Letting Go of What "They" Think

In the early months of anorexia the praise I received about my appearance and weight loss served as fuel for a dangerous fire.

“You look great!”
“What are you doing? You look awesome.”
“I wish I had your willpower.”
“Wow, you have a great body.”

Friends, strangers, and even my parents, in the early days, doled out praise for what appeared to be a newly discovered commitment to health and the smaller pants I could fit into. Approval was like a drug. It felt good, really good, when it started and it served as a motivation later on. When I didn’t want to go to the gym or I wanted to eat something beyond my ultra restricted diet all I did was think about what people would say if I gained weight and that was enough to keep me in line. In a lot of ways I was addicted to praise. The high I got from others celebrating my physical form (and how it conformed) was palpable. The panic I felt when (I projected that) others judged my body negatively was crushing. My colleague Tara Mohr is brilliant when it comes to the topic of unhooking from praise and criticism. Tara says that being hooked takes different forms, including:

1. Dependence on, or addiction to praise – causing us to do only those things that are likely to get us gold stars and others’ approval

2. Avoidance of praise – not wanting to stand out from the crowd – even for positive reasons, which causes us to self-sabotage, to not do our best work

3. Fear of criticism – which causes us to not innovate, share controversial ideas, pursue interests where we’ll be fumbling beginners or fail along the way, or do anything that makes us visible enough to be criticized!

She makes the astute suggestion to “always look at feedback as giving you information about the person or people giving the feedback, rather than information about yourself." Tara's writings explores this topic mostly in the context of our careers and I want to take it further and apply it to praise and criticism of our bodies and food choices.

And unhooking in this realm is not an easy thing to do because we all want to belong. We all want approval. When we are praised it feels great. When we are judged or rejected it can feel devastating. And yet, living at the mercy of the approval of others, striving to conform in our appearance or diets to what others or “society” deems good is the definition of disempowerment.

Being able to live our lives and make basic choices like what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat without factoring in what other people will think is essential if we are to feel free and unmasked. It’s essential if we are to stay connected to the immense wisdom of our bodies.

Feeding ourselves is one of the most basic acts of autonomy. No one else should have a say in what we put into our bodies and yet for too many women, with each bite, comes a cacophony of judgemental voices—some real, some projected. This happens when we get dressed too. Our minds run off with thoughts of "Does this make me look fat?" "Does this show my belly/thighs/arms/butt, etc?" "Will so and so think I’ve gained weight?" "Will they think I’ve given up?"

Too often we sit on the side lines, skip the party, or spend more than we can afford on clothing just to mitigate the judgement we fear others will have of how we look. But, as Tara so eloquently explains

“the goal...is not to become impervious to praise and criticism. That would be impossible. It would also be inhuman, and would force us to deny an important part of ourselves….The part of us that wants others to receive us with appreciation, with enthusiasm – the part that wants to be loved by those around us? I think that’s a very tender, real, part of us, a part to honor too. The point is not to become disconnected from feedback, to have such a thick skin that we can’t feel it or hear it, but rather, to become “unhooked” by it, to not be run by it. The point is to be run by our own wisdom...The goal is to not have others’ ideas about us distract us, silence us, or take us on an emotional roller coaster.”

I agree. In the end it comes down to what we each, as individuals, decide is important in a meaningful life. Unhooking from praise and criticism when it comes to our bodies and our food choices is a life long practice. Each of us has an ego that is ready and willing to lure us back to that to the roller coaster. Getting hooked isn't a failure.

So what does it look like when we’re unhooked from body praise and criticism? It looks like this:

• Eating what we want, not more or less based on what other people are eating or who we are eating with, or what social function we have coming up on our calendar.

• Allowing photos of us to be taken and seen, knowing that a single moment captured in 2-D doesn’t define us or tell our whole story.

• Not hiding in the ways we dress or hiding what we are choosing to eat.

• Letting someone else’s comments about our appearance be about them.

• Dressing and adorning ourselves for ourselves, with pride, and the body we have today.

• Observing the hurt or fear that comes from criticism and looking inward to where we may be holding self-judgement. After all, it’s much harder to be hurt by criticism we don’t agree with.

• Doing our best to practice non-judgement when it comes to other people’s eating and appearance.

• Sometimes consciously giving up the SHORT-TERM high we know we'd get if we went on a crash diet. We unhook when we choose long-term, internally-based sustainable happiness instead of short-term, external hits of power. This happens in small moments.

• When necessary, reminding other people that our body, appearance, and food choices are entirely our own domain—no outside contributions needed or welcome.

