Not Easy to Swallow; Just Open Wide!
As you read this post, I ask that you suspend judgment, even if you initially believe
the message doesn't pertain to your issue with weight or weight loss. I'll bet that by the time you reach the end, my words will make sense; perhaps even provide you with a better understanding of a fundamental truth that compels you to do what you do, eat what you eat, and feel as you feel.
As I have said in the past, your present issue with weight was not caused by a lifetime of abnormal, colossal hunger. You know this is true, and that's why you have spent years blaming your excess weight on defects in your character. Stop! You have been neither weak, nor slothful, nor ignorant. Nor do you suffer from a thyroid problem or a freakish inability to feel satisfied by the food you consume. You have merely evolved, after years of dieting, to the point when your every waking thought revolves around the struggle to stay strong and shed a few pounds. You have painstakingly developed and practiced strategies that help when you feel yourself faltering, and many of these behaviors have become second nature, thus accounting for the many, many times each day when you consistently choose healthy foods.
Fortunately, your learned strategies are usually enough to keep you on track, but every so often, in a god-forsaken moment, depraved thoughts ambush your consciousness. They come on suddenly; alien forces crush your resolve...and the self-destruction begins. This is called binging. We have all done it in the past. We will all probably do it in the future. There is no guarantee that the demons won't creep back into your life next week, next month, or next year and grab you by the heart and squeeze until those raging demons trigger your self-protective instincts. What will you choose as your first line of defense? Sadly, you will dive right back into the world of oblivion, the place you go to escape the demons, the real cause of your suffering. The need to numb that buried pain is the reason behind your binging.
I think we know a few things about weight loss, by now. We know it's very easily accomplished because we have all lost many, many pounds a hundred times over. We also know that it's hard to maintain our weight while we are losing, and hard to keep it off and live in our "loop" once we have reached goal. Why is keeping the weight off so very hard? Many of you will answer this question with a self-deprecating observation about your willpower, and flawed character, but you will be wrong. Think of all the programs you have begun, the money you have spent, the endurance you have brought to the table! There has to be something else going on; it shouldn't be this difficult to keep off the weight.
Before we go any further, I want you to participate in a little experiment. I want you to join my other readers and allow this exercise to shed some light on your inner struggle. It will only take a moment, but the time will be well spent if it helps you understand something integral about yourself. So, please close your eyes and quiet your mind for a second. Slow your breath for a moment, and let your shoulders relax. Once you're relaxed, I want you to soften your belly; that's right, soften your belly and breathe into it. Let your belly rise and your lungs expand. Many people feel uncomfortable just letting the belly go for a second, but I want you to try it for two or three seconds. If you are wearing something tight around your waist, loosen, unbutton, unbuckle, or unsnap it-unless, of course, you're in a public place!
How does it feel to breathe like this, to let everything go, to stop holding in everything? What do you feel? Perhaps releasing your belly felt good at first, but when you sustained the release for another second it didn't feel quite as good. What did you feel in that second? Think. Are your shoulders riding back up? Let them drop again, and keep checking to see that they remain dropped. How about the belly? Is it pulling back in? How about the hips? Relax those as well. Keep going through these checkpoints to see if you are holding anywhere. Remain silent and continue to take notice of how your body begs to tighten up.
How is your chest feeling? Does breathing seem difficult? Continue slowing your breathing, softening your belly, relaxing your shoulders. Are you feeling a bit anxious? Hang in there and keep slowing your breath, relaxing your belly, shoulders, hips, and buttocks. What's happening in your mind? What do you think is underneath all of that holding? What are you hiding in there? Why does it fight you when you try to release it? Soften that belly again; don't forget the shoulders. I'll bet that the majority of you have discovered that something deep within is stirring or brewing. Do you wonder why just a few minutes of quieting the self brings up such discomfort? Can you name it? Is it a bit of anxiety? Frustration? Sadness? Stay with it long enough to name the feeling that has been so long concealed.
The point of the exercise is to bring your awareness to a place you might have trouble facing. Unfortunately, this is the place we all have to uncover, acknowledge, and embrace-with love and understanding. That is the only way we can overcome the hold our past continues to exert on our present experience.
