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FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010
Reinvent Yourself
Emotional Eating is not simply a bad habit, but a symptom of a much more complex human phenomenon that involves all parts of your mind and life.
Recently a well respected figure in the world of adult development died, Dr. Robert Butler, someone who I knew professionally, but not personally. He too wrote about the life cycle and the issues of adapting to the various phases of adulthood. His primary focus was on post retirement, where my focus has been on mid-life crisis.
His thesis is that people have to “reinvent” themselves many times during the course of life, and that this is especially important if one is going to enjoy healthy aging. Although we haven’t used that particular term, that is core of what we do here. In order to fully break the emotional eating habit and free yourself from binging, compulsive eating or the food obsession, you have to reinvent yourself!
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That may sound like a tall order, if you let the wrong image of that control your thinking. The initial image suggests you have to change everything about yourself, including your hair, your wardrobe and life partner. That's not what he means, and it’s not what I mean.
We have already seen from the comments on the blogs, that reinventing yourself can mean something as simple as setting boundaries, being able to recover your voice and make yourself heard rather than hide, or developing an adult proactive attitude to all the ups and downs of relationships at work or at home. These are all obvious and on the surface. They might even sound simple and easy to do just by making a decision to do them. However, it is very difficult for the person who has not done them before, particularly if they have been thinking about doing it for a long time and not yet taken the steps to make the changes happen.
Reinventing yourself is nothing more than acquiring those life skills and self confidence that you probably admire and envy in another person. You may have other strengths that you are proud of, but what you envy in them is what you don’t have, and you envy because on some level you know you could develop if you worked at it. But these other people did not have the same upbringing that you did, did not have to adapt to the same set of parents, or go through the same difficult transitions, or deal with the same family dynamics. We've all had different experiences in life and have re-adapted to them in a way that has worked well enough so far.
The question of reinventing yourself comes up when
“well enough” is no longer good enough.
It's somewhat of a paradox. On one hand, reinventing yourself can simply be a matter of making a decision to take a reasonable risk, it’s about common and ordinary behavior, others like you have already done it for themselves and demonstrated that it can be done and it is safe. But that’s not how it feels when you think about doing it. It feels almost impossible, like climbing a high mountain without any preparation. For a person who has been shy most of their life to suddenly speak up and have their voice heard seems like it's asking too much. Of course it is not really asking too much, and other people do it all the time.
There is a steady pulse under the surface that pushes personal
evolution and change while we are busy living our daily lives.
However, the whole process of reinventing yourself and recovering from your childhood is stopped in its tracks by emotional eating. Emotional eating blocks normal growth and development. When a signal occurs that is prompting you to look at yourself and reevaluate and take some risk and practice something new in order solve problems or feel better about yourself, you mute that signal. You might binge or reach for food which blurs the message your brain is sending to you before it gets too clear. Emotional eating is like having a constantly interrupted conversation with yourself. Every time it gets interesting and important, eating interrupts that internal conversation, and the growth process is halted. Your brain doesn’t give up, the message for growth is relentless, it keeps coming up and you keep stuffing it down. That’s why binges and overeating occur in unpredictable and unpreventable cycles.
You can see from the comments on the blogs, how people are struggling to reinvent themselves. They are dealing with food obsession on the surface, but really it only represents the deeper struggle, which is to grow and be free and recover from old childhood adaptations that no longer work. The Shrink Yourself program will help you grow and live your life in the broadest sense of the word. People are always surprised, at the end of the program, to find that the cravings have gone away. That’s because the cravings were nothing more than the emotional hunger for growth and the push to reinvent yourself...
Given this time in your life, how do you need to reinvent yourself?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 5:05:00 PM
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The Shrink Yourself Blog
The Shrink Yourself Blog, hosted by Michelle Fiordaliso, clinical director of Shrink Yourself, gives you expert info on emotional eating.
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