looking great and feeling great will not happen, will never happen, unless you release the part of you that is hurt. This is why you have to be 100% committed. Life knows you are getting geared up for this challenge, and it will give you plenty of opportunities to test your resolve. It will throw at you everything it can to see if you are ready to succeed.
So now that you understand where you are, let's see how to resolve it. Let's take an example. You get up in the morning, you work out, meditate, write in your journal, and you are ready to take on the world. You get to the office, your boss yells at you for a major mistake you made that cost the company tons of money. OK, this is the first test of the day. How will you handle it? Will your stay centered with your adult as master of your domain and evaluate the situation calmly? Or will you let your younger self take over and react to today's events like a neurotic, self-destroying, sabotaging, throwing-a-tantrum kid? Well, when you put it like that!
The key to success is to NEVER let your younger self take over 100%. I know, easier said than done. Stop and listen. Go inward. If you feel your younger self flaring up, start to speak to your younger self right away. How does it feel? Personally, I get stomach pangs. I start feeling anxious, (actually uncontrolled anxiety) and if it is early morning, I desperately want a Danish and a coffee or if it is afternoon, chips and chocolate. And of course, I start my pattern of negative thinking and my physiology changes. If you find yourself in this position, what do you do?
The first thing to figure out is your pattern. Now that I know what mine is, I need to do two things. First I need to resolve the source of the problem, which is: wrongly handling today's situation with my young self instead of my grown self. I need to calm my younger self down. In Chapter 2, we will look at how to change a pattern, but for now, what you need to know is how to address that hurt, younger self that wants to take over.
You need to imagine talking to a child and approach your younger self with understanding and assurance: "I understand that you are hurt. That was pretty awful what was just said. Let me dig into this problem, logically. I will analyze it and see what happens." Your younger self needs to feel security. When your younger self flares up like that, it is because there is a feeling of being attacked. No way. Your adult self is there to protect all of you no matter what. The sooner all your selves get that, the better you (and everyone!) will feel. At times, your younger self will try to overtake you.
This is when soft (and sometimes hard) discipline comes in. You have to stand your ground and make it clear that you are not going anywhere. Your younger self needs to take a back seat and let you do your job. Think about the double fights that you have had to deal with all your life. As an adult, you have to contain the current situation, but at the same time, you have this side of you who just wants to have a tantrum and walk away because she is hurt (in this case walk away from the job!). You have always had to deal with two things at the same time, but that is not how adults deal with rough situations and your younger self needs to understand this. The stronger your adult and your core become, the less space your hurt younger self will take up.
Take action:
But at the same time, keep in mind that your young self is hurt. She is re-living a past event. You need to consciously relive it with her. So while you are taking charge at work, take some time on a quiet morning and write in your diary and try to figure out where this pain comes from. You need to simulate that event or similar events to bring this pain to the surface and relive it properly; that means reliving the pain with who you are today. It may be painful but it will relieve so much old bundled up pain that after you have done it, you will feel relieved and re-energized. The next time someone attacks you, this old pain will not resurface because you took care of it.
I find that I am in control most of the time, but I also find that now, when my younger self comes out, she is more angry and anxious than she used to be. This makes it harder for me to control her, but it is also a good thing. It means that I am headed in the right direction. When you get to this point, you'll find that the challenges are tougher, but as you conquer them, you get closer and closer to being free. Keep doing the exercise of writing down your pain and simulating it as if it was happening for real. Do it for each pain and relieve each and everyone of them, one at the time.
Stay strong, stay on top, and don't forget to get physical. I like to go for walks or climb stairs in my building in order to reconnect with my body and feel strong. I come back, my head high, shoulders back, and I'm smiling. Keep 100% committed; nothing else matters. Until this is solved, nothing you want will happen.
If the anxiety is still there, that means you have not yet resolved the pain she is suffering from. Go back to simulating events. You know you are on the right path when you feel it in your gut. To prevent your younger self from taking all the space, she needs to realize that you are now ready to be there and help her let go of the pain. The hurt can be released, and your younger self can now rest or come out and play instead. All she really wants is to be listened to!
