Web Site: http://www.karlyrandolphpitman.com/

Bio: Karly is a coach, speaker, workshop leader, and author who helps men and women heal the roots of binge eating, overeating and sugar addiction through growing human(kind)ness. Karly founded First Ourselves and leads its compassion based support group for women healing from food "stuff." She lives with her family in Austin. Learn more about Karly at karlyrandolphpitman.com.

Posts by karlyrandolphpitman:

    Healing the shame that keeps you stuck

    February 16th, 2012

    If I had to describe the men and women that I talk to, those who are trying to gently heal from food stuff, I would describe them in this way:  incredibly kind. Conscientious. Earnest. Sincere. Tender hearted. Sensitive. Empathetic. Spiritual. People with deep values who try to live them out. Often high achieving/setting high expectations for themselves.

    Like everything, these traits bring wonderful gifts – a kind heart, for starters. And like everything, these traits bring challenges – the flip sides of our strengths, what we may call our weaknesses. This is true for everyone.

    In our case, the flip side of conscientiousness is perfectionism, a belief that we have to be perfect to be loveable. Our very desire not to hurt – to not hurt others, to not hurt ourselves – becomes a drive towards self perfection, a zeal towards some enlightened state. We think, “If only I meditated enough, prayed enough, was sincere enough, did enough inner work…and on, and on….I can eradicate my messy humanity.” We think we can become perfect.

    So even though we’re healing, unraveling some of the kinks in our armor, the fact that, yes, we’re still human, and yes, we’re still imperfect, and yes, we still hurt (and hurt others) feels like a giant stain against us, proof that we’re falling short.

    We focus on this feeling of “not enough” and feel terrible. We notice all our mistakes and discount all the many things we do well. We look back at our choices and our life and feel dismay, like we’ve failed. We walk around with a giant ache in our hearts, a tension in our gut (those “not enough” feelings feel terrible in the body), a hole that sucks out our energy, our joy, our peace. We feel terrified that others will uncover our secret, just how bad we feel about ourselves. We feel guilty, ashamed, flawed.

    Instead of looking at our weaknesses as, “Oh, I’m human,” we see them as, “Oh, I’m failing the spiritual test.” We personalize them and think there’s something wrong with us. We feel bad that we aren’t this completely together person who never loses it with her kids, or loses it with her spouse, or loses it with food, or loses it with herself.

    If we look closely at these feelings, we can see some core beliefs – expectations – that are tripping us up. These expectations include beliefs that say:

    1. We have to be perfect to be lovable.

    2. Pain is bad, something to be ashamed about. If we’re hurting, it’s a sign that we did something wrong and are being punished or that it’s all our fault.

    3. We should be able to reach a state of perfection.

    When these beliefs are unconscious, (and many of our beliefs are – it’s only when we become aware of them that we can shift them) they rule our behavior, they seep into our thoughts, and they affect our feelings. They cause us so much suffering.

    Here’s how this plays out in our lives – if we think that pain is bad, basicly all our fault, when we’re hurting, we hide. We isolate. We feel like we’ll be judged or shamed for being in pain. So we keep ourselves separate from the very support that can help us when we’re bingeing out of control or feeling depressed.

    We hide from friends, family, loved ones. We stop seeing our counselors, doctors, therapists, and more, or we bounce from healer to healer. We stop taking our medication or supplements. We stop doing the very things that help us. We hide from ourselves. (We can’t even look at ourselves in the mirror.) We hide from the Divine and stop praying, meditating, studying – all our spiritual practices. We stop doing the very things that help us cope, those things that support ourselves and help us feel better because doing them is a shame trigger, a reminder that we are less than perfect and that we need help to get by.

    We will do anything to avoid feeling this feeling of “I’m not enough,” which is why we do things that, on the surface, make no sense. (Like hiding out.)

    If we think that we have to be perfect to be lovable, we feel terrible shame every time we make a mistake or every time we see something about ourselves that is less than pretty. So we don’t look inside at what we’d like to shift, because to do so means feeling the tight, terrible squeeze of, “I’m such a bad person.”

    Or, we give up altogether. We use our very imperfection as proof that we’re hopeless and helpless and discount all the work we’ve done. We can be so hard on ourselves.

    We don’t learn, we don’t grow, we isolate, we suffer, we feel badly about ourselves. Oh, such pain.

    Beloved, I gently invite you to bring these beliefs up to the light of day. To gently ask yourself, Is this true? Is it true that I have to be perfect to be lovable?

    We can use the practice of acceptance to soften how we see ourselves. I find tremendous freedom, over and over, when I let go – when I accept that I may not be able to change certain aspects of myself. When I accept my imperfections and weaknesses.

    I know this sounds like giving up or even a license to be self indulgent, to dump on people. (I can’t change, I’ll just accept myself as I am.) But I find the opposite to be true. When I accept things that are difficult about myself – like my sensitive nervous system, insecurity, and tendencies towards depression and anxiety – I can relate to my needs and feelings with greater wisdom. Instead of hiding out, I reach out. Rather than shame/control, I care for my anxiety or depression. Because I am honest, open and accepting, I move to care, rather than stay mired in shame. I don’t take the fact that I suffer from low self esteem or anxiety as proof that I’m a horrible person. Instead, I try to love it.

    I feel that this loving relatedness is the key. When I look at my weaknesses as an opportunity to practice love – unconditional, tender love for every part of myself – especially the hurting parts – I feel so much better. In other words, I feel better when I don’t take my pain so personally. I recognize, yep, this is the shared human condition. Not personal to me. We all have it, even though it may come in different forms, shapes and sizes. Whew, and I thought it was just me!

    It’s not easy to be a human being. Life is so complicated and nuanced – can any of us ever get it right, have all the answers so that we never make a mistake? I don’t think so.

    The healing journey is not about achieving a state of perfection. Of arriving somewhere. Rather, it’s going within to practice unconditional love, to forgive ourselves and others. To go within and to love what we find. To be open to it. To accept it. To accept it knowing that it says nothing about our worth or inherent loveability.

    When we let go of these shoulds, these expectations of perfection, we hit our vulnerability right smack in the face. Why do we try to be perfect? So we won’t hurt. What do we have to feel when we stop pursuing perfection? Our hurt.

    Our family kitty died yesterday, and we’re grieving her loss. It’s very sad, and came suddenly – a painful reality on top of a year of many losses. I was spinning yesterday with thoughts of, “If only I had taken her to the vet sooner, if only we hadn’t moved and given her this trauma of relocating, if only we hadn’t gone away for Christmas (we might have noticed that she was starting to slow down), if only, if only, if only….I could’ve prevented this from happening.”

    Then I started spiraling into feelings of guilt – did I love her enough when she was alive? Did I appreciate her? I should’ve done more for her. I should’ve held her more…I should’ve done taken more pictures….and on and on…..

    All these thoughts, at the most basic level, were believing 2 things to be true:  If only I had done more, I could’ve prevented her from dying. I should’ve been able to control it. I’m bad/not enough because I couldn’t stop her from dying. I’m bad/not enough because I can’t stop the pain in life.

    And I’m bad/not enough because I’m human and I don’t have time for everything. I’m bad because I sometimes forget to sit with my kitty because I’m caught in my to do list and the hubub of life or trying to pay the rent.

    As I saw these beliefs I realized – oh, my goodness – they’ve been running my life. Running my life and causing me to doubt my goodness at every turn.

    So I let go. I started with grieving. I felt very sad to lose a family member – sad for myself and sad for my family. I let myself feel my grief without the layers of, “The grief is my fault.” I felt my powerlessness – the hopelessness of losing something I dearly loved. I released the self blame, the guilt, because those are subtle ways to try and grab power, to try and control what is uncontrollable – the randomness of life, of losing kitties (and more than kitties.)

    And I felt my raw grief, my raw powerlenessness and I wept. I wept and accepted, this hurts. I surrendered to it. And in my surrender, I let go of this idea that it was my fault she died.

    So much of life is out of our control. We would rather feel guilty and beat ourselves up about how we should’ve done more than to feel this truth and surrender. And yet as long as we feel like we should be able to control life, we’ll suffer.

    My friend Deidre Combs uses this phrase to practice surrender – “It couldn’t have happened any other way.” Try that on. When I say it to myself, my whole being softens and relaxes. My heart unclenches and I feel relief. I let go. I come home.

    Dear one, I gently invite you – please come home.  What can you let go of today? What can you bow to? What is asking for your surrender?

    I bow with you on this path.

    For more help with shame, I offer practices, tools and exercises in sessions 11 and 12 of Heal Overeating:  Untangled, a program to heal the emotional roots of overeating.

    4 Comments "

    End emotional eating with kindness

    February 7th, 2012

    Can you befriend difficult emotions?