Unhooking is a practice, but remember, what I think of you, or she thinks of you, or he thinks of you, or your inner critic thinks of you doesn't much matter. You are in charge. Your body is yours. Your reasons behind your food choices are personal and multifaceted and no one's business.

Go to the party. Take the photograph. Put on whatever size clothing fits your body today and feels comfortable. Eat what you want, in public, in front of people who are still entranced by diet culture. Have no shame for struggling, getting hooked, bumbling toward finding your way, or being a human who feels deeply—this stuff isn't easy. Ultimately though, when you can, remember that what other people think about your body and food choices only has as much power as you give it.

Sola Dosis Facit Venenum

I love television.

That might be a bit taboo to say, but it’s true. I get an enormous amount of pleasure from watching my favorite shows.

And there is nothing wrong with loving television. It gives me a tremendous amount of joy, laughter, and relaxation. Put simply, it feeds me. Most of the time. I can also use TV as a tool for avoiding life when checking in, not out, is would serve me most. A while back I noticed my viewing habits detracting more than helping and no surprise my first thought was “I’m going to just give up TV. Go cold turkey. Block Netflix from my computer. Commit to reading a book a week....” Yes, my initial response was to go on a diet. But the problem for me in this case wasn’t television, but the amount and the way I was using television.

Sola dosis facit venenum.

This translates to: The dose makes the poison.

I learned of this principle in graduate school. We were taught that everything in the world is medicine and everything is poison, depending on the dose. This idea is a pretty radical in a world that loves to categorize most things into ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

Organic local apples = pure goodness.
Wonder Bread = bad, devoid of any value.

But it’s not that simple. It never is. You can eat enough apples to make you sick. You can enjoy a sandwich on Wonder Bread without any negative consequence. And this rule, "The dose makes the poison", extends beyond food to include everything we take in: relationships and people, music, television, movies, alone and social time, time in the sun, and so forth. With everything there is a tipping point where it goes from serving us to taking away from us. Herein lies the delicate balance of self-care. It’s easy to make blanket statements like “Get rest” or “Move your body” but at what point is sleep or physical activity no longer of service?

We can’t say, can we?
Or rather, we can’t say for anyone but ourselves in a given moment.

There are no rules here. There are no formulas. And what works for us at one point can change in a moment. We might have spent months exhaustively working on a fulfilling project and then run out of steam. So we turn to a period of restoration, but without mindfulness the even rest can turn excessive when it’s not longer what we need or what serves us. Oh how we love an all or nothing scenario though. Our black and white oriented brains get a hit of calm when we (attempt to) draw a hard line in the sand. This is the rush that comes with the start of a diet or a rigid commitment to be in bed by 10 pm, every single night. We love the boundary—until we don’t.

We spring back from the hard line, rebel against the confines of our tightrope-of-a-plan in part because the things that we think are poison, are also medicine when served up in a different dose.

A warm, carb-filled meal after a long day. An extra two hours of sleep. A marathon of our favorite television show when shutting the world out is sometimes, even often, just what’s called for. Nothing's all bad, or all good, as much as our reductionistic minds would like to make them out to be. There is a time and place for just about every thing. So what are we to do when the very same thing can turn from serving us to detracting from us in a day?

We forget perfection and stop chasing purity. Outside of a newborn baby, purity and perfection don’t exist. When we try too hard to eat perfect, look perfect, and be perfect we end up cutting ourselves off from life and from things that, in certain doses, are really do serve us.

We pay attention. Diets, even those that restrict television and not food, allow us to be on a sort of autopilot. When we’re on one we don’t have to think or feel, we just have to follow the rules. But, to live our lives free and well we have to pay attention and make choices.

We find the kind choice. If nothing is all good or all bad, we have to inquire moment-by-moment what the kind choice is. Sometimes not doing the thing is kind. Sometimes doing the thing is kind. By following kindness we find our way in a world where nothing is just black and white.

Lastly, we double check our knee-jerk reactions. Notice what you label as good or bad without question. What gets a knee-jerk green light from you? What gets a red light?

Sola dosis facit venenum.

Sacred Ground

"...and your very flesh shall be a great poem..."

— Walt Whitman

Growing up just outside Washington, DC resulted in my childhood having it’s fair share of visits to historical sites, such as Civil War battlefields, like Gettysburg.

If you’ve ever been to a memorial site, especially one where great loss actually took place, you know that you can feel it. What you’re standing on at these places is sacred ground and each has a powerful energetic fingerprint. Perhaps you’ve felt it while visiting the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, Auschwitz in Poland, or The Killing Fields Museum in Cambodia.