You cannot change the circumstances of the past. You can only change your reactions to it with your reality of today. This is what people mean when they say; "it is your choice". What happened then was not your choice, your reactions then as a child were the best you could do at that time. But what you do today as an adult is your choice. Do you want to remain angry, sad, and anxious forever? Do you want that to define you? Do you want to keep on being the victim? Is that how you want to be remembered?
You, today, define who you are and who you chose to be. It is your choice. Rewrite your own story on how You want it to be. If you are reading this book, it is because a large part of you is ready to let go. That is great news. So buckle up, it will be quite a ride. One event at a time, one hour at a time, one day, one week, one month at a time. Be persistent and never give up. You, all of you, are worth it. The more you stay centered and strong, the more you will be releasing that part of yourself that is hurt and needs to rest. But be careful. Just when you think you have it all figured out and have it all together: Bang! Another test will come your way. Maybe a bigger one. Stay focused, and stay in a place of love and forgiveness and strength instead of anger and anxiety. You need to gain momentum. Take action. The minute you sit back and do nothing, that is when your younger self will take over.
Ask yourself: Why do you want to lose weight?
So really, at this point you are thinking, "What was all this for?" Happiness? Peace of mind? To lose that loser feeling you had when you were fat? Did you hope to lose the anxiety of clothes shopping, dating, and doing job interviews? Did you think you'd reach a point where how much you weighed would not define how well you felt?
Oh God, I know! It all sounds so familiar! Do you realize that when I write in my journal, next to the date, I put my weight? Yes! Pathetic. Sad, really. For so long, my weight defined who I was. So I lost the weight, but then I had all those feelings you are having. My biggest fear was that I might gain it back. And, of course, when you focus on that, guess what happens? I had a big event in my life this past year, my wedding. Over eight months before the wedding, I embarked on a health regimen with a nutritionist and a private trainer. I lost 25 pounds in time for the wedding. Three months later, I had gained 10 pounds back. Fourteen months later, I was 10 pounds higher than when I embarked on my health regimen. I had thought that I had broken my yo-yo weight cycle. I had lost the weight in a healthy way, so why was it coming back?
Gaining the weight back was one thing, but my biggest annoyance was that I had not reached the peace of mind in my relationship with food that I thought I would have at a certain weight (or age!). I realized that whatever baggage (yes pun intended!), I carried around at my fattest, it was still with me at my thinnest. Unless I was able to put that baggage down, it was going to bring me right back there, to my fattest and most miserable.
I did not want that. I never wanted that. I was so tired of knowing how I was doing by how I was eating. So I decided to write this book. Why? Because I needed to find out, for real, what to do next. I just couldn't believe that after reaching my ideal weight before the wedding, my first impulse was to have a big meal as a celebration! It seemed that I did not believe for one second that I belonged at that weight. I am not giving you that weight number on purpose because that number is different for everyone. What is important is that I was at my goal weight. In retrospect, I felt like Oprah must have felt when she did that liquid diet and stayed at that weight for less than twenty-four hours, even if I had lost the weight in a healthy way.
I had my ups and downs in those eight months with the nutritionist and trainer. I always had to fight those inner (or outer) voices that told me that I could have that extra dessert." The problem with me is that I cannot have one dessert. I cannot have three potato chips; I need a big bag or at least two small bags. And I need two or three chocolate bars. I am an all-or-nothing kind of a girl. Those who binge know what I am talking about. As a side note, I don't purge (but I used to), and for those who do, you need to get professional help. It is damaging your body. In these moments, it felt like another part of me had taken over. That self was insecure, anxious, and hurt, and in order to avoid those feelings, we have to fill in the bucket with our escape mechanism, for me, through junk food. For others, it may be drugs or alcohol. A question that this raises is why it is so important to avoid those feelings. Do they really hurt that bad? Are they so painful? Today, my answer is "No!"
When I force myself to listen and feel, I find that these feelings aren't so bad. So why have I been avoiding them all my life? I believe that what I was afraid of was that those miserable feelings I was experiencing would last forever, so I ate. Well, I am not a therapist, but I have seen one for many years, so I assume that if you have these bad feelings you were probably young when you first experienced the pain, and it was earth shattering painful, and you relive that memory every time those emotions or feelings come around.