    The poet Rumi writes,

    This being human is a guest house.
    Every morning a new arrival.

    A joy, a depression, a meanness,
    some momentary awareness comes
    As an unexpected visitor.

    Welcome and entertain them all!
    Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
    who violently sweep your house
    empty of its furniture,
    still treat each guest honorably.
    He may be clearing you out
    for some new delight.

    The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
    meet them at the door laughing,
    and invite them in.

    Be grateful for whoever comes,
    because each has been sent

    as a guide from beyond.

    I love this poem, because it normalizes our human tendency not to welcome certain “guests,” certain emotions. For me, this includes things like anxiety, depression, anger, rage, loneliness, grief, jealousy and more. Which emotions are difficult for you to befriend?

    And why is caring for difficult emotions so hard, anyway?

    When I first gave up sugar in 2007, I thought my food problems were done. Finito. I thought that making this commitment to a sugar free life would mean I would never overeat, crave or suffer again. I thought I’d found the Holy Grail – the answer that would keep any pain, discomfort or negative emotion at bay. Looking back, I can see that I was wanting something way beyond sugar abstinence – I wanted an escape from the experience of being a human being.

    While abstaining from sugar continues to be essential to my well being – one of the best decisions I’ve made – I’ve learned that it is not a panacea. (This is one of the reasons why I went back and rewrote Overcoming Sugar Addiction, to reflect this new understanding.)

    Nothing in this world can keep us from living in our guest house – from experiencing the full range of human emotion. And slowly, slowly, I’m learning that this is okay. In fact, more than okay. Learning how to love and care for all my emotions is perhaps, one of the kindest things I can do for myself – and one of the most healing.

    Oh, beloved if your heart wants to awaken – and I believe yours does, or you wouldn’t be reading this post! – I’ve got some mixed news:

    1. It will hurt.

    And 2. It’s worth it.

    Because 3. It will lead to the deepest freedom. (Of not hurting so much!)

    If you want to be free from suffering, if you want to open your heart, to grow your compassion, to find peace in this ever changing, impermanent world, you must open your heart. We need to move from control to unconditional love. This means unconditionally loving and embracing all the pesky emotions that flow through our bodies, hearts and minds.

    I appreciate that this is not easy for several reasons:

    1. Our culture doesn’t teach us how to care for our emotions, and is often intolerant towards them.

    2. The emotions we tend to have the hardest time befriending are usually the ones that, as children, we weren’t allowed to feel. Perhaps our feelings and needs were minimized, mocked, denied (“You can’t be hungry!”) perhaps we weren’t allowed to show certain emotions (“Don’t be angry,”) perhaps those feelings were labeled as “bad,” or perhaps our parents and communities didn’t know how to help us feel our feelings. (“Do you want a cookie?”)

    3. It’s normal not to want to feel certain emotions, particularly if they hurt!

    4. If you’re sensitive, you’re probably very skittish towards your emotions. You feel that you need to minimize them, especially if you were told often, “Stop being so sensitive.”

    Here’s how this all works together:

    When you’re sensitive and empathetic, you’re a feeler. You pick up on everything. You feel what is felt/believed – even if it’s unsaid. This is particularly true with emotion – you feel all the thoughts and judgment of, “______ emotion is bad.” Even if no one says a thing about anger, if everyone around us walks on eggshells so as not to express anger, we pick up on this and learn, “Anger makes people uncomfortable.” Then it’s easy to take this one step further to, “I shouldn’t ever feel angry because I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable.”

    So you learn from an early age that, oh, anger isn’t okay, or my crying makes mom and dad feel uncomfortable, or loneliness is shamed. Because you feel and sense this (even if it isn’t expressed outright – even if it’s merely communicated in tone, gesture, facial expression, or more), you internalize this “rule” and obey it for your own safety. In some way, your brain learns, “if I want to be accepted and love, I can’t feel _______.”

    Then as adults, as these emotions pop up – we feel angry, or sad, or lonely – those same, “Uh, oh, this feeling is bad! Make it go away,” feelings arise. So you not only have the feeling you’re feeling itself – the anger or sadness – you also have the judgment, the anxiety of, “This feeling is bad.” Instead of being with our feelings or feeling them, we get caught in trying to control our experience. In so many words, our hearts clench up, our bodies tighten, our mind spins, and we believe, “I have to make this feeling go away. No wonder we feel tense!

    We can make the emotions go away by suppressing them, by eating them, denying them, thinking/fixing and more. We can even get really fancy and do the spiritual bypass, where we move right to, “it’s all good” as a way of not feeling our feelings.

    But the body knows. Those emotions we stuff underground? They don’t go away. They’re still there, in the body. Eventually our escape tactics fail. And if we want wholeness – if we want to heal our food addiction, or to stop overeating – we have to stop running from our feelings and feel them.

    I would gently, gently encourage you to practice befriending your emotions. Besides freeing you from emotional eating and bingeing, when we befriend our emotions, we’re not walking on eggshells, trying to control life, food, other people, or ourselves. We’re more free to ride the waves of our experience. This creates levity, joy and freedom. Ease.

    We may find wisdom in our emotions, because I believe all emotions have an intelligence to them – and often a message.

    Here’s a story from my own life that shows what this looks like. I’ve been experiencing some painful anxiety lately – anxiety that’s been off the charts. Sometimes my anxiety is just my overactive nervous system feeling triggered, so it’s easy for me to dismiss. But my anxiety has been so persistent that I realized there was something more there. This week I actually sat with it and became curious.

    I asked my anxiety, “What do you need from me? What are you trying to tell me?”

    And it very clearly shared what it saw – some unhealthy patterns in my life – some things that I had an inkling about but didn’t want to see. Hence my persistent anxiety. It was going to make me look at what wasn’t working, come hell or high water.

    With this perspective, I found that instead of looking at my anxiety as a nuisance, an aggravation I want to cut out, I found that, it, too, had wisdom. I actually felt grateful towards it and the message it was communicating to me. My whole attitude towards my anxiety shifted.

    This is one example of the power of befriending our emotions. When I kindly open my heart to even those painful emotions, the tight clench around my heart – that feeling of control, of white knuckling it – softens. I find that the more I allow myself to be with my feelings, the less tense I feel – and the less I dump them out on others.

    If you’re interested in this practice of feeling your feelings, this is the path that has helped me. (I explain this in much further detail in Heal Overeating:  Untangled.)

    It starts with honesty – tapping into our hearts to see, “What am I feeling?” To be honest about the feelings that arise instead of pretending we’re feeling something so much better and prettier (and that might look “better.”) Then we allow our feelings to be there. Instead of saying, “Go away,” we invite them in, as Rumi suggests. We show them kindness. We befriend them. We may even ask them, “What do you want to tell me?”

    We can also care for our feelings by simply feeling them – holding our pain, feeling our grief or anger rise and fall, and offering it our care and compassion. In the wake of this softening, this acceptance, this unconditional love, we put back those parts of us that we’ve been cut off from. We feel more whole; more complete.

    Our hearts soften as we recognize, “My heart is big enough for all of me.”

    Interestingly enough, I find strength when I befriend those dark, icky parts of me. After I listened to my anxiety, I felt so much stronger – as if in tapping into my anxiety I also reclaimed a hidden strength. I’ve found this to be true so often that I wonder – in opening to our “darkness” or “negative” emotions, perhaps we also reclaim lost positive parts of ourselves that we’ve shed along the way? Parts of us that we thought were “too much” or that made people uncomfortable or that we didn’t feel that we could embody? Perhaps we reclaim our light as well as our “darkness?”

    To me, that’s the mystery; the grace. It reminds me of a Bible verse I’ve always loved that says, “What was lost will be returned to you.” Yes, we reclaim. We come home.

    So here’s one last story for you. Last week I had a phone conversation with a wise, older friend. I was crying, sharing my deep sorrow about the pain in my life. I told her, “I’m tired of hurting. I’ve just had enough!”

    She said something to me that has stuck with me – that I’ve been replaying over and over in my mind. She said, “Karly, when you have pain in your life, you have two choices. You can harden your heart and turn bitter. You can hold onto the pain and build up walls. Or you can allow your pain to soften your heart, to grow your compassion, to grow your love. If this is the case, it will hurt. But it will hurt because you’re growing a bigger heart. What you’re feeling are the necessary growing pains of growing up, of opening your heart.”

    I found this image so beautiful – that the pain we feel in feeling our feelings is not lost, is not in vain – that it is used – transmuted – in the service of growing our hearts.

