I’m single so will not be spending Valentine’s Day with the man of my dreams (at least not this year!). Instead of being down about it, I’m sending all my love to my friends, family and blog readers. I hope you all pour your hearts out today and tell the ones you love how you feel about them.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
With love and hearts, Michelle
Dealing with all of these emotions and feelings is new to me. I’ve been told to feel the emotions; embrace, relish and even appreciate them. So, when crappy things or realizations dawn, it feels good to wallow in the quagmire. However, once I cross the line into the abyss of self-pity, it’s time to stop feeling sorry for myself.
When I talked myself out of the wallowing, I thought maybe I was ignoring my feelings, triggering a binge, until I realized there is a fine line between feeling and self-pity. There comes a point where remaining in the quagmire becomes counter-productive. The feelings are still there but the focus has to shift elsewhere for a while. Often, this is a temporary distraction because the feelings are waiting, but some “time away” gives my brain and body a break from the intensity. I’ll go back to processing the feelings eventually.
I have decided that this is my interpretation of maintaining a “stiff upper lip.”
I was at the treatment center to get control of my eating, right? Well, I didn’t see a nutritionist until about 3 days after I started treatment and my old, angry self was extremely annoyed by this. I’m sure there was a method to the madness but I didn’t (and still don’t) see what it was.
Once I saw the nutritionist, it was explained that diets just don’t work and I wasn’t going to be given a plan to facilitate weight loss. Weight loss would be a secondary result if I followed the food plan and became a normal eater. What?!?!?!? All I wanted to know was how I could stop bingeing and lose all this weight. This was a totally foreign concept to me because losing weight had ALWAYS been the primary reason I followed any eating regimen. Were they crazy? How was I going to assimilate this new way of thinking about food? Could I even get on board with it?
I finally decided that, yes, I could get on board because all of my old strategies hadn’t worked and I was desperate to get healthier. Little did I know, this would completely change my whole perspective on food, dieting and eating and drastically change the course of my life.
I’ve realized that after an intense period of enduring negative emotions, I experience an emotional hangover of sorts. After I’ve experienced and processed the feelings, I emerge feeling emotionally drained but stronger at the same time. Drained because my heart and mind are recovering from sensory overload and stronger because I have clarity about how to proceed. Everything in my head makes more sense and I’m more self-assured as a result.
It really is true that after rain there’s a rainbow.
I completely get why I fell into binge-eating to numb my feelings. I’ve had some pretty strong emotions this weekend including sadness, loneliness and resentment which were pretty painful to experience. At those painful times, I didn’t resort to bingeing but, by Sunday night, I had enough of feeling these feelings. I didn’t shut the feelings off by bingeing so my thoughts turned to wanting to escape and wishing I had a different set of issues. Would things be easier then? Would life be less painful? Somehow, I didn’t think so. So, I engaged my coping skills and rode out the feelings…I guess they’re mine and I’m stuck with them but, man, I really wanted that illusion of escape which bingeing used to provide.
The Buddha’s dharma continues:
“Do not believe in that which comes to your imagination, thinking that it must be the revelation of a superior Being.”
I wasn’t sure what this exactly meant at first. After thinking about it, I’ve postulated that maybe it pertains to someone whose imagination concocts evil things upon which they act in the name of a “superior Being” making them think the actions are justified. I can think of a lot of instances where people manipulate truth to justify actions. I have done this myself and I’m not proud of it. I can only strive to seek truth and purity to ensure I don’t behave in this way again…maybe that will be my penance.
For so many years, I have stopped myself from doing things, seeing people and living life because of insecurities regarding my weight. Although I have had many great experiences, I wonder if my life would have been different had I participated in it fully.
So, I am vowing that I will no longer stop myself from doing things because of said insecurities. Old habits may intervene but I will do my best to “love what is” and live as though I’m at the perfect weight. Who knows may happen but I’m excited to find out?!?!
Yesterday’s blog post reminded me of a quote I have loved since reading Hamlet as a teenager. As Polonius bids farewell to his son, Laertes, he gives this advice:
“This above all – to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
I better understand this advice since I now know what it means to be the “real me.” “To thine own self be true”, in my case, means not denying emotions and feelings. It means processing and feeling those emotions so situations are handled truly and with thought instead of with reactions resulting from unprocessed emotions that are often disguised. In so doing, I’m not only being true to myself but to others because the emotions driving my actions are authentic and not false, thus addressing the last line of the quote.
Wow – that Shakespeare guy was pretty brilliant 🙂
I was never sure what “knowing the real me” meant. How would I know when I encountered the “real me”? I was me – wasn’t that the real me?
It wasn’t until last night, where I talked about the intense emotions I felt last week, when my therapist mentioned that that is the “real me.” Those emotions and feelings are the “real me.” No wonder I never understood what that meant because I was too busy bingeing to avoid those feelings. By bingeing, I wasn’t only avoiding my feelings but my true self.
I have decided to dedicate every Wednesday’s blog to telling the story of my treatment journey.
There were a lot of rules at my treatment center which made for a very serious and somber environment. I guess that’s because patients were trying to recover from disorders that threatened their lives and structure was necessary. We weren’t allowed to discuss specific types of foods or how we used symptoms. It was hard to get used to at first and, of course, I stuck my foot in my mouth a couple of times before I caught on to the rules. You see, there was no orientation so I was on my own to make the mistakes and endure the ensuing embarrassment. I felt badly when I made these errors because I didn’t want to trigger any of the other patients. I realized I was definitely on a steep learning curve.