I have noticed that when I let those feelings go unchecked, meaning that I just eat tons of junk food to bury the feelings, I get numb. I disappear. Then I feel disgusted with myself. But, oh good news, when I don't allow myself to fall into the binging habit, I sit, I listen, and I feel. And it feels nice to have me listening to me for a change.
I enjoy food. I enjoy all the desserts and pasta dishes and croissants and Danishes and muffins and warm bread and butter. I love them. I probably should never move to France or Italy. Don't they have the best pastries and pasta dishes? But I have to be mature and choose the food that is best for my body and my overall health. I don't always do that. The internal fight has been going on forever, really. I cannot tell you exactly when it started. In my teens, I guess. I have just started to understand what the fight has been really about.
It is 14 months today that we got married. It has been amazing; we love calling each other husband and wife. Now we are back to reality and back to work, and I am back to worrying about my weight. I gained the 25 pounds back plus 10, and since I did not gain weight on the honeymoon, it is really after that, that it happened. Now I am back to square one.
I had not solved the problem that made me eat junk food. I was still anxious, nervous, frustrated, and dissatisfied with my life. I have been down lately. I have great moments of joy in my days, but also moments of feeling down. It is as if a part of me does not believe I deserve what I have, so I am trying to sabotage it. I was trying to figure out what occurred in my life in the past few months that activated a part of me that does not believe I deserve the best, and I think I figured out what it was. My father got sick, and he passed away not too long ago. I was in contact with people who knew me when I was young and insecure. Normally, I try to stay surrounded by people who belong in my present and not in my past, but sometimes, you know, the past catches up to you!
For six months, there was increased communications and visits with family. All the intensive face-to-face communications with some of the folks I had put behind me forced me to face some long hidden feelings. And I handled it by eating my way through it. This event totally reactivated a part of my self that I thought I had resolved-I guess life thought otherwise. It gave me a challenge and I failed! I am trying to be grateful when things like this happen because it forces me to face head on what I am trying to solve. And I know that if I don't solve it, it will keep coming back until I do.
So here I am getting down to the core of my problem, and my problem is not the chip or the chocolate bar; my problem is why do I need to eat so urgently when in distress? My reaction to stress is always the same. My adult self disappears to give all the space to my younger self. It annoys me that I let it happen. I let my world be run by an eight year old. Yes, I have determined that this part of my self that is hurt and frightened is eight years old. I have no scientific facts to base this on; it is a gut feeling. Also, the fact that starting my ninth year I had two major physical problems tends to tell me I am right that my eighth year was difficult.
When my younger self takes charge, my world becomes depressing and sad with no hope for escape. I have no doubt that this is how I felt when I was young. When my current self is in charge-the self who is more self-assured, more in control, feels more self-love, and who feels that I have choices-then my world is full of possibilities. I have found love with a great husband, good coworkers, and great friends. When I am centered in my core, I am master of my domain. I build my dream board, I plan my goals, I eat right, I exercise, and life is great. I am not trying to separate myself into multiple people, but I firmly believe that I have within me a small version of me who is stuck in time. She is still there in pain and afraid, and she feels stuck in her circumstances. Every once in a while, an event will occur to wake her up. I am fairly strong-minded and pig-headed so we inevitably end up wrestling.
To wake up my eight-year-old frame of mind, I have to activate a pattern, which is that I think very negatively. I build up the negative side of everything in my life. I build up the pain, the anger, the anxiety, and the feeling that I am a loser and will never accomplish anything worthy. I build all that up and then I act it as if my world were hopeless, with no way out, exactly like I thought it was back then. So instead of living in the present and being at my goal weight, happy and content, I suddenly act as if I were everything to the contrary. I knew about using "act-as-if" to improve your life, but I never in my dreams thought I was using it to bring my life down!
This makes so much sense. All these years, I was trying to figure out why I was disappearing so easily behind a part of my self that should not exist anymore. When I was saying I couldn't move on until I resolved this, I was right. As long as I play the role of the victim in my head, I cannot move on to be anything else. So all those goals and dreams will not happen until I let go and release this part of my self that insists on remaining stuck in time.