Sadly the world is full of sites where atrocities have left an imprint, physical or energetic.

In my early twenties as I was emerging victorious from my own battle with anorexia the only way I could relate to my body was as this sacred ground. While not visible to the eye, my body felt like modern day Gettysburg battlefield.

This flesh—my flesh—was where a war had been fought and won.

And what this meant to me was that anything less than sacred awe was not good enough.

In the years since then I have encountered in my life and in the lives of those I work with serious trauma. Childhood abuse. Sexual assault. Mental illness. Loss of parents and children. Battles with cancer. Amputation.

And it doesn’t take catastrophic incidents like these to leave trauma. Life is traumatic.

Life is traumatic and our bodies bare the brunt of it. They are our sensory input tool and they are where we experience (or repress) emotion. Our bodies are the tools or fight or flight...or freeze. Our bodies are the recipient of heinous cultural norms. Our bodies, depending on where we live in the world, aren’t even always considered our own.

Life is also miraculous. The ways in which our body heals, allows for connection, creates new life, and enables our lives is marvelous.

All this is to say: feel the sacred ground you are living in.

Feel that you are sacred in every cell of your body.

Stand in awe of not just what has happened on your ‘land’ but on what you have survived and created.

Stand tall.

Consider reverence as a new template for how you inhabit this flesh of yours.

Like Whitman says, your "flesh shall be a great poem".

In Praise of Awkward Toddlers

As a child, if I couldn’t be assured that I’d do something right the first time, I didn’t even want to try at all. The result of this fearful stance was that I didn’t learn to swim (until I nearly drowned and my parents insisted) or to ride a bike (I’m still working on this).

What I’m talking about is the resistance we feel to being less-than-masterful at anything. We loathe performing awkwardly, even though this is a precursor to doing anything more gracefully.

Embracing our inner awkward toddler crucial if we’re to find our way to being well-fed. Like toddlers learning to walk, this is the two-step we must do: Toddle forward. Trip. Stand up. Toddle some more. Go splat on the floor. Get up. Toddle again.

Towards the end of 2013 I looked around my life and saw that everything was fine.

Fine.

Fine is good.

Fine is important if we’re to function in the world.

But fine is not enough.

Feeling fine isn’t the same as feeling alive or particularly satiated. Fine is just fine.

What I know: the only way through to what’s really good in life is to embrace being awkward for at least a time.

In the spirit of embracing more of this energy in my life I started attending Laurie Wagner’s brilliant Wild Writing classes again where we were instructed to write poorly, pen to paper, and then share it aloud with the group.

It’s awkward training at it’s best.

What you and I have in common is a hunger to feel alive. To feel more than fine. This I know.

As a little girl, my fear of being criticized trumped my hunger to feel alive, to have fun, to ride a bike, or to swim in the lake.

As a grown women, though, I’ve learned that external sources of criticism don’t matter much and that I can soften around my own.

As a grown women, I’ve learned that being awkward is just one exhilarating step toward being well-fed.

The Five Languages of Body Love

Have you heard of The Five Love Languages?

I’m guessing yes given the best-seller status of the book, but if not, here’s the rundown.

Gary Chapman, the author, posits that there are five ways that we can show love to each other, and especially toward a romantic partner: through gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, act of service, and physical touch.

The idea is that each of us has a dominant love language, or way we are best able to receive love. If our partner shows their love in a language we don’t ‘speak’ well then we might end up feeling uncared for or unloved. The trick, Chapman argues, is to understand each others love language and do our best to communicate accordingly. Some people feel loved when they are given quality time while others interpret physical touch or gifts as an affirmative signs.

I think this theory has a lot of value AND I think we need to take it with a big grain of salt. I’m not sure that love can be simplified so easily, but it’s valuable to note that we all experience it uniquely.

Switching subjects for a minute, let's talk about our bodies and how we feel about them. It's a pretty body-unfriendly swamp that we're swimming in. Everywhere you look are shame-inducing messages, overt and subliminal, targeted at our natural and diverse forms.

As a life coach and woman who seeks to practice self-acceptance and respect, I know just how much our relationship with our body determines how fulfilling our life is overall. Seriously, what's possible for a woman who is body-respectful is two-fold to what's possible to those ensnared in body-loathing.

So what does body love and The Five Languages of Love have to do with each other?

A lot. I’ve noticed that there are periods when we either communicate with our body through only one language or not through the language our body is asking us to love it through. To explore this further, here are the questions I began to ask myself and that you might find useful.