    So, dear one, when you care for your anger, when you care for your anxiety, when you care for your frustration, when you feel your feelings and their pain, you’re growing a bigger heart. You’re growing your heart big enough to include all your many “selves,” all your emotions, all your feelings, all your needs, every hidden part of you – even those things that have you think, “If you knew _____ about me, you’d lock me up and think I was the world’s worst person!” (Isn’t it funny that we can all think that way about ourselves?)

    Yes, it may hurt as you feel those feelings, especially ones that you feel afraid to feel. Yes, it may hurt as you feel your feelings instead of suppressing them.

    But it is not the pain of something’s wrong; it is the necessary growing pain from growing a bigger heart.

    As you care for this pain, as you befriend every part of you, you find a wholeness, a strength within. Those parts of us that have been cut off for so long – we reintegrate them back to us. We find wholeness not in perfection but in an open heart, in the integrity of unconditional love.  It’s as my friend Maureen says, “I love all of me.”

    When we can open our arms to all our feelings, we find something priceless:  that the lie that we’ve believed for so long – that our imperfection makes us unlovable; that we’re too broken to be worthy, to be loved; that we have to be perfect to be “good” – is not true.

    In befriending our emotions, we find our homecoming. We find our goodness. We find peace.

    Beloved, open the door. Come home.

     

    6 Comments "

    Becoming attached – do you judge your pain?

    January 26th, 2012

    I recently shared my theory that refuge – a deep rooted feeling of belonging, safety and attachment – is what creates the foundation for growth, maturity, and change with food.

    I heard from so many tender men and women who resonated with that theory – and who wondered, Yes, but how?? How do I create that secure attachment? They shared how vulnerable and terrifying it feels to reach out to others when they’re hurting. They feel caught – we need loving interdependence to feel fully alive, and yet that very interdependence brings the risk of being hurt. They wonder, “Will I be judged? Loved? Accepted? Will I be seen for who I am?”

    They’re speaking the language of vulnerability. And they’re also speaking the language of shame. They feel ashamed, embarrassed by their pain – which is one reason why they feel vulnerable in sharing it with others.. They feel ashamed that they hurt, as if the pain is their fault; as if the pain is something they should be able to control or eliminate. Something they “should” handle better. They’re in pain and they think it’s all their fault. They think they’re responsible for it. They feel guilty for hurting. They apologize over and over.

    They hide. Isolate. They close themselves off from their fellow human beings. If they do reach out to others, it’s often from a place of embarrassment, of deep apology – as if they’re a giant nuisance for hurting in the first place.

    It’s the shame of needing. In so many words, this is what they’re saying:  I feel ashamed because I’m in pain and I’m needing human closeness and contact.

    I find this so poignant and heartbreaking; how we take our pain as a sign that there’s something wrong with us and, therefore, as something we need to minimize, edit, suppress, eliminate, or hide. And so we close the door, literally and metaphorically, lest anyone see inside our hearts (or see the extra pounds on our bodies) and see how much we’re hurting. In her book Broken Open, Elizabeth Lesser put it this way:

    One of the greatest enigmas of human behavior is the way we isolate ourselves from each other. In our misguided perception of separation we assume that others are not sharing a similar experience of life. We imagine that we are unique in our eccentricities or failures or longings. And so we try to appear as happy and consistent as we think others are, and we feel shame when we stumble and fall. When difficulties come our way, we don’t readily seek out help and compassion because we think others might not understand, or they would judge us harshly, or take advantage of our weakness. And so we hide out, and we miss out.

    Oh, beloved, I gently invite you to consider two things:

    1. Your need for human contact and closeness – especially when you’re in pain! – is normal. Natural. I look at it this way – pain plus powerlessness (a feeling of helplessness, despair, feeling alone, like no one’s there to help) equals panic. (I can’t bear this!) On a very simple level, “I can’t bear this” then becomes “I need to fight, flee, feed, freeze to care for myself.” We become very primitive, like a wounded animal. We are meant to bear pain in connection – to each other, to life, to our own hearts, to the Divine – not in isolation.

    This is the attachment variable I wrote about here.

    2. It’s not your fault that you’re hurting. Because pain hurts, we naturally resist it and judge it. We think pain = bad, so pain = punishment. We can even twist this into a spiritual/psychological test, as in, “If I’m more recovered/more enlightened/more evolved I won’t hurt so much.” So if we’re hurting, we see our pain as a judgment – as a sign of our lack of health, evolvement, or wholeness. This is spiritual shame and is incredibly wounding! It’s also punishment based thinking – the idea that only the wicked are punished; the faultless remain untouched; so if I’m hurting, that must put me in the wicked camp…..

    I don’t believe our pain is a sign of judgment. It’s a sign of our humanity. We will hurt in this life. There’s no way around it. It’s not a sign of wrongness or badness. It just is. There is incredible freedom to be found in not taking our pain personally. There is incredible freedom to be found in being compassionate towards our pain rather than judging it.

    Last year I read a beautiful book, Tattoos on the Heart, a collection of stories by Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who works with gang members in L.A. While I loved the book – it’s one of my favorites, and I read a lot! – one story in particular stuck with me. He was speaking about the poverty in his borough, and said (I’m paraphrasing here), “Rather than judge how the poor carry their burdens, perhaps we should show compassion for what they carry.”

    I found his words profound – and not just for those in poverty. When I read this, I paused and said to myself, “perhaps I should show compassion for what I’ve carried rather than judge how I carry it.” Just saying this out loud brings tears to my eyes.

    This is a powerful act – dropping our judgment of our pain. That’s because when we drop the judgment, we also drop the shame. We respond to our hurt honestly – with the connection and closeness we need – rather than shaming ourselves for needing it in the first place. We reach out and receive the salve of other human beings, of the Divine, of our own hearts, when we’re hurting. We stop running and hiding and receive love.

    This process starts internally, with ourselves. In my experience, one of the most healing things we can do for ourselves is to feel our pain. To truly feel it, to open to it, and to cry our tears. To bear witness to that which aches in us. I know this feels counterintuitive – Isn’t there an easier way?

    While I wish I had an answer that feels good and quick and easy, my honest, heartfelt answer; the answer I’ve found from my own experience is yes, we need to grieve. To cry our tears, to reach the wall of futility – to feel and accept all the things we wish were different; all the things we can not change.

    I think everything in us wants to be seen, felt, heard, acknowledged. I think of our pain as small children, very young parts of us that demand an audience. And I do mean demand. In my own life, I’ve humbly seen how I will (usually unconsciously) continue hurtful behaviors – towards myself and/or others – and perpetuate my pain until I turn towards it, grieve it, feel it, and acknowledge it.

    I grieve by walking and crying. I feel safe outside, I feel held by nature, and there’s something about the gentle rhythm of walking that allows my emotions to flow. I walk, put my hand on my heart and feel my suffering. Some of the most profound moments I’ve experienced in my life – dare I call them mystical? – are during these walks and cries. I don’t think this is because of the grief itself, but because I am fully present. For once, I’m not running from my pain. I’m feeling. All of it. And in being fully present, I no longer feel detached, separate, small, judged for my pain. I feel fully alive, connected, held, attached.

    Grieving is the doorway to maturity, acceptance, growth, healing, forgiveness, letting go, and yes, even attachment. It is a path to peace. It’s how we move forward and adapt. (I’ve long thought about writing a book titled something like, The Hidden Power of Grief, because I feel grief is unacknowledged, feared, undervalued, misunderstood and even despised by our culture. I can’t tell you how many times throughout my daily life I pick up on the subtle message of “Stop crying,” whether it’s directed towards a child or an adult; whether it’s in our spiritual communities, our families, our schools, or our workplaces. If only we had a deeper understanding that grief serves an important purpose!)

    We need to grieve. We need to befriend our pain, to bear witness. We need to reach out and connect when we’re hurting. These things are our life blood, the water that nourishes our souls.

    As we turn towards our pain in care, as we drop the judgment of our suffering, it also opens the doorway to each other. Instead of feeling like our pain is all about me and what I’ve done, it becomes a bridge to our shared common humanity – where all beings have their 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Instead of feeling alone, we realize, “We’re all in this together.” We feel – live – experience – the truth of Mother Theresa’s words about how “we belong to each other.”

    We feel our belonging and we come home.

    6 Comments "

    How attachment can heal overeating. For good.

    January 11th, 2012

    I’ve been speaking to lots of women this week. It’s January. They’re trying to start the year positively – to finally heal this “food thing” (or sugar thing) for good.

    These are bright, kind, loving, perceptive women. Women who’ve often been through incredible, heartbreaking challenges in their lives – challenges they’ve handled with remarkable grace and courage. These are women I’d feel honored to count as friends. Most of them see exactly where they get caught in food dependence – sugar, binge eating, overeating, emotional eating, bingeing and purging. They’re not in denial. They’ve been working on their stuff for years.