I never understood when people told me that I didn't have money or success because I didn't feel I deserved it. You see, I felt I did deserve it. One hundred percent of me at a given time believes in me. I did not understand when they said I didn't feel I deserved it because I did and I was doing all the right things. But then my young self kicks in. She is not "awake" or there 20-30% of the time at all times. That is not how it works. When she appears, she takes up 100% of the space. She wants the entire stage. And my adult self disappears.
I've also found that if one day my younger self takes over, then the next day it gets easier for her to do it and the next day even easier. And she stays for longer, too. Today is one hour, tomorrow will be two. The down feeling I have afterwards happens because when my adult self gets back in charge I am thinking, "What the heck just happened?" It is exactly the same as if I were looking at a child who did something stupid: I can't believe that kid just did that! Now, as an adult, I have to rebuild my hopes, trust, and faith. The thing is, my younger self now has momentum and strength; she had her moment of fame and space, and she wants more. That is when the internal fight begins between the two of us.
When I am not completely in charge, I feel my young hurt self, and I can see that when I focus on my goals and I associate negative feelings to them. For example, I imagine myself rich and living in a luxurious condo in San Diego. Then very quickly, I have the image of a relative showing up wanting money and fighting with me. I bring on a negative feeling and associate it to being rich. That is why I was not rich! Remember when I said I did not understand when people told me that I was not 100% committed to being rich? Well, here is the explanation.
My adult side could not understand the logic because she felt that I was 100% committed. However, the thing is, so is my younger self. She is a ball of pure, raw emotion. Anything she does is associated with emotion and makes her ten times stronger. I can repeat my affirmation to be rich 20 times a day, but as soon as negative emotions are linked to it via my younger self then it all goes down the drain. I unwillingly associated bad things to being rich. It would be easier not to be rich. Then, I wouldn't have to worry about fights over money. Very eight-year-old thinking, don't you agree? This is why I say, as long as you carry around these distorted emotions, you will never move on.
Now, I mentioned being rich, but what about being fat? Could it be that I associate more pain with being thin then with being fat? Is that why I regained the weight? I picked my brains again and again to get at that truth. I kept telling myself there was no way I felt being thin was painful. But yes, I did. It is binary; it is a yes and no thing. I associated being thin and beautiful to being an easy target for abusive guys. I needed the junk food because it rid myself of that bad feeling in that specific moment: it was more painful to remain thin and not have the junk food then to have it.
Well, now that we know that, what do we do? Think about the times when your adult self succeeded in not letting your younger self take over. How did you do that? Find out and do it again and again. I find that as you grow older and slowly get stronger (through therapy or self-help books or self-analysis), you begin to enjoy who you are. You feel stronger, happier, believe more in yourself, and have hopes and dreams that become more and more daring. You come to have bigger and bigger goals. When you grow stronger, you have no patience for your younger side who is sad, anxious, and angry. You become intolerant with your self.
That is where I am; I have no patience for my younger self anymore. She no longer belongs to who I am today. I want to let her go. And if you are reading this, I think you are ready to let your younger self go, too.
Now, how do you do that?
With love and tenderness. First of all, it is a part of me that suffered. I was scared, hurt and had huge anxiety. I had a hard time falling asleep all my life, until I met my husband. The anxiety level in me has always been huge, and now I am starting to understand why. My younger self was trying to speak out, to let me know that a part of myself was still there and still existed.
So step one is to acknowledge her. It is important to acknowledge that she is part of me and still exists, and that she still hurts and my adult self needs to take care of her and love her.
Then I needed to find out what wakes her up. Why is she manifesting herself one day and not the next? The answer I found was feelings! Simple feelings. In my case, it may be a feeling of hurt, a feeling of being stuck in a bad situation, a feeling of desperation or hopelessness or being unloved, feeling like a loser, or even feeling general anxiety. Any feelings that I felt when I was in that place that is stuck in time will bring me back to that time. And the amazing thing with feelings? No matter how many years have passed since then, they communicate with each other (past and present) faster than the speed of light.
Having to be in close contact again with all members of my family brought back my younger self in full force. I could not control her anymore. For weeks, she took over, and I ate junk food and pushed away exercise. Every day I would wake up with the hope that I was back in charge. But I wasn't. I was not able to take charge of myself. So how did I finally do it?