Gifts

Do I give my body gifts? Do I find yourself making kind purchases with my body’s care in mind? What’s the last gift I gave my body?

Quality Time

Do I give my body my time? Do I leave space in my life for my body to be heard and cared for? When is the last time I spent quality time with my body?

Words of Affirmation

Do I speak kindly towards my body? Are the messages I surround my body with respectful and/or loving? What’s the last generous and sweet thing I said to my body?

Acts of Service

Do I consider myself my body’s advocate and caregiver? When was the last time I went out of my way to do something for my body?

Physical Touch

Do I lay my hands on my own flesh? Do I do so with love? Do I provide my body with opportunities for caring and loving touch from another? When was the last time my body felt that it had been touched “enough” or to the point of “fullness”?

This line of inquiry was powerful for me and it opened me up to all the ways I could expand my body-love practice. So interesting to see where we easily give love and where we have blind spots. If you want to communicate your body through a broader range of love languages, here are a few ideas:

Gifts

Purchase a foam roller and use it to loosen up with myofacial release.

Treat your body to a coveted care product, be it lotion, massage oil, or scented soap.

Offer your body clothing that makes you feel good, comfortable, and stylish.

Quality Time

Dedicate 10 minutes in the morning to scanning your body with presence and curiosity.

Allow your body to write you a letter in your journal.

Take a nap, regularly.

Words of Affirmation

Commit to one day of body-respectful talk towards yourself.

Put up affirming words on your walls, bathroom mirror, or refrigerator door.

Come up with a mantra to recite every time you are feeling anything less than loving towards your body.

Acts of Service

Advocate for your body to another. Make a request. Make your body’s desires known.

Cook for your body. Prepare food that delights all your senses and your belly.

Take your body to see the doctor or dentist for a routine check-up.

Physical Touch

Massage yourself with sesame oil after a shower.

Try out a new type of bodywork, such as craniosacral or Thai massage.

Make love to yourself or with a partner.

The trick here, if this inquiry interests you, is to explore what makes your body feel loved?

Terms of Endearment

I want to show you something. There’s this amazing transformation I’ve been witness to. I wish I could show it to you. What I want to capture is what happens to a woman’s face, body, and whole being when I ask her to identify a meaningful and resonate term of endearment for herself.

As part of some retreats that I’ve lead, after delving into our inner critic, I have each woman identify and share a name for herself that elicits love, safety, and adoration.

First they journal to themselves, listing all the names that might be fit. Tossing out the ones that feel cloying or inauthentic. Considering the things only their inner circle calls them or perhaps a childhood nickname. They weigh “Lovely” with “Beloved” and “Sweetheart” with “Sweetness.”

They are looking for the moment their body says “Yes. that’s it. That’s us. Let’s curl up with that one.” Many of them know they’ve found their term of endearment when tears well in their eyes.

I’ve heard it all, from "My Love" to "Darling" or "Pumpkin." From "Cookie" to "Sarah-Loo" or "Babygirl."

There’s a name for everyone that calls us home.

Once they’ve got it, we go around the room and share. As we move from feeling our patterns of self-abuse to the healing that comes from self-kindness, the women I work with change right before my eyes. It’s a pretty remarkable thing to watch. They change and the room changes. What had been a circle of sadness, grief, and angst becomes one of delight, compassion, and understanding.

Having a name, rooted in love, to call ourselves gives us a foothold. When we’re in pain or feeling disconnected all we need to is reach for this name and it brings us back. It's a name that embraces us.

Having a term of endearment for ourselves helps to build safety and intimacy in the most important relationship we’ll ever have: us with ourselves. me with me. you with you.

If you want to experience the power of this practice, next time you catch yourself with a self-directed whip in your hand, next time you’re body is contracted from shame or insecurity, go find a mirror and greet yourself.

Look into your own eyes and call out the name that only means “I love you. Yes, you. I love you”

You're Not Needy, You're Starving

You are not needy. You are starving.

A while back I was working with a client and we began to talk about the prospect of her finding a post-divorce relationship.

She shared her fear that she’d be too needy.

I’ve heard this before. Many times.

And I say: NO. You are not needy, you’re starving.

This client had a 5 year old boy.

I explained it to her like this...

If her son skipped breakfast, lunch, and dinner and then said “Mommy, I’m too needy for food.” I know she’d reply:

“No sweetheart, you aren’t needy at all, you’re very hungry. You haven't gotten what you need. Now let’s get you something delicious to eat.”

Something about this needy feeling has us feeling like it’s bottomless, insatiable. That no matter how much we “eat” we’ll never be fed.

Not so. I speak from experience. Mine and many of my clients.

