My therapist has said to me several times that she wants me to consider changing my thoughts and beliefs about myself and not my behaviors. I usually nod my head, start thinking about what I am going to grab to eat on my way home from her office, and wonder if there is some other "tool" I have not tried that can get me to where I want to be. A new budget spreadsheet? A new organizational system? A new diet? A better understanding of gluten? Of sugar? Of fat? Intermittent fasting? One meal per day? How can I change my behavior so I can feel better about myself?
When you are a dieter, you wait for the day that you have lost all the weight, and you know that everything will be "better" then. If you are beating yourself up for being fat, once you aren't fat, you will no longer beat yourself up...right? I have done this with my debt (once I have paid off my debt, I will no longer beat myself up about how much debt I have), with the clutter in my house (once I clean up and come up with a system to keep it clean, I will no longer beat myself up about what a mess I am ), and with multiple projects that I have procrastinated on (well, it feels shitty to have to rush this way, but when I am done and still ON TIME, I will no longer beat myself about how I suck at time management and saying no and am always doing things at the eleventh hour).
So of course, it probably is not that easy. After all, I have been a size that looks damn good to me in pictures now, even though I thought at the time that I was still fat. There was a time when I did not have credit card debt, and I was not necessarily happier then. When I moved into my current home, I started with a blank slate, and no method I could come up with could stop it from becoming what it has been recently. As for procrastination, well, I usually over-schedule myself to the point that down time becomes REALLY down time (usually involving a nap and binge watching a Criminal Minds marathon), instead of a calm, set aside block of time where I can work on things ahead of time.
Anyway, it usually take me about fifteen minutes to get from the therapy office to my home. And I usually spend that time pondering what we have talked about and trying to separate the "fluff" (which is often from me deflecting or staying very "surface") from the "meat" (which usually is whatever leads me to cry) of the session. And today, the thought I left with was this: "What would my life look like if I were to willing to forgive myself for all the things I did that were not in keeping with taking care of my "inner child" (or the little girl that still lives in me...take your pick of terminology)?
My childhood was a good one (I think I have written about this before). We had plenty to eat, clothes to wear, a good education. We went on vacations, often more than once per year. My mom stayed at home with us, for the most part, and we didn't spend time in day cares. My dad worked hard to provide for us, and he paid for our college careers in full. We remain geographically and socially close, and we see each other often. I thought this meant that my family life had been alright.
But. Emotionally? Not so close. Nurturing? Not this group. Affectionate? Nope. Connected? I don't really think so. Generous with money? Absolutely. Willing to treat each other to lunch out or to ice cream or cookies or a bag of candy? Yep. At ease with saying the words "I love you?" Certainly not. But my family life was still alright...wasn't it?
A long time ago, my therapist said something that has stuck with me through this journey. She said that, while someone who has been abandoned or abused or physically neglected has a specific "reason" to point to when they find themselves in a therapist's chair, subtle things can, over time, be just as damaging. So for a baby who is left alone to cry in her bed who grows into a toddler whose mom is not free with affection and then to a child who is given treats but not told that she is loved and then into a teen who is afraid to rock the boat because "that's not what we do," the end result might just be a place like this one, where I find myself. My impression of myself is that I have fucked up a lot of stuff, and THIS is why I didn't get what I needed (at least emotionally) in my family. I see my life as a series of bad decisions (even some that I "made" before decisions were really mine to make), bad choices, and bad behaviors that inform my view of myself (I must be bad...right?) and have me stuck in this place where I am pretty sure I don't want to spend the rest of my life feeling THIS way, but the other side is far, far away, and the fog is too thick for me to see it clearly.
So changing my thoughts...forgiving myself...engaging in meaningful self-care...seeing myself as being worth achieving all those "goals" (less weight, less debt, less clutter) instead of waiting to achieve them in order to become worthy...how do I do that? I want an instruction book or a recipe. "Take two vitamin C gummies, eat an apple, and dance in the moonlight on a warm, rainy night while burning incense and balancing a book on your head." Okay, step one, done. Step two, done. And step three...well, as long as no one is there to see it. But I hear my therapist when she says that is not what it's about. And I am thinking about it. And I have not found her untrustworthy in the years that I have been seeing her, so there is no reason to think she is lying to me now. And she seems to really believe it. She believes that I am worthy of love, even with my load of credit card debt and my messy house and my fatness. Could that really be true?
I am not sure where to go from here. I guess a first step to forgiving myself is to figure out just what it is I need to forgive myself for. I do firmly believe that all the mindful eating work and body love advocacy and anti-diet reading in the world cannot "fix" what's going on here. I have tried medication that was supposed to cut down on binge eating by changing the way I felt physically, but that didn't address why it was I was binge eating. And I went off that medication because I saw that it was maybe a quick fix to a lifelong struggle I have had. Before I can profess to the world, "I love my body, curves and all," I have to be able to say that I love myself...the me inside this body, not the body as the world sees it.
So I guess it will take talking about it over and over again, having my irrational beliefs challenged over and over again, and leaving therapy exhausted after spending my time there crying over and over again to move in a healthy direction. And maybe the rest will follow. But even if it doesn't, it would stand to reason that that would not matter as much anymore, right? If I truly love myself, what the rest of the world thinks about my body should not matter. If I truly love myself, I should not feel the need to keep feeding the vortex that I am trying to fill with more and more things. If I truly love myself, I should be able to take care of myself by doing things like taking the trash out and vacuuming on a regular basis and occasionally saying "no" when I am over-scheduled and need some time to myself. My therapist today said that she knows that I am standing at the end of the cliff right now, and that feels very true, and I feel like I can't see the bottom. But can I let go of what I have known and believe in something better? Can I finally take that leap and believe that I can build some wings on my way down?
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