The next step is to cut the cord that tied me to that time because it was not my reality anymore. I am not saying I will never feel hurt or hopelessness again. What I am saying is when I do, it does not have to send me into a tailspin of the awfulness I felt back then. I wanted to retrieve those feelings into my present, and experience it now with my current reality.
I sat and talked to my younger self who was trying to take over and explained that the past did not exist anymore. Have moments of love and understanding for what she was trying to grasp. She was only trying to do what she knows. Slowly and surely with soft discipline, I explained that it was time for her to let go of that pain. The poor, hurt sweetie needed to rest. Can you imagine the years of pain she has suffered through that clouded reality, reliving those awful feelings over and over again every year since they initially happened?
Wasn't it time to let go? I wanted to let go of the pain, the anxiety, the hurt, the anger, the sadness, the feeling of pure fear grabbing at your throat and your stomach like there was no way out. Yes, I said it was time. I let it go. I am not saying I let her go; I am saying I let go of her pain.
Another lesson I learned was to change my physiology. It is known that when you are about to get depressed, down, or feel victimized, your body takes on a certain position: hunched over, head down, frowning, hands by your side and not smiling. The fastest way to change that is to stand up, shake yourself, put your shoulders back, stand tall, and put a big smile on your face as if you could take on the world. This will affect your mental focus. Because they are aligned, if you change your physiology, you mind has no other option but to follow.
Now, before you do anything, you need to understand why you keep this part of yourself around. You know it is not helping you grow to be a better person, you know it drags you down, so why carry it with you all these years? The answer is fear and habit. You are afraid to let go of that pain. It is familiar, and releasing it will make you lose an important part of yourself. You have been living with that side of yourself for so many years, how do you live without it? That is the fear of the unknown and the fear of change talking. So how do you address those fears? How do you change? That is what this book is about, and all the tricks and tools are coming up.
First, I believe you need to understand where your pain comes from, and second, you need to decide that staying in that victimized mode is more painful for you then changing. It took years to get to where you are. You now feel you have reached a point where you are strong enough to do it, so let's do it. One step at a time. Don't forget that your goal is to let go of the pain that you have associated with a part of you that is stuck in time; that part that makes you live today's events through the hurt of the past.
In order to release this part of you properly, you have to do it with love, forgiveness, and tenderness, but also strength: leave no option but to let go. That part of you will fight to stay. You have to be 100% committed to succeed in letting go of the pain.
Your goal of being at peace with food, to no longer binge out your emotions, and to succeed at looking great and feeling great will not happen, will never happen, unless you release the part of you that is hurt. This is why you have to be 100% committed. Life knows you are getting geared up for this challenge, and it will give you plenty of opportunities to test your resolve. It will throw at you everything it can to see if you are ready to succeed.
So now that you understand where you are, let's see how to resolve it. Let's take an example. You get up in the morning, you work out, meditate, write in your journal, and you are ready to take on the world. You get to the office, your boss yells at you for a major mistake you made that cost the company tons of money. OK, this is the first test of the day. How will you handle it? Will your stay centered with your adult as master of your domain and evaluate the situation calmly? Or will you let your younger self take over and react to today's events like a neurotic, self-destroying, sabotaging, throwing-a-tantrum kid? Well, when you put it like that!
The key to success is to NEVER let your younger self take over 100%. I know, easier said than done. Stop and listen. Go inward. If you feel your younger self flaring up, start to speak to your younger self right away. How does it feel? Personally, I get stomach pangs. I start feeling anxious, (actually uncontrolled anxiety) and if it is early morning, I desperately want a Danish and a coffee or if it is afternoon, chips and chocolate. And of course, I start my pattern of negative thinking and my physiology changes. If you find yourself in this position, what do you do?
The first thing to figure out is your pattern. Now that I know what mine is, I need to do two things. First I need to resolve the source of the problem, which is: wrongly handling today's situation with my young self instead of my grown self. I need to calm my younger self down. In Chapter 2, we will look at how to change a pattern, but for now, what you need to know is how to address that hurt, younger self that wants to take over.