    Many have healed from other addictions such as alcohol or cigarettes. They’ve tried lots and lots of healing strategies to heal their food stuff; they’ve done tons of inner work. They know – and have used – pretty much all the tools out there, whether they’re EFT/tapping techniques, psychotherapy, meditation, mindfulness, spiritual work, hypnotherapy, counseling, approaches that work with changing your inner dialogue (thoughts/beliefs/self talk), medication, nutritional supplements and more. They’ve read everybody on weight loss and food.

    Many are in the wellness field themselves – they’re nutritionists, healers, naturopaths, therapists, coaches, nurses, yoga teachers, acupuncturists, spiritual teachers, massage therapists, sound healers, personal trainers, and more. They’re intuitive, sensitive, and empathetic. They’re fabulous at helping people.

    They feel frustrated – and like frauds – because they feel absolutely stuck with food. They don’t understand - I know what to do. I’ve done all this inner work. Why can’t I just DO it? Why am I STILL overeating?

    I’ve seen this pattern so much – and it was true for me, too – that this year I’ve listened, really listened to deeply understand what’s going on. For a while, I thought emotional healing (I’m limiting my discussion on this post to emotional healing, even while I understand that physical healing is equally important and part of the picture) was about other factors. Perhaps it was knowledge – if I just knew what to do, I could do it. Then I thought it was about understanding – if I understand the roots, that insight can heal me. I thought that changing my thinking or beliefs would do it.

    Each of these things helped a bit, but they were not enough by themselves for me and for many of my clients. So what does create emotional healing?

    Finding the clues

    This weekend my children and I spent Friday night browsing Barnes & Noble. Because it’s January, the table at the front of the store was piled high with weight loss books. (You can imagine.) I thumbed through them in curiosity. This afternoon I was at the library, and browsed the latest weight loss books there, too.

    I found some ideas I liked – things like practicing self compassion, relaxed intent (having an intention but holding it loosely), the importance of structure and rhythm, and even appreciating how certain foods like wheat or sugar can lead to addiction.

    But there was 1 core idea where I strongly disagreed. At one point, I said out loud, “No! That’s not true!” (You should’ve seen the looks I got from the other library patrons as I argued with a book.)

    I was protesting against the “take responsibility for your stuff” solution to healing food stuff. Here’s an example – one book said something like, “If you’re not losing weight, it’s your own fault. If you really wanted it, you’d do it. I’m sorry that sounds harsh, but it’s the truth.” (This is when I started arguing outloud…) A cousin of this belief is, “just do the inner work so you can heal already. Quit making such a big deal out of it.”

    These ideas, in my view, completely miss the point. If we could, we would. As I see it, everyone is doing the best they can. “Taking responsibility” or “just doing it” feels trivializing to people in real pain. So why is that for some people, their best is speedy progress? And why do others feel stuck and hopeless?

    And here’s another biggie – if we recognize that our food stuff is not just about the body or brain, but is also rooted in the emotions, and we have all this self awareness, why do we feel unable to move forward and create change?

    How attachment affects our inner resilience

    The answer is attachment. We need to feel securely attached so we can grow.

    I’m not going to go into an in depth explanation of attachment theory here, as this post would then be a book. But if this post rings true for you, I encourage you to read more about it. (I share my favorite attachment resources in the comments below if you’d like to learn more.)

    In a nutshell, attachment theory says that our basic, fundamental need is to be loved and to belong – to feel connected, secure and safe. These needs are the basic ground floor level of our development. When these needs aren’t met, we get stuck. We have gaps in our development. We develop painful coping strategies – like overeating. (I think lots of addictions would fit in this sentence, too.)

    These attachment needs are primal, and go very, very deep in the brain. When these unmet needs are triggered in our adult lives, we panic. We go into fight or flight. My guess is that when we binge, or overeat, we’re feeling this panic of feeling unattached – of being in pain and feeling alone, disconnected, getting zero emotional support or response. We may have felt this way as children. And we feel it in the present when we feel hurt – let’s say our boss says something unkind about us at a meeting – and it triggers all those old feelings of alone, in pain, rejected, abandoned, terrified.

    A child who is securely attached feels that there’s an emotionally responsive parent who is there for them – especially when they’re in pain. They may feel hurt at times – it’s inevitable -  but they feel held in their hurt. This is what enables them to cope with it – as Dr. Sue Johnson says, “loving connection is the only safety nature ever offers us.” They’re able to adapt and work through the pain.

    What insecure attachment looks like

    The insecurely attached child doesn’t have this same resilence. They give up easily – very easily. They are easily overwhelmed because they “feel” alone.

    A child who is insecurely attached to its parents can be anxious, needy, clingy, insecure. They don’t feel safe, they don’t feel like they can rely on their parent to be there emotionally for them; the bond is fragile. They don’t feel held. Their pain overwhelms them. (It’s this pain I see in my clients when their emotions come up in the present day. They feel the hurt – let’s say they have an argument with their spouse – and it feels overwhelming, like too much to bear. The pain brings up those threatened, fight or flight signals and the brain spins out. They eat to soothe the panic.)

    How does that child survive? We cope. In my case, I coped by substituting an attachment. Yep, I attached to food Sugar in particular – sweet, creamy, fatty foods, foods like mother’s milk – became my source of nurturing. Here’s where the stuckness with food starts to make sense – if I use sugar to feel safe, to feel loved, to soothe that panic and terror, you can imagine that trying to remove sugar from my life would bring up these very same feelings of terror, and panic! No wonder it took me so long to unhook. No wonder I resisted it. I felt like a small child losing the thing that kept her tethered….

    And it’s this panic that I see in my clients. We work very, very slowly together to help them feel safe so they can unhook from the dependence on food.

    Insecure attachment and food

    A person who is insecurely attached to food will often be anxious with food, needy with food, clingy with food, insecure with food. Or, they can be avoidant towards it – pushing it away, acting cool, like they don’t need it. This can show up as:

    • We love food, and we hate it.
    • When we’re not eating, we crave food, we want it, we feel anxious for it. When we’re eating the food, we feel terrified of it and gobble it down – like we don’t trust that there will be enough.
    • For many of us, food is our mother. We look to it as we would look to a mother – to meet needs for nurturing, comfort, compassion, connection and understanding.
    • We may avoid eating, skip meals so we don’t feel the insecurity, the lack of trust with food.
    • We feel terrified (yes, absolute terror) about not having certain foods to eat, like sugar, or about setting limits on food.
    • Hoarding food, like stockpiling love.
    • Feeling panicky when there’s either too much or too little food.

    Why separating from sugar feels so painful

    For many of the women I work with, I hear words like terror, abandonment, isolation, deprivation, and panic when they even think about not eating sugar or not being able to eat as much as they want. Strong words! And yet it makes sense in the context of food = mother. If a small child is separated from its mother, that experience is incredibly distressing – nature designed in that way to keep the child safe! We feel the same sense of impending doom about separating from food.

    These strong emotions make sense if we see that the reason their feelings overwhelm them – why they turn to food instead – is because they have long buried memories of being in pain and feeling alone, overwhelmed by their pain. That feels rightly terrifying. So they panic when they feel strong emotions. They feel like they hijack their bodies, like they take over, like they can’t handle it. The strongest emotion is often this fear of separation from food.

    The pain I hear described to me over and over is a feeling of being completely alone, a feeling of “There’s no one there,” or, “I have to do it all myself.” This often show up in a family role of being the strong one – the person others count on to take charge and be responsible but who feels unduly burdened, that they can’t count on others when they need help. More than anything, they long to let down, to take off the responsibility hat, and to be held. To be cared for. To pass the baton to someone else. Some of them say that sugar is the only way they can do this – the only way they can give themselves a measure of let down, of mothering. And they consciously or unconsciously resist giving up this source of comfort – and understandably so! If their lives feel burdened – and they feel powerless to set limits against these burdens – then the only solution they feel they have is to comfort themselves in order to endure it.

    As I hope you’re seeing, it’s not so simple as just “wanting it enough” or “committing.”

    Why emotional connection – attachment – is necessary to feel our feelings

    Is there anything more painful than to be in pain and feel alone? I’ve given birth to 4 children, 3 completely naturally, and the last 2, at home. Childbirth hurts. And yet, paradoxically, in my natural births, the pain was tolerable. The pain was tolerable because I felt safe – I was with a midwife and nurse I completely trusted, I was in my husband’s loving arms, and I felt surrounded by love and care. My emotional needs were met. I felt secure and because of this, I felt I could handle the pain. It didn’t overwhelm me.