Yes, it feels like we’ll never get enough.  Just like, when we are starving for food, at first, we think we really could eat the whole kitchen. Not so in either case.

We can find satiation. Here are just a few things I often hear women saying they are too needy for:

love, being seen (often confused with attention), touch (the way they uniquely like it), affection + adoration, being desired, a circle of women friends, companionship, being listened to + feeling understood, validation…

You’re not needy. You’re starving.

You certainly do not want for too much.

These are all entirely normal, natural, its-your-birth-right, your-parents-probably-didn’t-give-you-enough things.

So you’re starving.

That’s okay.

You can begin there. Begin bit by bit. or bite by bite.

Begin by renaming this 'neediness' with a more accurate term: hunger.

Begin by asking for what you want.

Begin by honoring your hunger and by feeding yourself.

Begin by receiving the cravings with kindness, instead of shame.

This hunger of yours. It’s so very wise.

You’re not needy. You’re simply starving.

Now darling, let’s get you something delicious to eat.

Note: I use the word ‘starving’ here to refer to often first-world emotional deprivation. Not to be confused with actual lack of nutrition needed for physical survival, which is a very real problem in our world.

Emotional Auto-Immune Diseases

Allergies. Rheumatoid Arthritis. Lupus. Crohn’s Disease. Eczema. Type 1 Diabetes. Do you or someone you know have one of these conditions? Mostly likely yes. Those of us in the developed world are plagued by these and other autoimmune diseases.

Autoimmune diseases occur when our own immune system fails to recognize a part of our own tissues or cells as part of us, and instead sees it as a foreign enemy. Attacking. These are cases of mistaken identity. We become our own enemy when in reality, we’re not.

I wonder though why we don’t have a classification for emotional autoimmune disorders? I’ve rarely met a human being who didn’t suffer emotionally from confusing themselves with the enemy, and following suit with attack.

Both physical and emotional autoimmune diseases are equally misguided attempts to protect ourselves. Our immune system thinks it’s helping. Emotionally speaking, we so often think that if we shame ourselves, judge our hungers, and self-loathe that we’re making ourselves somehow better or safer. We speak to ourselves with disparagement because we want to be loved or just liked. We mistrust our hungers because we fear that feeding them will make us unlovable or judged by others. We all have our own best interest at heart it’s just that our emotional immune system too often gets confused and thinks that we are the enemy of our self. I may not be a doctor and I don’t know much about treating Lupus or Crohn’s Disease, but I do know a few tricks to get us on the road to recovery from an emotional autoimmune disease.

1. Practice seeing ourselves as an ally and not the enemy.

2. Know that any internal voice that is not kind, loving, or compassionate towards us is not speaking the truth.

3. Know that when we emotionally attack ourself our deeper intentions are good. We want the best for ourselves. We want to be safe and somewhere along the way various sorts of self-attacks appeared the path to get there. They aren’t.

4. Healing depends on our willingness to practice. We must notice our attacks, however subtle or seemingly harmless, and practice ending them without judgement. Notice. Let go. Make peace. Notice. Let go. Make peace. Mess-up. Start again. Notice. Let go. Make peace.

Cake for Breakfast

“Do you see a distinction between healthy hungers and unhealthy hungers?” a podcast host asked me years ago.

“Give me an example of an unhealthy hunger?” I said.

“Like, I’m hungry in the morning and so yes, I am going to have that cake, I want the whole thing!” she replied with a slightly giddy laugh at the thought of this devious act.

I smiled and said “I don’t think cake for breakfast is a bad thing. Are you connecting or disconnecting? Are you moving closer to your Self or farther away from your Self?"

That's the difference between a one hunger and another hunger: does it move you closer or further away from your Self? Does it connect you to your Self or disconnect you from your Self?”

It’s that simple. And, yes, it’s that complex...in that you can’t just follow prescribed rules of good foods and bad foods. Or good portion sizes and bad portion sizes. Or good times to eat and bad times to eat. Or good cooking methods and bad cooking methods. Or good food sources and bad food sources.

You have stay present. You have to listen inward. You have to remove judgement’s place at the table. Is this hunger moving me towards my Self or away? Listen. Ask. Allow. Allow. Allow. Feed yourself.

There is no reason that cake for breakfast can’t be the most nourishing act in the world.

This applies, of course, to hungers for things other than food. Hungers to quit your job. Hungers to buy something shiny and new. Hungers to be with friends. Hungers to be intimate. Hungers to wait. Hungers to go. Hungers to stay. Hungers to run away. or towards.

Which direction are you moving?