Let's go back a bit to the time of your birth. Yes, I know I am asking you to take a bit of a leap, but let's leap there together, just for a minute! We know that you were born with the the instinct to suckle, thus insuring your survival. What you might not realize is that in your infancy you were drawn to certain experiences that provided you with joy. You reveled in gazing at loving faces! Your stress was relieved by your caregiver's touch, the massages that came in the form of baths and diaper changes. You were comforted by motion and music, the sound of your caregiver's voice. But what happened if you did not receive what you craved as an infant? Well, you failed to thrive. You developed differently than the baby who was provided the experiences every human infant seeks to know.
Now, let's say that at any given age you felt unloved, uncared for, unnoticed. Let's say you were not valued, not hugged, not sung to. Let's say you longed for the attention-the love-of that one special person who just wouldn't or couldn't give it. Perhaps you became a "pleaser," always seeking ways to make that specially selected person see you, love you. If, for whatever reason, you never felt you received her attention, what happened inside? How did your psyche deal with that loneliness, that perceived rejection? You see, what happens on the outside is absorbed on the inside after you teach yourself to swallow the hurt. Eventually, you began lying to yourself. Despite evidence to the contrary, you told yourself that they loved you and thought you were special. You convinced yourself that they must love you, and one day they would surprise you and the world will finally right itself. Meanwhile, without even noticing, you began to fill the void.
Please understand that I am not suggesting that you weren't loved. I am simply pointing out the possibility that you could have expected love to be demonstrated differently than it was by your parents or caregivers. For instance, mine was a violent journey through childhood. I have no memory of being held and sheltered by protective parents. My memory of love was the comforting arms of my grandfather. It was only after I had grown into myself and learned the art of empathy that I realized how passionately my parents loved me. But they didn't love me the way I wished to be loved. When I began acting on my mistaken notion that others could provide the parental love I thought I had not received, my adult problems began.
Perhaps you can relate to my story on some level. The point is not to compare your experience with mine; rather, the point is to understand the disconnect between what you expected and longed for, and what you experienced. Therefore, if your parents did not demonstrate their love in the way you so desperately craved, you might still be searching for that type of love. Sad to say, you won't find it, and the longer your look, the more realistic is is to expect to feel only deeper sadness and deprivation. Let me say that again: you can very well spend the rest of your life futilely searching for the unconditional love your parents should have provided. This means you will expect your life partner to love you unconditionally, forgive your every lapse, and accept and respect you for who you are despite what you do or say. If your soul mate agrees, you will live happily ever after, feeling safe, loved, cherished, nourished, fulfilled and whole. Wow! But who will sign on to be your personal Prince Charming, willing to provide that which even the most devoted and emotionally stable of parents often cannot?
The answer is nobody! That's right... nobody can give you what you missed. Nor should you expect that of anybody! If you insist on so doing, all of your relationships will fail because it is unfair to suppose that your partner should love you like a parent. He or she should love you as one adult loves another, but he is not there to compensate for all the love you feel you missed as a child. If you persist in this expectation, you can be absolutely certain that you will go through the years feeling empty. And if you are reading this, there is a better than average chance that you have been filling that emptiness, that hollow feeling in your heart and gut with something other than introspection. You see, that feeling is your body telling you that something is missing, and your response has been a lifelong search for ways to fill the void and feel whole.
Am I suggesting that there is no hope, that you will persist in your futile practice of looking for love in all the wrong places? Absolutely not; however, I might add that yours is no longer the open innocent heart of a child, and even were you to find your ubiquitous soul mate, you could not receive his love with open arms and open heart, for the years have closed your arms and heart a bit, if not completely.
But there is hope. You won't like the answer, but you will know that it's true because the truth always resonates in us. Simply put, you must give it to yourself. Not what you wanted to hear? Well, listen up, because this is what you need to hear. You have to stop searching; you have to stop looking everywhere but within. You have to stop thinking that the people in your life owe you that love. In fact, they are probably looking for it themselves, waiting for it as you are, wishing for you to make it all right for them.
Therefore, you need to understand the hard truth: you were loved enough. They gave to the best of their ability. Perhaps you even received unconditional love from the "wrong" person, the one you didn't want! In any case, you have to stop expecting your husbands, wives, friends, children, and coworkers to love you like a mother!
Do you think it would be possible to commit to stopping the search? Could you simply look within, without fear, and face that place from which you have been desperately running. When you encounter your angry, hurt, withdrawn, child-self, will you be able to give her unconditional love and support? You can, and you should. Give love to yourself! Shower yourself with it so you can stop the cycle of pain and despair. And when you're full of the love you gave yourself, then you'll know true abundance, and you'll be whole and at peace. Promise.
Just give it!