You need to imagine talking to a child and approach your younger self with understanding and assurance: "I understand that you are hurt. That was pretty awful what was just said. Let me dig into this problem, logically. I will analyze it and see what happens." Your younger self needs to feel security. When your younger self flares up like that, it is because there is a feeling of being attacked. No way. Your adult self is there to protect all of you no matter what. The sooner all your selves get that, the better you (and everyone!) will feel. At times, your younger self will try to overtake you.
This is when soft (and sometimes hard) discipline comes in. You have to stand your ground and make it clear that you are not going anywhere. Your younger self needs to take a back seat and let you do your job. Think about the double fights that you have had to deal with all your life. As an adult, you have to contain the current situation, but at the same time, you have this side of you who just wants to have a tantrum and walk away because she is hurt (in this case walk away from the job!). You have always had to deal with two things at the same time, but that is not how adults deal with rough situations and your younger self needs to understand this. The stronger your adult and your core become, the less space your hurt younger self will take up.
Take action:
But at the same time, keep in mind that your young self is hurt. She is re-living a past event. You need to consciously relive it with her. So while you are taking charge at work, take some time on a quiet morning and write in your diary and try to figure out where this pain comes from. You need to simulate that event or similar events to bring this pain to the surface and relive it properly; that means reliving the pain with who you are today. It may be painful but it will relieve so much old bundled up pain that after you have done it, you will feel relieved and re-energized. The next time someone attacks you, this old pain will not resurface because you took care of it.
I find that I am in control most of the time, but I also find that now, when my younger self comes out, she is more angry and anxious than she used to be. This makes it harder for me to control her, but it is also a good thing. It means that I am headed in the right direction. When you get to this point, you'll find that the challenges are tougher, but as you conquer them, you get closer and closer to being free. Keep doing the exercise of writing down your pain and simulating it as if it was happening for real. Do it for each pain and relieve each and everyone of them, one at the time.
Stay strong, stay on top, and don't forget to get physical. I like to go for walks or climb stairs in my building in order to reconnect with my body and feel strong. I come back, my head high, shoulders back, and I'm smiling. Keep 100% committed; nothing else matters. Until this is solved, nothing you want will happen.
If the anxiety is still there, that means you have not yet resolved the pain she is suffering from. Go back to simulating events. You know you are on the right path when you feel it in your gut. To prevent your younger self from taking all the space, she needs to realize that you are now ready to be there and help her let go of the pain. The hurt can be released, and your younger self can now rest or come out and play instead. All she really wants is to be listened to!
You cannot change the circumstances of the past. You can only change your reactions to it with your reality of today. This is what people mean when they say; "it is your choice". What happened then was not your choice, your reactions then as a child were the best you could do at that time. But what you do today as an adult is your choice. Do you want to remain angry, sad, and anxious forever? Do you want that to define you? Do you want to keep on being the victim? Is that how you want to be remembered?
You, today, define who you are and who you chose to be. It is your choice. Rewrite your own story on how You want it to be. If you are reading this book, it is because a large part of you is ready to let go. That is great news. So buckle up, it will be quite a ride. One event at a time, one hour at a time, one day, one week, one month at a time. Be persistent and never give up. You, all of you, are worth it. The more you stay centered and strong, the more you will be releasing that part of yourself that is hurt and needs to rest. But be careful. Just when you think you have it all figured out and have it all together: Bang! Another test will come your way. Maybe a bigger one. Stay focused, and stay in a place of love and forgiveness and strength instead of anger and anxiety. You need to gain momentum. Take action. The minute you sit back and do nothing, that is when your younger self will take over.
Ask yourself: Why do you want to lose weight?
Sophie Lamarche Barnes is a life coach. For the last twenty-five
years, she has dedicated herself to learn about what makes us tick, why
we do things that are not conducive to our happiness and well-being, why
we gain and lose weight again and again, why we pick bad relationships,
stay in a dead end job, and the list goes on.
She has a bachelor's degree and a master's degree and she is currently working towards her Coaching certification. She is a member of the International Coaching Federation.
Go see her web site: http://www.helpheretoday.com
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sophie_Lamarche_Barnes
She has a bachelor's degree and a master's degree and she is currently working towards her Coaching certification. She is a member of the International Coaching Federation.
Go see her web site: http://www.helpheretoday.com
No comments:
Post a Comment