    With my first birth, the pain didn’t feel tolerable. I absolutely did not feel safe. I didn’t like my doctor. I’d seen him once for a 10 minute doctor visit, as we’d moved when I was pregnant, and the OB clinic had 6 or 7 OBS that you rotated through on each visit. He didn’t know me from Adam; I was giving birth – a pretty intimate thing! – with a total stranger. He ignored my birth plan and wishes. Same with the hospital staff. I was in a big hospital where nurses walked in and out and I never knew if someone would stay with me and help me through my contractions. I was in pain, I was a first time mom, I felt scared, I felt ignored, I felt overlooked, I felt abandoned! So the pain felt unbearable. I had a last minute epidural when I was fully dilated at the end of labor, even with the risks of getting an epidural so late in the game, because I felt like I was going to go through the roof in pain.

    It is contact and closeness – feeling safe, feeling held – that allows us to feel those painful feelings instead of feeling overwhelmed by them and eating them. And it is contact and closeness that helps us feel loved, that helps us feel belonging, so we don’t walk around with such a deep, aching hole in our hearts.

    I’ll never forget what one tender woman, a coaching client, asked for in our first call – “Karly, I just want to feel held.” If I do anything for my clients and readers, this is how I believe I help them – I help them feel safe. I help them feel held. I help them feel connected so that the pain doesn’t feel so overwhelming.

    We are remarkably brave when we feel cared for. When we feel connected, when we feel “held,” when we feel validated, understood, and safe, we can do what feels really painful, like step aside from the cookies. In fact, it’s how we’re able to say no…

    Overeating is an attachment cry

    Overeating, sugar bingeing, emotional eating are attachment cries, no different than a baby crying when it’s in pain. At the most basic, basic level, we don’t feel safe. My guess is that people who are able to work through their food stuff with relative ease are securely attached. They have more of a base from which to start. Those who struggle have some degree of insecure attachment.

    Fortunately, we can heal the attachment brain. Our childhood pain is not a sentence of hopelessness. Likewise, insecure attatchment is *not* a sign that we had abusive or unloving parents or that our families are “dysfunctional.” As Judy Scheel says, “Many families are enormously loving. Attachment Theory has nothing to do with the absence of love in a family.”

    As we heal the attachment brain, we can grow. As I see it, secure attachment is the foundation for growth. Not enlightenment, not spiritual evolution, not conscious attainment, not responsibility, not even effort. I think we put the cart before the horse – and make the road much, much harder – when we focus on fixing the behavior before we heal the relationship – the relationship we feel with ourselves, with others, and with life.

    When we feel safe, when we feel held, we can do things that are really painful, like sit with our painful feelings instead of eat them. We can do the emotional work – feeling our feelings, crying our tears, opening to feelings that we’ve experienced over and over again – that frees us from food. That has been my experience these past 2 years, and this is how I’ve been able to make great strides with food, even as it was not easy, comfortable, or fun. (In fact, the past 2 years have been a very difficult time for me – so attachment was crucial.) Not skills, not knowledge, not will power, not responsibility, but safety.

    How we find secure attachment

    I’ve found attachment in forgiving my friends and loved ones and letting go of years of bitterness, resentment and hurt – allowing myself to be loved by imperfect people and to feel their love. I’ve found attachment in a dear therapist who helped me feel safe to touch pain that felt too painful to touch on my own. I’ve found attachment in the mucky work of sitting with and feeling my feelings – crying my tears – and not abandoning myself when I felt overwhelmed or in pain. I’ve felt attachment in reaching out to others instead of isolating myself. And I’ve found attachment with my own heart in self compassion, self forgiveness, and self acceptance. (I forget. A lot.)

    So let’s unpack this a bit so we can clearly see the map of what I did. I focused on meeting my deep attachment needs for:

    • safety
    • contact and closeness
    • emotional responsiveness
    • attunement to my needs
    • belonging
    • unconditional love

    I met these needs through practices like:

    • compassion (offering myself care, a nurturing inner voice, and more)
    • meditation
    • yoga
    • mindfulness
    • prayer/spiritual practices of connecting with the Divine
    • sitting with my feelings and feeling them
    • listening to myself/connecting with myself
    • reaching out to others and creating connection
    • support! – letting a few people (people whom I deeply trusted, it was only 3-4 people) be with me when I was in pain and was feeling overwhelmed. For me, this included a therapist.
    • being honest about my needs (vs hiding or pretending)
    • being open/accepting to my needs (not judging, minimizing, editing, suppressing or shaming them)
    • allowing myself to be my own person (not having to take on other people’s thoughts or beliefs/agree with them in order to be close)
    • setting boundaries (these were primarily emotional boundaries – not making myself responsible for other people’s feelings, not feeling responsible for other people’s happiness, as well as setting limits)

    Learning these new skills is still a process for me, and yet looking back, I can see that practicing these skills yielded change and growth. That growth – the fruits of a strong attachment – are things like:

    • personal power – being your own person
    • integrative thinking (the ability to mix emotions, to hold two opposing thoughts at a time and honor your values rather than your instincts. This is also known as impulse control.)
    • “and” thinking vs. either/or thinking
    • being able to set boundaries and honor your limits
    • to rest at the deepest level, to know that you are enough
    • inner resilience regardless of changing external circumstances (a feeling of, “I can handle this” instead of a feeling of hopelessness/despair)
    • comfort with strong emotions (not so scary feeling)
    • the ability to care for and move strong emotions
    • efficacy – feeling capable of making changes in your life

    And these fruits are what enable me to say no to food. Holy cow, attachment heals. As Dr. Neufeld says, “It’s how we reach our human potential.” I would say it’s how we live what we are – our goodness.

    (Stay tuned – this will probably be my next course – walking you through this outline so you can create healing in your own life. If you’re wanting something like this, please let me know, as I work to serve and it helps me plan my priorities for the year.)

    So if you’re tried everything to heal, if you know what you need to do but are having a hard time doing it, oh dear one, it’s not your fault, and it’s not hopeless.  If you’re stuck, that simply tells me that you don’t feel safe. That you need to create a container in which to unfold – a container of secure attachment. That’s why I say that the real relationship we’re changing is not our relationship with food, but the one we have with ourselves. When we feel safe with ourselves – and feel safe with the Divine, with life, and with others – we can grow.

    Why this is so prevalent today

    This is one reason (there are many) why so many people are struggling with eating disorders – and other addictions – and why we’re the most overweight people in history (unmet attachment needs + highly processed, highly addictive, unnutritious, readily available food = a perfect storm for weight problems.) We feel so isolated, cut off, separate, alone, and lacking in belonging with each other – even with all our fancy technology. We feel like baby birds flailing around, kicked out of the nest, with no shelter. It’s why we eat…and shop, and have casual sex, and go online, and drink, and gamble, and watch reality TV, and live in virtual worlds, and work, and compulsively check our email, and twitter, and Facebook, and texting….

    And it’s why our children are doing all of this, too, and at younger and younger ages…..

    We are all desperately needing connection. Our hearts and souls are starving. Dying. Thirsting. Hungering. Literally. We can not live, we can not thrive, we can not survive without attachment.

    Our overeating is our protest. Our hearts and bodies saying, “NO. I can’t bear this isolation.” Our hearts saying, please, please, give me belonging! Give me shelter. I need safe emotional connection.

    They are protesting. The question, dear ones, is will we listen? Will we give our hearts what they’re thirsting for?

    Foster belonging

    I invite you to start, oh, so simply, with a gentle bow, an acknowledgement about how much you’re hurting. Hold yourself and cry your tears and open your arms to your pain. If you have a place where you feel belonging – a loved one, a therapist, a tree, a pet – go to them. Let them comfort you. Let yourself feel held. Forgive yourself. You’ve been trying to fight against your human biology, your most basic need. You were never meant to try and tough it out and live without belonging. Don’t feel like your human neediness is a flaw, a character stain that you just need to work on to erase….

    Instead, open to it. Come home. Rest in the shelter of your heart. Attach.

    Reach out to others. We can not survive without contact and closeness. Seek support. Seek love. Create bonds. This is crucial for your healing. In fact, in my humble opinion, I don’t think we can heal without it…we can’t heal in isolation. We need to heal in relationship, in belonging, in community.

    For we belong to each other. We belong to ourselves. We belong to the earth. And we belong to the Divine. Thank God.

    Resources for you:

     

     

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    How to respond to family scrutiny about weight

    December 24th, 2011

    You may find yourself gathering with friends and family this weekend for Christmas. There’s something about being around people that you don’t see everyday that prompts a desire to put your best foot forward. You want to be seen for who you really are, and you want to belong – to be loved and accepted.

    Of course! We all crave this acceptance.

    But what if you’ve gained weight since the last holiday, or since the last time you saw your holiday guests? You may be feeling vulnerable, wondering if you will be judged or criticized. You may wonder – will anyone say anything? What will they be thinking? Will they notice? And this vulnerability, and the undercurrents of anxiety in its wake, can lead right to the food!

    I prepared an audio talk about this last year, for a holiday help kit program I offered on my own website. Feedback was tremendous so I offer it on this website for the first time.

    In this audio, you’ll find comfort, encouragement, and support if you’re feeling anxious about the opinions of others – about your body or your very self – and the scrutiny it may bring during the holiday season. How do we find peace and soothe the anxiety?

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:07 — 19.3MB)

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    Loving where you’re at.

    December 12th, 2011

    I’ve received hundreds of emails that all say this, in one form or another:

    I’m really struggling and I feel so ashamed.

    I’ve been there, too – in fact, I hit one of those walls this week. This time it came in the form of my old friend, anxiety. For a slew of reasons, my anxiety was off the charts; I awoke each morning seared by panic and fear. I hurt so badly, and all I wanted to do was scream, cry, run, blame, hide, eat. (I did a little of all of the above.)

    During this time, I got a newsletter from a teacher I admire. He was sharing how he achieves his goals and intentions – and at a very high success rate. Given my state of mind when I read his email, I was less than receptive to his message. In fact, I went to war. I attacked – in this case, I attacked myself. I compared myself to him and fell hopelessly short. I felt the great weight of my anxiety and I felt ashamed.

    The truth is I was hurting, caught in overwhelm, overarousal, anxiety, panic. Rather than accepting- okay, I’m hurting right now, I need some support – I argued with my pain – “You shouldn’t be feeling anxious and overwhelmed right now!” I argued why I should be more like this other person, who has all his you know what together.

    I was shoulding all over myself. I was fighting against my experience. I was arguing with reality, blaming myself for my feelings, and suffering as a consequence.

    Fortunately, I’ve done this often enough that I recognize it. I paused, stopped spiraling inside my thoughts and judgment, and tried to open to my anxiety instead. I often do this while taking a long walk.

    So I cried and walked and felt my fear of my anxiety. I took some deep breaths. I put my hand on my heart and said to my anxiety, “It’s okay, sweetheart. I understand. I know you feel scared. It makes so much sense. It’s okay. I’m here.” (I love how a Zen master describes this – when he feels afraid, he says to the fear, “I agree!”)

    I asked my anxiety, “What do you need from me?” and it said, “I just need you to allow me to be here. Don’t blame me. Don’t make me wrong. Just allow me to be.” And I did. I allowed it to be.

    As I came alongside my anxiety and I allowed it be there, I felt my body soften and relax. I found space. My belly softened. The iron grip around my heart eased. Even more freeing, I opened to my experience. I allowed myself to be exactly where I was – in the midst of some pretty intense anxiety. I stopped making myself wrong for being in a hurting place, and just accepted it.

    In the wake of this acceptance, I felt better – not because the anxiety completely went away, but because I stopped making it worse with my judgment and resistance.

    In this path of unconditional love, of unconditional friendliness, of opening our hearts, I can’t help but wonder – what would it be like to love wherever we’re at? To be kind to the place where we find ourselves? To be kind to ourselves when we’re in a difficult, messy, hurting place?

    I’m reminded of a poem from Hafiz:

    The place where you are right now
    God circled on a map for you
    wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move
    Against the earth and the sky,
    the beloved has bowed there-

    The beloved has bowed there knowing
    You were coming…

    It’s easy to love the circle on the map when it feels good. Not so easy when it doesn’t. Perhaps that’s why it’s so powerful. So freeing. There’s an implicit trust there – that we’re both strong enough to handle it and that the pain isn’t a punishment. There’s a trust in our goodness, in life’s goodness.

    Beloved, if you find yourself hurting as I found myself hurting this week, I invite you:  be kind to your map. Be kind to the place where you find yourself. Can you love where you are?

    Please, please, drop the judgment, guilt, blame. Open. Open to the discomfort and care for it with exquisite tenderness, as you would comfort a small hurting child who finds himself in pain. (I share the tools that help me drop guilt, blame and judgment in Heal Overeating:  Untangled, my audio program to heal the roots of overeating.)

    When we drop the blame, we feel lightened. We release 1,000 tons of guilt and shame. This feels good. We physically feel the body relax. The heart unclenches. We let go. But something else happens when we accept where we are. We stop thinking, “I’m bad, I must’ve done something wrong to be in pain,” and the shame around our hurt softens.

    This opens us up to care. Instead of fighting against our experience we look inside and ask, “What do I need? How can I care for this hurt?”

    In my case, I was able to step away from my tendency to isolate myself when I’m hurting and reach out for help. After my walk, I emailed several close friends and asked them to pray for me. I called a loved one. I shared my hurt with my husband and allowed him to comfort me. Receiving this love and support felt good.

    I allowed myself to be exactly where I was – in a hurting place – instead of making myself wrong for being there. And I allowed myself to receive love and care so that the hurting place wasn’t quite so hurting!

    It’s a homecoming I hope to find, again, and again. It’s a homecoming I hope you seek, as well, my friend.

     

     

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    Does intuitive eating lead to sugar addiction?

    December 6th, 2011

    I hear from a lot of women who’ve struggled with intuitive eating. They try to listen to their bodies and eat what they want, only to find themselves in the throes of sugar addiction. As one dear woman I’ve been coaching put it, “I tried to let myself eat what I want. I eat cookies for dinner, thinking I’ll eventually get tired of them. Other people said they eventually stopped eating cookies all the time and that I would, too. But I ended up eating sugar at every meal.”

    She followed this statement with tears. “I feel so ashamed. What’s wrong with me?”

    I share this with you as I’ve had this very same conversation with hundreds of people.

    On the flip side, I’ve also talked with many women who’ve healed their eating disorders with intuitive eating. And in many circles, there’s a mindset that intuitive eating is the “highest” and “best” way to eat.

    So what gives? I’d love to share my thoughts, and I’d love to hear yours. (Comment away!)

    In my experience, people get hurt when we start labeling things as “highest” and “best” – whether it’s vegan, vegetarian, low carb, sugar free, paleo, intuitive eating, weight watchers, whatever! (In this post, I’m focusing on intuitive eating as it’s the one I hear about most often.)

    I think it’s harmful when we start ranking ways of eating. It turns something precious – caring for your physical body – into a competition, into ego. We move from the arena of action into thought – and all the mind’s tricks of comparison and contrast (this way is better, this way is worse…)

    It’s then very, very easy to turn eating into a moral standard, where our very goodness is tied to what or how we eat. We move out of the body and into the mind. Instead of sensing, I’m full, or I’ve had enough, or I need more, we get sidetracked into rules and dogma. Food becomes a measuring stick to see, “Am I good enough?”

    In my own life, I see this play out in very, very clever ways. If I’m eating “virtuous” (read: superhealthy) food – like kale, or broccoli, or soup, for example – it’s easy for me to ignore limits. I can overeat it because it’s so “good.” Or, I may overspend at Whole Foods or buy so much produce at the farmer’s market that it goes bad in my fridge. (But it’s so good for me and such a good thing to do…)

    I may ignore my own inner wisdom (limits!) and do something for my body just because it’s “good” for me. I’m thinking of the time I overdid it in yoga class, attempted the splits before I was ready, and tore my hamstring and piriformis, a painful injury that took a year to heal.

    On the other side of the coin, I can demonize “bad” foods and get caught in guilt when I eat them. I’ve also tsk tsked at other people for buying such “bad” junk food. (It’s no fun to be around a food cop. Ask those around me!)

    But where I see labeling cause the most pain is with shame. How do you feel when the “highest” and “best” way of eating leaves you struggling and feeling lousy? You feel ashamed. You feel bad. You feel like a failure. You personalize it. You think, “Something’s wrong with me” and not, “Perhaps I could try a different approach.”

    You probably then kill yourself to try and make this way of eating – that doesn’t work for you – work for you. It’s a big lesson in denying reality. Well, if I just work harder, if I just apply myself, then I’ll be able to make it work…..

    Oh dear one, stop working harder. Stop trying to make something that doesn’t work for you, work. Oh, dear one, please, please let go.

    Please let go of this idea that you’re a failure if an approach, theory, idea doesn’t fit. In growing human(kind)ness, I call this practice centering – kindly and wisely examining the beliefs that drive our behavior.

    Centering gets down to this basic question:  Are we willing to hurt ourselves to hold onto an ideal? Or are we willing to release the ideal and trust the truth of our own experience?

    One of the primary ways I’ve healed my food stuff is working with centering – putting aside my ideals to accept reality (life) on its own terms. We put aside our ideals when we open to reality, and forgive the ways it falls “short.” I’ve had to forgive my loved ones and stop expecting them to be perfect spouses, in laws, parents, friends. I’ve had to forgive my body and brain and accept that I need to take a little blue pill (otherwise known as an antidepressant) everyday to thrive. I’ve had to forgive my heart and accept that my tender sensitivity needs care, not judgment.

    It’s making peace with imperfection. And it’s making peace with limits, where life, my body or my experience says no. And it’s letting those ideals – which are just shoulds and thoughts, should and thoughts that are not true – go.

    This brings me back to intuitive eating. I would argue that this – trusting the truth of our own experience – is intuitive. Somewhere we got confused and thought that intuition meant no structure, no boundaries, no limits.

    If you’ve struggled with intuitive eating, I would gently encourage you to embrace this paradox:  intuitive eating is not letting yourself eat whatever you want. You can be an intuitive eater *and* have limits and structure in your life.

    I see myself as very intuitive. And I also know that when my body starts asking for sugar, not to listen. Listening to the body is not just eating whatever you want. There also needs to be wisdom and discretion! If you’re sugar sensitive, your body may “want” sugar. Listen to it in this case, and it’s easy to get lost in the throes of sugar addiction.

    It may help to think of it in this way. This metaphor comes from David Deida, and it helps me balance intuition with structure. Think of your feminine – which includes intuition, nurturing, flow – as a river, ever moving, ever flowing. Think of your masculine – which is direction, guidance, structure – as the river banks, guiding the river as it flows. When you have both, working together, you have both flow – intuition – and structure – rhythms and limits.

    Intuition/flow without structure leaves me feeling unmoored, ungrounded, and lost in “whatever I feel like.” Structure without flow/intuition leaves me feeling rigid, dry, barren.

    In Heal Overeating: Untangled, I offer tools and exercises to balance intuitive eating with structure so you can build a food container that fits around you – and not the other way around. I gently invite you to look within and to ask yourself this question – what balance of structure and flow do I need in my life?

    And perhaps ask yourself this question – what ideals are causing me pain? What ideals are fighting with reality?

    And how free could I be if I let them go?

     

     

     

     

     

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    Do you have your heart?

    November 30th, 2011

    One of the most persnickity challenges to healing are the internal obstacles that keep us from following through on our intentions – the doubt, resistance, the “I don’t want to” and “I don’t feel like it” feelings that get in the way of change.

    In Heal Overeating:  Untangled* (and in these articles here and here) I share ways we can soften resistance without resorting to painful strategies like white knuckling it, overcontrol, anxiety, fear, punishment, unbalanced striving and more.

    Today I’d like to share the practice of safekeeping.

    Here in the Pitman family, it’s been one of those weeks. My husband’s out of town on a business trip, I’m heading out of town for a funeral, my daughter is headed to a state soccer tournament several hours away, and we’re moving out of our temporary rental this weekend. This is all to say that I’m feeling a wee bit stressed as I pack up our house, care for my grief and get ready to send my family in 3 different directions with several children under foot.

    This morning, I was trying to get my boys to help me with the packing and was feeling frustrated by their whining and resistance. I coerced, bribed, threatened, cajoled, and talked in that tight, tense, “do you not hear my voice rising” mommy is angry voice. None of it worked. None of it felt good.

    The catalyst was my son breaking down in tears of overwhelm. Finally, his tears made me pause. (I’m a slow learner sometimes.) I held him in the rocking chair and I listened to him and validated his feelings.

    Afterwards, instead of ordering my boys around, we worked together on packing up the house. Several hours later, I about fell off my chair when my son – the same son who’d been crying in frustration – said, “Packing is actually fun.”

    Now, packing is not fun. That’s my opinion. But what made it fun to my son was our togetherness. Our connection. Our love. It’s also what made him open to the idea of packing instead of fighting me on it. And bingo – the light bulb went off for me.

    It’s the same process with ourselves. You may feel a lot of resistance about changing your eating habits – understandably so. Change is uncomfortable and takes effort. We often feel like fumbling beginners, back at kindergarten. It often means being vulnerable and asking for support.

    When your resistance arises, do you do what I did with my boys – do you overpower it, coerce it, bribe it, yell at it, even? I’m guessing it works as well with your own heart as it worked with my boys’.

    Here’s the powerful question of the day:  what would be the equivalent of holding your resistance in your lap, listening to its cries?

    Dr. Gordon Neufeld says getting children to behave isn’t about powering over them. Children want to obey when they trust that “we have their hearts in safekeeping.” What a beautiful phrase. When I first heard it, I immediately thought about my relationship with myself – Is my heart in safekeeping?

    It’s a pertinent question, as I recognize that if my heart isn’t safe, I can’t look inside. I feel too afraid of what I’ll find.

    If my heart isn’t safe, I feel ashamed – too ashamed to look at honestly at what needs shifting in my life. I run and hide. I soothe myself from the shame with food, internet surfing, gossip, overdoing, or perfectionism.

    If my heart isn’t safe, I feel anxious. Every step feels very life or death – tight, tense, stressful – and the messy path of growth is hiccuped by my need to, above all else, not mess up.

    But most of all, when my heart isn’t safe, I feel disconnected from my very self. I feel small, separate, helpless, hopeless. I miss myself.

    Rumi says it this way – “Do you visit with yourself?” Tara Brach says that when we give someone our presence – a kind, nonjudgmental, totally accepting attention – we’re offering love. I think that’s what Gordon Neufeld is saying, too. And I think that’s what I offered my son, and what changed our relationship – as well as his willingness to help pack.

    I think it’s particularly important to rest in our presence when we’re asking something challenging of ourselves. In Neufeld circles, this is called “collect before you direct.” So you would collect your child – connect with your child with touch, your eyes, your voice, your love – before you direct them – ask them to do something and bend them to your will.

    This is because a child will automatically, forcefully say, “No,” to a parent that they don’t feel attached to. We automatically say “no” to our request to eat healthier, eat structured meals, or slow down our eating when we’re feeling disconnected from our own hearts.

    So when you feel resistant to change, healing and growth, perhaps what you’re really feeling is loneliness, a thirst of the heart.

    I feel how my heart cries out to be collected. To be loved. To be appreciated. To be known. To be seen. To rest, unconditionally, in my own loving presence. There’s a direct correlation between time listening to myself/being with myself and my willingness to do what my highest self asks of me.

    Dear one, precious soul, I invite you – cross the threshold of your own heart. Before you embark on your to-do list or before you ask something of yourself just…be. Take 10 minutes and visit with yourself in the morning. Take 5 minutes and visit with yourself before a meal. Take 10 minutes and visit with yourself before the end of the day.

    Check in. Offer yourself tenderness. Let yourself be seen. Appreciate your tender, precious humanity – your suchness. Breathe. Offer yourself gratitude. Check in and ask yourself – how are you feeling, dear one? Put your hand on your heart. Feel your tender pulse, the life thread that connects you to the earth. Feel the tender thread that connects you to others. Look inside. Bask in your goodness.

    And if you check in and you feel chaos or discomfort – an overwhelm, a sadness, anger, envy – offer it kindness. Imagine a troubled 5 year old needing a mother’s soothing, and give yourself this same soothing – “There, there, now. I’m right here. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

    Soften your belly. Allow yourself to be, in whatever state you find yourself, and feel the tension ease, and unwind its coils. Unfold.

    This rest, this ease, this space of unconditional acceptance is your home. This is your true nature. This is who you really are, and how sad that we so seldom go there; that we think we have to fix ourselves before we can rest in our own presence….

    I invite you. Don’t believe the voice that say you can’t go home.

    Home is always there. Inside your heart.

    Go. Open the door. Visit with yourself. Relax in your own mercy.

    And go back, again and again and again. Forge that connection, over and over, feeding your hunger for closeness regularly throughout the day, just as you feed your hunger for physical nourishment 2, 3 or 4 times a day.

    Visit with yourself, and I think you’ll find that the resistance softens. Visit with yourself, and I think you’ll find that yes, everything you need is inside.

     (*When you buy Untangled this month, you get a free coaching call with me.)

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    Why I won’t punish myself after Thanksgiving

    November 23rd, 2011

    I was at my yoga studio yesterday evening and was asking about their schedule for the rest of the week, a holiday week here in the states. As they’re closed for Thanksgiving, the girls at the front desk suggested I try the Friday “burn the bird” class.

    My body immediately tensed and tightened, and I realized that my body was saying, “No.” As I tapped into my feelings, I realized that I felt sad about the “punish mentality” that seeps into our exercise, how we care for our bodies. So I said, “No, that’s not for me. I don’t need to burn anything.”

    I felt so tense because for years, I did punish myself. When I overate, I’d throw up my food. Or I’d push myself hard on my run the next morning (a weird sort of mathematical formula that went like this:  one extra mile for every extra 250 calories.) I’d skip meals the next day. I’d hide out at my house (I felt too bad about myself to be out with people) and stew in a sea of shame.

    In effect, I’d say to myself, “No kindness for you, missy, until you make up for all the bad, bad, bad things you did yesterday.” It was penance and punishment all in one.

    It was abusive and cruel and hurt like hell. It was also challenging for me to shift as it went against all my ingrained habits of beating myself up.

    It took me about 2 years of practice (I’m being honest here – that’s how long it took for me, although I appreciate and hope it will be a quicker road for you!) to stop this habit. I began by eating normally the day after a binge – yep, starting with breakfast – even though my mind wanted to skip meals so I could “make up” for my overindulgence the previous day.

    Of course, there was also the work in figuring out why I was overeating in the first place. But as that was a multi year process for me – a time of healing as well as a time of learning new coping methods – I realized that there were going to be times during my healing journey when I would binge even when I didn’t mean to. It’s the messy part of healing and growth. So I had to have a way of coping with these times of shortfall, a way that wasn’t about doing penance. For me, the solution was self compassion – forgiving myself for overeating and not adding onto the pain with blame, shame and guilt.

    Sometimes I still overeat. It’s not as extreme – I may notice that I’m inhaling my dinner and subsequently ate more than my body needed, or that I’m mindlessly snacking – but the difference is that I kindly observe it. I don’t kill myself over it. I breathe, let go, shift the habit, forgive myself and move on. Because of this new way of relating to it, I move out of it pretty quickly.

    I know this may sound like denial or being a softie, but here’s what I’ve discovered – it works. Self compassion softens the shame about making a mistake – how human of us! – and allows us to learn and do differently next time. It makes us responsible – able to respond.

    So, dear one, precious, precious soul – if I could offer a suggestion for you this week, it would be this:  please don’t feel like you have to “burn the bird,” run 10 miles, throw up your food, starve/fast, detox, eat like a bird, exercise for 3 hours, or skip meals as punishment for enjoying your Thanksgiving. This journey is not about punishing ourselves – feeling the pain, making sure we get our “just desserts” – so we learn.

    Believe that you can learn and grow without the whip, the stick, the punishment.

    Believe that you are worthy of kindness.

    Believe that you are a worthy, tender human being and that you are doing the very best you can.

    So tomorrow, be very, very, very gentle with yourself. Savor your meal. Enjoy it. Taste it. Eat slowly if you can. Stop and say grace beforehand. Offer yourself peace.

    If you’re feeling anxious about overeating – and I know how painful this is, as for decades, every holiday meal felt like a gauntlet to me – I invite you to spend time connecting with your deepest self before your holiday meal. My therapist calls this part of us “the healthy core self.” You may call it your soul, your spirit, your true nature. Use whatever terminology makes you feel safe and comfortable.

    This is the part of us that can’t be touched, that is immovable, unshakable, that isn’t hurt by the slings and arrows of life. It’s the source of our courage, compassion, strength, love and beauty. When we put this part of us in charge – when we live from this place – we can care for those parts of us that feel scared, terrified, nervous, lonely, and afraid – those parts of us who seek solace in food.

    How do we connect with this part of ourselves?  I use prayer, meditation, yoga, walking, poetry, art, listening to music, dancing, writing, and play. It’s why I often put my hand on my heart, to remember who I am. You probably have additional ideas. (Please share them in the comments!)

    This shift in perspective allows us to care for our bumbling humanity – including our nervousness about overdoing it on the holiday – with tenderness and a bit of objectivity. We’re not so personally caught by it, we’re a bit detached. It’s what allows us to pause and be more mindful about what we’re eating.

    And even if you do get caught, and you eat more than you intend to tomorrow, care for that with kindness. Don’t punish yourself on Friday. In fact, do something totally and wonderfully self indulgent that makes you feel deliciously happy – like making art, or taking a long walk in the woods, or playing with your children, or calling the 5 people you love the most and catching up. Eat normally the next day. Forgive yourself. Let it go.

    Honor your being. Bow to your goodness. And let any silly notions of burning the bird go….

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    How to quiet your inner food cop

    November 7th, 2011

    I talk with hundreds of men and women who are healing from emotional eating, chronic dieting, binge eating and sugar addiction. And there’s one crucial, essential place where everyone – including me – gets stuck.

    It’s this:  There’s a voice – a chorus of voices – that nags at them all day. This voice is the food and weight cop. It’s the voice that communicates the rules – the “shoulds” – about how you should eat, live and be. We get so hung up on following what this voice says – on how we should eat – that we forget the why. We turn suggestions/tools/practices/ways of eating/food guidelines and turn them into dogma:

    • I should eat more protein.
    • I should eat less protein.
    • I should eat vegan.
    • I should practice intuitive eating.
    • I should have clear boundaries around what I eat.

    This dogma becomes very rigid. Very serious. Very life or death.

    We start to feel crazy because the dogma starts to contradict one another. We feel confused – what is the right way to eat? We go back and forth and spin ourselves around in circles. We try everything and feel lost, unmoored, ungrounded, uncentered. So there are no guidelines and every meal is a huge decision with all this anxiety, “What the heck DO I eat!????!!!”

    We can also feel ashamed. We try to eat a certain way – let’s say an approach of mindfully eating whatever we want – and we fail at it. Miserably. Instead of looking at that approach and saying, “Perhaps it’s not the best fit for me, perhaps I need more structure or boundaries,” we internalize it and turn it into shame:  “I’m bad because what worked for this person (or what this expert says is best) didn’t work for me.”

    We can even rank ways of eating – if only I ate vegan, or if only I ate 100% clean, all the time, or if only I ate like this spiritual leader or guru eats, or if only I ate like this super fit successful author says – then I would have the highest, best, greatest way of eating. It’s like we’re trying to be the best – the most evolved, the healthiest, the fittest, to be aligned with the “right” group – and so there’s all this pressure about finding the best and joining forces with them.

    Beloved, can you feel the pain here? The suffering? The anguish as all of this mental energy is caught up in the (not so) simple question of, “What do I eat?”

    Dear one, if this describes you, I invite you to try on the practice of centering – questioning the thoughts, rules and shoulds about how we eat and live. I unpack centering in detail in Becoming Binge Free, my workbook to free you from sugar addiction, and in Heal Overeating:  Untangled, my program to free you from overeating and binge eating. For now, I offer this:

    All food plans/practices/diet plans/approaches, etc. are simply this:  TOOLS. They are tools to find greater health and ease. They are a means to an end – the end being a healthy, happy relationship with food, your body and yourself. They are not dogma. They are not ranked, with one being more evolved than the other. They are not life or death.

    The “right” tool or approach for you is this:  the one that supports your being. Instead of getting tied up in knots about the tools, I gently invite you to focus on the end, what you’re really seeking – a healthy, happy relationship with food, your body and yourself.

    If a tool doesn’t mesh with you, gently let it go – and then give yourself a tool that does support you. And, please, please, don’t personalize it – don’t make yourself wrong because the tool isn’t a good fit for what you need. (Neither do we need to attack tools that don’t work for us, because they may be exactly what someone else is needing, or what we need at another time.)

    So let’s make this concrete with an example. Right now, I thrive with routine, structure and clear boundaries. They make me feel safe, supported and held. When I loosen these structures, I suffer. I overeat. I skip meals. I feel anxious and unmoored. My moods are  volatile.

    So I set clear boundaries around the foods I don’t eat – I don’t eat sugar and wheat. I do my best to eat 3 meals a day. I eat breakfast. These things help me thrive.

    What’s interesting is that these tools are very difficult for me. They make me feel great, and they are not natural, easy or intuitive. I have to work at them, and I stumble a lot. (This observation could be an entirely separate post about how just because something is difficult/not easy doesn’t mean it isn’t essential or helpful to us!)

    I could make myself bad and wrong for needing this concrete structure – I could say that I should just go with the flow more, that I should be less structured and more intuitive in my eating. But I see that is arguing with reality, with what it – with what does support me.

    I am learning to let myself “love what I love,” to let myself need what I need, to let myself be who I am, to give myself all that I need to thrive – and not to feel ashamed by it. 

    Precious soul, what do you need to thrive? What tools help you? Can you give yourself permission to use those tools, and to gently, kindly release the tools that don’t help?

    Mary Oliver says it this way:

    You do not have to be good.
    You do not have to walk on your knees
    For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
    You only have to let the soft animal of your body
    love what it loves.

    Beloved, let yourself “love what you love.” I’d love to hear your thoughts and a-ha’s.

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